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• Support ARMv7 instruction set in Windows Embedded Compact applications

  - by Valter Minute

  On of the most interesting new features of Windows Embedded Compact 7 is support for the ARMv5, ARMv6 and ARMv7 instruction sets instead of the ARMv4 “generic” support provided by the previous releases. This means that code build for Windows Embedded Compact 7 can leverage features (like the FPU unit for ARMv6 and v7) and instructions of the recent ARM cores and improve their performances. Those improvements are noticeable in graphics, floating point calculation and data processing. The ARMv7 instruction set is supported by the latest Cortex-A8, A9 and A15 processor families. Those processor are currently used in tablets, smartphones, in-car navigation systems and provide a great amount of processing power and a low amount of electric power making them very interesting for portable device but also for any kind of device that requires a rich user interface, processing power, connectivity and has to keep its power consumption low. The bad news is that the compiler provided with Visual Studio 2008 does not provide support for ARMv7, building native applications using just the ARMv4 instruction set. Porting a Visual Studio “Smart Device” native C/C++ project to Platform Builder is not easy and you’ll lack many of the features that the VS2008 application development environment provides. You’ll also need access to the BSP and OSDesign configuration for your device to be able to build and debug your application inside Platform Builder and this may prevent independent software vendors from using the new compiler to improve their applications performances. Adeneo Embedded now provides a whitepaper and a Visual Studio plug-in that allows usage of the new ARMv7 enabled compiler to build applications inside Visual Studio 2008. I worked on the whitepaper and the tools, with the help of my colleagues and now the results can be downloaded from Adeneo Embedded’s website: http://www.adeneo-embedded.com/OS-Technologies/Windows-Embedded (Click on the “WEC7 ARMv7 Whitepaper tab to access the download links, free registration required) A very basic benchmark showed a very good performance improvement in integer and floating-point operations. Obviously your mileage may vary and we can’t promise the same amount of improvement on any application, but with a small effort on your side (even smaller if you use the plug-in) you can try on your own application. ARMv7 support is provided using Platform Builder’s compiler and VS2008 application debugger is not able to debut ARMv7 code, so you may need to put in place some workaround like keeping ARMv4 code for debugging etc.

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• 3 Reasons You Need To Know Something About Every Technology

  - by Tim Murphy

  I make my living as a consultant and a general technologist.  I credit my success to the fact that I have never been afraid to pick up any product, language or platform needed to get the job done.  While Microsoft technologies I my mainstay, I have done work on mainframe and UNIX platforms and have worked with a wide variety of database engines.  Each one has it’s use and most times it is less expensive to find a way to communicate with an existing system than to replace it. So what are the main benefits of expending the effort to learn a new technology? New ways to solve problems Accelerate development Advise clients and get new business opportunities By new technology I mean ones that you haven’t had experience with before.  They don’t have to be the the one that just came out yesterday.  As they say, those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it.  If you can learn something from an older technology it can be just as valuable as the shiny new one.  Either way, when you add another tool to your kit you get a new view on each problem you face.  This makes it easier to create a sound solution. The next thing you can learn from working with different products and techniques is how to more efficiently develop solve problems.  Many times if you are working with a new language you will find that there are specific design patterns that are used with it in normal use.  These can usually be applied with most languages.  You just needed to be exposed to them. The last point is about helping your clients and helping yourself.  If you can get in on technologies early you will have advantage over your competition in the market.  You will also be able to honestly advise you client on why they should or should not go with a new product.  Being able to compare products and their features is always an ability that stake holders appreciate. You don’t need to learn every detail of a product.  Learn enough to function and get an idea of how to use the technology.  Keep eating those technology Wheaties and you will be ready to go the distance in any project. del.icio.us Tags: Technology,technologists,technology generalist,Software Architecture

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• The Use-Case Driven Approach to Change Management

  - by Lauren Clark

  In the third entry of the series on OUM and PMI’s Pulse of the Profession, we took a look at the continued importance of change management and risk management. The topic of change management and OUM’s use-case driven approach has come up in few recent conversations. So I thought I would jot down a few thoughts on how the use-case driven approach aids a project team in managing the project’s scope. The use-case model is one of several tools in OUM that is used to establish and manage the project's scope.  Because a use-case model can be understood by both business and IT project team members, it can serve as a bridge for ongoing collaboration as well as a visual diagram that encapsulates all agreed-upon functionality. This makes it a vital artifact in identifying changes to the project’s scope. Here are some of the primary benefits of using the use-case model as part of the effort for establishing and managing project scope: The use-case model quickly communicates scope in a straightforward manner. All project stakeholders can have a common foundation for the decisions regarding architecture and design and how they relate to the project's objectives. Once agreed upon, the model can be put under change control and any updates to the model can then be quickly identified as potentially affecting the project’s scope.  Changes requested or discovered later in the project can be analyzed objectively for their impact on project's budget, resources and schedule. A modular foundation for the design of the software solution can be established in Elaboration.  This permits work to be divided up effectively and executed in so that the most important and riskiest use-cases can be tackled early in the project. The use-case model helps the team make informed decisions about implementation priorities, which allows effective allocation of limited project resources.  This is very helpful in not only managing scope, but in doing iterative and incremental planning which relies heavily on the ability to identify project priorities. Bottom line is that the use-case model gives the project team solid understanding of scope early in the project.  Combine this understanding with effective project management and communication and you have an effective tool for reducing the risk of overruns in budget and/or time due to out of control scope changes. Now that you’ve had a chance to read these thoughts on the use-case model and project scope, please let me know your feedback based on your experience.

