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• Poor Customer Service Example

  - by MightyZot

  Lately I have been frustrated by examples of poor customer service. At least one is worth writing about because I don’t think companies realize the effects of their service policies on loyal customers. Bad Customer Service Example #1 Recently, I received an offer in the mail from my cable company, suddenLink. The offer was for an updated TiVo for $12/mo. Normally I ignore offers like this one because I already have the service they’re offering and many times advertisers are offering alternatives to what is already an excellent product offering. I tend to exhibit a high level of loyalty to the products and brands that I use. In this case, we were looking to upgrade our TiVo and this deal is attractive for several reasons: I don’t want to pay a huge amount up-front for the device, so paying a monthly amount for the device is attractive to me. My entertainment is almost all on a single invoice. I’m no longer going to be billed by suddenLink and TiVo. TiVo is still involved, so I am still loyal to the brand I love. I have resisted moving to other DVRs and services for over a decade. I called suddenLink to order the new TiVo and was rewarded with great customer service. In fact, I can’t remember ever getting poor customer service from suddenLink. They are always there to answer my technical support questions and they are very responsive to outages. Then I called TiVo. First of all, I chose the option on the phone system to change or cancel my service, which was consequently met by an inordinate hold time. (I’m calling this time inordinate because I get through very quickly if I want to purchase something.) This is a trend that I’ve noticed with companies – if you want me to be loyal to you, it should be just as easy to cancel your service as it is to purchase it. Because, I should never be cancelling because I am unhappy. And, if you ever want my business again, or more importantly a reference, then you’d better make the exit door open just as easy as the enter door. After quite some time on hold, I talked to “Victor” who was very courteous. Victor canceled my service and then told me that I could keep my current TiVo and transfer recorded programs to it from the new TiVo.  Cool I said, but what about the cost?  He said there was no extra cost.  This was also attractive to me because I paid for my TiVo and it would be good to use it for something at least.  That was four months ago. This month I noticed that TiVo was still charging me for my original service. I was a little upset, but I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. After all, I am a loyal TiVo customer and I have resisted moving to other solutions for over a decade. I’m sure they will do whatever it takes to keep my business, through TiVo or through suddenLink. After quite some time on hold, I was able to talk to a customer service representative, “Les”. I explained that I am a loyal TiVo customer, but I purchased this deal through my cable provider. I’m still with TiVo, I just wanted a single bill and to take advantage of the pay-over-time option. “Les” told me that he was very sorry to hear that I’m leaving TiVo, to which I responded again that I wasn’t leaving TiVo, I just want one invoice, and to take advantage of the pay-over-time. So, after explaining that I requested a termination of the non-suddenLink account (TiVo can see both of course), I was put on hold again for quite some time while my refund was “approved”.  “Les” said that he could see my cancellation request back in July. Note that it is now November, so they have billed me inappropriately four times. After quite some time, he came back on the line and told me that he was able to “get me most of my money back.” He got approval to refund 90 days. Even though I requested cancellation of one of my accounts, TiVo has that cancellation request on file and they admit overbilling me, I am going to get “most” of my money back. To top this experience off, when we were ready to hang up, “Les” told me that he was sorry to see me go and that he hoped I would come back to TiVo again. Again, I explained to “Les” that I have not left TiVo. I am just paying them through suddenLink. At that point, he went into a small dissertation about how this is a special arrangement they have with suddenLink and very few others. He made me feel like I was doing something wrong. Why should I feel that way? TiVo made the deal with suddenLink, not me, and the deal seemed like a good compromise for me to be able to get what I need. Here is what TiVo Customer Service accomplished on those two calls – I no longer feel like I need to be loyal to the TiVo brand or service. If I had been treated better on these two calls, I would still be recommending TiVo to my friends. They would still be getting revenue from a loyal customer, who paid the same rate for over a decade, and this article wouldn’t be here for you to read. Interesting… In my opinion, if you want brand loyalty, be loyal to your customers!

