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  • Free Windows Azure event next Monday in London (29th March)

    - by Eric Nelson
    I just heard that we still have spaces for this event happening next week (29th March 2010). Whilst the event is designed for start-ups, I’m sure nobody would notice if you snuck in :-) Just keep it to yourself ;-) Register using invitation code: 79F2AB. Hope to see you there. The agenda is looking pretty swish: 09:00 – 09:30 Registration 09:30 - 10:15 Keynote  ‘I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now....’– John Taysom, Active Seed Investor 10:15 - 10:45   The Microsoft Vision for Cloud Computing – Steve Clayton, Director Software + Services, EMEA 10:45 - 11:00   Break 11:00 - 12:30 “Windows Azure in Real World” – hear from startups that have built their business around the Azure platform, moderated by Alistair Beagley, Azure UK Developer and Platform Lead 12:30 - 13:15 Lunch and networking  13:15 - 14:15  Breakout Tracks, moderated by our Azure Experts 1. Windows Azure Technical Overview - David Gristwood, Application Architect, Microsoft 2. SQL Azure Technical Overview – Eric Nelson, Application Architect, Microsoft 3. Commercial insight into Windows Azure and what this means for BizSpark Start-ups - Simon Karn, Commercial Lead, UK Windows Azure Incubation Team, Microsoft 14:15 - 14:30 Session change over 14:30 - 15:30   Breakout Tracks, moderated by our Azure Experts 1. SQL Azure Technical Overview (repeat) - Eric Nelson, Application Architect, Microsoft 2. Deep dive into Windows Azure – Neil Kidd, Architect, Microsoft Technology Centre 3. Lessons Learnt - Windows Azure in the Real World interactive session – Two customers hosted by Matt Deacon, Enterprise Architect, Microsoft 15:30 - 16:00 Break & Session change over 16:00 - 17:00 Breakout Tracks, moderated by our Azure Experts 1. PHP / Ruby on Azure Simon Davies, Architect, UK Windows Azure Incubation Team, Microsoft 2. Commercial insight into Windows Azure and what this means for BizSpark Start-ups (repeat) - Simon Karn, Commercial Lead, UK Windows Azure Incubation Team, Microsoft 3. Lessons Learnt - Windows Azure in the Real World interactive session #2 Two customers hosted by Matt Deacon, Enterprise Architect, Microsoft 17:00 - 18:00 Pitches and Judging 18:15 Wrap-up and close 18:15 - 20:00 Drinks & Networking

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  • With WPF and Silverlight against cancer

    - by Laurent Bugnion
    MVPs are well known for their good heart (like the GeekGive initiative shows) and Client App Dev MVP Gregor Biswanger is no exception. At the latest MVP summit (beginning of March 2011), he took over a DVD about WPF 4 and Silverlight 4 and asked a few Microsoft superstars to sign it. Right now, the DVD is auctioned on eBay and of course the proceeds will go to a charitable work: The German League against Cancer (Deutsche Krebshilfe). The post is in German and English (scroll down for the English text). This sounds like a great idea, and considering who signed it, it is going to be a real collectible: Scott Hanselman (Principal Program Manager Lead in Server and Tools Online) Tim Heuer (Program Manager for Microsoft Silverlight) Rob Relyea (Principal Program Manager Lead - Client Platform WPF & Silverlight) Pete Brown (Developer Division Community Program Manager - Windows Client) Eric Fabricant (Program Manager WPF) Jeff Wilcox (Silverlight Senior SDE) Jeffrey R Ferman (SDET Visual Studio Client Dev Tools) Chan Verbeck (Expression Blend Team) Yaniv Feinberg (Expression Blend Team) Douglas Olson (Director Dev Expression) Samuel W. Bent (Principal Software Design Engineer WPF) John Papa (Technical Evangelist for Silverlight) So if you feel that you could do a generous gesture, go ahead and take a look at the auction, and talk about it around you. Let’s prove again that geeks rule, also when it comes to giving to a good cause! Cheers! Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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  • SharePoint Q&A With the MVP Gang