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• The cost of Programmer Team Clustering

  - by MarkPearl

  I recently was involved in a conversation about the productivity of programmers and the seemingly wide range in abilities that different programmers have in this industry. Some of the comments made were reiterated a few days later when I came across a chapter in Code Complete (v2) where it says "In programming specifically, many studies have shown order-of-magnitude differences in the quality of the programs written, the sizes of the programs written, and the productivity of programmers". In line with this is another comment presented by Code Complete when discussing teams - "Good programmers tend to cluster, as do bad programmers". This is something I can personally relate to. I have come across some really good and bad programmers and 99% of the time it turns out the team they work in is the same - really good or really bad. When I have found a mismatch, it hasn't stayed that way for long - the person has moved on, or the team has ejected the individual. Keeping this in mind I would like to comment on the risks an organization faces when forcing teams to remain together regardless of the mix. When you have the situation where someone is not willing to be part of the team but still wants to get a pay check at the end of each month, it presents some interesting challenges and hard decisions to make. First of all, when this occurs you need to give them an opportunity to change - for someone to change, they need to know what the problem is and what is expected. It is unreasonable to expect someone to change but have not indicated what they need to change and the consequences of not changing. If after a reasonable time of an individual being aware of the problem and not making an effort to improve you need to do two things... Follow through with the consequences of not changing. Consider the impact that this behaviour will have on the rest of the team. What is the cost of not following through with the consequences? If there is no follow through, it is often an indication to the individual that they can continue their behaviour. Why should they change if you don't care enough to keep your end of the agreement? In many ways I think it is very similar to the "Broken Windows" principles – if you allow the windows to break and don’t fix them, more will get broken. What is the cost of keeping them on? When keeping a disruptive influence in a team you risk loosing the good in the team. As Code Complete says, good and bad programmers tend to cluster - they have a tendency to keep this balance - if you are not going to help keep the balance they will. The cost of not removing a disruptive influence is that the good in the team will eventually help you maintain the clustering themselves by leaving.

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• Current State EA: Focus on the Integration!!!

  - by Eric A. Stephens

  A recent project has me at the front end of a large implementation effort covering multiple software components. In addition to the challenges of integrating 15-20 separate and new software components there is the challenge of integrating the portfolio into an existing environment. Like other clients I've worked with and other environments I've worked in for many years, this is typical. The applications are undocumented and under patched leading to a mystery for any architect leading change.  We can boil down most architecture development methodologies (ADM) into first understanding the current/baseline state and then envisioning one or more future states. Many pundits emphasize the need to focus on the future/target states. I agree since enterprise architecture (EA) is about where you are going and not so much where you have been. But to be effective in the future, I contend some focused time needs to be spent on the current state. And specifically on the integration. Integration is always the difficult part of a project (I might put it more coarsely at a cocktail party). While I don't have a case study, my anecdotal experience suggests poorly integrated application portfolios tend to cost more to operate and create entropy when trying to respond to new changes and opportunities. In the aforementioned project, I was able to get one of our EAs assigned to focus on just integration almost immediately. While we're still early in the process, this EA is uncovering all sorts of information that will greatly assist our future state planning for this solution. This information is driving early decision making that we anticipate will accelerate our efforts moving forward. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }

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• Dadaism and Agility

  - by alexhildyard

  We all have our little bugbears, and something that has given me particular pause over the years is the place of Agility in the software development life cycle. While I have seen it used successfully on both small and Enterprise-level projects, I have also seen many instances in which long-standing technical debt has also originated under its watch. Ironically the problem in such cases seems to me not that the practitioners in question have failed to follow due process (Test, Develop, Refactor -- a common "what" of Agile), but basically that they have missed the point (the "why" of Agile). It's probably a sign of my age that I'm much more interested in the "why" than the "what", since I feel that the latter falls out naturally from the former, but that this is not a reciprocal relationship.Consider Dadaism, precursor to the Surrealist movement in the early part of the twentieth century. Anyone could stand up and proclaim he or she was Dada; anyone could write cut-ups, or pull words out a hat, or produce gibberish on duelling typewriters under the inspiration of Dada. And all that took place at such performances was a manifestation of Dada, and all the artefacts that resulted were also Dada. Hence one commentator's engimatic observation that 'when one speaks of Dada, then one speaks of Dada. But when one does not speak of Dada, one still speaks of Dada.'What is Dada? Literally, Dada is what you say it is. But that's also missing the point. Dada is about erecting a framework within which utterances like this are valid; Dada is about preparing a stage for itself. Dadaism exemplifies the purity of a process-driven ideology -- in fact an ideology that is almost pure process, with nothing extraneous in the way of formal method, and while perhaps Agile delivery should not embrace the liberties of Dadaism too literally, some of the similarities nevertheless are salutary.Agile -- like Dada -- is an attitude; it is about *being* agile; it is not really about doing a specific set of things that are somehow *part* of being Agile. It is an abstract base rather than an implementation, a characteristic rather than a factor. It is the pragmatic response to the need for change in the face of partial information, ephemeral requirements and a healthy dose of systematic uncertainty. In practice this will usually mean repeatedly making the smallest useful changes to a system, recognising that systems evolve, and that all change carries risk. It will usually mean that instead of investing effort in future-proofing a system against a known technology roadmap, one instead invests one's energies in the daily repetition and incremental development of processes best designed to accommodate change quickly. But though it may mean these things in practice, it isn't actually *about* either of these things; it's about the mindset, the attitude that conceives of such responses as sensible solutions given the larger and ultimately unclassifiable thing that constitutes the development lifecycle of a specific project.

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• Architects, Leadership, and Influence

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Technical expertise is a given for architects. In addition to solid development experience, extensive knowledge of technical trends, tools, standards, and methodolgies (not to mention business accumen) provides the foundation for the decisions the architect must make in the effort to get all the pieces to work together. But even superior technical chops can't overcome a lack of leadership. Leadership is about influence: the ability to effectively communicate — to sell your ideas and defend your decisions in a manner that affects the decisions of the people around you. Leadership and influence are especially important in situations in which the architect may not have the authority to simply tell people what to do. And even when the architect has that kind of authority, influential leadership can mean the difference between gaining real buy-in and support from colleagues and stakeholders, and settling for their grudging acceptance (or worse). Guess which outcome is likely to produce the best results. In a previous post I presented some examples of the kind of criticism that is leveled at architects, a great deal of which can be attributed to a lack of leadership and influence on the part of the targets of that criticism. So it was serendipitous that I recently ran across a post on the Harvard Business Review blog written by Chris Musselwhite and Tammie Plouffe. That post, When Your Influence Is Ineffective, includes this: [I]nfluence becomes ineffective when individuals become so focused on the desired outcome that they fail to fully consider the situation. While the influencer may still gain the short-term desired outcome, he or she can do long-term damage to personal effectiveness and the organization, as it creates an atmosphere of distrust where people stop listening, and the potential for innovation or progress is diminished. The need to "see the big picture" is a grossly reductive assesement of the architect's responsibilities — but that doesn't mean it's not true. That big picture perspective must encompass both the technological elements of the architecture and the elements responsible for implementing those technologies in compliance with the prescribed architecture. Technologies may be tempermental, but they don't have personalities or egos, and they are unlikely to carry a grudge — not yet, anyway (Hello, Skynet!).  Effective leadership and the ability to influence people can help to ensure that all the pieces fit and that they work together, today and tomorrow.