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• Office 2010: It&rsquo;s not just DOC(X) and XLS(X)

  - by andrewbrust

  Office 2010 has released to manufacturing.  The bits have left the (product team’s) building.  Will you upgrade? This version of Office is officially numbered 14, a designation that correlates with the various releases, through the years, of Microsoft Word.  There were six major versions of Word for DOS, during whose release cycles came three 16-bit Windows versions.  Then, starting with Word 95 and counting through Word 2007, there have been six more versions – all for the 32-bit Windows platform.  Skip version 13 to ward off folksy bad luck (and, perhaps, the bugs that could come with it) and that brings us to version 14, which includes implementations for both 32- and 64-bit Windows platforms.  We’ve come a long way baby.  Or have we? As it does every three years or so, debate will now start to rage on over whether we need a “14th” version the PC platform’s standard word processor, or a “13th” version of the spreadsheet.  If you accept the premise of that question, then you may be on a slippery slope toward answering it in the negative.  Thing is, that premise is valid for certain customers and not others. The Microsoft Office product has morphed from one that offered core word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and email functionality to a suite of applications that provides unique, new value-added features, and even whole applications, in the context of those core services.  The core apps thus grow in mission: Excel is a BI tool.  Word is a collaborative editorial system for the production of publications.  PowerPoint is a media production platform for for live presentations and, increasingly, for delivering more effective presentations online.  Outlook is a time and task management system.  Access is a rich client front-end for data-driven self-service SharePoint applications.  OneNote helps you capture ideas, corral random thoughts in a semi-structured way, and then tie them back to other, more rigidly structured, Office documents. Google Docs and other cloud productivity platforms like Zoho don’t really do these things.  And there is a growing chorus of voices who say that they shouldn’t, because those ancillary capabilities are over-engineered, over-produced and “under-necessary.”  They might say Microsoft is layering on superfluous capabilities to avoid admitting that Office’s core capabilities, the ones people really need, have become commoditized. It’s hard to take sides in that argument, because different people, and the different companies that employ them, have different needs.  For my own needs, it all comes down to three basic questions: will the new version of Office save me time, will it make the mundane parts of my job easier, and will it augment my services to customers?  I need my time back.  I need to spend more of it with my family, and more of it focusing on my own core capabilities rather than the administrative tasks around them.  And I also need my customers to be able to get more value out of the services I provide. Help me triage my inbox, help me get proposals done more quickly and make them easier to read.  Let me get my presentations done faster, make them more effective and make it easier for me to reuse materials from other presentations.  And, since I’m in the BI and data business, help me and my customers manage data and analytics more easily, both on the desktop and online. Those are my criteria.  And, with those in mind, Office 2010 is looking like a worthwhile upgrade.  Perhaps it’s not earth-shattering, but it offers a combination of incremental improvements and a few new major capabilities that I think are quite compelling.  I provide a brief roundup of them here.  It’s admittedly arbitrary and not comprehensive, but I think it tells the Office 2010 story effectively. Across the Suite More than any other, this release of Office aims to give collaboration a real workout.  In certain apps, for the first time, documents can be opened simultaneously by multiple users, with colleagues’ changes appearing in near real-time.  Web-browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote will be available to extend collaboration to contributors who are off the corporate network. The ribbon user interface is now more pervasive (for example, it appears in OneNote and in Outlook’s main window).  It’s also customizable, allowing users to add, easily, buttons and options of their choosing, into new tabs, or into new groups within existing tabs. Microsoft has also taken the File menu (which was the “Office Button” menu in the 2007 release) and made it into a full-screen “Backstage” view where document-wide operations, like saving, printing and online publishing are performed. And because, more and more, heavily formatted content is cut and pasted between documents and applications, Office 2010 makes it easier to manage the retention or jettisoning of that formatting right as the paste operation is performed.  