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Use BGInfo to Build a Database of System Information of Your Network Computers

- by Sysadmin Geek

One of the more popular tools of the Sysinternals suite among system administrators is BGInfo which tacks real-time system information to your desktop wallpaper when you first login. For obvious reasons, having information such as system memory, available hard drive space and system up time (among others) right in front of you is very convenient when you are managing several systems. A little known feature about this handy utility is the ability to have system information automatically saved to a SQL database or some other data file. With a few minutes of setup work you can easily configure BGInfo to record system information of all your network computers in a centralized storage location. You can then use this data to monitor or report on these systems however you see fit. BGInfo Setup If you are familiar with BGInfo, you can skip this section. However, if you have never used this tool, it takes just a few minutes to setup in order to capture the data you are looking for. When you first open BGInfo, a timer will be counting down in the upper right corner. Click the countdown button to keep the interface up so we can edit the settings. Now edit the information you want to capture from the available fields on the right. Since all the output will be redirected to a central location, don’t worry about configuring the layout or formatting. Configuring the Storage Database BGInfo supports the ability to store information in several database formats: SQL Server Database, Access Database, Excel and Text File. To configure this option, open File > Database. Using a Text File The simplest, and perhaps most practical, option is to store the BGInfo data in a comma separated text file. This format allows for the file to be opened in Excel or imported into a database. To use a text file or any other file system type (Excel or MS Access), simply provide the UNC to the respective file. The account running the task to write to this file will need read/write access to both the share and NTFS file permissions. When using a text file, the only option is to have BGInfo create a new entry each time the capture process is run which will add a new line to the respective CSV text file. Using a SQL Database If you prefer to have the data dropped straight into a SQL Server database, BGInfo support this as well. This requires a bit of additional configuration, but overall it is very easy. The first step is to create a database where the information will be stored. Additionally, you will want to create a user account to fill data into this table (and this table only). For your convenience, this script creates a new database and user account (run this as Administrator on your SQL Server machine): @SET Server=%ComputerName%.@SET Database=BGInfo@SET UserName=BGInfo@SET Password=passwordSQLCMD -S “%Server%” -E -Q “Create Database [%Database%]“SQLCMD -S “%Server%” -E -Q “Create Login [%UserName%] With Password=N’%Password%’, DEFAULT_DATABASE=[%Database%], CHECK_EXPIRATION=OFF, CHECK_POLICY=OFF”SQLCMD -S “%Server%” -E -d “%Database%” -Q “Create User [%UserName%] For Login [%UserName%]“SQLCMD -S “%Server%” -E -d “%Database%” -Q “EXEC sp_addrolemember N’db_owner’, N’%UserName%’” Note the SQL user account must have ‘db_owner’ permissions on the database in order for BGInfo to work correctly. This is why you should have a SQL user account specifically for this database. Next, configure BGInfo to connect to this database by clicking on the SQL button. Fill out the connection properties according to your database settings. Select the option of whether or not to only have one entry per computer or keep a history of each system. The data will then be dropped directly into a table named “BGInfoTable” in the respective database. Configure User Desktop Options While the primary function of BGInfo is to alter the user’s desktop by adding system info as part of the wallpaper, for our use here we want to leave the user’s wallpaper alone so this process runs without altering any of the user’s settings. Click the Desktops button. Configure the Wallpaper modifications to not alter anything. Preparing the Deployment Now we are all set for deploying the configuration to the individual machines so we can start capturing the system data. If you have not done so already, click the Apply button to create the first entry in your data repository. If all is configured correctly, you should be able to open your data file or database and see the entry for the respective machine. Now click the File > Save As menu option and save the configuration as “BGInfoCapture.bgi”. Deploying to Client Machines Deployment to the respective client machines is pretty straightforward. No installation is required as you just need to copy the BGInfo.exe and the BGInfoCapture.bgi to each machine and place them in the same directory. Once in place, just run the command: BGInfo.exe BGInfoCapture.bgi /Timer:0 /Silent /NoLicPrompt Of course, you probably want to schedule the capture process to run on a schedule. This command creates a Scheduled Task to run the capture process at 8 AM every morning and assumes you copied the required files to the root of your C drive: SCHTASKS /Create /SC DAILY /ST 08:00 /TN “System Info” /TR “C:\BGInfo.exe C:\BGInfoCapture.bgi /Timer:0 /Silent /NoLicPrompt” Adjust as needed, but the end result is the scheduled task command should look something like this: Download BGInfo from Sysinternals Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Create Your Own Custom ASCII Art from Any Image How To Process Camera Raw Without Paying for Adobe Photoshop How Do You Block Annoying Text Message (SMS) Spam? How to Use and Master the Notoriously Difficult Pen Tool in Photoshop HTG Explains: What Are the Differences Between All Those Audio Formats? 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SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #052

- by Pinal Dave

Let us continue with the final episode of the Memory Lane Series. Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Set Server Level FILLFACTOR Using T-SQL Script Specifies a percentage that indicates how full the Database Engine should make the leaf level of each index page during index creation or alteration. fillfactor must be an integer value from 1 to 100. The default is 0. Limitation of Online Index Rebuld Operation Online operation means when online operations are happening in the database are in normal operational condition, the processes which are participating in online operations does not require exclusive access to the database. Get Permissions of My Username / Userlogin on Server / Database A few days ago, I was invited to one of the largest database company. I was asked to review database schema and propose changes to it. There was special username or user logic was created for me, so I can review their database. I was very much interested to know what kind of permissions I was assigned per server level and database level. I did not feel like asking Sr. DBA the question about permissions. Simple Example of WHILE Loop With CONTINUE and BREAK Keywords This question is one of those questions which is very simple and most of the users get it correct, however few users find it confusing for the first time. I have tried to explain the usage of simple WHILE loop in the first example. BREAK keyword will exit the stop the while loop and control is moved to the next statement after the while loop. CONTINUE keyword skips all the statement after its execution and control is sent to the first statement of while loop. Forced Parameterization and Simple Parameterization – T-SQL and SSMS When the PARAMETERIZATION option is set to FORCED, any literal value that appears in a SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE or DELETE statement is converted to a parameter during query compilation. When the PARAMETERIZATION database option is SET to SIMPLE, the SQL Server query optimizer may choose to parameterize the queries. 2008 Transaction and Local Variables – Swap Variables – Update All At Once Concept Summary : Transaction have no effect over memory variables. When UPDATE statement is applied over any table (physical or memory) all the updates are applied at one time together when the statement is committed. First of all I suggest that you read the article listed above about the effect of transaction on local variant. As seen there local variables are independent of any transaction effect. Simulate INNER JOIN using LEFT JOIN statement – Performance Analysis Just a day ago, while I was working with JOINs I find one interesting observation, which has prompted me to create following example. Before we continue further let me make very clear that INNER JOIN should be used where it cannot be used and simulating INNER JOIN using any other JOINs will degrade the performance. If there are scopes to convert any OUTER JOIN to INNER JOIN it should be done with priority. 2009 Introduction to Business Intelligence – Important Terms & Definitions Business intelligence (BI) is a broad category of application programs and technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing, and providing access to data from various data sources, thus providing enterprise users with reliable and timely information and analysis for improved decision making. Difference Between Candidate Keys and Primary Key Candidate Key – A Candidate Key can be any column or a combination of columns that can qualify as unique key in database. There can be multiple Candidate Keys in one table. Each Candidate Key can qualify as Primary Key. Primary Key – A Primary Key is a column or a combination of columns that uniquely identify a record. Only one Candidate Key can be Primary Key. 2010 Taking Multiple Backup of Database in Single Command – Mirrored Database Backup I recently had a very interesting experience. In one of my recent consultancy works, I was told by our client that they are going to take the backup of the database and will also a copy of it at the same time. I expressed that it was surely possible if they were going to use a mirror command. In addition, they told me that whenever they take two copies of the database, the size of the database, is always reduced. Now this was something not clear to me, I said it was not possible and so I asked them to show me the script. Corrupted Backup File and Unsuccessful Restore The CTO, who was also present at the location, got very upset with this situation. He then asked when the last successful restore test was done. As expected, the answer was NEVER.There were no successful restore tests done before. During that time, I was present and I could clearly see the stress, confusion, carelessness and anger around me. I did not appreciate the feeling and I was pretty sure that no one in there wanted the atmosphere like me. 2011 TRACEWRITE – Wait Type – Wait Related to Buffer and Resolution SQL Trace is a SQL Server database engine technology which monitors specific events generated when various actions occur in the database engine. When any event is fired it goes through various stages as well various routes. One of the routes is Trace I/O Provider, which sends data to its final destination either as a file or rowset. DATEDIFF – Accuracy of Various Dateparts If you want to have accuracy in seconds, you need to use a different approach. In the first example, the accurate method is to find the number of seconds first and then divide it by 60 to convert it in minutes. Dedicated Access Control for SQL Server Express Edition http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k00z82u4OI Book Signing at SQLPASS 2012 Who I Am And How I Got Here – True Story as Blog Post If there was a shortcut to success – I want to know. I learnt SQL Server hard way and I am still learning. There are so many things, I have to learn. There is not enough time to learn everything which we want to learn. I am constantly working on it every day. I welcome you to join my journey as well. Please join me in my journey to learn SQL Server – more the merrier. Vacation, Travel and Study – A New Concept Even those who have advanced degrees and went to college for years, or even decades, find studying hard. There is a difference between studying for a career and studying for a certification. At least to get a degree there is a variety of subjects, with labs, exams, and practice problems to make things more interesting. Order By Numeric Values Formatted as String We have a table which has a column containing alphanumeric data. The data always has first as an integer and later part as a string. The business need is to order the data based on the first part of the alphanumeric data which is an integer. Now the problem is that no matter how we use ORDER BY the result is not produced as expected. Let us understand this with an example. Resolving SQL Server Connection Errors – SQL in Sixty Seconds #030 – Video One of the most famous errors related to SQL Server is about connecting to SQL Server itself. Here is how it goes, most of the time developers have worked with SQL Server and knows pretty much every error which they face during development language. However, hardly they install fresh SQL Server. As the installation of the SQL Server is a rare occasion unless you are a DBA who is responsible for such an instance – the error faced during installations are pretty rare as well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k00z82u4OI Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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ie7 innerhtml strange display problem

- by thoraniann

Hello, I am having a strange problem with ie7 (ie8 in compatibility mode). I have div containers where I am updating values using javascript innhtml to update the values. This works fine in Firefox and ie8. In ie7 the values do not update but if a click on the values and highlight them then they update, also if a change the height of the browser then on the next update the values get updated correctly. I have figured out that if I change the position property of the outer div container from relative to static then the updates work correctly. The page can be viewed here http://islendingasogur.net/test/webmap_html_test.html In internet explorer 8 with compatibility turned on you can see that the timestamp in the gray box only gets updated one time, after that you see no changes. The timestamp in the lower right corner gets updated every 10 seconds. But if you highlight the text in the gray box then the updated timestamp values appears! Here is the page: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /> <meta http-equiv="cache-control" content="no-cache"/> <meta http-equiv="pragma" content="no-cache"/> <meta http-equiv="expires" content="Mon, 22 Jul 2002 11:12:01 GMT"/> <title>innerhtml problem</title> <script type="text/javascript">  </script> <style type="text/css"> body { margin:0; border:0; padding:0px;background:#eaeaea;font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif; text-align: center; } A:active { color: #000000;} A:link { color: #000000;} A:visited { color: #000000;} A:hover { color: #000000;} #div_header { /*position: absolute;*/ background: #ffffff; width: 884px; height: 60px; display: block; float: left; font-size: 14px; text-align: left; /*overflow: visible;*/ } #div_container{ background: #ffffff;border-left:1px solid #000000; border-right:1px solid #000000; border-bottom:1px solid #000000; float: left; width: 884px;} #div_image_container{ position: relative; width: 884px; height: 549px; background: #ffffff; font-family:arial, verdana, arial, sans-serif; /*display: block;*/ float:none!important; float/**/:left; border:1px solid #00ff00; padding: 0px; } .div_group_box{ position: absolute; width: -2px; height: -2px; background: #FFFFFF; opacity: 1; filter: alpha(opacity=100); border:1px solid #000000; font-size: 2px; z-index: 0; padding: 0px; } .div_group_container{ position: absolute; opacity: 1; filter: alpha(opacity=100); z-index: 5; /*display: block;*/ /*border:1px solid #000000;*/ } .div_group_container A:active {text-decoration: none; display: block;} .div_group_container A:link { color: #000000;text-decoration: none; display: block;} .div_group_container A:visited { color: #000000;text-decoration: none; display: block;} .div_group_container A:hover { color: #000000;text-decoration: none; display: block;} .div_group_header{ background: #17B400; border:1px solid #000000;font-size: 12px; color: #FFFFFF; padding-top: 1px; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px; text-align: center; } .div_var_name_container{ color: #000000;background: #FFFFFF; border-left:1px solid #000000; border-top:0px solid #000000; border-bottom:0px solid #000000;font-size: 12px; float: left; display: block; text-align: left; } .div_var_name{ padding-top: 1px; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px; display: block; } .div_var_value_container{ color: #000000;background: #FFFFFF; border-left:1px solid #000000; border-right:1px solid #000000; border-top:0px solid #000000; border-bottom:0px solid #000000;font-size: 12px; float: left; text-align: center; } .div_var_value{ padding-top: 1px; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px; } .div_var_unit_container{ color: #000000;background: #FFFFFF; border-right:1px solid #000000; border-top:0px solid #000000; border-bottom:0px solid #000000;font-size: 12px; float: left; text-align: left; } .div_var_unit{ padding-top: 1px; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px; } .div_timestamp{ float: none; color: #000000;background: #F3F3F3; border:1px solid #000000;font-size: 12px; padding-top: 1px; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px; text-align: center; clear: left; z-index: 100; position: relative; } #div_last_update_time{ height: 14px; width: 210px; text-align: right; padding: 1px; font-size: 10px; float: right; } .copyright{ height: 14px; width: 240px; text-align: left; color: #777; padding: 1px; font-size: 10px; float: left; } a img { border: 1px solid #000000; } .clearer { clear: both; display: block; height: 1px; margin-bottom: -1px; font-size: 1px; line-height: 1px; } </style> </head> <body onload="update_map(1)"> <div id="div_container"><div id="div_header"></div><div class="clearer"></div><div id="div_image_container"><img id="map" src="Images/maps/0054_gardabaer.jpg" title="My map" alt="" align="left" border="0" usemap ="#_area_links" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;" /> <div id="group_container_257" class="div_group_container" style="visibility:visible; top:10px; left:260px; cursor: pointer;"> <div class="div_group_header" style="clear:right">Site</div> <div class="div_var_name_container"> <div id="group_name_257_var_8" class="div_var_name" >variable 1</div> <div id="group_name_257_var_7" class="div_var_name" style="border-top:1px solid #000000;">variable 2</div> <div id="group_name_257_var_9" class="div_var_name" style="border-top:1px solid #000000;">variable 3</div> </div> <div class="div_var_value_container"> <div id="group_value_257_var_8" class="div_var_value" >0</div> <div id="group_value_257_var_7" class="div_var_value" style="border-top:1px solid #000000;">0</div> <div id="group_value_257_var_9" class="div_var_value" style="border-top:1px solid #000000;">0</div> </div> <div class="div_var_unit_container"> <div id="group_unit_257_var_8" class="div_var_unit" >N/A</div> <div id="group_unit_257_var_7" class="div_var_unit" style="border-top:1px solid #000000;">N/A</div> <div id="group_unit_257_var_9" class="div_var_unit" style="border-top:1px solid #000000;">N/A</div> </div> <div id="group_257_timestamp" class="div_timestamp" style="">-</div> </div> </div><div class="clearer"></div><div class="copyright">© Copyright</div><div id="div_last_update_time">-</div> </div> <iframe id="webmap_update" style="display:none;" width="0" height="0"></iframe></body> </html> The divs with class div_var_value, div_timestamp & div_last_update_time all get updated by the javascript function. The div "div_image_container" is the one that is causing this it seems, atleast if I change the position property for it from relative to static the values get updated correctly This is the page that updates the values: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Loader</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/> <script type="text/javascript">  </script> </head> <body> </body> </html> I edited the post and added a link to the webpage in question, I have also tested the webpage in internet explorer 7 and this error does not appear there. I have only seen this error in ie8 with compatibility turned on. If anybody has seen this before and has a fix, I would be very grateful. Thanks.