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• On the art of self-promotion

  - by Tony Davis

  I attended Brent Ozar's Building the Fastest SQL Servers session at Tech Ed last week, and found myself engulfed in a 'perfect storm' of excellent technical and presentational skills coupled with an astute awareness of the value of promoting one's work. I spend a lot of time at such events talking to developers and DBAs about the value of blogging and writing articles, and my impression is that some could benefit from a touch less modesty and a little more self-promotion. I sense a reticence in many would-be writers. Is what I have to say important enough? Haven't far more qualified and established commentators, MVPs and so on, already said it? While it's a good idea to pick reasonably fresh and interesting topics, it's more important not to let such fears lead to writer's block. In the eyes of any future employer, your published writing is an extension of your resume. They will not care that a certain MVP knows how to solve problem x, but they will be very interested to see that you have tackled that same problem, and solved it in your own way, and described the process in your own voice. In your current job, your writing is one of the ways you can express to your peers, and to the organization as a whole, the value of what you contribute. Many Developers and DBAs seem to rely on the idea that their work will speak for itself, and that their skill shines out from it. Unfortunately, this isn't always true. Many Development DBAs, for example, will be painfully aware of the massive effort involved in tuning and adding resilience to rapidly developed applications. However, others in the organization who are unaware of what's involved in getting an application that is 'done' ready for production may dismiss such efforts as fussiness or conservatism. At the dark end of the development cycle, chickens come home to roost, but their droppings tend to land on those trying to clear up the mess. My advice is this: next time you fix a bug or improve the resilience or performance of a database or application, make sure that you use team meetings, informal discussions and so on to ensure that people understand what the problem was and what you had to do to fix it. Use your blog to describe, generally, the process you adopted, the resources you used and the insights that came from your work. Encourage your colleagues to do the same. By spreading the art of self-promotion to everyone involved in an IT project, we get a better idea of the extent of the work and the value of the contribution of all the team members. As always, we'd love to hear what you think. This very week, Simple-talk launches its new blogging platform. If any of this has moved you to 'throw your hat into the ring', drop us a mail at [email protected]. Cheers, Tony.

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• What to do when opensource project starts to tear apart? (or a manager tries to write code and than shouts at the team)

  - by Kabumbus

  Imagine there is an open source cross-platform project on Google code. It has lots of revisions (1000). It concentrates in itself lots technological stuff - rare stuff - it mixes top tech. It contains server, and more than one client. The project was created by a well-connected team of developers (friends) and a manager that was sponsoring project at its start up during its first few months (project now is more than a year old-sponsoring oss project is a big good deal- also gave the idea of project to developers). The project was growing in complexity and effort reqiered to continue development. Once upon a time a manager - team leader started trying to write code (he was a programmer in some other projects - not the best, but he felt like he was one). He started because one of the developers suggested an idea at the team meeting and he felt he just needed to do it on his own. He failed, and he told the dev team about it. The dev team did what he failed to do in a few days. After that, the manager feels that team codes with out him perfectly and gets the job done in short time. He felt sorry and lost and he started to crash like an old bad PC. Firstly, he started to scream (in forms of messages not in voice) he tried to tell developers that what they were doing was a bad, not-needed thing - developers kindly told him that his "beginnings" were not compilable while dev team product worked as needed. He told the developers that all work they do should be firstly discussed with him. Here is the part where we need to mention that all team members are "project owners" and logically have equal rights. The team leader suggested to the developers these options: change their dev process to go through him, or be moved from project owners to contributers. So what are our options as developers? What arguments we can provide to the team leader/manager for him to calm down? Is it possible to save the project or is it better to fork out now? An important issue is that lately we had no active ticket system, and I personally think that this was the reason the mess appeared. So... any ideas?

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• Perfect is the enemy of “Good Enough”

  - by Daniel Moth

  This is one of the quotes that I was against, but now it is totally part of my core beliefs: "Perfect is the enemy of Good Enough" Folks used to share this quote a lot with me in my early career and my frequent interpretation was that they were incompetent people that were satisfied with mediocrity, i.e. I ignored them and their advice. (Yes, I went through an arrogance phase). I later "grew up" and "realized" that they were missing the point, so instead of ignoring them I would retort: "Of course we have to aim for perfection, because as human beings we'll never achieve perfection, so by aiming for perfection we will indeed achieve good enough results". (Yes, I went through a smart ass phase). Later I grew up a bit more and "understood" that what I was really being told is to finish my work earlier and move on to other things because by trying to perfect that one thing, another N things that I was responsible for were suffering by not getting my attention - all things on my plate need to move beyond the line, not just one of them to go way over the line. It is really a statement of increasing scale and scope. To put it in other words, getting PASS grades on 10 things is better than getting an A+ with distinction on 1-2 and a FAIL on the rest. Instead of saying “I am able to do very well these X items” it is best if you can say I can do well enough on these X * Y items”, where Y > 1. That is how breadth impact is achieved. In the future, I may grow up again and have a different interpretation, but for now - even though I secretly try to "perfect" things, I try not to do that at the expense of other responsibilities. This means that I haven't had anybody quote that saying to me in a while (or perhaps my quality of work has dropped so much that it doesn't apply to me any more - who knows :-)). Wikipedia attributes the quote to Voltaire and it also makes connections to the “Law of diminishing returns”, and to the “80-20 rule” or “Pareto principle”… it commonly takes 20% of the full time to complete 80% of a task while to complete the last 20% of a task takes 80% of the effort …check out the Wikipedia entry on “Perfect is the enemy of Good” and its links. Also use your favorite search engine to search and see what others are saying (Bing, Google) – it is worth internalizing this in a way that makes sense to you… Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Survey: Your Plans for Adopting New Firefox Releases?