That’s much nicer than stripping it off, or adding it back, afterwards. And, speaking of pasting, a number of Office apps now make it especially easy to insert screenshots within their documents.  I know that’s useful to me, because I often document or critique applications and need to show them in action.  For the vast majority of users, I expect that this feature will be more useful for capturing snapshots of Web pages, but we’ll have to see whether this feature becomes popular.   Excel At first glance, Excel 2010 looks and acts nearly identically to the 2007 version.  But additional glances are necessary.  It’s important to understand that lots of people in the working world use Excel as more of a database, analytics and mathematical modeling tool than merely as a spreadsheet.  And it’s also important to understand that Excel wasn’t designed to handle such workloads past a certain scale.  That all changes with this release. The first reason things change is that Excel has been tuned for performance.  It’s been optimized for multi-threaded operation; previously lengthy processes have been shortened, especially for large data sets; more rows and columns are allowed and, for the first time, Excel (and the rest of Office) is available in a 64-bit version.  For Excel, this means users can take advantage of more than the 2GB of memory that the 32-bit version is limited to. On the analysis side, Excel 2010 adds Sparklines (tiny charts that fit into a single cell and can therefore be presented down an entire column or across a row) and Slicers (a more user-friendly filter mechanism for PivotTables and charts, which visually indicates what the filtered state of a given data member is).  But most important, Excel 2010 supports the new PowerPIvot add-in which brings true self-service BI to Office.  PowerPivot allows users to import data from almost anywhere, model it, and then analyze it.  Rather than forcing users to build “spreadmarts” or use corporate-built data warehouses, PowerPivot models function as true columnar, in-memory OLAP cubes that can accommodate millions of rows of data and deliver fast drill-down performance. And speaking of OLAP, Excel 2010 now supports an important Analysis Services OLAP feature called write-back.  Write-back is especially useful in financial forecasting scenarios for which Excel is the natural home.  Support for write-back is long overdue, but I’m still glad it’s there, because I had almost given up on it.   PowerPoint This version of PowerPoint marks its progression from a presentation tool to a video and photo editing and production tool.  Whether or not it’s successful in this pursuit, and if offering this is even a sensible goal, is another question. Regardless, the new capabilities are kind of interesting.  A greatly enhanced set of slide transitions with 3D effects; in-product photo and video editing; accommodation of embedded videos from services such as YouTube; and the ability to save a presentation as a video each lay testimony to PowerPoint’s transformation into a media tool and away from a pure presentation tool. These capabilities also recognize the importance of the Web as both a source for materials and a channel for disseminating PowerPoint output. Congruent with that is PowerPoint’s new ability to broadcast a slide presentation, using a quickly-generated public URL, without involving the hassle or expense of a Web meeting service like GoToMeeting or Microsoft’s own LiveMeeting.  Slides presented through this broadcast feature retain full color fidelity and transitions and animations are preserved as well.   Outlook Microsoft’s ubiquitous email/calendar/contact/task management tool gains long overdue speed improvements, especially against POP3 email accounts.  Outlook 2010 also supports multiple Exchange accounts, rather than just one; tighter integration with OneNote; and a new Social Connector providing integration with, and presence information from, online social network services like LinkedIn and Facebook (not to mention Windows Live).  A revamped conversation view now includes messages that are part of a given thread regardless of which folder they may be stored in. I don’t know yet how well the Social Connector will work or whether it will keep Outlook relevant to those who live on Facebook and LinkedIn.  But among the other features, there’s very little not to like.   OneNote To me, OneNote is the part of Office that just keeps getting better.  There is one major caveat to this, which I’ll cover in a moment, but let’s first catalog what new stuff OneNote 2010 brings.  