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• ASMLib

  - by wcoekaer

  Oracle ASMlib on Linux has been a topic of discussion a number of times since it was released way back when in 2004. There is a lot of confusion around it and certainly a lot of misinformation out there for no good reason. Let me try to give a bit of history around Oracle ASMLib. Oracle ASMLib was introduced at the time Oracle released Oracle Database 10g R1. 10gR1 introduced a very cool important new features called Oracle ASM (Automatic Storage Management). A very simplistic description would be that this is a very sophisticated volume manager for Oracle data. Give your devices directly to the ASM instance and we manage the storage for you, clustered, highly available, redundant, performance, etc, etc... We recommend using Oracle ASM for all database deployments, single instance or clustered (RAC). The ASM instance manages the storage and every Oracle server process opens and operates on the storage devices like it would open and operate on regular datafiles or raw devices. So by default since 10gR1 up to today, we do not interact differently with ASM managed block devices than we did before with a datafile being mapped to a raw device. All of this is without ASMLib, so ignore that one for now. Standard Oracle on any platform that we support (Linux, Windows, Solaris, AIX, ...) does it the exact same way. You start an ASM instance, it handles storage management, all the database instances use and open that storage and read/write from/to it. There are no extra pieces of software needed, including on Linux. ASM is fully functional and selfcontained without any other components. In order for the admin to provide a raw device to ASM or to the database, it has to have persistent device naming. If you booted up a server where a raw disk was named /dev/sdf and you give it to ASM (or even just creating a tablespace without asm on that device with datafile '/dev/sdf') and next time you boot up and that device is now /dev/sdg, you end up with an error. Just like you can't just change datafile names, you can't change device filenames without telling the database, or ASM. persistent device naming on Linux, especially back in those days ways to say it bluntly, a nightmare. In fact there were a number of issues (dating back to 2004) : Linux async IO wasn't pretty persistent device naming including permissions (had to be owned by oracle and the dba group) was very, very difficult to manage system resource usage in terms of open file descriptors So given the above, we tried to find a way to make this easier on the admins, in many ways, similar to why we started working on OCFS a few years earlier - how can we make life easier for the admins on Linux. A feature of Oracle ASM is the ability for third parties to write an extension using what's called ASMLib. It is possible for any third party OS or storage vendor to write a library using a specific Oracle defined interface that gets used by the ASM instance and by the database instance when available. This interface offered 2 components : Define an IO interface - allow any IO to the devices to go through ASMLib Define device discovery - implement an external way of discovering, labeling devices to provide to ASM and the Oracle database instance This is similar to a library that a number of companies have implemented over many years called libODM (Oracle Disk Manager). ODM was specified many years before we introduced ASM and allowed third party vendors to implement their own IO routines so that the database would use this library if installed and make use of the library open/read/write/close,.. routines instead of the standard OS interfaces. PolyServe back in the day used this to optimize their storage solution, Veritas used (and I believe still uses) this for their filesystem. It basically allowed, in particular, filesystem vendors to write libraries that could optimize access to their storage or filesystem.. so ASMLib was not something new, it was basically based on the same model. You have libodm for just database access, you have libasm for asm/database access. Since this library interface existed, we decided to do a reference implementation on Linux. We wrote an ASMLib for Linux that could be used on any Linux platform and other vendors could see how this worked and potentially implement their own solution. As I mentioned earlier, ASMLib and ODMLib are libraries for third party extensions. ASMLib for Linux, since it was a reference implementation implemented both interfaces, the storage discovery part and the IO part. There are 2 components : Oracle ASMLib - the userspace library with config tools (a shared object and some scripts) oracleasm.ko - a kernel module that implements the asm device for /dev/oracleasm/* The userspace library is a binary-only module since it links with and contains Oracle header files but is generic, we only have one asm library for the various Linux platforms. This library is opened by Oracle ASM and by Oracle database processes and this library interacts with the OS through the asm device (/dev/asm). It can install on Oracle Linux, on SuSE SLES, on Red Hat RHEL,.. The library itself doesn't actually care much about the OS version, the kernel module and device cares. The support tools are simple scripts that allow the admin to label devices and scan for disks and devices. This way you can say create an ASM disk label foo on, currently /dev/sdf... So if /dev/sdf disappears and next time is /dev/sdg, we just scan for the label foo and we discover it as /dev/sdg and life goes on without any worry. Also, when the database needs access to the device, we don't have to worry about file permissions or anything it will be taken care of. So it's a convenience thing. The kernel module oracleasm.ko is a Linux kernel module/device driver. It implements a device /dev/oracleasm/* and any and all IO goes through ASMLib - /dev/oracleasm. This kernel module is obviously a very specific Oracle related device driver but it was released under the GPL v2 so anyone could easily build it for their Linux distribution kernels. Advantages for using ASMLib : A good async IO interface for the database, the entire IO interface is based on an optimal ASYNC model for performance A single file descriptor per Oracle process, not one per device or datafile per process reducing # of open filehandles overhead Device scanning and labeling built-in so you do not have to worry about messing with udev or devlabel, permissions or the likes which can be very complex and error prone. Just like with OCFS and OCFS2, each kernel version (major or minor) has to get a new version of the device drivers. We started out building the oracleasm kernel module rpms for many distributions, SLES (in fact in the early days still even for this thing called United Linux) and RHEL. The driver didn't make sense to get pushed into upstream Linux because it's unique and specific to the Oracle database. As it takes a huge effort in terms of build infrastructure and QA and release management to build kernel modules for every architecture, every linux distribution and every major and minor version we worked with the vendors to get them to add this tiny kernel module to their infrastructure. (60k source code file). The folks at SuSE understood this was good for them and their customers and us and added it to SLES. So every build coming from SuSE for SLES contains the oracleasm.ko module. We weren't as successful with other vendors so for quite some time we continued to build it for RHEL and of course as we introduced Oracle Linux end of 2006 also for Oracle Linux. With Oracle Linux it became easy for us because we just added the code to our build system and as we churned out Oracle Linux kernels whether it was for a public release or for customers that needed a one off fix where they also used asmlib, we didn't have to do any extra work it was just all nicely integrated. With the introduction of Oracle Linux's Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel and our interest in being able to exploit ASMLib more, we started working on a very exciting project called Data Integrity. Oracle (Martin Petersen in particular) worked for many years with the T10 standards committee and storage vendors and implemented Linux kernel support for DIF/DIX, data protection in the Linux kernel, note to those that wonder, yes it's all in mainline Linux and under the GPL. This basically gave us all the features in the Linux kernel to checksum a data block, send it to the storage adapter, which can then validate that block and checksum in firmware before it sends it over the wire to the storage array, which can then do another checksum and to the actual DISK which does a final validation before writing the block to the physical media. So what was missing was the ability for a userspace application (read: Oracle RDBMS) to write a block which then has a checksum and validation all the way down to the disk. application to disk. Because we have ASMLib we had an entry into the Linux kernel and Martin added support in ASMLib (kernel driver + userspace) for this functionality. Now, this is all based on relatively current Linux kernels, the oracleasm kernel module depends on the main kernel to have support for it so we can make use of it. Thanks to UEK and us having the ability to ship a more modern, current version of the Linux kernel we were able to introduce this feature into ASMLib for Linux from Oracle. This combined with the fact that we build the asm kernel module when we build every single UEK kernel allowed us to continue improving ASMLib and provide it to our customers. So today, we (Oracle) provide Oracle ASMLib for Oracle Linux and in particular on the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel. We did the build/testing/delivery of ASMLib for RHEL until RHEL5 but since RHEL6 decided that it was too much effort for us to also maintain all the build and test environments for RHEL and we did not have the ability to use the latest kernel features to introduce the Data Integrity features and we didn't want to end up with multiple versions of asmlib as maintained by us. SuSE SLES still builds and comes with the oracleasm module and they do all the work and RHAT it certainly welcome to do the same. They don't have to rebuild the userspace library, it's really about the kernel module. And finally to re-iterate a few important things : Oracle ASM does not in any way require ASMLib to function completely. ASMlib is a small set of extensions, in particular to make device management easier but there are no extra features exposed through Oracle ASM with ASMLib enabled or disabled. Often customers confuse ASMLib with ASM. again, ASM exists on every Oracle supported OS and on every supported Linux OS, SLES, RHEL, OL withoutASMLib Oracle ASMLib userspace is available for OTN and the kernel module is shipped along with OL/UEK for every build and by SuSE for SLES for every of their builds ASMLib kernel module was built by us for RHEL4 and RHEL5 but we do not build it for RHEL6, nor for the OL6 RHCK kernel. Only for UEK ASMLib for Linux is/was a reference implementation for any third party vendor to be able to offer, if they want to, their own version for their own OS or storage ASMLib as provided by Oracle for Linux continues to be enhanced and evolve and for the kernel module we use UEK as the base OS kernel hope this helps.