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Using Sitecore RenderingContext Parameters as MVC controller action arguments

- by Kyle Burns

I have been working with the Technical Preview of Sitecore 6.6 on a project and have been for the most part happy with the way that Sitecore (which truly is an MVC implementation unto itself) has been expanded to support ASP.NET MVC. That said, getting up to speed with the combined platform has not been entirely without stumbles and today I want to share one area where Sitecore could have really made things shine from the "it just works" perspective. A couple days ago I was asked by a colleague about the usage of the "Parameters" field that is defined on Sitecore's Controller Rendering data template. Based on the standard way that Sitecore handles a field named Parameters, I was able to deduce that the field expected key/value pairs separated by the "&" character, but beyond that I wasn't sure and didn't see anything from a documentation perspective to guide me, so it was time to dig and find out where the data in the field was made available. My first thought was that it would be really nice if Sitecore handled the parameters in this field consistently with the way that ASP.NET MVC handles the various parameter collections on the HttpRequest object and automatically maps them to parameters of the action method executing. Being the hopeful sort, I configured a name/value pair on one of my renderings, added a parameter with matching name to the controller action and fired up the bugger to see... that the parameter was not populated. Having established that the field's value was not going to be presented to me the way that I had hoped it would, the next assumption that I would work on was that Sitecore would handle this field similar to how they handle other similar data and would plug it into some ambient object that I could reference from within the controller method. After a considerable amount of guessing, testing, and cracking code open with Redgate's Reflector (a must-have companion to Sitecore documentation), I found that the most direct way to access the parameter was through the ambient RenderingContext object using code similar to: string myArgument = string.Empty; var rc = Sitecore.Mvc.Presentation.RenderingContext.CurrentOrNull; if (rc != null) { var parms = rc.Rendering.Parameters; myArgument = parms["myArgument"]; } At this point, we know how this field is used out of the box from Sitecore and can provide information from Sitecore's Content Editor that will be available when the controller action is executing, but it feels a little dirty. In order to properly test the action method I would have to do a lot of setup work and possible use an isolation framework such as Pex and Moles to get at a value that my action method is dependent upon. Notice I said that my method is dependent upon the value but in order to meet that dependency I've accepted another dependency upon Sitecore's RenderingContext. I'm a big believer in, when possible, ensuring that any piece of code explicitly advertises dependencies using the method signature, so I found myself still wanting this to work the same as if the parameters were in the request route, querystring, or form by being able to add a myArgument parameter to the action method and have this parameter populated by the framework. Lucky for us, the ASP.NET MVC framework is extremely flexible and provides some easy to grok and use extensibility points. ASP.NET MVC is able to provide information from the request as input parameters to controller actions because it uses objects which implement an interface called IValueProvider and have been registered to service the application. The most basic statement of responsibility for an IValueProvider implementation is "I know about some data which is indexed by key. If you hand me the key for a piece of data that I know about I give you that data". When preparing to invoke a controller action, the framework queries registered IValueProvider implementations with the name of each method argument to see if the ValueProvider can supply a value for the parameter. (the rest of this post will assume you're working along and make a lot more sense if you do) Let's pull Sitecore out of the equation for a second to simplify things and create an extremely simple IValueProvider implementation. For this example, I first create a new ASP.NET MVC3 project in Visual Studio, selecting "Internet Application" and otherwise taking defaults (I'm assuming that anyone reading this far in the post either already knows how to do this or will need to take a quick run through one of the many available basic MVC tutorials such as the MVC Music Store). Once the new project is created, go to the Index action of HomeController. This action sets a Message property on the ViewBag to "Welcome to ASP.NET MVC!" and invokes the View, which has been coded to display the Message. For our example, we will remove the hard coded message from this controller (although we'll leave it just as hard coded somewhere else - this is sample code). For the first step in our exercise, add a string parameter to the Index action method called welcomeMessage and use the value of this argument to set the ViewBag.Message property. The updated Index action should look like: public ActionResult Index(string welcomeMessage) { ViewBag.Message = welcomeMessage; return View(); } This represents the entirety of the change that you will make to either the controller or view. If you run the application now, the home page will display and no message will be presented to the user because no value was supplied to the Action method. Let's now write a ValueProvider to ensure this parameter gets populated. We'll start by creating a new class called StaticValueProvider. When the class is created, we'll update the using statements to ensure that they include the following: using System.Collections.Specialized; using System.Globalization; using System.Web.Mvc; With the appropriate using statements in place, we'll update the StaticValueProvider class to implement the IValueProvider interface. The System.Web.Mvc library already contains a pretty flexible dictionary-like implementation called NameValueCollectionValueProvider, so we'll just wrap that and let it do most of the real work for us. The completed class looks like: public class StaticValueProvider : IValueProvider { private NameValueCollectionValueProvider _wrappedProvider; public StaticValueProvider(ControllerContext controllerContext) { var parameters = new NameValueCollection(); parameters.Add("welcomeMessage", "Hello from the value provider!"); _wrappedProvider = new NameValueCollectionValueProvider(parameters, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture); } public bool ContainsPrefix(string prefix) { return _wrappedProvider.ContainsPrefix(prefix); } public ValueProviderResult GetValue(string key) { return _wrappedProvider.GetValue(key); } } Notice that the only entry in the collection matches the name of the argument to our HomeController's Index action. This is the important "secret sauce" that will make things work. We've got our new value provider now, but that's not quite enough to be finished. Mvc obtains IValueProvider instances using factories that are registered when the application starts up. These factories extend the abstract ValueProviderFactory class by initializing and returning the appropriate implementation of IValueProvider from the GetValueProvider method. While I wouldn't do so in production code, for the sake of this example, I'm going to add the following class definition within the StaticValueProvider.cs source file: public class StaticValueProviderFactory : ValueProviderFactory { public override IValueProvider GetValueProvider(ControllerContext controllerContext) { return new StaticValueProvider(controllerContext); } } Now that we have a factory, we can register it by adding the following line to the end of the Application_Start method in Global.asax.cs: ValueProviderFactories.Factories.Add(new StaticValueProviderFactory()); If you've done everything right to this point, you should be able to run the application and be presented with the home page reading "Hello from the value provider!". Now that you have the basics of the IValueProvider down, you have everything you need to enhance your Sitecore MVC implementation by adding an IValueProvider that exposes values from the ambient RenderingContext's Parameters property. I'll provide the code for the IValueProvider implementation (which should look VERY familiar) and you can use the work we've already done as a reference to create and register the factory: public class RenderingContextValueProvider : IValueProvider { private NameValueCollectionValueProvider _wrappedProvider = null; public RenderingContextValueProvider(ControllerContext controllerContext) { var collection = new NameValueCollection(); var rc = RenderingContext.CurrentOrNull; if (rc != null && rc.Rendering != null) { foreach(var parameter in rc.Rendering.Parameters) { collection.Add(parameter.Key, parameter.Value); } } _wrappedProvider = new NameValueCollectionValueProvider(collection, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture); } public bool ContainsPrefix(string prefix) { return _wrappedProvider.ContainsPrefix(prefix); } public ValueProviderResult GetValue(string key) { return _wrappedProvider.GetValue(key); } } In this post I've discussed the MVC IValueProvider used to map data to controller action method arguments and how this can be integrated into your Sitecore 6.6 MVC solution.

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Android app crashes on emulator - logCat shows no errors

- by David Miler

I have just added the SherlockActionBar library to my android project. After some small changes (FragmentActivity - SherlockFragmentActivity, getActionBar() - getSupportActionBar(), imports) it all compiled nicely. After I run the app, however, the debugger stops, as though it had encountered an exception. However, there are no errors shown in the LogCat output. I just can't wrap my head around what's going on. Here is the logCat output after I terminate the app. 10-02 14:11:19.227: I/SystemUpdateService(174): UpdateTask at time 1349187079227 10-02 14:11:19.237: I/ActivityThread(328): Pub com.android.email.attachmentprovider: com.android.email.provider.AttachmentProvider 10-02 14:11:19.687: I/dalvikvm(81): Jit: resizing JitTable from 512 to 1024 10-02 14:11:19.809: D/MediaScannerService(150): start scanning volume internal: [/system/media] 10-02 14:11:20.047: V/AlarmClock(239): AlarmInitReceiver finished 10-02 14:11:20.087: I/ActivityManager(81): Start proc com.android.quicksearchbox for broadcast com.android.quicksearchbox/.SearchWidgetProvider: pid=346 uid=10012 gids={3003} 10-02 14:11:20.127: D/ExchangeService(320): !!! EAS ExchangeService, onStartCommand, startingUp = false, running = false 10-02 14:11:20.427: I/ActivityThread(346): Pub com.android.quicksearchbox.google: com.android.quicksearchbox.google.GoogleSuggestionProvider 10-02 14:11:20.497: I/ActivityThread(346): Pub com.android.quicksearchbox.shortcuts: com.android.quicksearchbox.ShortcutsProvider 10-02 14:11:20.657: I/ActivityManager(81): Start proc com.android.music for broadcast com.android.music/.MediaAppWidgetProvider: pid=358 uid=10028 gids={3003, 1015} 10-02 14:11:20.927: D/ExchangeService(320): !!! EAS ExchangeService, onCreate 10-02 14:11:20.967: D/dalvikvm(260): GC_CONCURRENT freed 213K, 6% free 6409K/6791K, paused 5ms+101ms 10-02 14:11:21.077: D/ExchangeService(320): !!! EAS ExchangeService, onStartCommand, startingUp = true, running = false 10-02 14:11:21.567: D/GTalkService(174): [ReonnectMgr] ### report Inet condition: status=false, networkType=0 10-02 14:11:21.587: D/ConnectivityService(81): reportNetworkCondition(0, 0) 10-02 14:11:21.597: D/ConnectivityService(81): Inet connectivity change, net=0, condition=0,mActiveDefaultNetwork=0 10-02 14:11:21.597: D/ConnectivityService(81): starting a change hold 10-02 14:11:21.697: D/GTalkService(174): [RawStanzaProvidersMgr] ##### searchProvidersFromIntent 10-02 14:11:21.697: D/GTalkService(174): [RawStanzaProvidersMgr] no intent receivers found 10-02 14:11:21.847: I/SystemUpdateService(174): cancelUpdate (empty URL) 10-02 14:11:21.847: E/TelephonyManager(174): Hidden constructor called more than once per process! 10-02 14:11:21.867: D/dalvikvm(174): GC_CONCURRENT freed 337K, 7% free 6561K/7047K, paused 5ms+4ms 10-02 14:11:21.917: D/GTalkService(174): [ReonnectMgr] ### report Inet condition: status=false, networkType=0 10-02 14:11:21.917: D/ConnectivityService(81): reportNetworkCondition(0, 0) 10-02 14:11:21.917: D/ConnectivityService(81): Inet connectivity change, net=0, condition=0,mActiveDefaultNetwork=0 10-02 14:11:21.917: D/ConnectivityService(81): currently in hold - not setting new end evt 10-02 14:11:21.990: E/TelephonyManager(174): Original: com.google.android.location, new: com.google.android.gsf 10-02 14:11:22.027: I/SystemUpdateService(174): removeAllDownloads (cancelUpdate) 10-02 14:11:22.127: D/dalvikvm(328): GC_CONCURRENT freed 205K, 6% free 6506K/6855K, paused 660ms+3ms 10-02 14:11:22.197: D/Eas Debug(320): Logging: 10-02 14:11:22.319: D/dalvikvm(81): GREF has increased to 401 10-02 14:11:22.947: D/ExchangeService(320): !!! EAS ExchangeService, onStartCommand, startingUp = true, running = false 10-02 14:11:23.130: D/Eas Debug(320): Logging: 10-02 14:11:23.307: I//system/bin/fsck_msdos(29): Attempting to allocate 2044 KB for FAT 10-02 14:11:23.560: I/ActivityManager(81): Starting: Intent { flg=0x10000000 cmp=com.google.android.gsf/.update.SystemUpdateInstallDialog } from pid 174 10-02 14:11:23.587: I/ActivityManager(81): Starting: Intent { flg=0x10000000 cmp=com.google.android.gsf/.update.SystemUpdateDownloadDialog } from pid 174 10-02 14:11:24.087: W/ActivityManager(81): Activity pause timeout for ActivityRecord{407c7320 com.android.launcher/com.android.launcher2.Launcher} 10-02 14:11:24.237: E/TelephonyManager(174): Hidden constructor called more than once per process! 10-02 14:11:24.237: E/TelephonyManager(174): Original: com.google.android.location, new: com.google.android.gsf 10-02 14:11:24.507: D/dalvikvm(174): GC_EXPLICIT freed 231K, 7% free 6596K/7047K, paused 4ms+6ms 10-02 14:11:24.607: D/ConnectivityService(81): Inet hold end, net=0, condition =0, published condition =0 10-02 14:11:24.607: D/ConnectivityService(81): no change in condition - aborting 10-02 14:11:24.707: D/dalvikvm(174): GC_EXPLICIT freed 17K, 7% free 6579K/7047K, paused 4ms+4ms 10-02 14:11:24.947: I//system/bin/fsck_msdos(29): ** Phase 2 - Check Cluster Chains 10-02 14:11:25.117: I//system/bin/fsck_msdos(29): ** Phase 3 - Checking Directories 10-02 14:11:25.128: I//system/bin/fsck_msdos(29): ** Phase 4 - Checking for Lost Files 10-02 14:11:25.167: I//system/bin/fsck_msdos(29): 12 files, 1044448 free (522224 clusters) 10-02 14:11:25.227: I/Vold(29): Filesystem check completed OK 10-02 14:11:25.227: I/Vold(29): Device /dev/block/vold/179:0, target /mnt/sdcard mounted @ /mnt/secure/staging 10-02 14:11:25.237: D/Vold(29): Volume sdcard state changing 3 (Checking) -> 4 (Mounted) 10-02 14:11:25.257: I/PackageManager(81): Updating external media status from unmounted to mounted 10-02 14:11:25.457: D/dalvikvm(303): GC_EXPLICIT freed 35K, 6% free 6242K/6595K, paused 3ms+312ms 10-02 14:11:25.987: D/ExchangeService(320): !!! EAS ExchangeService, onStartCommand, startingUp = true, running = false 10-02 14:11:26.157: D/MediaScanner(150): prescan time: 2905ms 10-02 14:11:26.167: D/MediaScanner(150): scan time: 148ms 10-02 14:11:26.167: D/MediaScanner(150): postscan time: 2ms 10-02 14:11:26.167: D/MediaScanner(150): total time: 3055ms 10-02 14:11:26.197: D/MediaScannerService(150): done scanning volume internal 10-02 14:11:26.237: D/MediaScannerService(150): start scanning volume external: [/mnt/sdcard] 10-02 14:11:26.497: D/dalvikvm(143): GC_EXPLICIT freed 234K, 8% free 7735K/8327K, paused 3ms+5ms 10-02 14:11:27.180: D/dalvikvm(143): GC_CONCURRENT freed 150K, 4% free 8004K/8327K, paused 7ms+3ms 10-02 14:11:27.397: D/dalvikvm(143): GC_FOR_ALLOC freed 96K, 6% free 8310K/8775K, paused 76ms 10-02 14:11:27.580: D/dalvikvm(143): GC_FOR_ALLOC freed 515K, 11% free 8135K/9095K, paused 79ms 10-02 14:11:27.829: D/dalvikvm(143): GC_CONCURRENT freed 3K, 5% free 8694K/9095K, paused 7ms+6ms 10-02 14:11:28.137: V/TLINE(143): new: android.text.TextLine@4065b280 10-02 14:11:28.527: D/dalvikvm(143): GC_CONCURRENT freed 729K, 10% free 8764K/9671K, paused 5ms+13ms 10-02 14:11:28.677: D/dalvikvm(143): GC_FOR_ALLOC freed 152K, 11% free 8683K/9671K, paused 99ms 10-02 14:11:28.717: I/dalvikvm-heap(143): Grow heap (frag case) to 11.434MB for 2975968-byte allocation 10-02 14:11:28.807: D/dalvikvm(143): GC_FOR_ALLOC freed 0K, 9% free 11589K/12615K, paused 84ms 10-02 14:11:29.159: D/dalvikvm(143): GC_CONCURRENT freed 197K, 7% free 12195K/12999K, paused 8ms+6ms 10-02 14:11:29.647: D/dalvikvm(143): GC_EXPLICIT freed 351K, 6% free 12790K/13511K, paused 8ms+17ms 10-02 14:11:29.717: I/SurfaceFlinger(32): Boot is finished (70768 ms) 10-02 14:11:29.877: I/ARMAssembler(32): generated scanline__00000177:03010104_00000002_00000000 [ 44 ipp] (66 ins) at [0x407c7290:0x407c7398] in 990662 ns 10-02 14:11:29.907: I/ARMAssembler(32): generated scanline__00000177:03515104_00000001_00000000 [ 73 ipp] (95 ins) at [0x407c73a0:0x407c751c] in 989381 ns 10-02 14:11:30.287: D/dalvikvm(174): GC_EXPLICIT freed 25K, 8% free 6554K/7047K, paused 4ms+32ms 10-02 14:11:30.380: D/dalvikvm(143): GC_EXPLICIT freed 349K, 6% free 13124K/13895K, paused 5ms+25ms 10-02 14:11:30.957: D/dalvikvm(143): GC_FOR_ALLOC freed 1069K, 10% free 13860K/15239K, paused 81ms 10-02 14:11:32.177: D/dalvikvm(150): GC_CONCURRENT freed 183K, 6% free 6438K/6791K, paused 5ms+4ms 10-02 14:11:32.187: W/ActivityManager(81): No content provider found for: 10-02 14:11:32.607: V/MediaScanner(150): pruneDeadThumbnailFiles... android.database.sqlite.SQLiteCursor@406724a8 10-02 14:11:32.617: V/MediaScanner(150): /pruneDeadThumbnailFiles... android.database.sqlite.SQLiteCursor@406724a8 10-02 14:11:32.640: W/ActivityManager(81): No content provider found for: 10-02 14:11:32.640: D/VoldCmdListener(29): asec list 10-02 14:11:32.647: I/PackageManager(81): No secure containers on sdcard 10-02 14:11:32.667: D/MediaScanner(150): prescan time: 107ms 10-02 14:11:32.667: D/MediaScanner(150): scan time: 89ms 10-02 14:11:32.667: D/MediaScanner(150): postscan time: 61ms 10-02 14:11:32.667: D/MediaScanner(150): total time: 257ms 10-02 14:11:32.697: W/PackageManager(81): Unknown permission android.permission.ADD_SYSTEM_SERVICE in package com.android.phone 10-02 14:11:32.707: W/PackageManager(81): Unknown permission com.android.smspush.WAPPUSH_MANAGER_BIND in package com.android.phone 10-02 14:11:32.737: W/PackageManager(81): Not granting permission android.permission.SEND_DOWNLOAD_COMPLETED_INTENTS to package com.android.browser (protectionLevel=2 flags=0x9be45) 10-02 14:11:32.737: W/PackageManager(81): Not granting permission android.permission.BIND_APPWIDGET to package com.android.widgetpreview (protectionLevel=3 flags=0x28be44) 10-02 14:11:32.767: W/PackageManager(81): Unknown permission android.permission.READ_OWNER_DATA in package com.android.exchange 10-02 14:11:32.778: W/PackageManager(81): Unknown permission android.permission.READ_OWNER_DATA in package com.android.email 10-02 14:11:32.788: W/PackageManager(81): Unknown permission com.android.providers.im.permission.READ_ONLY in package com.google.android.apps.maps 10-02 14:11:32.797: W/PackageManager(81): Not granting permission android.permission.DEVICE_POWER to package com.android.deskclock (protectionLevel=2 flags=0x8be45) 10-02 14:11:33.137: D/MediaScannerService(150): done scanning volume external 10-02 14:11:33.197: D/PackageParser(81): Scanning package: /data/app/vmdl257911298.tmp 10-02 14:11:33.837: I/InputReader(81): Device reconfigured: id=0, name='qwerty2', surface size is now 1024x800 10-02 14:11:34.097: D/dalvikvm(81): GC_CONCURRENT freed 12185K, 47% free 13966K/26311K, paused 8ms+23ms 10-02 14:11:36.798: I/TabletStatusBar(124): DISABLE_CLOCK: no 10-02 14:11:36.798: I/TabletStatusBar(124): DISABLE_NAVIGATION: no 10-02 14:11:37.348: I/ARMAssembler(32): generated scanline__00000177:03515104_00001001_00000000 [ 91 ipp] (114 ins) at [0x407c7520:0x407c76e8] in 919320 ns 10-02 14:11:37.598: I/TabletStatusBar(124): DISABLE_BACK: no 10-02 14:11:37.710: I/ActivityManager(81): Displayed com.android.launcher/com.android.launcher2.Launcher: +46s212ms 10-02 14:11:38.817: D/dalvikvm(143): GC_CONCURRENT freed 969K, 8% free 14867K/16007K, paused 4ms+10ms 10-02 14:11:39.437: I/dalvikvm(81): Jit: resizing JitTable from 1024 to 2048 10-02 14:11:40.267: D/dalvikvm(143): GC_FOR_ALLOC freed 2357K, 16% free 14395K/17031K, paused 80ms 10-02 14:11:40.717: D/dalvikvm(143): GC_EXPLICIT freed 742K, 16% free 14358K/17031K, paused 8ms+4ms 10-02 14:11:41.617: D/dalvikvm(81): GC_CONCURRENT freed 1955K, 48% free 13869K/26311K, paused 9ms+10ms 10-02 14:11:42.559: D/dalvikvm(81): GC_CONCURRENT freed 1830K, 48% free 13881K/26311K, paused 9ms+9ms 10-02 14:11:42.758: I/PackageManager(81): Removing non-system package:cz.trilimi.sfaui 10-02 14:11:42.758: I/ActivityManager(81): Force stopping package cz.trilimi.sfaui uid=10036 10-02 14:11:42.967: D/PackageManager(81): Scanning package cz.trilimi.sfaui 10-02 14:11:42.967: I/PackageManager(81): Package cz.trilimi.sfaui codePath changed from /data/app/cz.trilimi.sfaui-1.apk to /data/app/cz.trilimi.sfaui-2.apk; Retaining data and using new 10-02 14:11:42.967: I/PackageManager(81): Unpacking native libraries for /data/app/cz.trilimi.sfaui-2.apk 10-02 14:11:43.097: D/installd(35): DexInv: --- BEGIN '/data/app/cz.trilimi.sfaui-2.apk' --- 10-02 14:11:45.317: D/dalvikvm(391): DexOpt: load 434ms, verify+opt 1260ms 10-02 14:11:45.407: D/installd(35): DexInv: --- END '/data/app/cz.trilimi.sfaui-2.apk' (success) --- 10-02 14:11:45.407: W/PackageManager(81): Code path for pkg : cz.trilimi.sfaui changing from /data/app/cz.trilimi.sfaui-1.apk to /data/app/cz.trilimi.sfaui-2.apk 10-02 14:11:45.407: W/PackageManager(81): Resource path for pkg : cz.trilimi.sfaui changing from /data/app/cz.trilimi.sfaui-1.apk to /data/app/cz.trilimi.sfaui-2.apk 10-02 14:11:45.407: D/PackageManager(81): Activities: cz.trilimi.sfaui.ItemListActivity cz.trilimi.sfaui.ItemDetailActivity 10-02 14:11:45.427: I/ActivityManager(81): Force stopping package cz.trilimi.sfaui uid=10036 10-02 14:11:45.657: I/installd(35): move /data/dalvik-cache/data@[email protected]@classes.dex -> /data/dalvik-cache/data@[email protected]@classes.dex 10-02 14:11:45.657: D/PackageManager(81): New package installed in /data/app/cz.trilimi.sfaui-2.apk 10-02 14:11:45.997: I/ActivityManager(81): Force stopping package cz.trilimi.sfaui uid=10036 10-02 14:11:46.147: D/dalvikvm(143): GC_EXPLICIT freed 3K, 16% free 14356K/17031K, paused 10ms+9ms 10-02 14:11:46.237: D/PackageManager(81): generateServicesMap(android.accounts.AccountAuthenticator): 3 services unchanged 10-02 14:11:46.277: D/PackageManager(81): generateServicesMap(android.content.SyncAdapter): 5 services unchanged 10-02 14:11:46.337: D/PackageManager(81): generateServicesMap(android.accounts.AccountAuthenticator): 3 services unchanged 10-02 14:11:46.347: D/PackageManager(81): generateServicesMap(android.content.SyncAdapter): 5 services unchanged 10-02 14:11:46.437: D/dalvikvm(208): GC_EXPLICIT freed 258K, 7% free 6488K/6919K, paused 3ms+5ms 10-02 14:11:46.477: W/RecognitionManagerService(81): no available voice recognition services found 10-02 14:11:46.897: I/ActivityManager(81): Start proc com.svox.pico for broadcast com.svox.pico/.VoiceDataInstallerReceiver: pid=398 uid=10006 gids={} 10-02 14:11:47.087: I/ActivityThread(398): Pub com.svox.pico.providers.SettingsProvider: com.svox.pico.providers.SettingsProvider 10-02 14:11:47.138: D/GTalkService(174): [GTalkService.1] handlePackageInstalled: re-initialize providers 10-02 14:11:47.147: D/GTalkService(174): [RawStanzaProvidersMgr] ##### searchProvidersFromIntent 10-02 14:11:47.147: D/GTalkService(174): [RawStanzaProvidersMgr] no intent receivers found 10-02 14:11:47.718: I/AccountTypeManager(208): Loaded meta-data for 1 account types, 0 accounts in 186ms 10-02 14:11:48.377: D/dalvikvm(143): GC_CONCURRENT freed 1865K, 15% free 14513K/17031K, paused 7ms+4ms 10-02 14:11:48.917: D/dalvikvm(208): GC_CONCURRENT freed 219K, 6% free 6788K/7175K, paused 7ms+73ms 10-02 14:11:49.207: D/dalvikvm(143): GC_FOR_ALLOC freed 4558K, 31% free 11866K/17031K, paused 89ms 10-02 14:11:49.587: D/dalvikvm(143): GC_CONCURRENT freed 713K, 24% free 13010K/17031K, paused 5ms+4ms 10-02 14:11:49.967: D/dalvikvm(143): GC_CONCURRENT freed 1046K, 19% free 13922K/17031K, paused 5ms+4ms 10-02 14:11:50.437: D/dalvikvm(81): GC_EXPLICIT freed 898K, 47% free 13955K/26311K, paused 6ms+39ms 10-02 14:11:50.467: I/installd(35): unlink /data/dalvik-cache/data@[email protected]@classes.dex 10-02 14:11:50.477: D/AndroidRuntime(227): Shutting down VM 10-02 14:11:50.507: D/dalvikvm(227): GC_CONCURRENT freed 97K, 84% free 331K/2048K, paused 1ms+2ms 10-02 14:11:50.507: I/AndroidRuntime(227): NOTE: attach of thread 'Binder Thread #3' failed 10-02 14:11:50.517: D/jdwp(227): adbd disconnected 10-02 14:11:51.177: D/AndroidRuntime(410): >>>>>> AndroidRuntime START com.android.internal.os.RuntimeInit <<<<<< 10-02 14:11:51.177: D/AndroidRuntime(410): CheckJNI is ON 10-02 14:11:51.897: D/AndroidRuntime(410): Calling main entry com.android.commands.am.Am 10-02 14:11:51.937: I/ActivityManager(81): Force stopping package cz.trilimi.sfaui uid=10036 10-02 14:11:51.937: I/ActivityManager(81): Starting: Intent { act=android.intent.action.MAIN cat=[android.intent.category.LAUNCHER] flg=0x10000000 cmp=cz.trilimi.sfaui/.ItemListActivity } from pid 410 10-02 14:11:51.968: W/WindowManager(81): Failure taking screenshot for (230x179) to layer 21005 10-02 14:11:51.997: I/ActivityManager(81): Start proc cz.trilimi.sfaui for activity cz.trilimi.sfaui/.ItemListActivity: pid=418 uid=10036 gids={} 10-02 14:11:52.007: D/AndroidRuntime(410): Shutting down VM 10-02 14:11:52.057: I/AndroidRuntime(410): NOTE: attach of thread 'Binder Thread #3' failed 10-02 14:11:52.097: D/dalvikvm(410): GC_CONCURRENT freed 98K, 83% free 360K/2048K, paused 1ms+0ms 10-02 14:11:52.097: D/jdwp(410): adbd disconnected 10-02 14:11:53.147: W/ActivityThread(418): Application cz.trilimi.sfaui is waiting for the debugger on port 8100... 10-02 14:11:53.207: I/System.out(418): Sending WAIT chunk 10-02 14:11:53.217: I/dalvikvm(418): Debugger is active 10-02 14:11:53.447: I/System.out(418): Debugger has connected 10-02 14:11:53.457: I/System.out(418): waiting for debugger to settle... 10-02 14:11:53.637: I/ARMAssembler(32): generated scanline__00000177:03515104_00001002_00000000 [ 87 ipp] (110 ins) at [0x407c76f0:0x407c78a8] in 598498 ns 10-02 14:11:53.660: I/System.out(418): waiting for debugger to settle... 10-02 14:11:53.857: I/System.out(418): waiting for debugger to settle... 10-02 14:11:54.057: I/System.out(418): waiting for debugger to settle... 10-02 14:11:54.257: I/System.out(418): waiting for debugger to settle... 10-02 14:11:54.317: V/TLINE(81): new: android.text.TextLine@4155dde8 10-02 14:11:54.467: I/System.out(418): waiting for debugger to settle... 10-02 14:11:54.667: I/System.out(418): waiting for debugger to settle... 10-02 14:11:54.870: I/System.out(418): waiting for debugger to settle... 10-02 14:11:55.027: D/dalvikvm(143): GC_EXPLICIT freed 900K, 16% free 14420K/17031K, paused 7ms+4ms 10-02 14:11:55.067: I/System.out(418): waiting for debugger to settle... 10-02 14:11:55.292: I/System.out(418): debugger has settled (1315) 10-02 14:12:02.008: W/ActivityManager(81): Launch timeout has expired, giving up wake lock! 10-02 14:12:02.971: W/ActivityManager(81): Activity idle timeout for ActivityRecord{4078c6b0 cz.trilimi.sfaui/.ItemListActivity} 10-02 14:12:08.359: D/ExchangeService(320): Received deviceId from Email app: androidc259148960 10-02 14:12:08.507: D/ExchangeService(320): Reconciling accounts... 10-02 14:16:11.437: D/SntpClient(81): request time failed: java.net.SocketException: Address family not supported by protocol 10-02 14:17:21.573: W/jdwp(418): Debugger is telling the VM to exit with code=1 10-02 14:17:21.573: I/dalvikvm(418): GC lifetime allocation: 8642 bytes 10-02 14:17:21.637: D/Zygote(33): Process 418 exited cleanly (1) 10-02 14:17:21.651: I/ActivityManager(81): Process cz.trilimi.sfaui (pid 418) has died. 10-02 14:17:21.847: D/dalvikvm(143): GC_EXPLICIT freed <1K, 16% free 14420K/17031K, paused 7ms+7ms 10-02 14:17:21.917: W/InputManagerService(81): Window already focused, ignoring focus gain of: com.android.internal.view.IInputMethodClient$Stub$Proxy@40bfbf28