  - by Steven Chan (Oracle Development)

  Mozilla is committing to releasing new Firefox versions every six weeks.  Mozilla released Firefox 5 this week.  With this release, Mozilla states that Firefox 4 is End-of-Life and will not receive any additional security updates.  In a comment thread posted on to a Mike Kaply's blog article discussing these new Firefox policies, Asa Dotzler from Mozilla stated: ... Enterprise has never been (and I’ll argue, shouldn’t be) a focus of ours. Until we run out of people who don’t have sysadmins and enterprise deployment teams looking out for them, I can’t imagine why we’d focus at all on the kinds of environments you care so much about.  In a later comment, he added: ... A minute spent making a corporate user happy can better be spent making many regular users happy. I’d much rather Mozilla spending its limited resources looking out for the billions of users that don’t have enterprise support systems already taking care of them. Asa then confirmed that every new Firefox release will put the previous one into End-of-Life: As for John’s concern, “By the time I validate Firefox 5, what guarantee would I have that Firefox 5 won’t go EOL when Firefox 6 is released?” He has the opposite of guarantees that won’t happen. He has my promise that it will happen. Firefox 6 will be the EOL of Firefox 5. And Firefox 7 will be the EOL for Firefox 6.  He added: “You’re basically saying you don’t care about corporations.” Yes, I’m basically saying that I don’t care about making Firefox enterprise friendly. Kev Needham, Channel Manager at Mozilla later stated to PC Mag: The Web and Web browsers continue to evolve rapidly. Mozilla's focus is on providing users with the best Web experience possible, and Firefox needs to evolve at the pace the Web's users and developers expect. By releasing small, focused updates more often, we are able to deliver improved security and stability even as we introduce new features, which is better for our users, and for the Web.We recognize that this shift may not be compatible with a large organization's IT Policy and understand that it is challenging to organizations that have effort-intensive certification polices. However, our development process is geared toward delivering products that support the Web as it is today, while innovating and building future Web capabilities. Tying Firefox product development to an organizational process we do not control would make it difficult for us to continue to innovate for our users and the betterment of the Web.  Your feedback needed for E-Business Suite certifications  Mozilla's new support policy has significant implications for enterprise users of Firefox with Oracle E-Business Suite.  We are reviewing the implications for our certification and support policies for Firefox now.  It would be very helpful if you could let me know about your organisation's plans for Firefox in light of this new information.  Please feel free to drop me a private email, or post a comment here if that's appropriate. 

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• Office 2010 Professional Plus (Top 10 reasons to upgrade)

  - by mbcrump

  Being a huge nerd, I decided that I would go ahead and upgrade to the latest and greatest office. That being, Office 2010 Professional Plus. The biggest concern that I had was loosing all my mail settings from Outlook 2007. Thankfully, it upgrade gracefully and worked like a charm. So lets start this top 10 list. 1) You can upgrade without fear of loosing all your stuff! As you can tell by the screenshot below, you can select what you want to do. I selected to remove all previous versions.    2) Outlook conversations: Just like GMail, you can now group emails by conversations. This is simply awesome and a must have. 3) The ability to ignore conversations. If you are on a email thread that has nothing to do with you. Simply “ignore” the conversation and all emails go into the deleted folder. 4) Quick Steps, do you send an email to the same team member or group constantly. With quick steps, its just one click away. 5) Spell check in the Subject line! 6)  Easier Screenshots, built in just click the button. No more ALT-Printscreen for those that are not aware of the awesome SnagIT 10 that's out. 7) Open in protected view. When you open a document from an email attachment, it lets you know the file may be unsafe. You can click a button to enable editing. This is great for preventing macros.       8) Excel has always had a variety of charts and graphs available to visually depict data and trends. With Excel 2010, though, Microsoft has added a new feature called Sparklines, which allows you to place a mini-graph or trend line in a single cell. The Sparklines are a cool way to quickly and simply add a visual element without having to go through the effort of inserting a graph or chart that overwhelms the worksheet. 9) Contact actions. If you hover over a name in the form or fields on an email, you get a popup giving you several actions you can perform on the person such as adding them to your Outlook contacts, scheduling a meeting, viewing their stored contact information if they are already in your contacts, sending an instant message or even starting a telephone call. 10) Windows 7 Task Bar Context Menu – I love the jumplist. I don’t know how much that I would actually use it but it just rocks.

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• Registering domain during christmas holydays

  - by arkascha

  One of the domain names I tried to register previously has been blocked by a domain grabber two days prior to my own attempt. That was about 1 year ago. The attempt to buy the domain from that person failed due to a totally exaggerated price. So I dropped the issue and watched the domain (offered at sedo.com). As expected there were no more offers, the domain was not sold. Now I learn from the whois database that the registration of that domain name ends on 25.12.2012 (christmas holyday). This raises two questions for me, I fail to find reliable answers on the internet. So maybe someone experienced here can drop a statement or a hint: is it reasonable that the domain name in question really will be free again when that date mentioned in the whois database up to when the domain is registered has passed? I certainly know that the registration can be prolonged, that is not what I mean. I expect (hope) that that domain grabber does not extend the registration, since it costs money and effort and he failed to sell the domain. Provided this is the case and the domain registration is not prolonged, is that date mentioned reliable? Or might it just be some 'default' date? I would like to try to register that domain name as soon as it is unregistered. Since that domain grabber registered that domain only two days before my own registration attempt I would like to prevent such annoying interference next time. So I ask myself: is it possible to register a domain name on a holyday? I mean not to send an email to my provider to do so on that day or before, but to actually have to process taking place as not to wait for 1-2 days after the unregistration? My own provider which I am very happy with does not offer such service on a holyday (which is perfectly understandable). They are 'still checking' if they can offer something automatic. I researched and did not find an answer to the question if that is possible at all. Is an autoomatic registration attempt on a holyday possible? Where can I do that? Is that reliable? Thanks for any reply!