    - by Bil Simser
    Interested in getting some first hand knowledge about SharePoint and all of it’s quirks, oddities, and secrets? We’re hosting not one, but *two* SharePoint Q&A sessions with the MVP crowd. Here’s the official blurb: Do you have tough technical questions regarding SharePoint for which you're seeking answers? Do you want to tap into the deep knowledge of the talented Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals? The SharePoint MVPs are the same people you see in the technical community as authors, speakers, user group leaders and answerers in the MSDN forums. By popular demand, we have brought these experts together as a collective group to answer your questions live. So please join us and bring on the questions! This chat will cover WSS, MOSS and the SharePoint 2010. Topics include setup and administration, design, development and general questions. Here’s a rundown of the expected guests for the chats: Agnes Molnar, Andrew Connell, Asif Rehmani, Becky Bertram, Me, Bryan Phillips, Chris O'Brien, Clayton Cobb, Dan Attis, Darrin Bishop, David Mann, Gary Lapointe, John Ross, Mike Oryzak, Muhanad Omar, Paul Stork, Randy Drisgill, Rob Bogue, Rob Foster, Shane Young, Spence Harbar. Apologies for not linking to everyone’s blogs, I’m just not that ambitious tonight. Please note that not everyone listed here is guaranteed to make it to either chat and there may be additions/changes at the last minute so the names may change to protect the innocent. The chat sessions will be held April 27th, 2010 at 4PM (PST) and April 28th at 9AM (PST). You can find out more details about the chats here or click here to add the April 27th event to your calendar, or click here to add the April 28th event (assuming your calendar software supports ICS files). See you there!

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  • Windows 7 Audio tracks messed up

    - by Crash893
    I'm not an audio guy so it might not be the most articulate description of the problem I'm having but it seems like ever since I went to Windows 7 some video (netflix and some youtube) the background track (music sound effects etc) plays appropriately but the foreground track (i.e. the actors and/or narrator) barely comes in at all Right now I have just a simple set of PC speakers and some times a pair of headphones that plug into the PC speakers (no fancy 5.1) I've looked at every setting I can think of but I can't find anything that could be causing this Ive uninstalled the driver and reinstalled and I still get the same results so I think its a software issue any ideas?

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  • Recovering Pictures & Movies from Formatted Memory Card

    - by Donotalo
    I thought I've copied all of the pictures and videos that I've taken using my digital camera Canon Digital IXUS 860 IS to my computer. Then I format the memory card. Then I found I didn't take all of the files! I don't have any other means of connecting the memory card to computer except via the camera. But the camera doesn't show it as a removable device directly in my computer so programs like Glary Utilities and PC Inspector didn't find the drive. I didn't take any picture after I formatted it. Is there any free software that can help me to get the pictures and videos? My memory card is an 4 GB SDHC card. Thanks.

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  • Fix Firefox Not Scrolling with Up/Down Arrow Keys or Home/End Keys

    - by The Geek
    If you’ve encountered a problem where your Firefox installation no longer scrolls when you use the up or down arrow keys, and even the Home or End keys don’t work anymore, there’s an easy fix. When this problem happens, you’ll notice that moving the arrow keys around just moves the cursor around the page. Annoying! The problem is because you tripped the Caret Browsing feature at some point, and accidentally hit Yes. To fix this, you can just hit the F7 key again. Or, if you want to do it the about:config way, filter by accessibility.browsewithcaret and make sure it’s set to false. Remember, you can double-click on any boolean value to toggle between true and false. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Keyboard Ninja: Scrolling the Windows Command Prompt With Only the KeyboardShow Shortcut Keys in ScreenTips in Visual Studio 2003Show Shortcut Keys in ScreenTips in Visual Studio 2005Future Date a Post in Windows Live WriterDisable the Irritating Sticky / Filter Keys Popup Dialogs TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Need Help with Your Home Network? Awesome Lyrics Finder for Winamp & Windows Media Player Download Videos from Hulu Pixels invade Manhattan Convert PDF files to ePub to read on your iPad Hide Your Confidential Files Inside Images