The best part of OneNote, is the way each of its versions have managed hierarchy: Notebooks have sections, sections have pages, pages have sub pages, multiple notes can be contained in either, and each note supports infinite levels of indentation.  None of that is new to 2010, but the new version does make creation of pages and subpages easier and also makes simple work out of promoting and demoting pages from sub page to full page status.  And relationships between pages are quite easy to create now: much like a Wiki, simply typing a page’s name in double-square-brackets (“[[…]]”) creates a link to it. OneNote is also great at integrating content outside of its notebooks.  With a new Dock to Desktop feature, OneNote becomes aware of what window is displayed in the rest of the screen and, if it’s an Office document or a Web page, links the notes you’re typing, at the time, to it.  A single click from your notes later on will bring that same document or Web page back on-screen.  Embedding content from Web pages and elsewhere is also easier.  Using OneNote’s Windows Key+S combination to grab part of the screen now allows you to specify the destination of that bitmap instead of automatically creating a new note in the Unfiled Notes area.  Using the Send to OneNote buttons in Internet Explorer and Outlook result in the same choice. Collaboration gets better too.  Real-time multi-author editing is better accommodated and determining author lineage of particular changes is easily carried out. My one pet peeve with OneNote is the difficulty using it when I’m not one a Windows PC.  OneNote’s main competitor, Evernote, while I believe inferior in terms of features, has client versions for PC, Mac, Windows Mobile, Android, iPhone, iPad and Web browsers.  Since I have an Android phone and an iPad, I am practically forced to use it.  However, the OneNote Web app should help here, as should a forthcoming version of OneNote for Windows Phone 7.  In the mean time, it turns out that using OneNote’s Email Page ribbon button lets you move a OneNote page easily into EverNote (since every EverNote account gets a unique email address for adding notes) and that Evernote’s Email function combined with Outlook’s Send to OneNote button (in the Move group of the ribbon’s Home tab) can achieve the reverse.   Access To me, the big change in Access 2007 was its tight integration with SharePoint lists.  Access 2010 and SharePoint 2010 continue this integration with the introduction of SharePoint’s Access Services.  Much as Excel Services provides a SharePoint-hosted experience for viewing (and now editing) Excel spreadsheet, PivotTable and chart content, Access Services allows for SharePoint browser-hosted editing of Access data within the forms that are built in the Access client itself. To me this makes all kinds of sense.  Although it does beg the question of where to draw the line between Access, InfoPath, SharePoint list maintenance and SharePoint 2010’s new Business Connectivity Services.  Each of these tools provide overlapping data entry and data maintenance functionality. But if you do prefer Access, then you’ll like  things like templates and application parts that make it easier to get off the blank page.  These features help you quickly get tables, forms and reports built out.  To make things look nice, Access even gets its own version of Excel’s Conditional Formatting feature, letting you add data bars and data-driven text formatting.   Word As I said at the beginning of this post, upgrades to Office are about much more than enhancing the suite’s flagship word processing application. So are there any enhancements in Word worth mentioning?  I think so.  The most important one has to be the collaboration features.  Essentially, when a user opens a Word document that is in a SharePoint document library (or Windows Live SkyDrive folder), rather than the whole document being locked, Word has the ability to observe more granular locks on the individual paragraphs being edited.  Word also shows you who’s editing what and its Save function morphs into a sync feature that both saves your changes and loads those made by anyone editing the document concurrently. There’s also a new navigation pane that lets you manage sections in your document in much the same way as you manage slides in a PowerPoint deck.  Using the navigation pane, you can reorder sections, insert new ones, or promote and demote sections in the outline hierarchy.  Not earth shattering, but nice.   Other Apps and Summarized Findings What about InfoPath, Publisher, Visio and Project?  I haven’t looked at them yet.  And for this post, I think that’s fine.  While those apps (and, arguably, Access) cater to specific tasks, I think the apps we’ve looked at in this post service the general purpose needs of most users.  And the theme in those 2010 apps is clear: collaboration is key, the Web and productivity are indivisible, and making data and analytics into a self-service amenity is the way to go.  But perhaps most of all, features are still important, as long as they get you through your day faster, rather than adding complexity for its own sake.  I would argue that this is true for just about every product Microsoft makes: users want utility, not complexity.