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• My father wants to learn PHP-MySQL to port his application. What I should do to help?

  - by adijiwa

  My father is a doctor/physician. About 15 years ago he started writing an application to handle his patient's medical records in his clinic at home. The app has the ability to input patient's medical records (obviously), search patients by some criteria, manage medicine stocks, output receipt to printer, and some more CRUDs. He wrote it in dBase III+. A few years later he migrated to FoxPro 2.6 for DOS and finally in a few more years he rewrote his app in Visual FoxPro 9. And now (actually two years ago) he wants to rewrite it in PHP, but he don't know how. The Visual FoxPro version of this app is still running and has no serious problem except sometimes it performs slowly. Usually there are 1-5 concurrent users. The binary and database files are shared via windows share. He did all the coding as a hobby and for free (it is for his own clinic after all). He also use this app in two other offices he managed. Some reasons of why he wants to rewrite in PHP-MySQL: He wants to learn Easier to deploy (?) Easier client setup, need only a browser What should I do to help my father? How should he start? I explored some options: I let my father learn PHP and MySQL (and HTML (and JavaScript?)) from scratch. I create/bundle framework. I'm thinking on bundling CodeIgniter and a web UI framework (any suggestion?) especially to reduce effort on writing presentation codes. What do you think? tl;dr My father (a doctor) wants to rewrite his Visual FoxPro app in PHP-MySQL. He knows very little of PHP and MySQL but he wants to learn. What should I do to help? How should he start? Some facts: My father is 50 years old. His first encounter with a PC is in early 1980s. It was IBM PC with Intel 8088. He knows BASIC. He taught me how to use DOS and how to program with BASIC. The other language he knows fairly well is dBase/FoxPro. I got my bachelor CS degree last year. I know the internals of my father's app because sometime he wants me to help him writing his app. Sorry for my english.

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• Wireless connection by using command screen

  - by Amadeus

  I installed Ubuntu 12.04 armhf to my beagleboard-xm and now trying to connect to a wireless network. First, I checked if I can search for available networks: ubuntu@arm:~$ iwlist scan lo Interface doesn't support scanning. usb0 Interface doesn't support scanning. wlan0 Scan completed : Cell 01 - Address: EA:7D:EF:60:C9:0B Channel:1 Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1) Quality=70/70 Signal level=-23 dBm Encryption key:on ESSID:"ghostrider" Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s Bit Rates:6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s Mode:Ad-Hoc Extra:tsf=000000005a1ab50e Extra: Last beacon: 6242ms ago IE: Unknown: 000A67686F73747269646572 IE: Unknown: 010882848B962430486C IE: Unknown: 030101 IE: Unknown: 06020000 IE: Unknown: 2A0100 IE: Unknown: 2F0100 IE: Unknown: 32040C121860 IE: Unknown: 2D1A2C181BFF00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 IE: Unknown: 3D16010800000000FF000000000000000000000000000000 IE: Unknown: DD09001018020000000000 Then I edited /etc/network/interfaces file to the following: root@arm:/etc/wpa_supplicant# cat /etc/network/interfaces auto lo iface lo inet loopback # The primary network interface auto eth0 iface eth0 inet dhcp # Example to keep MAC address between reboots #hwaddress ether DE:AD:BE:EF:CA:FE # WiFi Example auto wlan0 iface wlan0 inet dhcp wpa-ssid "ghostrider" wpa-psk "b34d373eb2fb836a43b0afffe783c7d0af694724506c9e77b06d1021302905bf" But I cannot still connect to the wireless network: root@arm:/etc/wpa_supplicant# iwconfig lo no wireless extensions. usb0 no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:off/any Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Asociated Tx-Power=20 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Encryption key:off Power Management:on eth0 no wireless extensions. root@arm:/etc/network# ifup wlan0 Failed to bring up wlan0. What is wrong? Should I change any other files also? But I think it was enough. By the way if you are curious about where that wpa-psk came from: zero@ghostrider:~$ wpa_passphrase ghostrider 34bddf67c2 network={ ssid="ghostrider" #psk="34bddf67c2" psk=b34d373eb2fb836a43b0afffe783c7d0af694724506c9e77b06d1021302905bf } I will appreciate any effort to help. Regards, Amadeus ps: Also I tried to connect manually: root@arm:/etc/network# iwconfig wlan0 essid ghostrider key s:34bddf67c2 But this did not solve my problem also.

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• The Minimalist's Approach to Content Governance

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  This week on the blog, we want to focus on the content lifecylce and how important it is to have the tools in place to be able to properly manage all te phases of the content lifecylce. John Brunswick has some great advice when it comes to this topic, so expect to hear a lot from him this week! Originally posted by John Brunswick. Let's be honest - content governance is far from an exciting topic. BUT the potential of a very small intranet team creating and maintaining a platform that provides an organization with relevant, high value information, helping workers to get their jobs done with greater accuracy and in less time is exciting. It is easy to quickly start producing content, but the challenge is ensuring that the environment is easy to navigate and use on the third week and during the third year.   What can be done to bridge this gap? Over the next few blog entries let's take a pragmatic, minimalistic view of a process that can help any team manage a wealth of unstructured information. Based on an earlier article that I wrote around Portal Governance, I am going to focus on using technology as much as possible to support the governance of content with minimal involvement from users. The only certainty about content production is that business users are not fans of maintaining content. Maintenance is overhead and is a long-term investment thats value will possibly not be realized under the current content creator's watch. To add context to how we will use technical tools in this process, each post will highlight one section of the content lifecycle process as outlined below Content Lifecycle Stages 1. Request - Understand the education, purpose, resource and success criteria for content 2. Create - Determine access and workflow for content 3. Manage - Understand ownership and review cycles 4. Retire - Act on thresholds established during the request stage Within each state we will also elaborate as to 1. Why - why would we entertain doing this? 2. How - the steps that are needed to make it happen 3. Impact - what is the net benefit or loss based on the process Over the course of this week, we will dive deep into the stages and the minimal amount of time, effort and process within each to make some meaningful gains in the improvement of user experience and productivity in their search for information. It might be a stretch to say that we can make content governance exciting, but hopefully it can end up being painless and paying dividends. And if you'd like to hear first hand from a customer that is managing their content lifecycle with Oracle WebCenter, be sure to join us on Wednesday for this webcast "ResCare Solves Content Lifecycle Challenges with Oracle WebCenter"!