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  • Merging partitions and removing windows of one partition

    - by SmartLemon
    I have two partitions on my laptop, I created a new one when installing windows 8 pro because windows 7 wouldn't upgrade to it for some odd reason. The main partition, which has 631 GB ( has windows 7 installed on it, and the second partition is 49.9 GB and has windows 8 installed on it. What I need to do is remove windows 7 from the other one (Yeah its dual booting), make it so it boots straight into windows 8, without showing the dual boot screen, and also merge the two drives together. Only problem is, I have no idea how to do this. Please don't use complete lamens terms, I am a software developer so I know at least a bit about computers. Here's disk management so you can see how its set out.

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  • Viewing CHM Files Across The Network in Windows 7

    - by Lukas Cenovsky
    When I try to open .chm help from a network shared drive I receive the following error: Navigation to the webpage was canceled. I know about the .reg solution described on KB896054 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\HTMLHelp\1.x\ItssRestrictions] "MaxAllowedZone"=dword:00000001 but it does not work in Windows 7. Any ideas how to make .chm help available from the network drives? Edit: I have the network path mapped to P: drive letter. My program runs from P: and I want to see the help for it. Copying the program to local drive is not a solution for me.

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  • Windows 7 Dell laptop Forgotten password

    - by jtmk
    Hi, A friend has managed to set up their new Windows 7 Home Premium Dell Inspiron and forgot the password they have used. I have tried the following password reset software to no avail: UBCD OHPCrack Offline NT Password & Registry Editor *Trinity Kon Boot I have also tried to do a system restore but this asks for the password. The user does not have any data they need to save. Is there anyway I can get access to the restore partition using Linux to create a recovery disk or do I have to purchase a recovery disk from Dell? Any help is greatly appreciated.

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  • multiple wildcard entries

    - by Murali
    my client has around 300,000 domains and they just have a wildcard for all of them * A 12.12.12.12 Now they want to create a sub domain that points to a different IP and still have the flexibility of wildcard, something like ww1.* A 24.24.24.24 * A 12.12.12.12 Looks like in BIND, the lower "*" is catch-all and taking over every query and hence ww1 is not working. One of solutions offered by IT folks was to create seperate 300K zones for just "ww1" and leave the "*" wildcard. Are there any other DNS software's that can achieve this task easily? Any other ways to deal?

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  • Elevating Customer Experience through Enterprise Social Networking

    - by john.brunswick
    I am not sure about most people, but I really dislike automated call center routing systems. They are impersonal and convey a sense that the company I am dealing with does not see the value of providing customer service that increases positive perception of their brand. By the time I am connected with a live support representative I am actually more frustrated than before I originally dialed. Each time a company interacts with its customers or prospects there is an opportunity to enhance that relationship. Technical enablers like call center routing systems can be a double edged sword - providing process efficiencies, but removing the human context of some interactions that can build a lot of long term value and create substantial repeat business. Certain web systems, available through "chat with a representative" now links on some web sites, provide a quick and easy way to get in touch with someone and cut down on help desk calls, but miss the opportunity to deliver an even more personal experience to customers and prospects. As more and more users head to the web for self-service and product information, the quality of this interaction becomes critical to supporting a company's brand image and viability. It takes very little effort to go a step further and elevate customer experience, without adding significant cost through social enterprise software technologies. Enterprise Social Networking Social networking technologies have slowly gained footholds in the enterprise, evolving from something that people may have been simply curious about, to tools that have started to provide tangible value in the enterprise. Much like instant messaging, once considered a toy in the enterprise, expertise search, blogs as communications tools, wikis for tacit knowledge sharing are all seeing adoption in a way that is directly applicable to the business and quickly adding value. So where does social networking come in when trying to enhance customer experience?