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Integrate Google Wave With Your Windows Workflow

- by Matthew Guay

Have you given Google Wave a try, only to find it difficult to keep up with? Here’s how you can integrate Google Wave with your desktop and workflow with some free and simple apps. Google Wave is an online web app, and unlike many Google services, it’s not easily integrated with standard desktop applications. Instead, you’ll have to keep it open in a browser tab, and since it is one of the most intensive HTML5 webapps available today, you may notice slowdowns in many popular browsers. Plus, it can be hard to stay on top of your Wave conversations and collaborations by just switching back and forth between the website and whatever else you’re working on. Here we’ll look at some tools that can help you integrate Google Wave with your workflow, and make it feel more native in Windows. Use Google Wave Directly in Windows What’s one of the best ways to make a web app feel like a native application? By making it into a native application, of course! Waver is a free Air powered app that can make the mobile version of Google Wave feel at home on your Windows, Mac, or Linux desktop. We found it to be a quick and easy way to keep on top of our waves and collaborate with our friends. To get started with Waver, open their homepage on the Adobe Air Marketplace (link below) and click Download From Publisher. Waver is powered by Adobe Air, so if you don’t have Adobe Air installed, you’ll need to first download and install it. After clicking the link above, Adobe Air will open a prompt asking what you wish to do with the file. Click Open, and then install as normal. Once the installation is finished, enter your Google Account info in the window. After a few moments, you’ll see your Wave account in miniature, running directly in Waver. Click a Wave to view it, or click New wave to start a new Wave message. Unfortunately, in our tests the search box didn’t seem to work, but everything else worked fine. Google Wave works great in Waver, though all of the Wave features are not available since it is running the mobile version of Wave. You can still view content from plugins, including YouTube videos, directly in Waver. Get Wave Notifications From Your Windows Taskbar Most popular email and Twitter clients give you notifications from your system tray when new messages come in. And with Google Wave Notifier, you can now get the same alerts when you receive a new Wave message. Head over to the Google Wave Notifier site (link below), and click the download link to get started. Make sure to download the latest Binary zip, as this one will contain the Windows program rather than the source code. Unzip the folder, and then run GoogleWaveNotifier.exe. On first run, you can enter your Google Account information. Notice that this is not a standard account login window; you’ll need to enter your email address in the Username field, and then your password below it. You can also change other settings from this dialog, including update frequency and whether or not to run at startup. Click the value, and then select the setting you want from the dropdown menu. Now, you’ll have a new Wave icon in your system tray. When it detects new Waves or unread updates, it will display a popup notification with details about the unread Waves. Additionally, the icon will change to show the number of unread Waves. Click the popup to open Wave in your browser. Or, if you have Waver installed, simply open the Waver window to view your latest Waves. If you ever need to change settings again in the future, right-click the icon and select Settings, and then edit as above. Get Wave Notifications in Your Email Most of us have Outlook or Gmail open all day, and seldom leave the house without a Smartphone with push email. And thanks to a new Wave feature, you can still keep up with your Waves without having to change your workflow. To activate email notifications from Google Wave, login to your Wave account, click the arrow beside your Inbox, and select Notifications. Select how quickly you want to receive notifications, and choose which email address you wish to receive the notifications. Click Save when you’re finished. Now you’ll receive an email with information about new and updated Waves in your account. If there were only small changes, you may get enough info directly in the email; otherwise, you can click the link and open that Wave in your browser. Conclusion Google Wave has great potential as a collaboration and communications platform, but by default it can be hard to keep up with what’s going on in your Waves. These apps for Windows help you integrate Wave with your workflow, and can keep you from constantly logging in and checking for new Waves. And since Google Wave registration is now open for everyone, it’s a great time to give it a try and see how it works for yourself. Links Signup for Google Wave (Google Account required) Download Waver from the Adobe Air Marketplace Download Google Wave Notifier Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips We Have 20 Google Wave Invites. Want One?Tired of Waiting for Google Wave? Try ShareFlow NowIntegrate Google Docs with Outlook the Easy WayAwesome Desktop Wallpapers: The Windows 7 EditionWeek in Geek: The Stupid Geek Tricks to Hide Extra Windows Edition 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 HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Default Programs Editor – One great tool for Setting Defaults Convert BMP, TIFF, PCX to Vector files with RasterVect Free Identify Fonts using WhatFontis.com Windows 7’s WordPad is Actually Good Greate Image Viewing and Management with Zoner Photo Studio Free Windows Media Player Plus! – Cool WMP Enhancer

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Unable to enable wireless on a Vostro 2520