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• Is there a process-oriented IDE ?

  - by Raveline

  My problem is simple : when I'm programming in an OO paradigm, I'm often having part of a main business process divided in many classes. Which means, if I want to examine the whole functional chain that leads to the output, for debugging or for optimization research, it can be a bit painful. So I was wondering : is there an IDE that let you put a "process tag" on functions coming from different objects, and give you a view of all those functions having the same tag ? edit : To give an example (that I'm making up completely, sorry if it doesn't sound very realistic). Let's say we have the following business process for a HR application : receive a holiday-request by an employee, check the validity of the request, then give an alert to his boss ("one of those lazy programmer wants another day off"); at the same time, let's say the boss will want to have a table of all employee's timetable during the time the employee wants his vacations; then handle the answer of the boss, send a nice little mail to the employee ("No way, lazy bones"). Even if we get rid of everything not purely business-related (mail sending process, db handling to get the useful info, GUI functionalities, and so on), we still have something that doesn't really fit in "one class". I'd like to have an IDE that would give me the opportunity to embrace quickly, at the very least : The function handling the validation of the request by the employee; The function preparing the "timetable" for the boss; The function handling the validation of the request by the boss; I wouldn't put all those functions in the same class (but perhaps that's my mistake ?). This is where my dreamed IDE could be helpful.

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• How to decide on a price for the project as a freelancer

  - by Shekhar_Pro

  I have seen similar question on this SE site but none comes close to a sure shot answer and many are rather subjective. So i am taking a website as an example to be more objective for you to decide its development price i should quote for the complete work.I would like to have specific figures. In past I have developed many projects for my classmates (Computer science and few .net) when i was in college and there i just arbitrarily quoted the price i will take depending on my mood and customer's ability to pay.. usually ranging from Rs.500 (about $10 USD) to Rs. 1500 (about $30 USD). I have also developed few websites but that was open-source and free. But this time impressed by my work i have got a client that wants to get a website developed similar to this: [ http://www.jeetle.in/ ]. So taking this website as an example tell me how much should i charge for complete work from designing to payment gateway implementation (Excluding the charge the payment gateway provider will take). Few information you might like to consider. I am the only developer on this project if that makes any difference. And i would be using ASP.Net and MSSQL Express for server side processing and jQuery on client. Time period for development offered is about 4 to 6 Weeks. Its like i know my work but not how much I'm worth