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  • Layer 2 topology discovery

    - by pegah s
    I have been given a network (it is a LAN) comprised of switches and I need to discover the topology of that. (There may be Link Aggregation Groups (LAGs) in the network as well.) I have done a lot of search on layer 2 topology discovery and I have seen many articles talking about using SNMP MIBs or LLDP (I do not know which one is better or more practical, but all devices in my network support SNMP). But my problem is that I cannot find "the software to install and run" to actually see the topology map. I would really appreciate if someone could send me the website where I can download the code and use it. I have also found a lot of tools available online such as OpenNMS, Nagios, The Dude, LANsurveyor, SNMPwalk, and many more... But I cannot figure out which one is the best to pick. To summarize: what is the easiest simplest way to discover the layer 2 network topology?

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  • Desktop Fun: Beaches Theme Wallpapers

    - by Asian Angel
    Is your vacation still a few weeks or months away? Make the waiting a little easier by adding some of that vacation scenery to your desktop with our Beaches Theme Wallpapers collection. Note: Click on the picture to see the full-size image—these wallpapers vary in size so you may need to crop, stretch, or place them on a colored background in order to best match them to your screen’s resolution.                       For more fun wallpapers be certain to visit our new Desktop Fun section. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Windows 7 Welcome Screen Taking Forever? Here’s the Fix (Maybe)Desktop Fun: Starship Theme WallpapersDesktop Fun: Underwater Theme WallpapersDesktop Fun: Forest Theme WallpapersDesktop Fun: Fantasy Theme Wallpapers TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Run Command Missing in Windows 7? Share High Res Photos using Divvyshot Draw Online using Harmony How to Browse Privately in Firefox Kill Processes Quickly with Process Assassin Need to Come Up with a Good Name? Try Wordoid

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  • Windows 8 wmvcore.dll

    - by Dominykas Mostauskis
    I am running Windows 8 Pro N x64 without Windows Media Player (which might be called Windows Media Center in the case of Windows 8) preinstalled. Apparently certain software packages require WMP to be installed, in my case Premiere Pro, (wmvcore.dll required error); however, Microsoft will only be releasing it at the end of October, which is a month from now, while no other WMP packages seem to install on Windows 8. Tried downloading a Windows 7 x64 SP1 wmvcore.dll to no avail. This is a problem for many people at the moment, and a solution would be appreciated.

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  • Installing Intel Rapid Storage Drivers makes my eSATA Drives act weird

    - by Filip Ekberg
    I have a HP 8530w Elitebook this Laptop got an eSATA port which I want to plug my LaCie d2 Quadra V2 1TB harddrive into. It all works well on a fresh install of Windows 7 without the Intel Chipset drivers installed. However when I install the Intel Rapid Storage drivers or the Intel Matrix software my drive seems to "disconnect" when I use it to much. I have a lot of Virtual PC's on the drive and when I start them the disk somewhat disconnects. What could cause this?

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  • Patch Management and System Inventory on a Windows network?

    - by Scott
    What are some good ways to have patch management and systems/hardware inventory for a Windows (Server 2003 or 2008) network? For example, at a minimum knowing the basics for all the machines out on the network such as OS version, patch level, what hotfixes they have, processor, ram, etc. Even better would be knowing more details such as peripherals. Ideally if there were a way to push service packs, and hotfixes (and other software?) to the machines, that would be great. What are some options for this?

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  • CIC 2010 - Ghost Stories and Model Based Design

    - by warren.baird
    I was lucky enough to attend the collaboration and interoperability congress recently. The location was very beautiful and interesting, it was held in the mountains about two hours outside Denver, at the Stanley hotel, famous both for inspiring Steven King's novel "The Shining" and for attracting a lot of attention from the "Ghost Hunters" TV show. My visit was prosaic - I didn't get to experience the ghosts the locals promised - but interesting, with some very informative sessions. I noticed one main theme - a lot of people were talking about Model Based Design (MBD), which is moving design and manufacturing away from 2d drawings and towards 3d models. 2d has some pretty deep roots in industrial manufacturing and there have been a lot of challenges encountered in making the leap to 3d. One of the challenges discussed in several sessions was how to get model information out to the non-engineers in the company, which is a topic near and dear to my heart. In the 2D space, people without access to CAD software (for example, people assembling a product on the shop floor) can be given printouts of the design - it's not particularly efficient, and it definitely isn't very green, but it tends to work. There's no direct equivalent in the 3D space. One of the ways that AutoVue is used in industrial manufacturing is to provide non-CAD users with an easy to use, interactive 3D view of their products - in some cases it's directly used by people on the shop floor, but in cases where paper is really ingrained in the process, AutoVue can be used by a technical publications person to create illustrative 2D views that can be printed that show all of the details necessary to complete the work. Are you making the move to model based design? Is AutoVue helping you with your challenges? Let us know in the comments below.