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• Oracle Linux Partner Pavilion Spotlight - Part II

  - by Ted Davis

  As we draw closer to the first day of Oracle OpenWorld, starting in less than a week, we continue to showcase some of our premier partners exhibiting in the Oracle Linux Partner Pavilion ( Booth #1033). We have Independent Hardware Vendors, Independent Software Vendors and Systems Integrators that show the breadth of support in the Oracle Linux and Oracle VM ecosystem. In today's post we highlight three additional Oracle Linux / Oracle VM Partners from the pavilion. Micro Focus delivers mainframe solutions software and software delivery tools with its Borland products. These tools are grouped under the following solutions: Analysis and testing tools for JDeveloper Micro Focus Enterprise Analyzer is key to the success of application overhaul and modernization strategies by ensuring that they are based on a solid knowledge foundation. It reveals the reality of enterprise application portfolios and the detailed constructs of business applications. COBOL for Oracle Database, Oracle Linux, and Tuxedo Micro Focus Visual COBOL delivers the next generation of COBOL development and deployment. Itbrings the productivity of the Eclipse IDE to COBOL, and provides the ability to deploy key business critical COBOL applications to Oracle Linux both natively and under a JVM. Migration and Modernization tooling for mainframes Enterprise application knowledge, development, test and workload re-hosting tools significantly improves the efficiency of business application delivery, enabling CIOs and IT leaders to modernize application portfolios and target platforms such as Oracle Linux. When it comes to Oracle Linux database environments, supporting high transaction rates with minimal response times is no longer just a goal. It’s a strategic imperative. The “data deluge” is impacting the ability of databases and other strategic applications to access data and provide real-time analytics and reporting. As such, customer demand for accelerated application performance is increasing. Visit LSI at the Oracle Linux Pavilion, #733, to find out how LSI Nytro Application Acceleration products are designed from the ground up for database acceleration. Our intelligent solid-state storage solutions help to eliminate I/O bottlenecks, increase throughput and enable Oracle customers achieve the highest levels of DB performance. Accelerate Your Exadata Success With Teleran. Teleran’s software solutions for Oracle Exadata and Oracle Database reduce the cost, time and effort of migrating and consolidating applications on Exadata. In addition Teleran delivers visibility and control solutions for BI/data warehouse performance and user management that ensure service levels and cost efficiency.Teleran will demonstrate these solutions at the Oracle Open World Linux Pavilion: Consolidation Accelerator - Reduces the cost, time and risk ofof migrating and consolidation applications on Exadata. Application Readiness – Identifies legacy application performance enhancements needed to take advantage of Exadata performance features Workload Accelerator – Identifies and clusters workloads for faster performance on Exadata Application Visibility and Control - Improves performance, user productivity, and alignment to business objectives while reducing support and resource costs. Thanks for reading today's Partner Spotlight. Three more partners will be highlighted tomorrow. If you missed our first Partner Spotlight check it out here.

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• How to explain bad software to non-technical people?

  - by mtutty

  In discussing software development with non-technical people (customers, business owners, project sponsors, etc.), I often resort to analogies and metaphors. It's relatively easy and effective to use a "house" or other metaphor for describing the size and complexity of new development. However, we often inherit someone else's code or data, and this approach doesn't seem to hold up as well when trying to explain why we're gutting something that already seems to work. Of course we can point to cycle time and cost to be saved in the future but this generally means nothing to business folks. I know doctors can say "just take this pill," but I'm not sure that software devs have the same authority. Ideas? EDIT: Let me add a bit to the discussion. The specific project I'm talking about has customers that don't realize (or care) about specific aspects of the system we're retiring (i.e., they think it was just fine): The system would save a NEW RECORD every time someone updated a field The system contained tables for reference data. These tables had new records added every day, even though they were duplicates of previous records. And there was no way to tie the reference data used for a particular case at the time it was closed. This is like 99% of the data in the old system. The field NAMES also have spaces, apostrophes and other inappropriate characters in them, making everything harder to work with. In addition to the incredible amount of duplicate data, they have around 1000 XLS files with data they want added to the system. Previously, they would do a spreadsheet for each case in the database, IN ADDITION TO what they typed into the database. Getting rid of this old, unneeded information and piping in the XLS data comprises about 80% of the total project effort, and was not something we could accurately predict. I'm trying to find a concrete way to describe how bad this thing was, mostly so that the customer will understand why the migration process has been so time-consuming. The actual coding was done pretty quickly and the new system works fine, but without the old data they won't be happy. Sorry to get into the weeds, but most of the answers I've seen so far are pretty basic scope/schedule/cost things. I've been doing this for 15 years, so this really is more of a reflective, philosophical question - but without some of the details it can be difficult to really appreciate the awful beauty of this problem.