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• Group Matchmaking

  - by Simon Kérouack

  Consider different groups(1 or more players) queuing together, we want to make 2 opposing teams containing each the same amount of players while keeping the groups together. At the same time we want to make both teams' average ranking as close as possible. Now also consider we have as a working set the subset of groups currently queuing within a given ranking range. For an example, let's say we have the following groups, ordered by queuing time: Id, playerCount, totalRank, avgRank 0, 3, 126, 42 1, 2, 60, 30 2, 1, 25, 25 3, 2, 80, 40 4, 1, 40, 40 5, 1, 20, 20 6, 3, 150, 50 for this specific subset, the expected output should ideally be: team1: 0, 1 (total: 186) team2: 2, 5, 6 (total: 195) up to now the solution I have been using is to balance out each team by making each team pick the group with highest ranking within the subset turn by turn. The team who picks is the one with the currently lowest average rank unless one is already full. If one team is already full the other team tries to complete itself with groups that would make the rank gap as small as possible. This solution turns out to have issues with frequent edge cases and I'm looking for a better solution, or some fine-tuning that could be made. In most cases, players seems to want teams of 5 people and queue in group of 2. Our average subset when 2 teams of 5 are chosen is made of about 14 players if that may be of any help.

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• Hack a Linksys Router into a Ambient Data Monitor

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  If you have a data source (like a weather report, bus schedule, or other changing data set) you can pull it and display it with an ambient data monitor; this fun build combines a hacked Linksys router and a modified toy bus to display transit arrival times. John Graham-Cumming wanted to keep an eye on the current bus arrival time tables without constantly visiting the web site to check them. His workaround turns a hacked Linksys router, a display, a modified London city bus (you could hack apart a more project-specific enclosure, of course), and a simple bit code that polls the bus schedule’s API, into a cool ambient data monitor that displays the arrival time, in minutes, of the next two buses that will pass by his stop. The whole thing could easily be adapted to another API to display anything from stock prices to weather temps. Hit up the link below for more information on the project. Ambient Bus Arrival Monitor Hacked from Linksys Router [via Make] Make Your Own Windows 8 Start Button with Zero Memory Usage Reader Request: How To Repair Blurry Photos HTG Explains: What Can You Find in an Email Header?

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• MDX needs a function or macro syntax

  - by Darren Gosbell

  I was having an interesting discussion with a few people about the impact of named sets on performance (the same discussion noted by Chris Webb here: http://cwebbbi.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/referencing-named-sets-in-calculations). And apparently the core of the performance issue comes down to the way named sets are materialized within the SSAS engine. Which lead me to the thought that what we really need is a syntax for declaring a non-materialized set or to take this even further a way of declaring an MDX expression as function or macro so that it can be re-used in multiple places. Because sometimes you do want the set materialised, such as when you use an ordered set for calculating rankings. But a lot of the time we just want to make our MDX modular and want to avoid having to repeat the same code over and over. I did some searches on connect and could not find any similar suggestions so I posted one here: https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/651646/mdx-macro-or-function-syntax Although apparently I did not search quite hard enough as Chris Webb made a similar suggestion some time ago, although he also included a request for true MDX stored procedures (not the .Net style stored procs that we have at the moment): https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/473694/create-parameterised-queries-and-functions-on-the-server Chris also pointed out this post that he did last year http://cwebbbi.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/iccube/ where he pointed out that the icCube product already has this sort of functionality. So if you think either or both of these suggestions is a good idea then I would encourage you to click on the links and vote for them.

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• Simple Architecture Verification

  - by Jean Carlos Suárez Marranzini

  I just made an architecture for an application with the function of scoring, saving and loading tennis games. The architecture has 2 kinds of elements: components & layers. Components: Standalone elements that can be consumed by other components or by layers. They might also consume functionality from the model/bottom layer. Layers: Software components whose functionality rests on previous layers (except for the model layer). -Layers: -Models: Data and it's behavior. -Controllers: A layer that allows interaction between the views and the models. -Views: The presentation layer for interacting with the user. -Components: -Persistence: Makes sure the game data can be stored away for later retrieval. -Time Machine: Records changes in the game through time so it's possible to navigate the game back and forth. -Settings: Contains the settings that determine how some of the game logic will apply. -Game Engine: Contains all the game logic, which it applies to the game data to determine the path the game should take. This is an image of the architecture (I don't have enough rep to post images): http://i49.tinypic.com/35lt5a9.png The requierements which this architecture should satisfy are the following: Save & load games. Move through game history and see how the scoreboard changes as the game evolves. Tie-breaks must be properly managed. Games must be classified by hit-type. Every point can be modified. Match name and player names must be stored. Game logic must be configurable by the user. I would really appreciate any kind of advice or comments on this architecture. To see if it is well built and makes sense as a whole. I took the idea from this link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model%E2%80%93view%E2%80%93controller

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• On what criteria should I evaluate domain registrars?

  - by jdotjdot89

  Though I've been a web developer for a fair amount of time, I am going for the first time to buy a few domain names. I have looked into the domains I'm going to buy and know that they're available, and I've been looking into which sellers to use. After doing a lot of research, the main ones I'm considering are 1&1, Namecheap, and Gandi. The problem is, when continuing to research, I'm not really sure what makes one domain seller distinct from another. I don't need much in the way of services--definitely not hosting, since I plan to use Heroku for that. I mainly only need the domain itself and DNS management, as well as possibly SSL certificates and WHOIS protection. Question: What makes one domain seller different from another? How can I go about evaluating which one is the best for me? Note: This question is not which domain seller is the best, but rather, what criteria can I use to evaluate them and rank one over another. I'm trying to find out what makes one domain seller different from another, since they all seem to be pretty similar to me right now.