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• Camera doesn't move

  - by hugo

  Here is my code, as my subject indicates i have implemented a camera but I couldn't make it move. #define PI_OVER_180 0.0174532925f #define GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE 0x812F #include "metinalifeyyaz.h" #include <GL/glu.h> #include <GL/glut.h> #include <QTimer> #include <cmath> #include <QKeyEvent> #include <QWidget> #include <QDebug> metinalifeyyaz::metinalifeyyaz(QWidget *parent) : QGLWidget(parent) { this->setFocusPolicy(Qt:: StrongFocus); time = QTime::currentTime(); timer = new QTimer(this); timer->setSingleShot(true); connect(timer, SIGNAL(timeout()), this, SLOT(updateGL())); xpos = yrot = zpos = 0; walkbias = walkbiasangle = lookupdown = 0.0f; keyUp = keyDown = keyLeft = keyRight = keyPageUp = keyPageDown = false; } void metinalifeyyaz::drawBall() { //glTranslatef(6,0,4); glutSolidSphere(0.10005,300,30); } metinalifeyyaz:: ~metinalifeyyaz(){ glDeleteTextures(1,texture); } void metinalifeyyaz::initializeGL(){ glShadeModel(GL_SMOOTH); glClearColor(1.0,1.0,1.0,0.5); glClearDepth(1.0f); glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST); glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_2D); glDepthFunc(GL_LEQUAL); glClearColor(1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0); glShadeModel(GL_SMOOTH); GLfloat mat_specular[]={1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0}; GLfloat mat_shininess []={30.0}; GLfloat light_position[]={1.0,1.0,1.0}; glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT, GL_SPECULAR, mat_specular); glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT,GL_SHININESS,mat_shininess); glLightfv(GL_LIGHT0, GL_POSITION, light_position); glEnable(GL_LIGHT0); glEnable(GL_LIGHTING); QImage img1 = convertToGLFormat(QImage(":/new/prefix1/halisaha2.bmp")); QImage img2 = convertToGLFormat(QImage(":/new/prefix1/white.bmp")); glGenTextures(2,texture); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture[0]); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGB, img1.width(), img1.height(), 0, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, img1.bits()); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture[1]); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGB, img2.width(), img2.height(), 0, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, img2.bits()); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glHint(GL_PERSPECTIVE_CORRECTION_HINT, GL_NICEST); // Really nice perspective calculations } void metinalifeyyaz::resizeGL(int w, int h){ if(h==0) h=1; glViewport(0,0,w,h); glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION); glLoadIdentity(); gluPerspective(45.0f, static_cast<GLfloat>(w)/h,0.1f,100.0f); glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW); glLoadIdentity(); } void metinalifeyyaz::paintGL(){ movePlayer(); glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); glLoadIdentity(); GLfloat xtrans = -xpos; GLfloat ytrans = -walkbias - 0.50f; GLfloat ztrans = -zpos; GLfloat sceneroty = 360.0f - yrot; glLoadIdentity(); glRotatef(lookupdown, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f); glRotatef(sceneroty, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f); glTranslatef(xtrans, ytrans+50, ztrans-130); glLoadIdentity(); glTranslatef(1.0f,0.0f,-18.0f); glRotatef(45,1,0,0); drawScene(); int delay = time.msecsTo(QTime::currentTime()); if (delay == 0) delay = 1; time = QTime::currentTime(); timer->start(qMax(0,10 - delay)); } void metinalifeyyaz::movePlayer() { if (keyUp) { xpos -= sin(yrot * PI_OVER_180) * 0.5f; zpos -= cos(yrot * PI_OVER_180) * 0.5f; if (walkbiasangle >= 360.0f) walkbiasangle = 0.0f; else walkbiasangle += 7.0f; walkbias = sin(walkbiasangle * PI_OVER_180) / 10.0f; } else if (keyDown) { xpos += sin(yrot * PI_OVER_180)*0.5f; zpos += cos(yrot * PI_OVER_180)*0.5f ; if (walkbiasangle <= 7.0f) walkbiasangle = 360.0f; else walkbiasangle -= 7.0f; walkbias = sin(walkbiasangle * PI_OVER_180) / 10.0f; } if (keyLeft) yrot += 0.5f; else if (keyRight) yrot -= 0.5f; if (keyPageUp) lookupdown -= 0.5; else if (keyPageDown) lookupdown += 0.5; } void metinalifeyyaz::keyPressEvent(QKeyEvent *event) { switch (event->key()) { case Qt::Key_Escape: close(); break; case Qt::Key_F1: setWindowState(windowState() ^ Qt::WindowFullScreen); break; default: QGLWidget::keyPressEvent(event); case Qt::Key_PageUp: keyPageUp = true; break; case Qt::Key_PageDown: keyPageDown = true; break; case Qt::Key_Left: keyLeft = true; break; case Qt::Key_Right: keyRight = true; break; case