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• S11 launched

  - by unixman

  Now that Oracle Solaris 11 is out, its time to do 2 things -- 1) Its time to see what's in it, what's new and why its important, and then assess why it might make sense to begin evaluating it for your needs and 2) Its time to acknowledge, give thanks to and congratulate all the R&D personnel, architects, engineers, designers and testers who've put in so much effort and energy into helping make Solaris 11 (and SunOS 5.11) what it has become -- starting way back circa 2004 and, more importantly, culminating in the recent years and months -- staying focused on the execution, unwavering in the face of various challenges. For #1 above, here are a few good things to get going with - Watch the product launch replay - Visit the Solaris 11 Spotlight section on oracle.com - Get comfortable through introductory videos and detailed "how-to" guides (ex: how to create and publish IPS packages), white papers on the new default root file system, ZFS, and reap the benefits brought on by the fundamental shift in easing the administration experience - Look at the next level of software lifecycle management that is enabled by technologies such as Automated Installer and Image Packaging System -- that dramatically address patch management-related challenges - Understand how we continue to innovate in areas of service intelligence, reliability and availability - Start to evaluate enhancements in virtualization capabilities -- whether influenced by the need to consolidate or motivated by the need to have increased service mobility across physical systems, leveraging hardware-level abstractions - Gain more control over your network-centric services through enhancements in network resource management, observability and I/O performance - Look beyond your existing infrastructure with confidence that you can re-host and transition to newer systems with the use of Solaris 10 zones running on top of Solaris 11 - Relish in the fact that you can do all this, get your data to be secure and encrypted and more, on both, SPARC and x86-based systems. - Stay informed by keeping an eye on relevant blogs, which we've begun turning up recently. - Go through a hands-on lab - Sign up to take a class or just opt to watch various videos to begin to raise your comfort level with these technologies For #2 above -- There are many ways to do that. One way is to just say "thanks" with an email, a post, or a simple card,  similar to this one seen at a Barnes and Noble store recently.  The front of the card is followed by what's inside... and as the saying goes, now more then ever "it's what's inside that counts" And here's the inside of the card: So, what are you waiting for ? Go download and try it out, and please let us know what you think of it!

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• Analysing SQLBits Feedback

  - by jamiet

  Earlier this week I received all the feedback that people offered on my session at SQLBits 7 in York – “SSIS Dataflow Performance Tuning” (the video is available online if you wish to see it). As you may have gathered from previous posts on this blog and my less-SQLy-focused Wordpress blog I am a big fan of collecting and tracking both personal and public data and session feedback lends itself very well to tracking because it is quantitative rather than qualitative; by that I mean attendees are invited to provide marks out of ten rather than (or, in the case of SQLBits, as well as) written comments. The SQLBits feedback is also useful because they use a consistent format – the same questions are asked each time – this means it is particularly easy to to track whether the scores that people give are trending up or down. I suspect that somewhere the SQLBits organisers have a big Analysis Services cube (ok, perhaps its an Excel pivot table) that allows them to analyse these scores per conference, speaker, track etc.… and there’s no reason that we as session speakers cannot do the same thing. To that end I have started to store my feedback in an Excel spreadsheet of my own which in the interests of transparency is available for public viewing (only a web browser required) on SkyDrive at http://cid-550f681dad532637.office.live.com/view.aspx/Public/Misc/Personal%20SQLBits%20Session%20Feedback.xlsx. I have used a pivot table to aggregate all that feedback and here is a screenshot: I am hereby making a public plea to the SQLBits organisers (on the off-chance that they are reading) to please continue to keep the feedback format consistent in the future and I encourage them to publish all of the feedback in an anonymised form. I would also encourage anyone doing conference speaking to track their conference feedback in the same way that I am doing so that you get an insight into whether or not you are improving over time. It is not difficult to setup and maintaining it as you do more sessions takes very little effort. Storing feedback data like this leads me to wider thoughts about well-known conventions and data format standardisation. Let’s imagine a utopia where there were a standard set of questions for capturing session feedback that were leveraged at every conference regardless of subject matter, location or culture; that would give rise to immense cross-conference and cross-discipline analysis – the data analyst in me goes giddy at the thought of it. It is scenarios like this that drive my interest both in data formats such as iCalendar, microformats and RDF, and in emerging movements such as the semantic web and linked data, all things which I have written about in the past. I don’t know whether we will ever reach the stage where every piece of data has structured, descriptive metadata associated with it but I live in hope. @Jamiet

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• How to avoid oscillation by async event based systems?

  - by inf3rno

  Imagine a system where there are data sources which need to be kept in sync. A simple example is model - view data binding by MVC. Now I intend to describe these kind of systems with data sources and hubs. Data sources are publishing and subscribing for events and hubs are relaying events to data sources. By handling an event a data source will change it state described in the event. By publishing an event the data source puts its current state to the event, so other data sources can use that information to change their state accordingly. The only problem with this system, that events can be reflected from the hub or from the other data sources, and that can put the system into an infinite oscillation (by async or infinite loop by sync). For example A -- data source B -- data source H -- hub A -> H -> A -- reflection from the hub A -> H -> B -> H -> A -- reflection from another data source By sync it is relatively easy to solve this issue. You can compare the current state with the event, and if they are equal, you don't change the state and raise the same event again. By async I could not find a solution yet. The state comparison does not work by async event handling because there is eventual consistency, and new events can be published in an inconsistent state causing the same oscillation. For example: A(*->x) -> H -> B(y->x) -- can go parallel with B(*->y) -> H -> A(x->y) -- so first A changes to x state while B changes to y state -- then B changes to x state while A changes to y state -- and so on for eternity... What do you think is there an algorithm to solve this problem? If there is a solution, is it possible to extend it to prevent oscillation caused by multiple hubs, multiple different events, etc... ? update: I don't think I can make this work without a lot of effort. I think this problem is just the same as we have by syncing multiple databases in a distributed system. So I think what I really need is constraints if I want to prevent this problem in an automatic way. What constraints do you suggest?