- by Joe

I have a Vostro 2520 and not sure how to enable wireless on my machine. The details are given below, would appreciate any pointers to resolving this issue. lsmod returns Module Size Used by ath9k 132390 0 ath9k_common 14053 1 ath9k ath9k_hw 411151 2 ath9k,ath9k_common ath 24067 3 ath9k,ath9k_common,ath9k_hw b43 365785 0 mac80211 506816 2 ath9k,b43 cfg80211 205544 4 ath9k,ath,b43,mac80211 bcma 26696 1 b43 ssb 52752 1 b43 ndiswrapper 282628 0 ums_realtek 18248 0 usb_storage 49198 1 ums_realtek uas 18180 0 snd_hda_codec_hdmi 32474 1 snd_hda_codec_cirrus 24002 1 joydev 17693 0 parport_pc 32866 0 ppdev 17113 0 rfcomm 47604 0 bnep 18281 2 bluetooth 180104 10 rfcomm,bnep psmouse 97362 0 dell_wmi 12681 0 sparse_keymap 13890 1 dell_wmi snd_hda_intel 33773 3 snd_hda_codec 127706 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_cirrus,snd_hda_intel snd_hwdep 13668 1 snd_hda_codec snd_pcm 97188 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec snd_seq_midi 13324 0 snd_rawmidi 30748 1 snd_seq_midi snd_seq_midi_event 14899 1 snd_seq_midi snd_seq 61896 2 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event snd_timer 29990 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq snd_seq_device 14540 3 snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq wmi 19256 1 dell_wmi snd 78855 16 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_cirrus,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device mac_hid 13253 0 i915 473240 3 drm_kms_helper 46978 1 i915 uvcvideo 72627 0 drm 242038 4 i915,drm_kms_helper videodev 98259 1 uvcvideo soundcore 15091 1 snd dell_laptop 18119 0 dcdbas 14490 1 dell_laptop i2c_algo_bit 13423 1 i915 v4l2_compat_ioctl32 17128 1 videodev snd_page_alloc 18529 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm video 19596 1 i915 serio_raw 13211 0 mei 41616 0 lp 17799 0 parport 46562 3 parport_pc,ppdev,lp r8169 62099 0 sudo lshw -class network *-network UNCLAIMED description: Network controller product: Broadcom Corporation vendor: Broadcom Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:07:00.0 version: 01 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list configuration: latency=0 resources: memory:f7c00000-f7c07fff *-network description: Ethernet interface product: RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:09:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: 07 serial: 78:45:c4:a3:aa:65 size: 100Mbit/s capacity: 1Gbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=full firmware=rtl8168e-3_0.0.4 03/27/12 ip=192.168.1.5 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=MII speed=100Mbit/s resources: irq:41 ioport:e000(size=256) memory:f0004000-f0004fff memory:f0000000-f0003fff rfkill list all 0: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: yes Hard blocked: yes 1: dell-bluetooth: Bluetooth Soft blocked: yes Hard blocked: yes Output of lspci > 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge DRAM Controller (rev > 09) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge > Graphics Controller (rev 09) 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel > Corporation Panther Point MEI Controller #1 (rev 04) 00:1a.0 USB > controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host > Controller #2 (rev 04) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Panther > Point High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: > Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev c4) > 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root > Port 4 (rev c4) 00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point > PCI Express Root Port 6 (rev c4) 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel > Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04) > 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point LPC Controller > (rev 04) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point 6 > port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 04) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel > Corporation Panther Point SMBus Controller (rev 04) 07:00.0 Network > controller: Broadcom Corporation Device 4365 (rev 01) 09:00.0 Ethernet > controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express > Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 07) Output of lspci -v 0:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge DRAM Controller (rev 09) Subsystem: Dell Device 0558 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0 Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: agpgart-intel 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge Graphics Controller (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Subsystem: Dell Device 0558 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 43 Memory at f7800000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M] Memory at e0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M] I/O ports at f000 [size=64] Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: i915 Kernel modules: i915 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point MEI Controller #1 (rev 04) Subsystem: Dell Device 0558 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 42 Memory at f7d0a000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: mei Kernel modules: mei 00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04) (prog-if 20 [EHCI]) Subsystem: Dell Device 0558 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16 Memory at f7d08000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Panther Point High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04) Subsystem: Dell Device 0558 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 44 Memory at f7d00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev c4) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0 Bus: primary=00, secondary=04, subordinate=04, sec-latency=0 Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: pcieport Kernel modules: shpchp 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev c4) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0 Bus: primary=00, secondary=07, subordinate=07, sec-latency=0 Memory behind bridge: f7c00000-f7cfffff Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: pcieport Kernel modules: shpchp 00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 6 (rev c4) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0 Bus: primary=00, secondary=09, subordinate=09, sec-latency=0 I/O behind bridge: 0000e000-0000efff Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 00000000f0000000-00000000f00fffff Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: pcieport Kernel modules: shpchp 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04) (prog-if 20 [EHCI]) Subsystem: Dell Device 0558 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 23 Memory at f7d07000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point LPC Controller (rev 04) Subsystem: Dell Device 0558 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0 Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel modules: iTCO_wdt 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point 6 port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 04) (prog-if 01 [AHCI 1.0]) Subsystem: Dell Device 0558 Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 40 I/O ports at f0b0 [size=8] I/O ports at f0a0 [size=4] I/O ports at f090 [size=8] I/O ports at f080 [size=4] I/O ports at f060 [size=32] Memory at f7d06000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: ahci 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation Panther Point SMBus Controller (rev 04) Subsystem: Dell Device 0558 Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 11 Memory at f7d05000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256] I/O ports at f040 [size=32] Kernel modules: i2c-i801 07:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation Device 4365 (rev 01) Subsystem: Dell Device 0016 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 10 Memory at f7c00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32K] Capabilities: <access denied> 09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 07) Subsystem: Dell Device 0558 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 41 I/O ports at e000 [size=256] Memory at f0004000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=4K] Memory at f0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: r8169 Kernel modules: r8169

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Are Chromebooks the New Netbooks, and What Does That Mean?

- by Chris Hoffman

Netbooks — small, cheap, slow laptops — were once very popular. They fell out of favor — people bought them because they seemed cheap and portable, but the actual experience was lackluster. Most netbooks now sit unused. Windows netbooks have vanished from stores today, but there’s a new super-cheap laptop — the Chromebook. Chromebook sales numbers are impressive, but their usage statistics tell a different story. Are Chromebooks just the new netbook? The Problem With Netbooks Netbooks seemed appealing, especially in an age before tablets and lightweight ultrabooks. You could buy a netbook for $200 or so and have a portable device that let you get on the Internet. The name “netbook” spelled that out — it was a portable device for getting on the ‘net. They weren’t really that great. The original netbook was a lightweight Asus Eee PC that ran Linux alone and had a small amount of fast flash storage. Netbooks eventually ran heavier Windows XP operating systems — Windows Vista was out, but it was just too bloated to run on netbooks. Manufacturers added slow magnetic hard drives, bloatware, and even DVD drives! They couldn’t run most Windows software very well. The build quality was poor and their keyboards were tiny and cramped. People liked the idea of a lightweight device that let them get on the Internet and loved the cheap price, but the actual experience wasn’t great. Chromebook Sales Chromebook sales numbers seem surprisingly high. NPD reported that Chromebooks were 21% of all notebooks sold in the US in 2013. If you combine laptop and tablet sales into a single statistic, Chromebooks were 9.6% of all those devices sold. That’s 2/3 as many Chromebooks sold as iPads in the US! Of Amazon’s best-selling laptop computers, two of the top three are Chromebooks. These definitely look like successful products. Unlike netbooks, Chromebooks are taking off in a big way in the education market. Many schools are buying Chromebooks for their students instead of more expensive Windows laptops. They’re easier to manage and lock down than Windows laptops, but — more importantly for cash-strapped schools — they’re very cheap. Netbooks never had this sort of momentum in schools. Chromebook Usage Statistics Here’s where the rosy picture of Chromebooks starts to become more realistic. StatCounter’s browser usage statistics show how widely used different operating systems are. For example, Windows 7 has the highest share with 35.71% of web activity in April, 2014. The chart doesn’t even show Chrome OS at all, although there is an “Other” number near the bottom. Click the Download Data link to download a CSV file and we can view more detailed information. Chrome OS only accounted for 0.38% of web usage in April, 2014. Desktop Linux, which people often shrug at, accounted for 1.52% in the same month. To its credit, Chrome OS usage has increased. Chromebooks were widely mocked back in November, 2013 when the sales numbers came out. After all, they only accounted for 0.11% of web usage globally in November, 2013! But Chrome OS numbers have been improving: Nov, 2013: 0.11% Dec, 2013: 0.22% Jan, 2014: 0.31% Feb, 2014: 0.35% Mar, 2014: 0.36% Apr, 2014: 0.38% Chrome OS is climbing, but it’s definitely still in the “Other” category. It isn’t as high as we’d expect to see it with those types of sales numbers. Chromebooks vs. Netbooks Chromebooks are more limited devices than traditional PCs. You can do quite a few things, but you have to do it all using Chrome or Chrome apps. Most people won’t be enabling developer mode and installing a Linux desktop. You don’t have access to the powerful desktop software available for Windows and even Mac OS X. On the other hand, these Chromebooks are less compromised than netbooks in many ways. They come with a lightweight operating system designed for portable, mobile devices. They don’t come packed with any bloatware, like the bloatware you’ll find on competing Windows PCs and the original netbooks. They’re cheaper because the manufacturer doesn’t have to pay for a Windows license. There’s no need for antivirus software weighing the operating system down. They’re larger than the original netbooks, with many of them being 11.6-inches instead of the original 8-inch bodies many older netbooks came with. They have larger, more comfortable keyboards and fast solid-state storage. Really, Chromebooks are what netbooks wanted to be. People didn’t buy netbooks to use typical Windows software — they just wanted a lightweight PC. Of course, for many people, the real successor to netbooks is tablets. If all you want is a portable device to throw in a bag so you can get online, maybe a tablet is better. Where Does This Leave Chromebooks? So, are Chromebooks the new netbooks? It’s a bit early to answer that question. Chromebooks are definitely not out of the competition — their sales look good and their usage share is increasing. On the other hand, Chrome OS is still pretty far behind. They’re not catching fire like tablets did. Maybe netbooks were just before their time and Chromebooks were what they were always meant to be. Just as Microsoft’s Windows XP tablets failed, Windows XP netbooks also failed. Tablets took off with a more refined operating system on better hardware years later. “Netbooks” — or Chromebooks — are now taking off with a more purpose-built operating system on better hardware, too. It’s hard to count Chromebooks out because they provide a much better experience than netbooks ever did. If you’re one of the people who wants to use old Windows desktop apps on your portable laptop, you may think netbooks were better — but most people don’t want that. But maybe people either want a full desktop PC experience or a full mobile tablet experience. Is there a place for a laptop with a keyboard that can only view websites? We’ll have to wait and see. Image Credit: Kevin Jarret on Flickr, Clive Darra on Flickr, Sean Freese on Flickr

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Premature-Optimization and Performance Anxiety

- by James Michael Hare

While writing my post analyzing the new .NET 4 ConcurrentDictionary class (here), I fell into one of the classic blunders that I myself always love to warn about. After analyzing the differences of time between a Dictionary with locking versus the new ConcurrentDictionary class, I noted that the ConcurrentDictionary was faster with read-heavy multi-threaded operations. Then, I made the classic blunder of thinking that because the original Dictionary with locking was faster for those write-heavy uses, it was the best choice for those types of tasks. In short, I fell into the premature-optimization anti-pattern. Basically, the premature-optimization anti-pattern is when a developer is coding very early for a perceived (whether rightly-or-wrongly) performance gain and sacrificing good design and maintainability in the process. At best, the performance gains are usually negligible and at worst, can either negatively impact performance, or can degrade maintainability so much that time to market suffers or the code becomes very fragile due to the complexity. Keep in mind the distinction above. I'm not talking about valid performance decisions. There are decisions one should make when designing and writing an application that are valid performance decisions. Examples of this are knowing the best data structures for a given situation (Dictionary versus List, for example) and choosing performance algorithms (linear search vs. binary search). But these in my mind are macro optimizations. The error is not in deciding to use a better data structure or algorithm, the anti-pattern as stated above is when you attempt to over-optimize early on in such a way that it sacrifices maintainability. In my case, I was actually considering trading the safety and maintainability gains of the ConcurrentDictionary (no locking required) for a slight performance gain by using the Dictionary with locking. This would have been a mistake as I would be trading maintainability (ConcurrentDictionary requires no locking which helps readability) and safety (ConcurrentDictionary is safe for iteration even while being modified and you don't risk the developer locking incorrectly) -- and I fell for it even when I knew to watch out for it. I think in my case, and it may be true for others as well, a large part of it was due to the time I was trained as a developer. I began college in in the 90s when C and C++ was king and hardware speed and memory were still relatively priceless commodities and not to be squandered. In those days, using a long instead of a short could waste precious resources, and as such, we were taught to try to minimize space and favor performance. This is why in many cases such early code-bases were very hard to maintain. I don't know how many times I heard back then to avoid too many function calls because of the overhead -- and in fact just last year I heard a new hire in the company where I work declare that she didn't want to refactor a long method because of function call overhead. Now back then, that may have been a valid concern, but with today's modern hardware even if you're calling a trivial method in an extremely tight loop (which chances are the JIT compiler would optimize anyway) the results of removing method calls to speed up performance are negligible for the great majority of applications. Now, obviously, there are those coding applications where speed is absolutely king (for example drivers, computer games, operating systems) where such sacrifices may be made. But I would strongly advice against such optimization because of it's cost. Many folks that are performing an optimization think it's always a win-win. That they're simply adding speed to the application, what could possibly be wrong with that? What they don't realize is the cost of their choice. For every piece of straight-forward code that you obfuscate with performance enhancements, you risk the introduction of bugs in the long term technical debt of the application. It will become so fragile over time that maintenance will become a nightmare. I've seen such applications in places I have worked. There are times I've seen applications where the designer was so obsessed with performance that they even designed their own memory management system for their application to try to squeeze out every ounce of performance. Unfortunately, the application stability often suffers as a result and it is very difficult for anyone other than the original designer to maintain. I've even seen this recently where I heard a C++ developer bemoaning that in VS2010 the iterators are about twice as slow as they used to be because Microsoft added range checking (probably as part of the 0x standard implementation). To me this was almost a joke. Twice as slow sounds bad, but it almost never as bad as you think -- especially if you're gaining safety. The only time twice is really that much slower is when once was too slow to begin with. Think about it. 2 minutes is slow as a response time because 1 minute is slow. But if an iterator takes 1 microsecond to move one position and a new, safer iterator takes 2 microseconds, this is trivial! The only way you'd ever really notice this would be in iterating a collection just for the sake of iterating (i.e. no other operations). To my mind, the added safety makes the extra time worth it. Always favor safety and maintainability when you can. I know it can be a hard habit to break, especially if you started out your career early or in a language such as C where they are very performance conscious. But in reality, these type of micro-optimizations only end up hurting you in the long run. Remember the two laws of optimization. I'm not sure where I first heard these, but they are so true: For beginners: Do not optimize. For experts: Do not optimize yet. This is so true. If you're a beginner, resist the urge to optimize at all costs. And if you are an expert, delay that decision. As long as you have chosen the right data structures and algorithms for your task, your performance will probably be more than sufficient. Chances are it will be network, database, or disk hits that will be your slow-down, not your code. As they say, 98% of your code's bottleneck is in 2% of your code so premature-optimization may add maintenance and safety debt that won't have any measurable impact. Instead, code for maintainability and safety, and then, and only then, when you find a true bottleneck, then you should go back and optimize further.

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Personal Technology – Laptop Screen Blank – No Post – No BIOS – No Boot

- by Pinal Dave

If your laptop Screen is Blank and there is no POST, BIOS or boot, you can follow the steps mentioned here and there are chances that it will work if there is no hardware failure inside. Step 1: Remove the power cord from the laptop Step 2: Remove the battery from the laptop Step 3: Hold power button (keep it pressed) for almost 60 seconds Step 4: Plug power back in laptop Step 5: Start computer and it should just start normally. Step 6: Now shut down Step 7: Insert the battery back in the laptop Step 8: Start laptop again and it should work Note 1: If your laptop does not work after inserting back the memory. Remove the memory and repeat above process. Do not insert the battery back as it is malfunctioning. Note 2: If your screen is faulty or have issues with your hardware (motherboard, screen or anything else) this method will not fix your computer. Those, who care about how I come up with this not SQL related blog post, here is the very funny true story. If you are a married man, you will know what I am going to describe next. May be you have faced the same situation or at least you feel and understand my situation. My wife’s computer suddenly stops working when she was searching for my daughter’s mathematics worksheets online. While the fatal accident happened with my wife’s computer (which was my loyal computer for over 4 years before she got it), I was working in my home office, fixing a high priority issue (live order’s database was corrupted) with one of the largest eCommerce websites. While I was working on production server where I was fixing database corruption, my wife ran to my home office. Here is how the conversation went: Wife: This computer does not work. I: Restart it. Wife: It does not start. I: What did you do with it? Wife: Nothing, it just stopped working. I: Okey, I will look into it later, working on the very urgent issue. Wife: I was printing my daughter’s worksheet. I: Hm.. Okey. Wife: It was the mathematics worksheet, which you promised you will teach but you never get around to do it, so I am doing it myself. I: Thanks. I appreciate it. I am very busy with this issue as million dollar transaction are not happening as the database got corrupted and … Wife: So what … umm… You mean to say that you care about this customer more than your daughter. You know she got A+ in every other class but in mathematics she got only A. She missed that extra credit question. I: She is only 4, it is okay. Wife: She is 4.5 years old not 4. So you are not going to fix this computer which does not start at all. I think our daughter next time will even get lower grades as her dad is busy fixing something. I: Alright, I give up bring me that computer. Our daughter who was listening everything so far she finally decided to speak up. Daughter: Dad, it is a laptop not computer. I: Yes, sweety get that laptop here and your dad is going to fix the this small issue of million dollar issue later on. I decided to pay attention to my wife’s computer. She was right. No matter what I do, it will not boot up, it will not start, no BIOS, no POST screen. The computer starts for a second but nothing comes up on the screen. The light indicating hard drive comes up for a second and goes off. Nothing happens. I removed every single USB drive from the laptop but it still would not start. It was indeed no fun for me. Finally I remember my days when I was not married and used to study in University of Southern California, Los Angeles. I remembered that I used to have very old second (or maybe third or fourth) hand computer with me. In polite words, I had pre-owned computer and it used to face very similar issues again and again. I had small routine I used to follow to fix my old computer and I had decided to follow the same steps again with this computer. Step 1: Remove the power cord from the laptop Step 2: Remove the battery from the laptop Step 3: Hold power button (keep it pressed) for almost 60 seconds Step 4: Plug power back in laptop Step 5: Start computer and it should just start normally. Step 6: Now shut down Step 7: Insert the battery back in the laptop Step 8: Start laptop again and it should work Note 1: If your laptop does not work after inserting back the memory. Remove the memory and repeat above process. Do not insert the battery back as it is malfunctioning. Note 2: If your screen is faulty or have issues with your hardware (motherboard, screen or anything else) this method will not fix your computer. Once I followed above process, her computer worked. I was very delighted, that now I can go back to solving the problem where millions of transactions were waiting as I was fixing corrupted database and it the current state of the database was in emergency mode. Once I fixed the computer, I looked at my wife and asked. I: Well, now this laptop is back online, can I get guaranteed that she will get A+ in mathematics in this week’s quiz? Wife: Sure, I promise. I: Fantastic. After saying that I started to look at my database corruption and my wife interrupted me again. Wife: Btw, I forgot to tell you. Our daughter had got A in mathematics last week but she had another quiz today and she already have received A+ there. I kept my promise. I looked at her and she started to walk outside room, before I say anything my phone rang. DBA from eCommerce company had called me, as he was wondering why there is no activity from my side in last 10 minutes. DBA: Hey bud, are you still connected. I see um… no activity in last 10 minutes. I: Oh, well, I was just saving the world. I am back now. After two hours I had fixed the database corruption and everything was normal. I was outsmarted by my wife but honestly I still respect and love her the same as she is the one who spends countless hours with our daughter so she does not miss me and I can continue writing blogs and keep on doing technology evangelism. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Humor, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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Data-driven animation states