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• XSF-FO intellisense and national languages with Apache FOP

  - by Lukasz Kurylo

  Some time ago I showed how to get an intellisense and how to configure the FO.NET to acquire national characters inside the generated pdf files. Due to the limitations that I mensioned in my previous post, I started playing with the Apache FOP. In this post I want to show, how to acquire the same result as I showed in the two posts related to FO.NET.   Intellisense   To get the intellisense from the XSL-FO templates set the xsi:schemaLocation the same way I showed it in this post. The only diffrence to FO.NET is that, during generating the document by the code I showed last time we will get an exception:   org.apache.fop.fo.ValidationException: Invalid property encountered on "fo:root": xsi:schemaLocation (See position 6:11)   Fortunatelly there is a very easy way to resolve this without removing the entire attribute along with the intellisense. Add to the FopFactory the ignoreNamespace by:   FopFactory fopFactory = FopFactory.newInstance(); fopFactory.ignoreNamespace(http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance);   Notice that, the url specified in this method this is a namespace for the xmlns:xsi namespace, not xsi.schemaLocation.   Fonts / national characters   This point is a little dfferent to acquire, but not more complicated that it was with FO.NET. To set the fonts in Apache FOP 1.0, we need a configuration file. A sample one can be get from the directory where we unpacked the fop binaries, from conf subdirectory. There is a file called fop.xconf. We must copy this file to our solution. In the simplest way, in the <fonts> tag we can add  <auto-detect/>. Thanks to this, FOP will index all fonts available on the installed operating system. There probably should be no problem, if we have a http handler or a WCF Service on the server that serves the generated pdf documents. In this situation we can use all available fonts on this server.   To use this config file, we must set a path to it:   FopFactory fopFactory = FopFactory.newInstance(); fopFactory.setUserConfig(new File("fop.xconf"));

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• Interesting SSMS issue with waittype of PREEMPTIVE_OS_LOOKUPACCOUNTSID

  - by steveh99999

  Saw a recent issue with SQL2008 sp 1 where SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) appeared to hang when a DBA expanded the database users tab of a database… ie like this :-   When we looked at the waittype of the SSMS session - via sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks– it was waiting on PREEMPTIVE_OS_LOOKUPACCOUNTSID. I’d not come across this waittype before, and there was very little information out on the web for it.. Looking at this issue using SQL Profiler – it them became apparent that SSMS was waiting on the function SUSER_SNAME. I did a quick test using SET STATISTICS TIME to prove it was the SUSER_SNAME function causing our issue :- SELECT * FROM sys.database_principals   -- completes in 6 milliseconds SELECT SUSER_SNAME(sid),* FROM sys.database_principals  -- completes in 188941 milliseconds. suser_sname validates a sid against Active Directory.. What I haven’t mentioned so far is that the database in question had been restored from a server on a different domain. This domain was untrusted from the current domain. However, it appeared that SSMS was still trying to validate the Windows login of each user when displaying the users list…. and taking a long time to return NULL for each user from the untrusted domain. When all users that had a login from the untrusted domain are removed from the database – this fixed the issue. To find out the users that had this issue :- SELECT name FROM sys.database_principals WHERE type_desc IN(‘WINDOWS_USER’, ‘WINDOWS_GROUP’) and SUSER_SNAME(sid) IS NULL Although I have not raised this as a case with MS – I do think this is a bug in SSMS – I do not see why windows logins should need to be validated when displaying only user details..