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  • Compiling Gnucash 2.6.3 in Ubuntu 14.04

    - by wolveryn
    Downloaded the debian file from source forge and followed instructions, where these errors appear, I re-downloaded the file several times with same error. I want to install the latest Gnucash not the one available on software center. Thank you for your support. /qof/gnc-date/qof print date dmy buff: There are some differences between distros in the way they namelocales, and this can cause trouble with the locale-basedformatting. If you get the assert in this function, run locale -aand make sure that en_US, en_GB, and fr_FR are installed and thatif a suffix is needed it's in the suffixes array.** ERROR:test-gnc-date.c:465:test_gnc_setlocale: code should not be reached FAIL GTester: last random seed: R02Sd8d3d0e67be954baa8ec75d81a14c0e3 /bin/bash: line 1: 18889 Terminated MALLOC_CHECK_=2 MALLOC_PERTURB_=$((${RANDOM:-256} % 256)) gtester --verbose test-qof make[5]: *** [test-nonrecursive] Error 143 make[5]: Leaving directory `/home/ahmed/gnucash/gnucash-2.6.3/src/libqof/qof/test' make[4]: *** [check-am] Error 2 make[4]: Leaving directory `/home/ahmed/gnucash/gnucash-2.6.3/src/libqof/qof/test' make[3]: *** [check-recursive] Error 1 make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/ahmed/gnucash/gnucash-2.6.3/src/libqof/qof' make[2]: *** [check-recursive] Error 1 make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/ahmed/gnucash/gnucash-2.6.3/src/libqof' make[1]: *** [check-recursive] Error 1 make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/ahmed/gnucash/gnucash-2.6.3/src' make: *** [check-recursive] Error 1

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  • Transfer used ram to swap and free more physical ram

    - by AbuOmar
    I have a vps with 256m physical ram and 512m swap space, I am trying to use a software that need more than 256m and less than 512m ram, so it uses swap. The problem is at some moment of the installation, the installation process checks the available physical ram, it's full (some swap is used), so it pauses the installation and tills that it must be some more ram to continue the installation.. I see that I need to move some of used physical ram to swap while the process is running.. Is there anyway I can do that? or any other solution! For sorry I am using openvz vps, and the vm.swappiness option can't be modified as a solution.

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  • Is there any multi-touch graphics tablet with Linux drivers?

    - by Zifre
    After watching the absolutely amazing 10/GUI video, I have been dying to try to implement something like this. I can do the software side quite easily, but I don't have the hardware. The Wacom Bamboo Fun would work, but the Linux drivers don't support the multi-touch features. Microsoft's "UnMouse Pad" looks like the perfect solution, but it is not commercially available yet. Are there any similar devices that would work? Alternatively, is there a way to build a DIY version? (It is fairly easy to build a multi-touch display with a webcam and IR LEDs, but it would not be pressure sensitive. Does anyone have any info on how the UnMouse Pad works and if it is possible to build one?) EDIT: I should clarify that I don't want a multi-touch display. I want the sensor to be separate from the display. If that sounds crazy, watch the 10/GUI video.

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  • Memory Stick Controller is not compatible with this version of Windows.

    - by nona urbiz
    I'm getting this error message in the Action Center on Windows 7, and I can't seem to solve it through Windows or through searches on Google: RICOH R5C592 PCI-CardBus/IEEE-1394/SD Card/Memory Stick Controller is not compatible with this version of Windows. Thanks for any help PS. I wasn't sure if you're allowed to post questions like this, about proprietary software, but I checked the FAQ and it seemed ok. Response: The URL I am told to visit it this but I can't tell which I should choose that I am originally presented with, or what to put in to select, as I am not sure what input it is referring to.