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• Solaris 11

  - by user9154181

  Oracle has a strict policy about not discussing product features until they appear in shipping product. Now that Solaris 11 is publically available, it is time to catch up. I will be shortly posting articles on a variety of new developments in the Solaris linkers and related bits: 64-bit Archives After 40+ years of Unix, the archive file format has run out of room. The ar and link-editor (ld) commands have been enhanced to allow archives to grow past their previous 32-bit limits. Guidance The link-editor is now willing and able to tell you how to alter your link lines in order to build better objects. Stub Objects This is one of the bigger projects I've undertaken since joining the Solaris group. Stub objects are shared objects, built entirely from mapfiles, that supply the same linking interface as the real object, while containing no code or data. You can link to them, but cannot use them at runtime. It was pretty simple to add this ability to the link-editor, but the changes to the OSnet in order to apply them to building Solaris were massive. I discuss how we came to invent stub objects, how we apply them to build the OSnet in a more parallel and scalable manner, and about the follow on opportunities that have emerged from the new stub proto area we created to hold them. The elffile Utility A new standard Solaris utility, elffile is a variant of the file utility, focused exclusively on linker related files. elffile is of particular value for examining archives, as it allows you to find out what is inside them without having to first extract the archive members into temporary files. This release has been a long time coming. I joined the Solaris group in late 2005, and this will be my first FCS. From a user perspective, Solaris 11 is probably the biggest change to Solaris since Solaris 2.0. Solaris 11 polishes the ground breaking features from Solaris 10 (DTrace, FMA, ZFS, Zones), and uses them to add a powerful new packaging system, numerous other enhacements and features, along with a huge modernization effort. I'm excited to see it go out into the world. I hope you enjoy using it as much as we did creating it. Software is never done. On to the next one...

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• I'm graduating with a Computer Science degree but I don't feel like I know how to program.

  - by wp123

  I'm graduating with a Computer Science degree but I see websites like Stack Overflow and search engines like Google and don't know where I'd even begin to write something like that. During one summer I did have the opportunity to work as a iPhone developer, but I felt like I was mostly gluing together libraries that other people had written with little understanding of the mechanics happening beneath the hood. I'm trying to improve my knowledge by studying algorithms, but it is a long and painful process. I find algorithms difficult and at the rate I am learning a decade will have passed before I will master the material in the book. Given my current situation, I've spent a month looking for work but my skills (C, Python, Objective-C) are relatively shallow and are not so desirable in the local market, where C#, Java, and web development are much higher in demand. That is not to say that C and Python opportunities do not exist but they tend to demand 3+ years of experience I do not have. My GPA is OK (3.0) but it's not high enough to apply to the large companies like IBM or return for graduate studies. Basically I'm graduating with a Computer Science degree but I don't feel like I've learned how to program. I thought that joining a company and programming full-time would give me a chance to develop my skills and learn from those more experienced than myself, but I'm struggling to find work and am starting to get really frustrated. I am going to cast my net wider and look beyond the city I've grown up in, but what have other people in similar situation tried to do? I've worked hard but don't have the confidence to go out on my own and write my own app. (That is, become an indie developer in the iPhone app market.) If nothing turns up I will need to consider upgrading and learning more popular skills or try something marginally related like IT, but given all the effort I've put in that feels like copping out. EDIT: Thank you for all the advice. I think I was premature because of unrealistic expectations but the comments have given me a dose of reality. I will persevere and continue to code. I have a project in mind, although well beyond my current capabilities it will challenge me to hone my craft and prove my worth to myself (and potential employers). Had I known there was a career overflow I would have posted there instead. Thanks again!

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• Upgrades from Beta or CTP SQL Server Software is NOT Supported

  - by BuckWoody

  As of this writing, SQL Server 2008 R2 has released, and just like every release, I get e-mails and calls from folks with this question: “Can I upgrade from Customer Technical Preview (CTP) x or Beta #x or Release Candidate (RC) to the “Released to Manufacturing” (RTM) version?” No. Right up until the last minute, things are changing in the code – and you want that to happen. Our internal testing runs right up until the second we lock down for release, and we watch the CTP/RC/Beta reports to make sure there are no show-stoppers, and fix what we find. And it’s not just “big” changes you need to worry about – a simple change in one line of code can have a massive effect. I know, I know – you’ve possibly upgraded an RC or CTP to the RTM version and it worked “just fine”. But hear this tale: I’ve dealt with someone who faced this exact situation in SQL Server 2008. They upgraded (which is clearly prohibited in the documentation) from a CTP to the RTM version over a year ago. Everything was working fine. But then…one day they had an issue. Couldn’t fix it themselves, we took a look, days went by, and we finally had to call in the big guns for support. Turns out, the upgrade was the problem. So we had to come up with some elaborate schemes to get the system migrated over while they were in production. This was painful for everyone involved. So the answer is still no. Just don’t do it. There is one caveat to this story – if you are a “TAP” customer (you’ll know if you are), we help you move from the CTP products to RTM, but that’s a special case that we track carefully and send along special instructions and tools to help you along. That level of effort isn’t possible on a large scale, so it’s not just a magic tool that we run to upgrade from CTP to RTM. So again, unless you’re a TAP customer, it’s a no-no. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Registering domain during Christmas holidays

  - by arkascha

  One of the domain names I tried to register previously has been blocked by a domain grabber two days prior to my own attempt. That was about 1 year ago. The attempt to buy the domain from that person failed due to a totally exaggerated price. So I dropped the issue and watched the domain (offered at sedo.com). As expected there were no more offers, the domain was not sold. Now I learn from the whois database that the registration of that domain name ends on 25 Dec 2012 (Christmas holiday). This raises two questions for me, I fail to find reliable answers on the internet. So maybe someone experienced here can drop a statement or a hint: Is it reasonable that the domain name in question really will be free again when that date mentioned in the whois database up to when the domain is registered has passed? I certainly know that the registration can be prolonged, that is not what I mean. I expect (hope) that that domain grabber does not extend the registration, since it costs money and effort and he failed to sell the domain. Provided this is the case and the domain registration is not prolonged, is that date mentioned reliable? Or might it just be some 'default' date? I would like to try to register that domain name as soon as it is unregistered. Since that domain grabber registered that domain only two days before my own registration attempt I would like to prevent such annoying interference next time. So I ask myself: is it possible to register a domain name on a holiday? I mean not to send an email to my provider to do so on that day or before, but to actually have to process taking place as not to wait for 1-2 days after the unregistration? My own provider which I am very happy with does not offer such service on a holiday (which is perfectly understandable). They are 'still checking' if they can offer something automatic. I researched and did not find an answer to the question if that is possible at all. Is an automatic registration attempt on a holiday possible? Where can I do that? Is that reliable?

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