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, October 30, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, October 30, 2012Popular ReleasesCleverBobCat: CleverBobCat 0.4: Added: ModuleCleverResourceTransferMCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.6: Changelog for 2.3.6 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Fixed a bug in multichannel audio conversion failure. AAC does not support 6 channel audio, MCEBuddy now checks for it and force the output to 2 channel if AAC codec is specified 2. Fixed a bug in Original Broadcast Date and Time. Original Broadcast Date and Time is reported in UTC timezone in WTV metadata. TVDB and MovieDB dates are reported in network timezone. It is assumed the video is recorded and converted on the same machine, i.e. local timezone...ZXMAK2: Version 2.6.8.0: Whats new: add Spectrum +3 model; tape serializer: show extended info for crc bad blocksMicrosoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.73: Fix issue in Discussion #401101 (unreferenced var in a for-in statement was getting removed). add the grouping operator to the parsed output so that unminified parsed code is closer to the original. Will still strip unneeded parens later, if minifying. more cleaning of references as they are minified out of the code.RiP-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.03: changes FIXED: Kitty-Kats new Forum UrlJobboard Light Edition: Version 2.2: Major Release Parallalization Added Job posting now working Job Editing now working Search Box Clear Filters added Search criteria updated (more simple) jobdetails page displays missing selections parameters added to url Cleaned UI moreMJP's DirectX 11 Samples: MSAA Resolve Filtering: Sample application and source code from the article "Experimenting with Reconstruction Filters for MSAA Resolve" http://mynameismjp.wordpress.com/2012/10/28/msaa-resolve-filters/Liberty: v3.4.0.1 Release 28th October 2012: Change Log -Fixed -H4 Fixed the save verification screen showing incorrect mission and difficulty information for some saves -H4 Hopefully fixed the issue where progress did not save between missions and saves would not revert correctly -H3 Fixed crashes that occurred when trying to load player information -Proper exception dialogs will now show in place of crashesPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (Preview 7): This release is compatible with the version of the Smooth Streaming SDK released today (10/26). Release 1 of the player framework is expected to be available next week. IMPROVEMENTS & FIXESIMPORTANT: List of breaking changes from preview 6 Support for the latest smooth streaming SDK. Xaml only: Support for moving any of the UI elements outside the MediaPlayer (e.g. into the appbar). Note: Equivelent changes to the JS version due in coming week. Support for localizing all text used in t...Send multiple SMS via Way2SMS C#: SMS 1.1: Added support for 160by2Quick Launch: Quick Launch 1.0: A Lightweight and Fast Way to Manage and Launch Thousands of Tools and ApplicationsPress Win+Q and start to search and run. http://www.codeplex.com/Download?ProjectName=quicklaunch&DownloadId=523536Orchard Project: Orchard 1.6: Please read our release notes for Orchard 1.6: http://docs.orchardproject.net/Documentation/Orchard-1-6-Release-Notes Please do not post questions as reviews. Questions should be posted in the Discussions tab, where they will usually get promptly responded to. If you post a question as a review, you will pollute the rating, and you won't get an answer.Media Companion: Media Companion 3.507b: Once again, it has been some time since our release, and there have been a number changes since then. It is hoped that these changes will address some of the issues users have been experiencing, and of course, work continues! New Features: Added support for adding Home Movies. Option to sort Movies by votes. Added 'selectedBrowser' preference used when opening links in an external browser. Added option to fallback to getting runtime from the movie file if not available on IMDB. Added new Big...MSBuild Extension Pack: October 2012: Release Blog Post The MSBuild Extension Pack October 2012 release provides a collection of over 475 MSBuild tasks. A high level summary of what the tasks currently cover includes the following: System Items: Active Directory, Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, FTP, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound Code: Assemblies, AsyncExec, CAB Files, Code Signing, DynamicExecute, File Detokenisation, GUI...NAudio: NAudio 1.6: Release notes at http://mark-dot-net.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/naudio-16-release-notes-10th.htmlPowerShell Community Extensions: 2.1 Production: PowerShell Community Extensions 2.1 Release NotesOct 25, 2012 This version of PSCX supports both Windows PowerShell 2.0 and 3.0. See the ReleaseNotes.txt download above for more information.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.9.1: Umbraco 4.9.1 is a bugfix release to fix major issues in 4.9.0 BugfixesThe full list of fixes can be found in the issue tracker's filtered results. A summary: Split buttons work again, you can now also scroll easier when the list is too long for the screen Media and Content pickers have information of the full path of the picked item Fixed: Publish status may not be accurate on nodes with large doctypes Fixed: 2 media folders and recycle bins after upgrade to 4.9 The template/code ...AcDown????? - AcDown Downloader Framework: AcDown????? v4.2.2: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown??????????????????，????????????????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???，????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???，????????Mono?? ??2...Rawr: Rawr 5.0.2: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...CRM 2011 Visual Ribbon Editor: Visual Ribbon Editor (1.3.1025.5): [NEW] Support for connecting to CRM Online via Office 365 (OSDP) [NEW] Current connection information and loaded ribbon name are displayed in the status bar [IMPROVED] Connect dialog minor improvements and error message descriptions [IMPROVED] Connecting to a CRM server will close currently loaded ribbon upon confirmation (if another ribbon was loaded previously) [FIX] Fixed bug in Open Ribbon dialog which would not allow to refresh entity list more than onceNew Projects10010dshjlahfajhflkjhkjhherkjhfkja: 10010dshjlahfajhflkjhkjhherkjhfkjaA supplementary Machine Learning and Evolutionary Computation suite for Orange: ML & EC tools such as: - Optimization Meta-heuristics (EDAs, cGA) - Feature Selection - Kernel Methods - Dependency NetworksATH TaskList 2012: ATH TaskList 2012Canlipe: This is a simple C# / Mono (.NET) static blog generator. Nothing fancy, just the basic functionality at the moment. The code is really dirty too.com.sogeti.certif: Basic but essential source code example for SharePoint 2010Duhking: A quasi-duck typing library for .Net. It doesn't provide "real" duck typing, but it kinda looks a little bit like a duck if you squint and look at it from a distance. This library is built on and for .Net 3.5,Guestbook 2: A highly customizable program to track people visiting a booth via recording their name and some basic information. Written in C#.Interval Mandelbrot Explorer: Explore the Mandelbrot set using interval arithmetic.Isel - Projecto: projecto para isel....killStudentMain: killStudentMainKWSystem-WithClient: c++??La villa del seis: La villa del seis is a multiplatform point-and-click graphical adventure. Also, you can play it like a text adventure (interactive fiction) on a text browser (like Links, w3m or Lynx) or in a normal browser without JavaScript support.malversuchen: Das ist ein TEstPhotoCloud: This is a sample ASP.NET Web Pages app that uses Twitter authentication, HTMl5 drag and drop file uploading, blob storage, and SignalR to build a photo sharing platnosci-test: testSharePoint GSC: SharePoint GSC is a set of SharePoint utilities developed in General de Software. SHCODE: SH Project please contact little_deer@hotmail.com for more details.SimpleImageCacherRT: WinRT????????????????????。Windows.UI.XAML.Controls.Image????Source?????????????????????。???????????????…SLIP Framework: SilverLightweight Prism FrameworkSmallCheck: F# exhaustive testing framework. Port of Haskell SmallCheck test librarySolution organizer: Help developers organizing their Visual Studio 2010 solutionsSukul: Web 2.0 Portal for powering modern CMStestjabbr1029: heTFS Reflect Work Items Links: This small utility allows complex TFS to TFS migration to preserve work item links during the process. It is used in complement with the TFS Integration tools.XactiSource Application Framework: The XactiSource Application Framework is an attempt to add basic functionality that can be used from one project to the next. Yasminoku: Yasminoku is an open source "Sudoku" alike game totally written in DHTML (JavaScript, CSS and HTML) that uses mouse. Includes sudoku solver. This cross-platform and cross-browser game was tested under BeOS, Linux, *BSD, Windows and others.Zalgo for Word: Zalgo addin for Word 2010