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  • Keyboard locking up in Visual Studio 2010

    - by Jim Wang
    One of the initiatives I’m involved with on the ASP.NET and Visual Studio teams is the Tactical Test Team (TTT), which is a group of testers who dedicate a portion of their time to roaming around and testing different parts of the product.  What this generally translates to is a day and a bit a week helping out with areas of the product that have been flagged as risky, or tackling problems that span both ASP.NET and Visual Studio.  There is also a separate component of this effort outside of TTT which is to help with customer scenarios and design. I enjoy being on TTT because it allows me the opportunity to look at the entire product and gain expertise in a wide range of areas.  This week, I’m looking at Visual Studio 2010 performance problems, and this gem with the keyboard in Visual Studio locking up ended up catching my attention. First of all, here’s a link to one of the many Connect bugs describing the problem: Microsoft Connect I like this problem because it really highlights the challenges of reproducing customer bugs.  There aren’t any clear steps provided here, and I don’t know a lot about your environment: not just the basics like our OS version, but also what third party plug-ins or antivirus software you might be running that might contribute to the problem.  In this case, my gut tells me that there is more than one bug here, just by the sheer volume of reports.  Here’s another thread where users talk about it: Microsoft Connect The volume and different configurations are staggering.  From a customer perspective, this is a very clear cut case of basic functionality not working in the product, but from our perspective, it’s hard to find something reproducible: even customers don’t quite agree on what causes the problem (installing ReSharper seems to cause a problem…or does it?). So this then, is the start of a QA investigation. If anybody has isolated repro steps (just comment on this post) that they can provide this will immensely help us nail down the issue(s), but I’ll be doing a multi-part series on my progress and methodologies as I look into the problem.

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  • Making a Case For The Command Line

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

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  • Friday Fun: Play MineSweeper in Google Chrome

    - by Asian Angel
    Are you addicted to MineSweeper and love to play it when taking a break from work? Now you can add that mine sweeping goodness to Google Chrome with the Chrome MineSweeper extension. Find Those Mines! Once the extension has been installed simply click on the “Toolbar Button” to access the game (opens in a new tab). The “emoticons” at the top of the tab window indicate the difficulty level of game play available. Sometimes you can make quick progress in a short time with this game… Only to lose moments later. So you do have to plan your strategy out carefully. You will be surprised (or perhaps alarmed?) at just how quickly you get addicted to playing “just one more round”! Want a bigger challenge? Click on the “middle emoticon” to access a tougher level. The ultimate level…how much mine sweeping punishment are you up for?   Conclusion If you are a MineSweeper fan then this will be a perfect addition to your browser. For those who are new to this game then you have a lot of fun just waiting for you. Links Download the Chrome MineSweeper extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to Make Google Chrome Your Default BrowserPlay a New Random Game Each Day in ChromeEnable Vista Black Style Theme for Google Chrome in XPIncrease Google Chrome’s Omnibox Popup Suggestion Count With an Undocumented SwitchFriday Fun: Play 3D Rally Racing in Google Chrome TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional YoWindoW, a real time weather screensaver Optimize your computer the Microsoft way Stormpulse provides slick, real time weather data Geek Parents – Did you try Parental Controls in Windows 7? Change DNS servers on the fly with DNS Jumper Live PDF Searches PDF Files and Ebooks

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  • HPET for x86 BSP (how to build it for WCE8)