- by user8363

I'm trying to handle animations in a 2D game engine hobby project, without hard-coding them. Hard coding animation states seems like a common but very strange phenomenon, to me. A little background: I'm working with an entity system where components are bags of data and subsystems act upon them. I chose to use a polling system to update animation states. With animation states I mean: "walking_left", "running_left", "walking_right", "shooting", ... My idea to handle animations was to design it as a data driven model. Data could be stored in an xml file, a rdbms, ... And could be loaded at the start of a game / level/ ... This way you can easily edit animations and transitions without having to go change the code everywhere in your game. As an example I made an xml draft of the data definitions I had in mind. One very important piece of data would simply be the description of an animation. An animation would have a unique id (a descriptive name). It would hold a reference id to an image (the sprite sheet it uses, because different animations may use different sprite sheets). The frames per second to run the animation on. The "replay" here defines if an animation should be run once or infinitely. Then I defined a list of rectangles as frames. <animation id='WIZARD_WALK_LEFT'> <image id='WIZARD_WALKING' /> <fps>50</fps> <replay>true</replay> <frames> <rectangle> <x>0</x> <y>0</y> <width>45</width> <height>45</height> </rectangle> <rectangle> <x>45</x> <y>0</y> <width>45</width> <height>45</height> </rectangle> </frames> </animation> Animation data would be loaded and held in an animation resource pool and referenced by game entities that are using it. It would be treated as a resource like an image, a sound, a texture, ... The second piece of data to define would be a state machine to handle animation states and transitions. This defines each state a game entity can be in, which states it can transition to and what triggers that state change. This state machine would differ from entity to entity. Because a bird might have states "walking" and "flying" while a human would only have the state "walking". However it could be shared by different entities because multiple humans will probably have the same states (especially when you define some common NPCs like monsters, etc). Additionally an orc might have the same states as a human. Just to demonstrate that this state definition might be shared but only by a select group of game entities. <state id='IDLE'> <event trigger='LEFT_DOWN' goto='MOVING_LEFT' /> <event trigger='RIGHT_DOWN' goto='MOVING_RIGHT' /> </state> <state id='MOVING_LEFT'> <event trigger='LEFT_UP' goto='IDLE' /> <event trigger='RIGHT_DOWN' goto='MOVING_RIGHT' /> </state> <state id='MOVING_RIGHT'> <event trigger='RIGHT_UP' goto='IDLE' /> <event trigger='LEFT_DOWN' goto='MOVING_LEFT' /> </state> These states can be handled by a polling system. Each game tick it grabs the current state of a game entity and checks all triggers. If a condition is met it changes the entity's state to the "goto" state. The last part I was struggling with was how to bind animation data and animation states to an entity. The most logical approach seemed to me to add a pointer to the state machine data an entity uses and to define for each state in that machine what animation it uses. Here is an xml example how I would define the animation behavior and graphical representation of some common entities in a game, by addressing animation state and animation data id. Note that both "wizard" and "orc" have the same animation states but a different animation. Also, a different animation could mean a different sprite sheet, or even a different sequence of animations (an animation could be longer or shorter). <entity name="wizard"> <state id="IDLE" animation="WIZARD_IDLE" /> <state id="MOVING_LEFT" animation="WIZARD_WALK_LEFT" /> </entity> <entity name="orc"> <state id="IDLE" animation="ORC_IDLE" /> <state id="MOVING_LEFT" animation="ORC_WALK_LEFT" /> </entity> When the entity is being created it would add a list of states with state machine data and an animation data reference. In the future I would use the entity system to build whole entities by defining components in a similar xml format. -- This is what I have come up with after some research. However I had some trouble getting my head around it, so I was hoping op some feedback. Is there something here what doesn't make sense, or is there a better way to handle these things? I grasped the idea of iterating through frames but I'm having trouble to take it a step further and this is my attempt to do that.

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Refactoring Part 1 : Intuitive Investments

- by Wes McClure

Fear, it’s what turns maintaining applications into a nightmare. Technology moves on, teams move on, someone is left to operate the application, what was green is now perceived brown. Eventually the business will evolve and changes will need to be made. The approach to those changes often dictates the long term viability of the application. Fear of change, lack of passion and a lack of interest in understanding the domain often leads to a paranoia to do anything that doesn’t involve duct tape and bailing twine. Don’t get me wrong, those have a place in the short term viability of a project but they don’t have a place in the long term. Add to it “us versus them” in regards to the original team and those that maintain it, internal politics and other factors and you have a recipe for disaster. This results in code that quickly becomes unmanageable. Even the most clever of designs will eventually become sub optimal and debt will amount that exponentially makes changes difficult. This is where refactoring comes in, and it’s something I’m very passionate about. Refactoring is about improving the process whereby we make change, it’s an exponential investment in the process of change. Without it we will incur exponential complexity that halts productivity. Investments, especially in the long term, require intuition and reflection. How can we tackle new development effectively via evolving the original design and paying off debt that has been incurred? The longer we wait to ask and answer this question, the more it will cost us. Small requests don’t warrant big changes, but realizing when changes now will pay off in the long term, and especially in the short term, is valuable. I have done my fair share of maintaining applications and continuously refactoring as needed, but recently I’ve begun work on a project that hasn’t had much debt, if any, paid down in years. This is the first in a series of blog posts to try to capture the process which is largely driven by intuition of smaller refactorings from other projects. Signs that refactoring could help: Testability How can decreasing test time not pay dividends? One of the first things I found was that a very important piece often takes 30+ minutes to test. I can only imagine how much time this has cost historically, but more importantly the time it might cost in the coming weeks: I estimate at least 10-20 hours per person! This is simply unacceptable for almost any situation. As it turns out, about 6 hours of working with this part of the application and I was able to cut the time down to under 30 seconds! In less than the lost time of one week, I was able to fix the problem for all future weeks! If we can’t test fast then we can’t change fast, nor with confidence. Code is used by end users and it’s also used by developers, consider your own needs in terms of the code base. Adding logic to enable/disable features during testing can help decouple parts of an application and lead to massive improvements. What exactly is so wrong about test code in real code? Often, these become features for operators and sometimes end users. If you cannot run an integration test within a test runner in your IDE, it’s time to refactor. Readability Are variables named meaningfully via a ubiquitous language? Is the code segmented functionally or behaviorally so as to minimize the complexity of any one area? Are aspects properly segmented to avoid confusion (security, logging, transactions, translations, dependency management etc) Is the code declarative (what) or imperative (how)? What matters, not how. LINQ is a great abstraction of the what, not how, of collection manipulation. The Reactive framework is a great example of the what, not how, of managing streams of data. Are constants abstracted and named, or are they just inline? Do people constantly bitch about the code/design? If the code is hard to understand, it will be hard to change with confidence. It’s a large undertaking if the original designers didn’t pay much attention to readability and as such will never be done to “completion.” Make sure not to go over board, instead use this as you change an application, not in lieu of changes (like with testability). Complexity Simplicity will never be achieved, it’s highly subjective. That said, a lot of code can be significantly simplified, tidy it up as you go. Refactoring will often converge upon a simplification step after enough time, keep an eye out for this. Understandability In the process of changing code, one often gains a better understanding of it. Refactoring code is a good way to learn how it works. However, it’s usually best in combination with other reasons, in effect killing two birds with one stone. Often this is done when readability is poor, in which case understandability is usually poor as well. In the large undertaking we are making with this legacy application, we will be replacing it. Therefore, understanding all of its features is important and this refactoring technique will come in very handy. Unused code How can deleting things not help? This is a freebie in refactoring, it’s very easy to detect with modern tools, especially in statically typed languages. We have VCS for a reason, if in doubt, delete it out (ok that was cheesy)! If you don’t know where to start when refactoring, this is an excellent starting point! Duplication Do not pray and sacrifice to the anti-duplication gods, there are excellent examples where consolidated code is a horrible idea, usually with divergent domains. That said, mediocre developers live by copy/paste. Other times features converge and aren’t combined. Tools for finding similar code are great in the example of copy/paste problems. Knowledge of the domain helps identify convergent concepts that often lead to convergent solutions and will give intuition for where to look for conceptual repetition. 80/20 and the Boy Scouts It’s often said that 80% of the time 20% of the application is used most. These tend to be the parts that are changed. There are also parts of the code where 80% of the time is spent changing 20% (probably for all the refactoring smells above). I focus on these areas any time I make a change and follow the philosophy of the Boy Scout in cleaning up more than I messed up. If I spend 2 hours changing an application, in the 20%, I’ll always spend at least 15 minutes cleaning it or nearby areas. This gives a huge productivity edge on developers that don’t. Ironically after a short period of time the 20% shrinks enough that we don’t have to spend 80% of our time there and can move on to other areas. Refactoring is highly subjective, never attempt to refactor to completion! Learn to be comfortable with leaving one part of the application in a better state than others. It’s an evolution, not a revolution. These are some simple areas to look into when making changes and can help get one started in the process. I’ve often found that refactoring is a convergent process towards simplicity that sometimes spans a few hours but often can lead to massive simplifications over the timespan of weeks and months of regular development.

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TGIF: Engagement Wrap-up

- by Michael Snow

We've had a very busy week here at Oracle and as we build up to Oracle OpenWorld starting in less than 10 days - it doesn't look like things will be slowing down. Engagement is definitely in the air this week. Our friend, John Mancini published a great article entitled: "The World of Engagement" on his Digital Landfill blog yesterday and we hosted a great webcast with R "Ray" Wang from Constellation Research yesterday on the "9 C's of Engagement". 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} I wanted to wrap-up the week with some key takeaways from our webcast yesterday with Ray Wang. If you missed the webcast yesterday, fear not - it is now available On-Demand. We'll leave you this week with lots of questions about how to navigate these churning waters of engagement. Stay tuned to the Oracle WebCenter Social Business Thought Leaders Webcast Series as we fuel this dialogue. 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Company Culture Does company support a culture of putting customer satisfaction ahead of profits? Does culture promote creativity and cross functional employee collaboration? Does culture accept different views of multi-generational workforce? Does culture promote employee training and skills development Does culture support upward mobility and long term retention? Does culture support work-life balance? Does the culture provide rewards for employee for outstanding customer support? Channels What are the current primary channels for customer communications? What do you think will be the primary channels in two years? Is company developing support model for emerging channels? Do all channels consistently deliver the same level of customer support? Do you know the cost per transaction across all channels? Do you engage customers proactively across multiple channels? Do all channels have access to the same customer information? Community Does company extend customer support into virtual communities of interest? Does company facilitate educating users through its virtual communities? Does company mine its customer’s experience into useful data? Does company increase the value for customers through using data to deliver new products and services? Does company support two way interactions with its customers through communities of interest? Does company actively support social CRM, online communities and social media markets? Credibility Does company market its trustworthiness through external certificates such as business licenses, BBB certificates or other validations? Does company promote trust through customer testimonials and case studies on ethical business practices? Does company promote truthful market campaigns Does company make it easy for customers to complain? Does company build its reputation for standing behind its products with guarantees for satisfaction? Does company protect its customer data with high security measures> Content What sources do you use to create customer content? Does company mine social media and blogs for customer content? How does your company sort, store and retain its customer content? How frequently does content get updated? What external sources do you use for customer content? How many responses are typically received from a knowledge management system inquiry? Does your company use customer content to design and develop new product and services? Context Does your company market to customers in clusters or individually? Does your company customize its messages and personalize them to specific needs of each individual customer? Does your company store customer data based on their past behaviors, purchases, sentiment analysis and current activities? Does your company manage customer context according to channels used? For example identify personal use channels versus business channels? What is your frequency of collecting customer activities across various touch points? How is your customer data stored and analyzed? Is contextual data used for future customer outreach? Cadence Which channels does your company measure-web site visits, phone calls, IVR, store visits, face to face, social media? Does company make effective use of cross channel marketing to promote more frequent customer engagement? Does your company rate the patterns relevant for your product or service and monitor usage against this pattern? Does your company measure the frequency of both online and offline channels? Does your company apply metrics to the frequency of customer engagements with product or services revenues? Does your company consolidate data for customer engagement across various channels for a complete view of its customer? Catalyst Does company offer coupon discounts? Does company have a customer loyalty program or a VIP membership program? Does company mine customer data to target specific groups of buyers? Do internal employees serve as ambassadors for customer programs? Does company drive loyalty through social media loyalty programs? Does company build rewards based on using loyalty data? Does company offer an employee incentive program to drive customer loyalty?

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Book Review: Brownfield Application Development in .NET

- by DotNetBlues

I recently finished reading the book Brownfield Application Development in .NET by Kyle Baley and Donald Belcham. The book is available from Manning. First off, let me say that I'm a huge fan of Manning as a publisher. I've found their books to be top-quality, over all. As a Kindle owner, I also appreciate getting an ebook copy along with the dead tree copy. I find ebooks to be much more convenient to read, but hard-copies are easier to reference. The book covers, surprisingly enough, working with brownfield applications. Which is well and good, if that term has meaning to you. It didn't for me. Without retreading a chunk of the first chapter, the authors break code bases into three broad categories: greenfield, brownfield, and legacy. Greenfield is, essentially, new development that hasn't had time to rust and is (hopefully) being approached with some discipline. Legacy applications are those that are more or less stable and functional, that do not expect to see a lot of work done to them, and are more likely to be replaced than reworked. Brownfield code is the gray (brown?) area between the two and the authors argue, quite effectively, that it is the most likely state for an application to be in. Brownfield code has, in some way, been allowed to tarnish around the edges and can be difficult to work with. Although I hadn't realized it, most of the code I've worked on has been brownfield. Sometimes, there's talk of scrapping and starting over. Sometimes, the team dismisses increased discipline as ivory tower nonsense. And, sometimes, I've been the ignorant culprit vexing my future self. The book is broken into two major sections, plus an introduction chapter and an appendix. The first section covers what the authors refer to as "The Ecosystem" which consists of version control, build and integration, testing, metrics, and defect management. The second section is on actually writing code for brownfield applications and discusses object-oriented principles, architecture, external dependencies, and, of course, how to deal with these when coming into an existing code base. The ecosystem section is just shy of 140 pages long and brings some real meat to the matter. The focus on "pain points" immediately sets the tone as problem-solution, rather than academic. The authors also approach some of the topics from a different angle than some essays I've read on similar topics. For example, the chapter on automated testing is on just that -- automated testing. It's all well and good to criticize a project as conflating integration tests with unit tests, but it really doesn't make anyone's life better. The discussion on testing is more focused on the "right" level of testing for existing projects. Sometimes, an integration test is the best you can do without gutting a section of functional code. Even if you can sell other developers and/or management on doing so, it doesn't actually provide benefit to your customers to rewrite code that works. This isn't to say the authors encourage sloppy coding. Far from it. Just that they point out the wisdom of ignoring the sleeping bear until after you deal with the snarling wolf. The other sections take a similarly real-world, workable approach to the pain points they address. As the section moves from technical solutions like version control and continuous integration (CI) to the softer, process issues of metrics and defect tracking, the authors begin to gently suggest moving toward a zero defect count. While that really sounds like an unreasonable goal for a lot of ongoing projects, it's quite apparent that the authors have first-hand experience with taming some gruesome projects. The suggestions are grounded and workable, and the difficulty of some situations is explicitly acknowledged. I have to admit that I started getting bored by the end of the ecosystem section. No matter how valuable I think a good project manager or business analyst is to a successful ALM, at the end of the day, I'm a gear-head. Also, while I agreed with a lot of the ecosystem ideas, in theory, I didn't necessarily feel that a lot of the single-developer projects that I'm often involved in really needed that level of rigor. It's only after reading the sidebars and commentary in the coding section that I had the context for the arguments made in favor of a strong ecosystem supporting the development process. That isn't to say that I didn't support good product management -- indeed, I've probably pushed too hard, on occasion, for a strong ALM outside of just development. This book gave me deeper insight into why some corners shouldn't be cut and how damaging certain sins of omission can be. The code section, though, kept me engaged for its entirety. Many technical books can be used as reference material from day one. The authors were clear, however, that this book is not one of these. The first chapter of the section (chapter seven, over all) addresses object oriented (OO) practices. I've read any number of definitions, discussions, and treatises on OO. None of the chapter was new to me, but it was a good review, and I'm of the opinion that it's good to review the foundations of what you do, from time to time, so I didn't mind. The remainder of the book is really just about how to apply OOP to existing code -- and, just because all your code exists in classes does not mean that it's object oriented. That topic has the potential to be extremely condescending, but the authors miraculously managed to never once make me feel like a dolt or that they were wagging their finger at me for my prior sins. Instead, they continue the "pain points" and problem-solution presentation to give concrete examples of how to apply some pretty academic-sounding ideas. That's a point worth emphasizing, as my experience with most OO discussions is that they stay in the academic realm. This book gives some very, very good explanations of why things like the Liskov Substitution Principle exist and why a corporate programmer should even care. Even if you know, with absolute certainty, that you'll never have to work on an existing code-base, I would recommend this book just for the clarity it provides on OOP. This book goes beyond just theory, or even real-world application. It presents some methods for fixing problems that any developer can, and probably will, encounter in the wild. First, the authors address refactoring application layers and internal dependencies. Then, they take you through those layers from the UI to the data access layer and external dependencies. Finally, they come full circle to tie it all back to the overall process. By the time the book is done, you're left with a lot of ideas, but also a reasonable plan to begin to improve an existing project structure. Throughout the book, it's apparent that the authors have their own preferred methodology (TDD and domain-driven design), as well as some preferred tools. The "Our .NET Toolbox" is something of a neon sign pointing to that latter point. They do not beat the reader over the head with anything resembling a "One True Way" mentality. Even for the most emphatic points, the tone is quite congenial and helpful. With some of the near-theological divides that exist within the tech community, I found this to be one of the more remarkable characteristics of the book. Although the authors favor tools that might be considered Alt.NET, there is no reason the advice and techniques given couldn't be quite successful in a pure Microsoft shop with Team Foundation Server. For that matter, even though the book specifically addresses .NET, it could be applied to a Java and Oracle shop, as well.

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Need personal advice on how to get out of a company..