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• Permanent death in a MUD (think command line MMORPG)

  - by Luke Laupheimer

  I have considered writing a MUD for years, and I have a lot of ideas my friends think are really cool (and that's how I'd hope to get anywhere -- word of mouth). Thing is, there's one thing I have always wanted, that my friends and strangers hated: permanent death. Now, the emotional response I get to this is visceral revulsion, every time. I'm pretty sure I am the only person that wants this, or if I'm not, I'm a tiny minority. Now, the reason I want it is because I want the actions of the players to matter. Unlike a lot of other MUDs, which have a set of static city-states and social institutions etc, I want the things my players do, should I get any, to actually change the situation. And that includes killing people. If you kill someone, you didn't send them to time out, you killed them. What happens when you kill people? They go away. They don't come back in half an hour to smack talk you some more. They're gone. Forever. By making death non-permanent, you make death not matter. It would be similar if a climax to a character's arc is getting a speeding ticket. It cheapens it. Non-permanent death cheapens death. How can I: 1) Convince my players (and random people!) that this is actually a good idea?, or 2) Find some other way to make death and violence matter as much as it does in real life (except within the game, of course) sans character deletion? What alternatives are there out there?

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• Fixing Windows7 Bootmgr

  - by Ashfame

  I made my laptop Dell XPS 15z dual boot with Ubuntu last year, and something went wrong & BOOTMGR of my windows got fried. I couldn't fix it that time. And I kept using Ubuntu. I don't even remember whether I installed directly via a live usb or used wubi, sorry. I installed 11.10 at that point of time, but right now I am on 12.10. Today, I got to know about the Boot repair tool, so I was wondering with this tool may be I can figure out what's exactly wrong with my setup. This is my Boot info - http://paste.ubuntu.com/1343575/ If I select the Win7 entry on GRUB2, I get the error BOOTMGR is missing. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del. Now the thing is I have read numerous links on how this could be fixed, but I don't feel comfortable without knowing what I am doing. So unless I am sure what a certain tool would do, I would prefer fixing it by hand (manually editing files). So reading from my boot info file, can anyone explain it to me what's messed up wrong here and what could fix it? I certainly can't afford to have my ubuntu install unbootable right now, but looking into this issue is bothering me too much. Help appreciated! I have Win7 DVD & Ubuntu live USBs with me, I am just looking for a sure shot way of fixing Win7 without any harm to my existing Ubuntu install.

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• Dual Boot, Dual Hard Drives!

  - by Mars

  I'm posting this question after reading most of similar ones. My situation is different here in the fact that I'm installing on SSD and not partitioning my HDD, and that I can actually boot! I'm just looking to improve the convenience of having easier way to choose. 1- I have a Dell Inspiron 15R SE. It has HDD (1TB) and SSD (32GB). I managed to do whatever things I did in distant past to set the SSD free (I don't really care how fast my system boots). Now I wanted to install Linux on the SSD and leave the HDD untouched. It's way too precious for me to mess with it. So, I repartitioned the SSD to: 30GB for /root, 1GB for /swap, and 100MB for /boot. I installed Linux on the root and the GRUB on boot (of the SSD). Now GRUB immediately boots into linux and doesn't allow me to boot to Windows. BUT! If I enable UEFI Boot manager and choose "Windows Boot Manager" after hitting F12, I can boot into Windows 8 normally. I'd say that's pretty ok, except, I'd prefer to have the option to boot into which one or at the very least, default to boot to Windows. 2- I'm concerned that if I now delete the SSD partition, that the boot will break and I won't be able to boot anything! Does this seem like a valid concern? I made that choice of having linux on SSD because I'm going to be training on it, so I expect multiple resets from time to time.

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• Just started a job with Scrum. Something seems to be missing. I am new to Scrum

  - by punkouter

  The code is a complete mess of a combination of classic ASP/ASP.NET. The scrum consist of us patching up the big mess or making additions to it. We are all too busy doing that to start a rewrite so I am wondering.. Where is the part in Scrum where the developers can have the power to say that enough is enough and demand that they are given time to start the big rewrite ? We seem in an endless loop of just patching old code with 'Stories'. So things are being run by the non-technical people who seem to have no desire to push for a rewrite because they don't understand how bad the code base has gotten.. So who is in charge of making this big rewrite change happen ? The devs? The scrum master? The current strategy is just find time and do it ourselves without the higher ups involved.. since they are mostly to blame for the current mess we are in.. <-insert rant about non-tech people telling tech people what to do here-

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• The Developers Conference 2012: Presentation about CEP & BAM

  - by Ricardo Ferreira

  This year I had the pleasure again of being one of the speakers in the TDC ("The Developers Conference") event. I have spoken in this event for three years from now. This year, the main theme of the SOA track was EDA ("Event-Driven Architecture") and I decided to delivery a comprehensive presentation about one of my preferred personal subjects: Real-time using Complex Event Processing. The theme of the presentation was "Business Intelligence in Real-time using CEP & BAM" and I would like to share here the presentation that I have done. The material is in Portuguese since was an Brazilian event that happened in São Paulo. Once my presentation has a lot of videos, I decided to share the material as a Youtube video, so you can pause, rewind and play again how many times you want it. I strongly recommend you that before starting watching the video, you change the video quality settings to 1080p in High Definition.