    - by Werner Willemsens
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/WernerWillemsens/archive/2014/08/02/157895.aspx"I needed a timer". That is how we started a few blogs ago our series about APIC and ACPI. Well, here it is. HPET (High Precision Event Timer) was introduced by Intel in early 2000 to: Replace old style Intel 8253 (1981!) and 8254 timers Support more accurate timers that could be used for multimedia purposes. Hence Microsoft and Intel sometimes refers to HPET as Multimedia timers. An HPET chip consists of a 64-bit up-counter (main counter) counting at a frequency of at least 10 MHz, and a set of (at least three, up to 256) comparators. These comparators are 32- or 64-bit wide. The HPET is discoverable via ACPI. The HPET circuit in recent Intel platforms is integrated into the SouthBridge chip (e.g. 82801) All HPET timers should support one-shot interrupt programming, while optionally they can support periodic interrupts. In most Intel SouthBridges I worked with, there are three HPET timers. TIMER0 supports both one-shot and periodic mode, while TIMER1 and TIMER2 are one-shot only. Each HPET timer can generate interrupts, both in old-style PIC mode and in APIC mode. However in PIC mode, interrupts cannot freely be chosen. Typically IRQ11 is available and cannot be shared with any other interrupt! Which makes the HPET in PIC mode virtually unusable. In APIC mode however more IRQs are available and can be shared with other interrupt generating devices. (Check the datasheet of your SouthBridge) Because of this higher level of freedom, I created the APIC BSP (see previous posts). The HPET driver code that I present you here uses this APIC mode. Hpet.reg [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Drivers\BuiltIn\Hpet] "Dll"="Hpet.dll" "Prefix"="HPT" "Order"=dword:10 "IsrDll"="giisr.dll" "IsrHandler"="ISRHandler" "Priority256"=dword:50 Because HPET does not reside on the PCI bus, but can be found through ACPI as a memory mapped device, you don't need to specify the "Class", "SubClass", "ProgIF" and other PCI related registry keys that you typically find for PCI devices. If a driver needs to run its internal thread(s) at a certain priority level, by convention in Windows CE you add the "Priority256" registry key. Through this key you can easily play with the driver's thread priority for better response and timer accuracy. See later. Hpet.cpp (Hpet.dll) This cpp file contains the complete HPET driver code. The file is part of a folder that you typically integrate in your BSP (\src\drivers\Hpet). It is written as sample (example) code, you most likely want to change this code to your specific needs. There are two sets of #define's that I use to control how the driver works. _TRIGGER_EVENT or _TRIGGER_SEMAPHORE: _TRIGGER_EVENT will let your driver trigger a Windows CE Event when the timer expires, _TRIGGER_SEMAPHORE will trigger a Windows CE counting Semaphore. The latter guarantees that no events get lost in case your application cannot always process the triggers fast enough. _TIMER0 or _TIMER2: both timers will trigger an event or semaphore periodically. _TIMER0 will use a periodic HPET timer interrupt, while _TIMER2 will reprogram a one-shot HPET timer after each interrupt. The one-shot approach is interesting if the frequency you wish to generate is not an even multiple of the HPET main counter frequency. The sample code uses an algorithm to generate a more correct frequency over a longer period (by reducing rounding errors). _TIMER1 is not used in the sample source code. HPT_Init() will locate the HPET I/O memory space, setup the HPET counter (_TIMER0 or _TIMER2) and install the Interrupt Service Thread (IST). Upon timer expiration, the IST will run and on its turn will generate a Windows CE Event or Semaphore. In case of _TIMER2 a new one-shot comparator value is calculated and set for the timer. The IRQ of the HPET timers are programmed to IRQ22, but you can choose typically from 20-23. The TIMERn_INT_ROUT_CAP bits in the TIMn_CONF register will tell you what IRQs you can choose from. HPT_IOControl() can be used to set a new HPET counter frequency (actually you configure the counter timeout value in microseconds), start and stop the timer, and request the current HPET counter value. The latter is interesting because the Windows CE QueryPerformanceCounter() and QueryPerformanceFrequency() APIs implement the