- by SOfan

Hi, I am an SO user since past 6 months and this is the first time I am turning to SO for personal help. I have asked technical questions before with my real ID. I am stuck inside a service based IT company for the past one year and haven't been able to decide if to leave it, when to leave it and how to leave it. I had taken 2 weeks LWP on medical reason roughly at end of 1 year and then soon after reporting, I applied for 2 months more LWP (on medical/personal ground) with the intention of working on my health,take up a hobby class to ward off depression,pessimism, to have some fun in life, and to look for a job which I really would be excited about - that interests me and which matches with my strength. My leave starts from this Monday. So in any case, I had hard set in mind that I will leave the company after I join them back hopefully with some job offer already in hand (after figuring out what I want do). Neither I can stand the past project,past colleagues,company, HR, pathetically low salary. But if I really listen to my heart, I don't want to have to go back to that office after my sabbatical and again have to see those people. I will have to resign it after my sabbatical ends. Then HR people perhaps wont like it, may even accuse me on face or behind back that primary purpose of my leave must have been to hunt for a better job and I lied about medical and person reasons. Also, if they get nasty and force me to serve 2 months notice period. There is no way I see myself after sabbatical resuming in old project or starting new work. It will be a pain. Since they have already approved 2 months leave and stuff, ideally if they want, they should be just able to relieve me right on the next day after I join back. But, I don't know if they want to get nasty, will they mention about my 2 months sabbatical leave in my experience letter or more scary, the term medical/personal reason. I have hard earned my experience here, have worked against my will, mostly it has been painful and slogged like anything, because I realize the importance of work experience in IT industry. I don't have greed to have those 2 months included extra in my experience letter, but I don't want to mess up with my experience letter in a way which makes my next employer ask question, get suspicious, or be wary if I have any medical reason going on. Being an emotional,moody person or somebody who can't be in an environment, once my mind and heart starts hating it. I think it perhaps is best, if I resign on Monday itself telling them (in polite manner) something that look I took sabbatical for some reason but I don't want to resume working in the company after my sabbatical ends. So please accept my resignation. Now tell me what you want to do about my leave request, my notice period and when you are willing to relieve me. What should I write and how? Some background: I am working in an IT company in India.I am overqualified in the company. It is grossly underpaying me. My education qualifications far exceed anyone's in the whole company being a CS undergrad as well as a CS grad. I joined this company after finishing the grad. I had self-doubts about my skills and interest as a programmer. I like doing research oriented work, though didn't have any particular success during grad. My life here has been very hectic. The project containing many many sub-projects has kept me on my toes and I have never really liked the work. I have been playing against my strength. Also the company strict internet usage policy (you can't read gmails, can't browse any non-work related sites not even news). When working for a client, from the machine we can't even check company related emails.For this one has to go to kiosk like 5 machines in a small room etc. Most of the times those machines are not available, so it was not unusual to keep making rounds to these kiosk machines to check company emails, browse company related emails etc.So it was not so easy to keep in touch with company related basic affairs for a not particular careful person. Things like this which are new to me, make me feel restricted. I am an undecisive person with a sense of failure, self-doubt, not meeting up unrealistic expectation. Somewhere at back of mind, I envy my classmates who make a smooth transition from company to company without causing any gap in their resume. I on other hand have gaps in resume. I get tired after working in a place for sometime. problem with colleagues in general. I am not particular great with people, have few friends, not known for a fun nature, rather serious, scholar. I am not a typical conventional female. I think females are usually more disciplined. But I am not so. I reach office late (though after informing manager). I don't want to blame them entirely, because from my past, it is not unusual for me to get undecisive on things. Also I had doubts about my ability as researched and to succeed there. of building a relationship in a group, to have something to talk about, newspaper. I get cut-off from people. peer pressure. I make blunders in coding, lose patience. Consciously or unconsciously I feel contempt for people here, work here, environment here. I have doubts that either I go to a place which does innovation, does research oriented work, product biggies, have great motivated people, have competent people passionate about products they are building. But then I also doubt my ability to survive there. I have identified that an idea job for me would be 4 days a week, a high salary job. When among people in company/team, I can't think much. I need some time at home to read good authentic books written in good style on what work I am doing.So that I am comfortable with my understanding of work. I get into pressure easily under deadline and need 5th day to cool myself off. I took for 2 weeks leave, because each day was hell for me. May be the depression phase of bipolar is on and also partially it could be that being a work centered person, who derives happiness,self-esteem from work, haven't been enjoying work and have been working for the sole person of proving stability, and ability to stick, against all odds, and facing what challenges I see, bonding with people, identifying opportunities to learn in given task etc.have been averaging one day LWP in 1 week or 10 days. or may be because of my nature,ADD,not being able to switch context,out of touch with news, don't have a circle of friends with who I enjoy. less knowledge in general to talk about, just some technical stuff.anyway, so due to emotional reason, some practical reason etc, I wanted to be very sure before leaving. So my leave starts from Monday and I should feel happy about it. I have taken the leave to for a few purposes - to take care of my health by regular yoga/exercise (with project on, I just can't do anything regular), reassess myself to see what I want to try next which work I might like, look for next job, take up a hobby which I like say singing. I am not clear on my career,job aspiration. I have tried my hands on research. During this year appraisal yesterday, I even had some conflict with my last manager. In meeting with me one on one, he would say all nice things about me, but in feedback to new manager, he hasn't given any excellent feedback. It is all only good. I am angry at this old Manager. Also new manager also scolded me as I didn't agree to his appraisal and waited to hear myself from old Manager. He kind of scolded me for wasting his time. Am I being unethical somewhere? I am always very conscious of if I am cheating anywhere. What advice I am seeking? How to resign and what to write in resignation letter

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First PC Build (Part 1)

- by Anthony Trudeau

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tonyt/archive/2014/08/05/157959.aspxA couple of months ago I made the decision to build myself a new computer. The intended use is gaming and for using the last real version of Photoshop. I was motivated by the poor state of console gaming and a simple desire to do something I haven’t done before – build a PC from the ground up. I’ve been using PCs for more than two decades. I’ve replaced a component hear and there, but for the last 10 years or so I’ve only used laptops. Therefore, this article will be written from the perspective of someone familiar with PCs, but completely new at building. I’m not an expert and this is not a definitive guide for building a PC, but I do hope that it encourages you to try it yourself. Component List Research There was a lot of research necessary, because building a PC is completely new to me, and I haven’t kept up with what’s out there. The first thing you want to do is nail down what your goals are. Your goals are going to be driven by what you want to do with your computer and personal choice. Don’t neglect the second one, because if you’re doing this for fun you want to get what you want. In my case, I focused on three things: performance, longevity, and aesthetics. The performance aspect is important for gaming and Photoshop. This will drive what components you get. For example, heavy gaming use is going to drive your choice of graphics card. Longevity is relevant to me, because I don’t want to be changing things out anytime soon for the next hot game. The consequence of performance and longevity is cost. Finally, aesthetics was my next consideration. I could have just built a box, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as fun for me. Aesthetics might not be important to you. They are for me. I also like gadgets and that played into at least one purchase for this build. I used PC Part Picker to put together my component list. I found it invaluable during the process and I’d recommend it to everyone. One caveat is that I wouldn’t trust the compatibility aspects. It does a pretty good job of not steering you wrong, but do your own research. The rest of it isn’t really sexy. I started out with what appealed to me and then I made changes and additions as I dived deep into researching each component and interaction I could find. The resources I used are innumerable. I used reviews, product descriptions, forum posts (praises and problems), et al. to assist me. I also asked friends into gaming what they thought about my component list. And when I got near the end I posted my list to the Reddit /r/buildapc forum. I cannot stress the value of extra sets of eyeballs and first hand experiences. Some of the resources I used: PC Part Picker Tom’s Hardware bit-tech Reddit Purchase PC Part Picker favors certain vendors. You should look at others too. In my case I found their favorites to be the best. My priorities were out-the-door price and shipping time. I knew that once I started getting parts I’d want to start building. Luckily, I timed it well and everything arrived within the span of a few days. Here are my opinions on the vendors I ended up using in alphabetical order. Amazon.com is a good, reliable choice. They have excellent customer service in my experience, and I knew I wouldn’t have trouble with them. However, shipping time is often a problem when you use their free shipping unless you order expensive items (I’ve found items over $100 ship quickly). Ultimately though, price wasn’t always the best and their collection of sales tax in my state turned me off them. I did purchase my case from them. I ordered the mouse as well, but I cancelled after it was stuck four days in a “shipping soon” state. I purchased the mouse locally. Best Buy is not my favorite place to do business. There’s a lot of history with poor, uninterested sales representatives and they used to have a lot of bad anti-consumer policies. That’s a lot better now, but the bad taste is still in my mouth. I ended up purchasing the accessories from them including mouse (locally) and headphones. NCIX is a company that I’ve never heard of before. It popped up as a recommendation for my CPU cooler on PC Part Picker. I didn’t do a lot of research on the company, because their policy on you buying insurance for your orders turned me off. That policy makes it clear to me that the company finds me responsible for the shipment once it leaves their dock. That’s not right, and may run afoul of state laws. Regardless they shipped my CPU cooler quickly and I didn’t have a problem. NewEgg.com is a well known company. I had never done business with them, but I’m glad I did. They shipped quickly and provided good visibility over everything. The prices were also the best in most cases. My main complaint is that they have a lot of exchange only return policies on components. To their credit those policies are listed in the cart underneath each item. The visibility tells me that they’re not playing any shenanigans and made me comfortable dealing with that risk. The vast majority of what I ordered came from them. Coming Next In the next part I’ll tackle my build experience.

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Why people don't patch and upgrade?!?

- by Mike Dietrich

Discussing the topic "Why Upgrade" or "Why not Upgrade" is not always fun. Actually the arguments repeat from customer to customer. Typically we hear things such as: A PSU or Patch Set introduces new bugs A new PSU or Patch Set introduces new features which lead to risk and require application verification Patching means risk Patching changes the execution plans Patching requires too much testing Patching is too much work for our DBAs Patching costs a lot of money and doesn't pay out And to be very honest sometimes it's hard for me to stay calm in such discussions. Let's discuss some of these points a bit more in detail. A PSU or Patch Set introduces new bugsWell, yes, that is true as no software containing more than some lines of code is bug free. This applies to Oracle's code as well as too any application or operating system code. But first of all, does that mean you never patch your OS because the patch may introduce new flaws? And second, what is the point of saying "it introduces new bugs"? Does that mean you will never get rid of the mean issues we know about and we fixed already? Scroll down from MOS Note:161818.1 to the patch release you are on, no matter if it's 10.2.0.4 or 11.2.0.3 and check for the Known Issues And Alerts.Will you take responsibility to know about all these issues and refuse to upgrade to 11.2.0.4? I won't. A new PSU or Patch Set introduces new featuresOk, we can discuss that. Offering new functionality within a database patch set is a dubious thing. It has advantages such as in 11.2.0.4 where we backported Database Redaction to. But this is something you will only use once you have an Advanced Security license. I interpret that statement I've heard quite often from customers in a different way: People don't want to get surprises such as new behaviour. This certainly gives everybody a hard time. And we've had many examples in the past (SESSION_CACHED_CURSROS in 10.2.0.4, _DATAFILE_WRITE_ERRORS_CRASH_INSTANCE in 11.2.0.2 and others) where those things weren't documented, not even in the README. Thanks to many friends out there I learned about those as well. So new behaviour is the topic people consider as risky - not really new features. And just to point this out: A PSU never brings in new features or new behaviour by definition! Patching means riskDoes it really mean risk? Yes, there were issues in the past (and sometimes in the present as well) where a patch didn't get installed correctly. But personally I consider it way more risky to not patch. Keep that in mind: The day Oracle publishes an PSU (or CPU) containing security fixes all the great security experts out there go public with their findings as well. So from that day on even my grandma can find out about those issues and try to attack somebody. Now a lot of people say: "My database does not face the internet." And I will answer: "The enemy is sitting already behind your firewalls. And knows potentially about these things." My statement: Not patching introduces way more risk to your environment than patching. Seriously! Patching changes the execution plansDo they really? I agree - there's a very small risk for this happening with Patch Sets. But not with PSUs or CPUs as they contain no optimizer fixes changing behaviour (but they may contain fixes curing wrong-query-result-bugs). But what's the point of a changing execution plan? In Oracle Database 11g it is so simple to be prepared. SQL Plan Management is a free EE feature - so once that occurs you'll put the plan into the Plan Baseline. Basta! Yes, you wouldn't like to get such surprises? Than please use the SQL Performance Analyzer (SPA) from Real Application Testing and you'll detect that easily upfront in minutes. And not to forget this, a plan change can also be very positive!Yes, there's a little risk with a database patchset - and we have many possibilites to detect this before patching. Patching requires too much testingWell, does it really? I have seen in the past 12 years how people test. There are very different efforts and approaches on this. I have seen people spending a hell of money on licenses or on project team staffing. And I have seen people sailing blindly without any tests just going the John-Wayne-approach.Proper tools will allow you to test easily without too much efforts. See the paragraph above. We have used Real Application Testing in so many customer projects reducing the amount of work spend on testing by over 50%. But apart from that at some point you will have to stop testing. If you don't you'll get lost and you'll burn money. There's no 100% guaranty. You will have to deal with a little risk as reaching the final 5% of certainty will cost you the same as it did cost to reach 95%. And doing this will lead to abnormal long product cycles that you'll run behind forever. And this will cost even more money. Patching is too much work for our DBAsPatching is a lot of work. I agree. And it's no fun work. It's boring, annoying. You don't learn much from that. That's why you should try to automate this task. Use the Database's Lifecycle Management Pack. And don't cry about the fact that it costs money. Yes it does. But it will ease the process and you'll save a lot of costs as you don't waste your valuable time with patching. Or use Oracle Database 12c Oracle Multitenant and patch either by unplug/plug or patch an entire container database with all PDBs with one patch in one task. We have customer reference cases proofing it saved them 75% of time, effort and cost since they've used Lifecycle Management Pack. So why don't you use it? Patching costs a lot of money and doesn't pay outWell, see my statements in the paragraph above. And it pays out as flying with a database with 100 known critical flaws in it which are already fixed by Oracle (such as in the Oct 2013 PSU for Oracle Database 12c) will cost ways more in case of failure or even data loss. Bet with me? Let me finally ask you some questions. What cell phone are you using and which OS does it run? Do you have an iPhone 5 and did you upgrade already to iOS 7.0.3? I've just encountered on mine that the alarm (which I rely on when traveling) has gotten now a dependency on the physical switch "sound on/off". If it is switched to "off" physically the alarm rings "silently". What a wonderful example of a behaviour change coming in with a patch set. Will this push you to stay with iOS5 or iOS6? No, because those have security flaws which won't be fixed anymore. What browser are you surfing with? Do you use Mozilla 3.6? Well, congratulations to all the hackers. It will be easy for them to attack you and harm your system. I'd guess you have the auto updater on. Same for Google Chrome, Safari, IE. Right? -Mike The T.htmtableborders, .htmtableborders td, .htmtableborders th {border : 1px dashed lightgrey ! important;} html, body { border: 0px; } body { background-color: #ffffff; } img, hr { cursor: default }

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The True Cost of a Solution

- by D'Arcy Lussier

I had a Twitter chat recently with someone suggesting Oracle and SQL Server were losing out to OSS (Open Source Software) in the enterprise due to their issues with scaling or being too generic (one size fits all). I challenged that a bit, as my experience with enterprise sized clients has been different – adverse to OSS but receptive to an established vendor. The response I got was: Found it easier to influence change by showing how X can’t solve our problems or X is extremely costly to scale. Money talks. I think this is definitely the right approach for anyone pitching an alternate or alien technology as part of a solution: identify the issue, identify the solution, then present pros and cons including a cost/benefit analysis. What can happen though is we get tunnel vision and don’t present a full view of the costs associated with a solution. An “Acura”te Example (I’m so clever…) This is my dream vehicle, a Crystal Black Pearl coloured Acura MDX with the SH-AWD package! We’re a family of 4 (5 if my daughters ever get their wish of adding a dog), and I’ve always wanted a luxury type of vehicle, so this is a perfect replacement in a few years when our Rav 4 has hit the 8 – 10 year mark. MSRP – $62,890 But as we all know, that’s not *really* the cost of the vehicle. There’s taxes and fees added on, there’s the extended warranty if I choose to purchase it, there’s the finance rate that needs to be factored in… MSRP – $62,890 Taxes – $7,546 Warranty - $2,500 SubTotal – $72,936 Finance Charge – $ 1094.04 Grand Total – $74,030 Well! Glad we did that exercise – we discovered an extra $11k added on to the MSRP! Well now we have our true price…or do we? Lifetime of the Vehicle I’m expecting to have this vehicle for 7 – 10 years. While the hard cost of the vehicle is known and dealt with, the costs to run and maintain the vehicle are on top of this. I did some research, and here’s what I’ve found: Fuel and Mileage Gas prices are high as it is for regular fuel, but getting into an MDX will require that I *only* purchase premium fuel, which comes at a premium price. I need to expect my bill at the pump to be higher. Comparing the MDX to my 2007 Rav4 also shows I’ll be gassing up more often. The Rav4 has a city MPG of 21, while the MDX plummets to 16! The MDX does have a bigger fuel tank though, so all in all the number of times I hit the pumps might even out. Still, I estimate I’ll be spending approximately $8000 – $10000 more on gas over a 10 year period than my current Rav4. Service Options Limited Although I have options with my Toyota here in Winnipeg (we have 4 Toyota dealerships), I do go to my original dealer for any service work. Still, I like the fact that I have options. However, there’s only one Acura dealership in all of Winnipeg! So if, for whatever reason, I’m not satisfied with the level of service I’m stuck. Non Warranty Service Work Also let’s not forget that there’s a bulk of work required every year that is *not* covered under warranty – oil changes, tire rotations, brake pads, etc. I expect I’ll need to get new tires at the 5 years mark as well, which can easily be $1200 – $1500 (I just paid $1000 for new tires for the Rav4 and we’re at the 5 year mark). Now these aren’t going to be *new* costs that I’m not used to from our existing vehicles, but they should still be factored in. I’d budget $500/year, or $5000 over the 10 years I’ll own the vehicle. Final Assessment So let’s re-assess the true cost of my dream MDX: MSRP $62,890 Taxes $7,546 Warranty $2,500 Finance Charge $1094 Gas $10,000 Service Work $5000 Grand Total $89,030 So now I have a better idea of 10 year cost overall, and I’ve identified some concerns with local service availability. And there’s now much more to consider over the original $62,890 price tag. Tying This Back to Technology Solutions The process that we just went through is no different than what organizations do when considering implementing a new system, technology, or technology based solution, within their environments. It’s easy to tout the short term cost savings of particular product/platform/technology in a vacuum. But its when you consider the wider impact that the true cost comes into play. Let’s create a scenario: A company is not happy with its current data reporting suite. An employee suggests moving to an open source solution. The selling points are: - Because its open source its free - The organization would have access to the source code so they could alter it however they wished - It provided features not available with the current reporting suite At first this sounds great to the management and executive, but then they start asking some questions and uncover more information: - The OSS product is built on a technology not used anywhere within the organization - There are no vendors offering product support for the OSS product - The OSS product requires a specific server platform to operate on, one that’s not standard in the organization All of a sudden, the true cost of implementing this solution is starting to become clearer. The company might save money on licensing costs, but their training costs would increase significantly – developers would need to learn how to develop in the technology the OSS solution was built on, IT staff must learn how to set up and maintain a new server platform within their existing infrastructure, and if a problem was found there was no vendor to contact for support. The true cost of implementing a “free” OSS solution is actually spinning up a project to implement it within the organization – no small cost. And that’s just the short-term cost. Now the organization must ensure they maintain trained staff who can make changes to the OSS reporting solution and IT staff that will stay knowledgeable in the new server platform. If those skills are very niche, then higher labour costs could be incurred if those people are hard to find or if trained employees use that knowledge as leverage for higher pay. Maybe a vendor exists that will contract out support, but then there are those costs to consider as well. And let’s not forget end-user training – in our example, anyone that runs reports will need to be trained on how to use the new system. Here’s the Point We still tend to look at software in an “off the shelf” kind of way. It’s very easy to say “oh, this product is better than vendor x’s product – and its free because its OSS!” but the reality is that implementing any new technology within an organization has a cost regardless of the retail price of the product. Training, integration, support – these are real costs that impact an organization and span multiple departments. Whether you’re pitching an improved business process, a new system, or a new technology, you need to consider the bigger picture costs of implementation. What you define as success (in our example, having better reporting functionality) might not be what others define as success if implementing your solution causes them issues. A true enterprise solution needs to consider the entire enterprise.