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• Bright Minds in Singapore: Oracle Graduate Hiring

  - by user769227

   Last week I was in Singapore and had the opportunity to take part in our graduate interviewing that we are currently undertaking as part of our ASEAN hiring. I always feel fortunate to get the chance to meet and talk with students in the APAC region and taking time to meet some of the students we interviewed in Singapore last week is no exception. The excitement and enthusiasm of many of the students that I spoke to last week really stands out but what really brought some of them to the forefront for me was their creative ways of thinking and the level of professionalism that I saw in the students. Some of the presentation and communication skills that I saw displayed would rival experienced IT Consultants in the industry.  We still have more interviews to follow up from last week, but I am confident that of the students we had the chance to meet last week some of them will go on to have bright and successful careers here at Oracle.  To all the students that came in and spent the day with us, I want to thank you for giving us your time and for sharing your thoughts and ideas with us. From a business perspective I think you all will go on and do great things and from a personal stand point I enjoyed many of the conversations I had and feel lucky to meet with you. Best of luck with the remainder of your interviews and I hope to see some of you in the halls on my next visit to Singapore.

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• Simple issue tracker for 1-2 developers

  - by devoured elysium

  (I'm not sure whether this pertains to the realm of programmers@se or so@se) I'm currently working mostly alone on a project (in Java). I'm mostly alone as I have an advisor that gives me high level instructions on what to do, and will seldom make any code contribution. She will code in a couple of acceptance tests from time to time, though. I've never used an Issue Tracker before, and was thinking about starting to use one now, as I'd like to have a place where I can log possible bugs I find and keep track of them in a centralized manner. Would it be possible to integrate the issue tracker with Eclipse, better yet. So here are the constraints: It's NOT a open-source project. Our code is not to be shared with anyone! we are and will be using Subversion; we have our own Subversion server and we will keep using this same Subversion server; it must be free; it must allow at least 2 users. What is your advice on what to pick? I'm looking for the simplest solution available!

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• Delphi Client-Server Application using Firebird 2.5 error

  - by Japie Bosman

  I have got a lengthy question to ask. First of all Im still very new when it comes to Delphi programming and my experience has beem mostly developing small single user database applications using ADO and an Access database. I need to take the transition now to a client server application and this is where the problem starts. I decided to use Firebird 2.5 embeded as my database, as it is open source, and it is can be used with the interbase components in Delphi and that multiple clients can access the database simultanously. So I followed the interbase tutorial in Delphi. I managed to connect the client to the server and see the data in the example (While both are running on my pc), but when i tried to move the client to another pc, keeping the server on mine and running it to see if I can connect to the server it gave me the following error. Exception EIdSocketError in module clientDemo.exe at 0029DCAC. Socket Error # 10061 Connection refused. I understand that this might be because the host is defined as localhost in the client. But here is my first question. In the TSQLConncetion you can set die hostname under Driver-Hostname. The thing I want to know is how do you do this at run time, as I cannot get the property when I try and make an edit box to allow the user to enter the value and then set it via code like for example: SQLConncetion1.Driver.Hostname := edtHost.text; The thing is there is not such property to set, so how do you set the hostname at run time? Im using Delphi XE2 There is still a lot of questions to come especially when it comes to deployment, but I will take this piece by piece and I appreciate the advice.

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• What's wrong with my ext4 partition?

  - by bumbling fool

  What is wrong with this picture? Top is output from "df -h", bottom is gparted. I suspect I'm missing a lot of free space. No problems other than that (yet). Can somebody suggest the best (non-destructive) way to correct this? sudo dumpe2fs -h /dev/sda3: (source http://pastebin.com/nAvrdT4E) Filesystem volume name: <none> Last mounted on: / Filesystem UUID: 9f6eff64-60d7-4eec-81d5-1e8acd818b38 Filesystem magic number: 0xEF53 Filesystem revision #: 1 (dynamic) Filesystem features: has_journal ext_attr resize_inode dir_index filetype needs_recovery extent flex_bg sparse_super large_file huge_file uninit_bg dir_nlink extra_isize Filesystem flags: signed_directory_hash Default mount options: (none) Filesystem state: clean Errors behavior: Continue Filesystem OS type: Linux Inode count: 1602496 Block count: 6406144 Reserved block count: 320306 Free blocks: 4842284 Free inodes: 1361222 First block: 0 Block size: 4096 Fragment size: 4096 Reserved GDT blocks: 1022 Blocks per group: 32768 Fragments per group: 32768 Inodes per group: 8176 Inode blocks per group: 511 RAID stride: 32692 Flex block group size: 16 Filesystem created: Sun Nov 8 18:18:13 2009 Last mount time: Tue Mar 1 01:04:27 2011 Last write time: Mon Feb 28 04:27:34 2011 Mount count: 16 Maximum mount count: 28 Last checked: Thu Feb 24 06:23:39 2011 Check interval: 15552000 (6 months) Next check after: Tue Aug 23 07:23:39 2011 Lifetime writes: 227 GB Reserved blocks uid: 0 (user root) Reserved blocks gid: 0 (group root) First inode: 11 Inode size: 256 Required extra isize: 28 Desired extra isize: 28 Journal inode: 8 First orphan inode: 268015 Default directory hash: half_md4 Directory Hash Seed: cc101517-e617-482b-a883-a72919419c84 Journal backup: inode blocks Journal features: journal_incompat_revoke Journal size: 128M Journal length: 32768 Journal sequence: 0x001d3000 Journal start: 7787 fdisk and parted output per requests: http://pastebin.com/EGVH7Ken