same functionality, albeit based on other counter implementations. HpetDrvIst() contains the IST code. DWORD WINAPI HpetDrvIst(LPVOID lpArg) { psHpetDeviceContext pHwContext = (psHpetDeviceContext)lpArg; DWORD mainCount = READDWORD(pHwContext->g_hpet_va, GenCapIDReg + 4); // Main Counter Tick period (fempto sec 10E-15) DWORD i = 0; while (1) { WaitForSingleObject(pHwContext->g_isrEvent, INFINITE); #if defined(_TRIGGER_SEMAPHORE) LONG p = 0; BOOL b = ReleaseSemaphore(pHwContext->g_triggerEvent, 1, &p); #elif defined(_TRIGGER_EVENT) BOOL b = SetEvent(pHwContext->g_triggerEvent); #else #pragma error("Unknown TRIGGER") #endif #if defined(_TIMER0) DWORD currentCount = READDWORD(pHwContext->g_hpet_va, MainCounterReg); DWORD comparator = READDWORD(pHwContext->g_hpet_va, Tim0_ComparatorReg + 0); SETBIT(pHwContext->g_hpet_va, GenIntStaReg, 0); // clear interrupt on HPET level InterruptDone(pHwContext->g_sysIntr); // clear interrupt on OS level _LOGMSG(ZONE_INTERRUPT, (L"%s: HpetDrvIst 0 %06d %08X %08X", pHwContext->g_id, i++, currentCount, comparator)); #elif defined(_TIMER2) DWORD currentCount = READDWORD(pHwContext->g_hpet_va, MainCounterReg); DWORD previousComparator = READDWORD(pHwContext->g_hpet_va, Tim2_ComparatorReg + 0); pHwContext->g_counter2.QuadPart += pHwContext->g_comparator.QuadPart; // increment virtual counter (higher accuracy) DWORD comparator = (DWORD)(pHwContext->g_counter2.QuadPart >> 8); // "round" to real value WRITEDWORD(pHwContext->g_hpet_va, Tim2_ComparatorReg + 0, comparator); SETBIT(pHwContext->g_hpet_va, GenIntStaReg, 2); // clear interrupt on HPET level InterruptDone(pHwContext->g_sysIntr); // clear interrupt on OS level _LOGMSG(ZONE_INTERRUPT, (L"%s: HpetDrvIst 2 %06d %08X %08X (%08X)", pHwContext->g_id, i++, currentCount, comparator, comparator - previousComparator)); #else #pragma error("Unknown TIMER") #endif } return 1; } The following figure shows how the HPET hardware interrupt via ISR -> IST is translated in a Windows CE Event or Semaphore by the HPET driver. The Event or Semaphore can be used to trigger a Windows CE application. HpetTest.cpp (HpetTest.exe)This cpp file contains sample source how to use the HPET driver from an application. The file is part of a separate (smart device) VS2013 solution. It contains code to measure the generated Event/Semaphore times by means of GetSystemTime() and QueryPerformanceCounter() and QueryPerformanceFrequency() APIs. HPET evaluation If you scan the internet about HPET, you'll find many remarks about buggy HPET implementations and bad performance. Unfortunately that is true. I tested the HPET driver on an Intel ICH7M SBC (release date 2008). When a HPET timer expires on the ICH7M, an interrupt indeed is generated, but right after you clear the interrupt, a few more unwanted interrupts (too soon!) occur as well. I tested and debugged it for a loooong time, but I couldn't get it to work. I concluded ICH7M's HPET is buggy Intel hardware. I tested the HPET driver successfully on a more recent NM10 SBC (release date 2013). With the NM10 chipset however, I am not fully convinced about the timer's frequency accuracy. In the long run - on average - all is fine, but occasionally I experienced upto 20 microseconds delays (which were immediately compensated on the next interrupt). Of course, this was all measured by software, but I still experienced the occasional delay when both the HPET driver IST thread as the application thread ran at CeSetThreadPriority(1). If it is not the hardware, only the kernel can cause this delay. But Windows CE is an RTOS and I have never experienced such long delays with previous versions of Windows CE. I tested and developed this on WCE8, I am not heavily experienced with it yet. Internet forum threads however mention inaccurate HPET timer implementations as well. At this moment I haven't figured out what is going on here. Useful references: http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/technical-specifications/software-developers-hpet-spec-1-0a.pdf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Precision_Event_Timer http://wiki.osdev.org/HPET Windows CE BSP source file package for HPET in MyBsp Note that this source code is "As Is". It is still under development and I cannot (and never will) guarantee the correctness of the code. Use it as a guide for your own HPET integration.

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