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Ubuntu 12.04 wireless (wifi) not working, can not upgrade to 12.10, touchpad gestures not working. What to do?

- by Ritwik

I installed ubuntu 12.04 LTS 3 days ago and since then wireless feature and touchpad gestures are not working. Tried everything on internet but still unsuccessful. I cant upgrade to ubuntu 12.10. These are the following comments I tried. Please help me. EDIT: just realized usb 3.0 is also not working. COMMAND lsb_release -r OUTPUT ----------------------------------------------------------------- Release: 12.04 ----------------------------------------------------------------- COMMAND lspci OUTPUT ------------------------------------------------------------------ 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 06) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor PCI Express x16 Controller (rev 06) 00:01.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor PCI Express x8 Controller (rev 06) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 06) 00:03.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor HD Audio Controller (rev 06) 00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI (rev 05) 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04) 00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB EHCI #2 (rev 05) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #1 (rev d5) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #2 (rev d5) 00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #3 (rev d5) 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB EHCI #1 (rev 05) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation HM86 Express LPC Controller (rev 05) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family 6-port SATA Controller 1 [AHCI mode] (rev 05) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 05) 07:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF117M [GeForce 610M/710M / GT 620M/625M/630M/720M] (rev a1) 08:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 07) 09:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTS5229 PCI Express Card Reader (rev 01) 0f:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9565 / AR9565 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01) ------------------------------------------------------------------ COMMAND sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-wireless-lucid-generic OUTPUT ------------------------------------------------------------------- Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done E: Unable to locate package linux-backports-modules-wireless-lucid-generic ------------------------------------------------------------------- COMMAND cat /etc/lsb-release; uname -a OUTPUT ------------------------------------------------------------------- DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu DISTRIB_RELEASE=12.04 DISTRIB_CODENAME=precise DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS" Linux ritwik-PC 3.2.0-67-generic #101-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jul 15 17:46:11 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux ------------------------------------------------------------------- COMMAND lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 net OUTPUT ------------------------------------------------------------------- 08:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller [10ec:8136] (rev 07) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device [103c:225d] Kernel driver in use: r8169 -- 0f:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9565 / AR9565 Wireless Network Adapter [168c:0036] (rev 01) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device [103c:217f] ------------------------------------------------------------------- COMMAND lsusb OUTPUT ------------------------------------------------------------------- Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:8008 Intel Corp. Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:8000 Intel Corp. ------------------------------------------------------------------- COMMAND iwconfig OUTPUT ------------------------------------------------------------------- lo no wireless extensions. eth0 no wireless extensions. ------------------------------------------------------------------- COMMAND rfkill list all OUTPUT ------------------------------------------------------------------- 0: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 1: hp-bluetooth: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no ------------------------------------------------------------------- COMMAND lsmod OUTPUT ------------------------------------------------------------------- Module Size Used by snd_hda_codec_realtek 224215 1 bnep 18281 2 rfcomm 47604 0 bluetooth 180113 10 bnep,rfcomm parport_pc 32866 0 ppdev 17113 0 nls_iso8859_1 12713 1 nls_cp437 16991 1 vfat 17585 1 fat 61512 1 vfat snd_hda_intel 33719 3 snd_hda_codec 127706 2 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_intel snd_hwdep 17764 1 snd_hda_codec snd_pcm 97275 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec snd_seq_midi 13324 0 snd_rawmidi 30748 1 snd_seq_midi snd_seq_midi_event 14899 1 snd_seq_midi snd_seq 61929 2 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event nouveau 775039 0 joydev 17693 0 snd_timer 29990 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq snd_seq_device 14540 3 snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq ttm 76949 1 nouveau uvcvideo 72627 0 snd 79041 15 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device videodev 98259 1 uvcvideo drm_kms_helper 46978 1 nouveau psmouse 98051 0 drm 241971 3 nouveau,ttm,drm_kms_helper i2c_algo_bit 13423 1 nouveau soundcore 15091 1 snd snd_page_alloc 18529 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm v4l2_compat_ioctl32 17128 1 videodev hp_wmi 18092 0 serio_raw 13211 0 sparse_keymap 13890 1 hp_wmi mxm_wmi 13021 1 nouveau video 19651 1 nouveau wmi 19256 2 hp_wmi,mxm_wmi mac_hid 13253 0 lp 17799 0 parport 46562 3 parport_pc,ppdev,lp r8169 62190 0 ------------------------------------------------------------------- COMMAND sudo su modprobe -v ath9k OUTPUT ------------------------------------------------------------------- insmod /lib/modules/3.2.0-67-generic/kernel/net/wireless/cfg80211.ko insmod /lib/modules/3.2.0-67-generic/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath.ko insmod /lib/modules/3.2.0-67-generic/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath9k/ath9k_hw.ko insmod /lib/modules/3.2.0-67-generic/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath9k/ath9k_common.ko insmod /lib/modules/3.2.0-67-generic/kernel/net/mac80211/mac80211.ko insmod /lib/modules/3.2.0-67-generic/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath9k/ath9k.ko ------------------------------------------------------------------- COMMAND do-release-upgrade OUTPUT ------------------------------------------------------------------- Err Upgrade tool signature 404 Not Found [IP: 91.189.88.149 80] Err Upgrade tool 404 Not Found [IP: 91.189.88.149 80] Fetched 0 B in 0s (0 B/s) WARNING:root:file 'quantal.tar.gz.gpg' missing Failed to fetch Fetching the upgrade failed. There may be a network problem. ------------------------------------------------------------------- COMMAND sudo modprobe ath9k dmesg | grep ath9k NO OUTPUT FOR THEM COMMAND dmesg | grep -e ath -e 80211 OUTPUT ------------------------------------------------------------------- [ 13.232372] type=1400 audit(1408867538.399:9): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/telepathy/mission-control-5" pid=975 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 13.232615] type=1400 audit(1408867538.399:10): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/telepathy/telepathy-*" pid=975 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 15.186599] ath3k: probe of 3-4:1.0 failed with error -110 [ 15.186635] usbcore: registered new interface driver ath3k [ 88.219329] cfg80211: Calling CRDA to update world regulatory domain [ 88.351665] cfg80211: World regulatory domain updated: [ 88.351667] cfg80211: (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp) [ 88.351670] cfg80211: (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 88.351671] cfg80211: (2457000 KHz - 2482000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 88.351673] cfg80211: (2474000 KHz - 2494000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 88.351674] cfg80211: (5170000 KHz - 5250000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 88.351675] cfg80211: (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) ------------------------------------------------------------------- COMMAND sudo apt-get install touchpad-indicator OUTPUT ------------------------------------------------------------------- Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following extra packages will be installed: gir1.2-gconf-2.0 python-pyudev Suggested packages: python-qt4 python-pyside.qtcore The following NEW packages will be installed: gir1.2-gconf-2.0 python-pyudev touchpad-indicator 0 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 84.1 kB of archives. After this operation, 1,136 kB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y Get:1 http://ppa.launchpad.net/atareao/atareao/ubuntu/ precise/main touchpad-indicator all 0.9.3.12-1ubuntu1 [46.5 kB] Get:2 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/main gir1.2-gconf-2.0 amd64 3.2.5-0ubuntu2 [7,098 B] Get:3 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/main python-pyudev all 0.13-1 [30.5 kB] Fetched 84.1 kB in 2s (31.6 kB/s) Selecting previously unselected package gir1.2-gconf-2.0. (Reading database ... 169322 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking gir1.2-gconf-2.0 (from .../gir1.2-gconf-2.0_3.2.5-0ubuntu2_amd64.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package python-pyudev. Unpacking python-pyudev (from .../python-pyudev_0.13-1_all.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package touchpad-indicator. Unpacking touchpad-indicator (from .../touchpad-indicator_0.9.3.12-1ubuntu1_all.deb) ... Processing triggers for bamfdaemon ... Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf.index... Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ... Processing triggers for gnome-menus ... Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme ... Processing triggers for software-center ... INFO:softwarecenter.db.update:no translation information in database needed Setting up gir1.2-gconf-2.0 (3.2.5-0ubuntu2) ... Setting up python-pyudev (0.13-1) ... Setting up touchpad-indicator (0.9.3.12-1ubuntu1) ... ------------------------------------------------------------------- Not able to find ( drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath9k/hw.c ) or ( drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath9k/hw.h )

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Feedback on meeting of the Linux User Group of Mauritius

Once upon a time in a country far far away... Okay, actually it's not that bad but it has been a while since the last meeting of the Linux User Group of Mauritius (LUGM). There have been plans in the past but it never really happened. Finally, Selven took the opportunity and organised a new meetup with low administrative overhead, proper scheduling on alternative dates and a small attendee's survey on the preferred option. All the pre-work was nicely executed. First, I wasn't sure whether it would be possible to attend. Luckily I got some additional information, like children should come, too, and I was sold to this community gathering. According to other long-term members of the LUGM it was the first time 'ever' that a gathering was organised outside of Quatre Bornes, and I have to admit it was great! LUGM - user group meeting on the 15.06.2013 in L'Escalier Quick overview of Linux & the LUGM With a little bit of delay the LUGM meeting officially started with a quick overview and introduction to Linux presented by Avinash. During the session he told the audience that there had been quite some activity over the island some years ago but unfortunately it had been quiet during recent times. Of course, we also spoke about the acknowledged world dominance of Linux - thanks to Android - and the interesting possibilities for countries like Mauritius. It is known that a couple of public institutions have there back-end infrastructure running on Red Hat Linux systems but the presence on the desktop is still very low. Users are simply hanging on to Windows XP and older versions of Microsoft Office. Following the introduction of the LUGM Ajay joined into the session and it quickly changed into a panel discussion with lots of interesting questions and answers, sharing of first-hand experience either on the job or in private use of Linux, and a couple of ideas about how the LUGM could promote Linux a bit more in Mauritius. It was great to get an insight into other attendee's opinion and activities. Especially taking into consideration that I'm already using Linux since around 1996/97. Frankly speaking, I bought a SuSE 4.x distribution back in those days because I couldn't achieve certain tasks on Windows NT 4.0 without spending a fortune. OpenELEC Mediacenter Next, Selven gave us decent introduction on OpenELEC: Open Embedded Linux Entertainment Center (OpenELEC) is a small Linux distribution built from scratch as a platform to turn your computer into an XBMC media center. OpenELEC is designed to make your system boot fast, and the install is so easy that anyone can turn a blank PC into a media machine in less than 15 minutes. I didn't know about it until this presentation. In the past, I was mainly attached to Video Disk Recorder (VDR) as it allows the use of satellite receiver cards very easily. Hm, somehow I'm still missing my precious HTPC that I had to leave back in Germany years ago. It was great piece of hardware and software; self-built PC in a standard HiFi-sized (43cm) black desktop casing with 2 full-featured Hauppauge DVB-s cards, an old-fashioned Voodoo graphics card, WiFi card, Pioneer slot-in DVD drive, and fully remote controlled via infra-red thanks to Debian, VDR and LIRC. With EP Guide, scheduled recordings and general multimedia centre it offered all the necessary comfort in the living room, besides a Nintendo game console; actually a GameCube at that time... But I have to admit that putting OpenELEC on a Raspberry Pi would be a cool DIY project in the near future. LUGM - our next generation of linux users (15.06.2013) Project Evil Genius (PEG) Don't be scared of the paragraph header. Ish gave us a cool explanation why he named it PEG - Project Evil Genius; it's because of the time of the day when he was scripting down his ideas to be able to build, package and provide software applications to various Linux distributions. The main influence came from openSuSE but the platform didn't cater for his needs and ideas, so he started to work out something on his own. During his passionate session he also talked about the amazing experience he had due to other Linux users from all over the world. During the next couple of days Ish promised to put his script to GitHub... Looking forward to that. Check out Ish's personal blog over at hacklog.in. Highly recommended to read. Why India? Simply because the registration fees per year for an Indian domain are approximately 20 times less than for a Mauritian domain (.mu). Exploring the beach of L'Escalier af the meeting 'After-party' at the beach of L'Escalier Puh, after such interesting sessions, ideas around Linux and good conversation during the breaks and over lunch it was time for a little break-out. Selven suggested that we all should head down to the beach of L'Escalier and get some impressions of nature down here in the south of the island. Talking about 'beach' ;-) - absolutely not comparable to the white-sanded ones here in Flic en Flac... There are no lagoons down at the south coast of Mauriitus, and watching the breaking waves is a different experience and joy after all. Unfortunately, I was a little bit worried about the thoughtless littering at such a remote location. You have to drive on natural paths through the sugar cane fields and I was really shocked by the amount of rubbish lying around almost everywhere. Sad, really sad and it concurs with Yasir's recent article on the same topic. Resumé & outlook It was a great event. I met with new people, had some good conversations, and even my children enjoyed themselves the whole day. The location was well-chosen, enough space for each and everyone, parking spaces and even a playground for the children. Also, a big "Thank You" to Selven and his helpers for the organisation and preparation of lunch. I'm kind of sure that this was an exceptional meeting of LUGM and I'm really looking forward to the next gathering of Linux geeks. Hopefully, soon. All images are courtesy of Avinash Meetoo. More pictures are available on Flickr.

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Google Analytics on Android

- by pjv

There is a specific and official analytics SDK for native Android apps (note that I'm not talking about webpages in apps on a phone). This library basically sends pages and events to Google Analytics and you can view your analytics in exactly the same dashboard as for websites. Since my background is apps rather than websites, and since a lot of the Google Analytics terminology seems particularly inapplicable to a native app, I need some pointers. Please discuss my remarks, provide some clarification where you think I'm off-track, and above all share good experiences! 1. Page Views Pages mostly can match different Activities (and Dialogs) being displayed. Activities can be visible behind non-full-screen Activities however, though only the top-level Activity can be interacted. This sort-off clashes with a "(page) view". You'd also want at least one page view for each visit and therefore put one page view tracker in the Application class. However this does not constitute a window or sorts. Usually an Activity will open at the same time, so the time spent on that page will have been 0. This will influence your "time spent" statistics. How are these counted anyway? Moreover, there is a loose coupling between the Activities, by means of Intents. A user can, much like on any website, step in at any Activity, although usually this then concerns resuming the application where he left off. This makes that the hierarchy of Activities usually is very flat. And since there are no url's involved. What meaning would using slashes in page titles have, such as "/Home"? All pages would appear on an equal level in the reports, so no content drilldown. Non-unique page views seem to be counted as some kind of indicator of successfulness: how often does the visitor revisit the page. When the user rotates the screen however usually an Activity resumes again, thus making it a new page view. This happens a lot. Maybe a well-thought-through placement of the call might solve this, or placing several, I'm not sure. How to deal with Page Views? 2. Events I'd say there are two sorts: A user event Something that happened, usually as an indirect consequence of the above. The latter particularly is giving me headaches. First of all, many events aren't written in code any more, but pieced logically together by means of Intents. This means that there is no place to put the analytics call. You'd either have to give up this advantage and start doing it the old-fashioned way in favor of good analytics, or, just be missing some events. Secondly, as a developer you're not so much interested in when a user clicks a button, but if the action that should have been performed really was performed and what the result was. There seems to be no clear way to get resulting data into Google Analytics (what's up with the integers? I want to put in Strings!). The same that applies to the flat pages hierarchy, also goes for the event categories. You could do "vertical" categories (topically, that is), but some code is shared "horizontally" and the tracking will be equally shared. Just as with the Intents mechanism, inheritance makes it hard for you to put the tracking in the right places at all times. And I can't really imagine "horizontal" categories. Unless you start making really small categories, such as all the items form the same menu in one category, I have a hard time grasping the concept. Finally, how do you deal with cancelling? Usually you both have an explicit cancel mechanism by ways of a button, as well as the implicit cancel when the "back"-button is pressed to leave the activity and there were no changes. The latter also applies to "saves", when the back button is pressed and there ARE changes. How are you consequently going to catch all these if not by doing all the "back"-button work yourself? How to deal with events? 3. Goals For goal types I have choice of: URL Destination, Time on Site, and Pages/Visit. Most apps don't have a funnel that leads the user to some "registration done" or "order placed" page. Apps have either already been bought (in which case you want to stimulate the user to love your app, so that he might bring on new buyers) or are paid for by in-app ads. So URL Destination is not a very important goal. Time on Site also seems troublesome. First, I have some doubt on how this would be measured. Second, I don't necessarily want my user to spend a lot of time in my already paid app, just be active and content. Equivalently, why not mention how frequent a user uses your app? Regarding Pages/Visit I already mentioned how screen orientation changes blow up the page view numbers. In an app I'd be most interested in events/visit to measure the user's involvement/activity. If he's intensively using the app then he must be loving it right? Furthermore, I also have some small funnels (that do not lead to conversion though) that I want to see streamlined. In my mind those funnels would end in events rather than page views but that seems not to be possible. I could also measure clickthroughs on in-app ads, but then I'd need to track those as Page Views rather than Events, in view of "URL Destination". What are smart goals for apps and how can you fit them on top of Analytics? 4. Optimisation Is there a smart way to manually do what "Website Optimiser" does for websites? Most importantly, how would I track different landing page designs? 5. Traffic Sources Referrals deal with installation time referrals, if you're smart enough to get them included. But perhaps I'd also want to get some data which third-party app sends users to my app to perform some actions (this app interoperability is possible via Intents). Many of the terminologies related to "Traffic Sources" seem totally meaningless and there is no possibility of connecting in AdSense. What are smart uses of this data? 6. Visitors Of the "Browser capabilities", "Network Properties" and "Mobile" tabs, many things are pointless as they have no influence on / relation with my mostly offline app that won't use flash anyway. Only if you drill down far enough, can you get to OS versions, which do matter a lot. I even forgot where you could check what exact Android devices visited. What are smart uses of this data? How can you make the relevant info more prominent? 7. Other No in-page analytics. I have to register my app as a web-url (What!?)?