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• 50% off ASP.NET hosting

  - by Fabrice Marguerie

  I haven't blogged for a long time because I'm busy working on an exciting new project. It's too early to tell you more. I'll provide details in a few months. Meanwhile, I wanted to write a quick post to share an excellent offer with you. It's that time of the year when you can get deals on many things, including web hosting. I'd like to remind you about Arvixe, a great web hosting provider for Windows (for ASP.NET) and Linux. For 48 hours, between Thursday November 24th at 00:00 PST (08:00 GMT/UTC) and Friday November 25th, Arvixe will be offering 50% off all of their shared hosting products. This will be for all new accounts, for life (as long as you continue to renew the account)!I've been using Arvixe for my websites for more than one year and a half now, and I highly recommend them. Here is an overview of what I get for a very good price:Unlimited diskspaceUnlimited data transferUnlimited domainsUnlimited POP3 and IMAP mailboxesUnlimited SQL Server 2008 databasesUnlimited MySQL databases.NET 1.1, 2, 3.5 and 4Dedicated application poolsFull trustIIS 7Daily backupsand more... And now, you can get that too for half the price. Just go to Arvixe.com and secure your own hosting account now by using the coupon code "Black Friday" during checkout.Disclaimer: the links to Arvixe are affiliate links that may bring me some money home if you sign up. Still, I recommend Arvixe because I use them and I'm very happy with what they offer.

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• How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7

  - by The Geek

  Wireless network settings in Windows 7 are global across all users, but there’s a little-known option that lets you switch them to per-user, so each user has access to only the networks they are allowed to connect to. Here’s how it all works. How is this useful? Maybe you want to prevent a particular user from accessing the internet—if you don’t give them the wireless password, they won’t be able to get online. This could be very useful if you’ve got mini-people playing games on the family PC, but you don’t want them getting online Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker Google Sky Map Turns Your Android Phone into a Digital Telescope Walking Through a Seaside Village Wallpaper

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• Web Development Environment: How to distribute edited hosts files over bunch of mac machines?

  - by Alex Reds

  I am doing some research to prepare some web development environment for our small(10ppl and growing) new office. User Case: For each new web project usually we create new alias on an Apache server someproject.companywebsite From my understanding in order to see this website locally for all the rest of our team(including mangers and directors) they will need to edit hosts file (e.g. "192.168.1.10 someproject.companywebsite"), and like that each time for a new project(can be 2-5 each week) Solution: And I looking for a solution how to edit this hosts file only once and distribute it over all mac machines in our network at once or much more flawlessly than poking around with each machine every time over and over again. Is that possible? Or that a very wrong way of doing that? Perhaps we better set up own local dns server and point to it our router? Though own dns server a bit concerns me because of might be some network interruption and others lags, if you know what I mean. Or perhaps there are another workflows for that? What's the best way for such things? So I'll be so grateful to hear some advices from experienced admins. I couldn't find that info on internet, so if you know where to read about it, point me in a right direction. Thank you in advance Alex

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• BI&EPM in Focus - November 2011

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  Enterprise Performance Management A Thing of Beauty, by Alison WeissAvon’s enterprise performance management system delivers accurate information and critical insight to managers at every level of the organization Oracle Crystal Ball Helps Managers Guard Against Volatility, by Alison Weiss The Insight Game, by Aaron LazenbyEnterprise performance management can deliver insights crucial to navigating the volatility of the global economy—and that’s no game of checkers. KPI vs. the Bottom Line, by Edward RoskeFor managers, is tracking the key metrics for their departments enough to ensure success for the entire business? The CEO for Oracle partner interRel shares his opinion. Deep Integration, by Aaron LazenbyThe synthesis of Oracle Hyperion applications and core Oracle technologies can deliver deep benefits to analytics-driven businesses. Oracle Crystal Ball. Oracle's #1 Solution for Risk Management Follow EPM Documentation at Hyperion EPM Info for news about EPM documentation releases and updates (twitter | facebook | Linkedin) Whitepaper: Integrating XBRL Into Your Financial Reporting Process Oracle Hyperion Disclosure Management Customer Story: StealthGas Inc. Saves 12 Accountant Days Yearly, Validates XBRL-Compliant Financial Filing Data in One Day Sherwin-Williams Argentina I.C.S.A. Accelerates Budget Preparation Process by 75% BBDO Germany GmbH Consolidates Financial and Planning Processes for More Than 50 Agencies StealthGas Inc. Saves 12 Accountant Days Yearly, Validates XBRL-Compliant Financial Filing Data in One Day Business Intelligence Webcast Replay: Oracle Data Mining & BI EE - Predictive Analytics (Part 2) Innovation Award Winners - BI/EPM: HealthSouth, State of MD, Clorox Company, Telenor and Dunkin Brands Leeds Teaching Hospitals National Health Service Trust Builds Budget Reports Six Times Faster, Achieves 100% ROI in 12 Months with Oracle Business Intelligence Home Credit Group Consolidates Reporting and Saves Time across All Business Units w/ Oracle Essbase & OBIEE Autoglass Improves Business Visibility and Services to Customers and Partners with Oracle Business Intelligence Events Download Oracle OpenWorld Oct 2011 Presentations select Middleware - BI or Applications - Hyperion Oracle Business Analytics Summits:learn about the latest trends, best practices, and innovations in business intelligence, analytics applications, and data warehousing Webcast Nov 15 9am PST: Running the Last Mile, Beyond Financial Consolidations - Streamlining the Close and Addressing the SEC's XBRL Mandate Webcast Dec 13 1pm PST: Defining Your Mobile BI Strategy (BICG) New Training Available: Oracle BI Publisher 11g R1: Fundamentals Webcast Replay: How to Expand the Usage of Analytics in your Organization while Driving Down IT Spend Webcast Replay: Real-Time Decisions (RTD) Updated Use Cases for Ecommerce Personalization in Financial Services & Retail

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

  - by Jeff

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

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