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Advice for a distracted, unhappy, recently graduated programmer? [closed]

- by Re-Invent

I graduated 4 months ago. I had offers from a few good places to work at. At the same time I wanted to stick to building a small software business of my own, still have some ideas with good potential, some half done projects frozen in my github. But due to social pressures, I chose a job, the pay is great, but I am half-passionate about it. A small team of smart folks building useful product, working out contracts across the world. I've started finding it extremely boring. Boring to the extent that I skip 2-3 days a week together not doing work. Neither do I spend that time progressing any of my own projects. Yes, I feel stupid at the way I'm wasting time, but I don't understand exactly why is it happening. It's as if all the excitement has been drained. What can I do about it? Long version: School - I was in third standard. Only students, 6th grade had access to computer labs. I once peeked into the lab from the little door opening. No hard-disks, MS DOS on 5 1/2 inch floppies. I asked a senior student to play some sound in BASIC. He used PLAY to compose a tune. Boy! I was so excited, I was jumping from within. Back home, asked my brother to teach me some programming. We bought a book "MODERN All About GW-BASIC for Schools & Colleges". The book had everything, right from printing, to taking input, file i/o, game programming, machine level support, etc. I was in 6th standard, wrote my first game - a wheel of fortune, rotated the wheel by manipulating 16 color palette's definition. Got internet soon, got hooked to QuickBasic programming community. Made some more games "007 in Danger", "Car Crush 2" for submission to allbasiccode archives. I was extremely excited about all this. My interests now swayed into "hacking" (computer security). Taught myself some perl, found it annoying, learnt PHP and a bit of SQL. Also taught myself Visual Basic one of the winters and wrote a pacman clone with Direct X. By the time I was in 10th standard, I created some evil tools using visual basic, php and mysql and eventually landed myself into an unpaid side-job at a government facility, building evil tools for them. It was a dream come true for crackers of that time. And so was I, still very excited. Things changed soon, last two years of school were not so great as I was balancing preps for college, work at govt. and studies for school at same time. College - College was opposite of all I had wished it to be. I imagined it to be a place where I'd spend my 4 years building something awesome. It was rather an epitome of rote learning, attendance, rules, busy schedules, ban on personal laptops, hardly any hackers surrounding you and shit like that. We had to take permissions to even introduce some cultural/creative activities in our annual schedule. The labs won't be open on weekends because the lab employees had to have their leaves. Yes, a horrible place for someone like me. I still managed to pull out a project with a friend over 2 months. Showed it to people high in the academia hierarchy. They were immensely impressed, we proposed to allow personal computers for students. They made up half-assed reasons and didn't agree. We felt frustrated. And so on, I still managed to teach myself new languages, do new projects of my own, do an intern at the same govt. facility, start a small business for sometime, give a talk at a conference I'm passionate about, win game-dev and hacking contest at most respected colleges, solve good deal of programming contest problems, etc. At the same time I was not content with all these restrictions, great emphasis on rote learning, and sheer wastage of time due to college. I never felt I was overdoing, but now I feel I burnt myself out. During my last days at college, I did an intern at a bigco. While I spent my time building prototypes for certain LBS, the other interns around me, even a good friend, was just skipping time. I thought maybe, in a few weeks he would put in some serious efforts at work assigned to him, but all he did was to find creative ways to skip work, hide his face from manager, engage people in talks if they try to question his progress, etc. I tried a few time to get him on track, but it seems all he wanted was to "not to work hard at all and still reap the fruits". I don't know how others take such people, but I find their vicinity very very poisonous to one's own motivation and productivity. Over that, the place where I come from, HRs don't give much value to what have you done past 4 years. So towards the end of out intern, we all were offered work at the bigco, but the slacker, even after not writing more than 200 lines of code was made a much better offer. I felt enraged instantly - "Is this how the corp world treats someone who does fruitful, if not extra-ordinary work form them for past 6 months?". Yes, I did try to negotiate and debate. The bigcos seem blind due to departmentalization of responsibilities and many layers of management. I decided not to be in touch with any characters of that depressing play. Probably the busy time I had at college, ignoring friends, ignoring fun and squeezing every bit of free time for myself is also responsible. Probably this is what has drained all my willingness to work for anyone. I find my day job boring, at the same time I with to maintain it for financial reasons. I feel a bit burnt out, unsatisfied and at the same time an urge to quit working for someone else and start finishing my frozen side-projects (which may be profitable). Though I haven't got much to support myself with food, office, internet bills, etc in savings. I still have my day job, but I don't find it very interesting, even though the pay is higher than the slacker, I don't find money to be a great motivator here. I keep comparing myself to my past version. I wonder how to get rid of this and reboot myself back to the way I was in school days - excited about it, tinkering, building, learning new things daily, and NOT BORED?

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HTG Explains: Should You Buy Extended Warranties?

- by Chris Hoffman

Buy something at an electronics store and you’ll be confronted by a pushy salesperson who insists you need an extended warranty. You’ll also see extended warranties pushed hard when shopping online. But are they worth it? There’s a reason stores push extended warranties so hard. They’re almost always pure profit for the store involved. An electronics store may live on razor-thin product margins and make big profits on extended warranties and overpriced HDMI cables. You’re Already Getting Multiple Warranties First, back up. The product you’re buying already includes a warranty. In fact, you’re probably getting several different types of warranties. Store Return and Exchange: Most electronics stores allow you to return a malfunctioning product within the first 15 or 30 days and they’ll provide you with a new one. The exact period of time will vary from store to store. If you walk out of the store with a defective product and have to swap it for a new one within the first few weeks, this should be easy. Manufacturer Warranty: A device’s manufacturer — whether the device is a laptop, a television, or a graphics card — offers their own warranty period. The manufacturer warranty covers you after the store refuses to take the product back and exchange it. The length of this warranty depends on the type of product. For example, a cheap laptop may only offer a one-year manufacturer warranty, while a more expensive laptop may offer a two-year warranty. Credit Card Warranty Extension: Many credit cards offer free extended warranties on products you buy with that credit card. Credit card companies will often give you an additional year of warranty. For example, if you buy a laptop with a two year warranty and it fails in the third year, you could then contact your credit card company and they’d cover the cost of fixing or replacing it. Check your credit card’s benefits and fine print for more information. Why Extended Warranties Are Bad You’re already getting a fairly long warranty period, especially if you have a credit card that offers you a free extended warranty — these are fairly common. If the product you get is a “lemon” and has a manufacturing error, it will likely fail pretty soon — well within your warranty period. The extended warranty matters after all your other warranties are exhausted. In the case of a laptop with a two-year warranty that you purchase with a credit card giving you a one-year warranty extension, your extended warranty will kick in three years after you purchase the laptop. In that many years, your current laptop will likely feel pretty old and laptops that are as good — or better — will likely be pretty cheap. If it’s a television, better television displays will be available at a lower price point. You’ll either want to upgrade to a newer model or you’ll be able to buy a new, just-as-good product for very cheap. You’ll only have to pay out-of-pocket if your device fails after the normal warranty period — in over two or three years for typical laptops purchased with a decent credit card. Save the money you would have spent on the warranty and put it towards a future upgrade. How Much Do Extended Warranties Cost? Let’s look at an example from a typical pushy retail outlet, Best Buy. We went to Best Buy’s website and found a pretty standard $600 Samsung laptop. This laptop comes with a one-year warranty period. If purchased with a fairly common credit card, you can easily get a two-year warranty period on this laptop without spending an additional penny. (Yes, such credit cards are available with no yearly fees.) During the check-out process, Best Buy tries to sell you a Geek Squad “Accidental Protection Plan.” To get an additional year of Best Buy’s extended warranty, you’d have to pay $324.98 for a “3-Year Accidental Protection Plan”. You’d basically be paying more than half the price of your laptop for an additional year of warranty — remember, the standard warranties would cover you anyway for the first two years. If this laptop did break sometime between two and three years from now, we wouldn’t be surprised if you could purchase a comparable laptop for about $325 anyway. And, if you don’t need to replace it, you’ve saved that money. Best Buy would object that this isn’t a standard extended warranty. It’s a supercharged warranty plan that will also provide coverage if you spill something on your laptop or drop it and break it. You just have to ask yourself a question. What are the odds that you’ll drop your laptop or spill something on it? They’re probably pretty low if you’re a typical human being. Is it worth spending more than half the price of the laptop just in case you’ll make an uncommon mistake? Probably not. There may be occasional exceptions to this — some Apple users swear by Apple’s AppleCare, for example — but you should generally avoid buying these things. There’s a reason stores are so pushy about extended warranties, and it’s not because they want to help protect you. It’s because they’re making lots of profit from these plans, and they’re making so much profit because they’re not a good deal for customers. Image Credit: Philip Taylor on Flickr

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Nokia Windows Phone 8 App Collection

- by Tim Murphy

I recently upgraded to a Nokia Lumia 920. Along with it came the availability of a number of Nokia developed apps or apps that Nokia has made available from other developers. Below is a summary of some of the ones that I have used to this point. There are quite a few of them so I won’t be covering everything that is available. Nokia Maps I am quite pleased with the accuracy of Nokia Maps and not having to tap the screen for each turn any more. The information on the screen is quite good as well. The couple of improvements I would like to see are for the voice directions to include which street or exit you need to use and improve the search accuracy. Bing maps had much better search results in my opinion. Nokia Drive This one really had me confused when I first setup the phone. I was driving down the road and suddenly I am getting notification tones, but there were no visual notifications on the phone. It seems that in their infinite wisdom Nokia thinks I don’t know when I am going over the speed limit and need to be told. ESPN I really liked my ESPN app on Windows Phone 7.5, but I am not getting the type of experience I was looking for out of this app. While it allows me to pick my favorite teams, but there isn’t a pivot page or panorama page that shows a summary of my favorite teams. I have also found that the live tile don’t update very often. Over all I am rather disappointed compared app produced by ESPN. Smart Shoot I really need to get the kids to let me use this on. I like the concept, but I need to spend more time with it. The idea how running the camera through a continuous shooting mode and then picking the best is something that I have done with my DSLR and am glad to see it available here. Cinemagraph Here is a fun filter. It doesn’t have the most accurate editing features, but it is fun to stop certain parts of a scene and let other parts move. As a test I stopped the traffic on the highway and let the traffic on the frontage road flow. It makes for a fun effect. If nothing else it could be great for sending prank animations to your friends. YouSendIt I have only briefly touched this application. What I don’t understand is why it is needed. Most of the functionality seems to be similar to SkyDrive and it gives you less storage. They only feature that seems to differentiate the app is the signature capability. Creative Studio This app has some nice quick edits, but it is not very comprehensive. I am also not to thrilled with the user experience. It puts you though an initial color cast series that I’m not sure why it is there. Discovery of the remaining adjustments isn’t that great. In the end I found myself wanting Thumbia back. Panorama This is one of the apps that I like. I found it easy to use as it guides you with a target circle that you center for it to take the next pictures. It also stitches the images with amazing speed. The one thing I wish it had was the capability to turn the phone into portrait orientation and do a taller panorama. Perhaps we will see this in the future. Nokia Music After getting over the missing album art I found that there were a number of missing features with this app as well. I have a Zune HD and I am used to being able to go through my collection and adding songs, albums or artists to my now playing. There also doesn’t seem to be a way to manage playlists that I have seen yet. Other than that the UI is familiar and it give Nokia City Lens Augmented reality is a cool concept, but I still haven’t seen it implemented in a compelling fashion beyond a demo at TED a couple of years ago. The app still leaves me wanting as well. It does give an interesting toy. It gives you the ability to look for general categories and see general direction and clusters of locations. I think as this concept is better thought out it will become more compelling. Nokia Trailers I don’t know how often I will use this app, but I do like being able to see what movies are being promoted. I can’t wait for The Hobbit to come out and the trailer was just what the doctor ordered. I can see coming back to this app from time to time. PhotoBeamer PhotoBeamer is a strange beast that needs a better instruction manual. It seems a lot like magic but very confusing. I need some more testing, but I don’t think this is something that most people are going to understand quickly and may give up before getting it to work. I may put an update here after playing with it further. Ringtone Maker The app was just published and it didn’t work very well for me. It couldn’t find 95% of the songs that Nokia Music was playing for me and crashed several times. It also had songs named wrong that when I checked them in Nokia Music they were fine. This app looks like it has a long way to go. Summary In all I think that Nokia is offering a well rounded set of initial applications that can get any new owner started. There is definitely room for improvement in all of these apps. The main need is usability upgrades. I would guess that with feedback from users they will come up to acceptable levels. Try them out and see if you agree. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone,Nokia,Lumia,Nokia Apps,ESPN,PhotoBeamer,City Lens,YouSendIt,Drive,Maps

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SOA Implementation Challenges

Why do companies think that if they put up a web service that they are doing Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)? Unfortunately, the IT and business world love to run on the latest hype or buzz words of which very few even understand the meaning. One of the largest issues companies have today as they consider going down the path of SOA, is the lack of knowledge regarding the architectural style and the over usage of the term SOA. So how do we solve this issue?I am sure most of you are thinking by now that you know what SOA is because you developed a few web services. Isn’t that SOA, right? No, that is not SOA, but instead Just Another Web Service (JAWS). For us to better understand what SOA is let’s look at a few definitions.Douglas K. Bary defines service-oriented architecture as a collection of services. These services are enabled to communicate with each other in order to pass data or coordinating some activity with other services.If you look at this definition closely you will notice that Bary states that services communicate with each other. Let us compare this statement with my first statement regarding companies that claim to be doing SOA when they have just a collection of web services. In order for these web services to for an SOA application they need to be interdependent on one another forming some sort of architectural hierarchy. Just because a company has a few web services does not mean that they are all interconnected.SearchSOA from TechTarget.com states that SOA defines how two computing entities work collectively to enable one entity to perform a unit of work on behalf of another. Once again, just because a company has a few web services does not guarantee that they are even working together let alone if they are performing work for each other.SearchSOA also points out service interactions should be self-contained and loosely-coupled so that all interactions operate independent of each other.Of all the definitions regarding SOA Thomas Erl’s seems to shed the most light on this concept. He states that “SOA establishes an architectural model that aims to enhance the efficiency, agility, and productivity of an enterprise by positioning services as the primary means through which solution logic is represented in support of the realization of the strategic goals associated with service-oriented computing.” (Erl, 2011) Once again this definition proves that a collection of web services does not mean that a company is doing SOA. However, it does mean that a company has a collection of web services, and that is it.In order for a company to start to go down the path of SOA, they must take a hard look at their existing business process while abstracting away any technology so that they can define what is they really want to accomplish. Once a company has done this, they can begin to factor out common sub business process like credit card process, user authentication or system notifications in to small components that can be built independent of each other and then reassembled to form new and dynamic services that are loosely coupled and agile in that they can change as a business grows.Another key pitfall of companies doing SOA is the fact that they let vendors drive their architecture. Why do companies do this? Vendors’ do not hold your company’s success as their top priority; in fact they hold their own success as their top priority by selling you as much stuff as you are willing to buy. In my experience companies tend to strive for the maximum amount of benefits with a minimal amount of cost. Does anyone else see any conflicts between this and the driving force behind vendors.Mike Kavis recommends in an article written in CIO.com that companies need to figure out what they need before they talk to a vendor or at least have some idea of what they need. It is important to thoroughly evaluate each vendor and watch them perform a live demo of their system so that you as the company fully understand what kind of product or service the vendor is actually offering. In addition, do research on each vendor that you are considering, check out blog posts, online reviews, and any information you can find on the vendor through various search engines.Finally he recommends companies to verify any recommendations supplied by a vendor. From personal experience this is very important. I can remember when the company I worked for purchased a $200,000 add-on to their phone system that never actually worked as it was intended. In fact, just after my departure from the company started the process of attempting to get their money back from the vendor. This potentially could have been avoided if the company had done the research before selecting this vendor to ensure that their product and vendor would live up to their claims. I know that some SOA vendor offer free training regarding SOA because they know that there are a lot of misconceptions about the topic. Superficially this is a great thing for companies to take part in especially if the company is starting to implement SOA architecture and are still unsure about some topics or are looking for some guidance regarding the topic. However beware that some companies will focus on their product line only regarding the training. As an example, InfoWorld.com claims that companies providing deep seminars disguised as training, focusing more about ESBs and SOA governance technology, and less on how to approach and solve the architectural issues of the attendees.In short, it is important to remember that we as software professionals are responsible for guiding a business’s technology sections should be well informed and fully understand any new concepts that may be considered for implementation. As I have demonstrated already a company that has a few web services does not mean that they are doing SOA. Additionally, we must not let the new buzz word of the day drive our technology, but instead our technology decisions should be driven from research and proven experience. Finally, it is important to rely on vendors when necessary, however, always take what they say with a grain of salt while cross checking any claims that they may make because we have to live with the aftermath of a system after the vendors are gone. References: Barry, D. K. (2011). Service-oriented architecture (SOA) definition. Retrieved 12 12, 2011, from Service-Architecture.com: http://www.service-architecture.com/web-services/articles/service-oriented_architecture_soa_definition.html Connell, B. (2003, 9). service-oriented architecture (SOA). Retrieved 12 12, 2011, from SearchSOA: http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/definition/service-oriented-architecture Erl, T. (2011, 12 12). Service-Oriented Architecture. Retrieved 12 12, 2011, from WhatIsSOA: http://www.whatissoa.com/p10.php InfoWorld. (2008, 6 1). Should you get your SOA knowledge from SOA vendors? . Retrieved 12 12, 2011, from InfoWorld.com: http://www.infoworld.com/d/architecture/should-you-get-your-soa-knowledge-soa-vendors-453 Kavis, M. (2008, 6 18). Top 10 Reasons Why People are Making SOA Fail. Retrieved 12 13, 2011, from CIO.com: http://www.cio.com/article/438413/Top_10_Reasons_Why_People_are_Making_SOA_Fail?page=5&taxonomyId=3016

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