Qt::Key_Up: keyUp = true; break; case Qt::Key_Down: keyDown = true; break; } } void metinalifeyyaz::changeEvent(QEvent *event) { switch (event->type()) { case QEvent::WindowStateChange: if (windowState() == Qt::WindowFullScreen) setCursor(Qt::BlankCursor); else unsetCursor(); break; default: break; } } void metinalifeyyaz::keyReleaseEvent(QKeyEvent *event) { switch (event->key()) { case Qt::Key_PageUp: keyPageUp = false; break; case Qt::Key_PageDown: keyPageDown = false; break; case Qt::Key_Left: keyLeft = false; break; case Qt::Key_Right: keyRight = false; break; case Qt::Key_Up: keyUp = false; break; case Qt::Key_Down: keyDown = false; break; default: QGLWidget::keyReleaseEvent(event); } } void metinalifeyyaz::drawScene(){ glBegin(GL_QUADS); glNormal3f(0.0f,0.0f,1.0f); // glColor3f(0,0,1); //back glVertex3f(-6,0,-4); glVertex3f(-6,-0.5,-4); glVertex3f(6,-0.5,-4); glVertex3f(6,0,-4); glEnd(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); glNormal3f(0.0f,0.0f,-1.0f); //front glVertex3f(6,0,4); glVertex3f(6,-0.5,4); glVertex3f(-6,-0.5,4); glVertex3f(-6,0,4); glEnd(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); glNormal3f(-1.0f,0.0f,0.0f); // glColor3f(0,0,1); //left glVertex3f(-6,0,4); glVertex3f(-6,-0.5,4); glVertex3f(-6,-0.5,-4); glVertex3f(-6,0,-4); glEnd(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); glNormal3f(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f); // glColor3f(0,0,1); //right glVertex3f(6,0,-4); glVertex3f(6,-0.5,-4); glVertex3f(6,-0.5,4); glVertex3f(6,0,4); glEnd(); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture[0]); glBegin(GL_QUADS); glNormal3f(0.0f,1.0f,0.0f);//top glTexCoord2f(1.0f,0.0f); glVertex3f(6,0,-4); glTexCoord2f(1.0f,1.0f); glVertex3f(6,0,4); glTexCoord2f(0.0f,1.0f); glVertex3f(-6,0,4); glTexCoord2f(0.0f,0.0f); glVertex3f(-6,0,-4); glEnd(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); glNormal3f(0.0f,-1.0f,0.0f); //glColor3f(0,0,1); //bottom glVertex3f(6,-0.5,-4); glVertex3f(6,-0.5,4); glVertex3f(-6,-0.5,4); glVertex3f(-6,-0.5,-4); glEnd(); // glPushMatrix(); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture[1]); glBegin(GL_QUADS); glNormal3f(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f); glTexCoord2f(1.0f,0.0f); //right far goal post front face glVertex3f(5,0.5,-0.95); glTexCoord2f(1.0f,1.0f); glVertex3f(5,0,-0.95); glTexCoord2f(0.0f,1.0f); glVertex3f(5,0,-1); glTexCoord2f(0.0f,0.0f); glVertex3f(5, 0.5, -1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right far goal post back face glVertex3f(5.05,0.5,-0.95); glVertex3f(5.05,0,-0.95); glVertex3f(5.05,0,-1); glVertex3f(5.05, 0.5, -1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right far goal post left face glVertex3f(5,0.5,-1); glVertex3f(5,0,-1); glVertex3f(5.05,0,-1); glVertex3f(5.05, 0.5, -1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right far goal post right face glVertex3f(5.05,0.5,-0.95); glVertex3f(5.05,0,-0.95); glVertex3f(5,0,-0.95); glVertex3f(5, 0.5, -0.95); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right near goal post front face glVertex3f(5,0.5,0.95); glVertex3f(5,0,0.95); glVertex3f(5,0,1); glVertex3f(5,0.5, 1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right near goal post back face glVertex3f(5.05,0.5,0.95); glVertex3f(5.05,0,0.95); glVertex3f(5.05,0,1); glVertex3f(5.05,0.5, 1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right near goal post left face glVertex3f(5,0.5,1); glVertex3f(5,0,1); glVertex3f(5.05,0,1); glVertex3f(5.05,0.5, 1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right near goal post right face glVertex3f(5.05,0.5,0.95); glVertex3f(5.05,0,0.95); glVertex3f(5,0,0.95); glVertex3f(5,0.5, 0.95); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right crossbar front face glVertex3f(5,0.55,-1); glVertex3f(5,0.55,1); glVertex3f(5,0.5,1); glVertex3f(5,0.5,-1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right crossbar back face glVertex3f(5.05,0.55,-1); glVertex3f(5.05,0.55,1); glVertex3f(5.05,0.5,1); glVertex3f(5.05,0.5,-1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right crossbar bottom face glVertex3f(5.05,0.5,-1); glVertex3f(5.05,0.5,1); glVertex3f(5,0.5,1); glVertex3f(5,0.5,-1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right crossbar top face glVertex3f(5.05,0.55,-1); glVertex3f(5.05,0.55,1); glVertex3f(5,0.55,1); glVertex3f(5,0.55,-1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //left far goal post front face glVertex3f(-5,0.5,-0.95); glVertex3f(-5,0,-0.95); glVertex3f(-5,0,-1); glVertex3f(-5, 0.5, -1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right far goal post back face glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5,-0.95); glVertex3f(-5.05,0,-0.95); glVertex3f(-5.05,0,-1); glVertex3f(-5.05, 0.5, -1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right far goal post left face glVertex3f(-5,0.5,-1); glVertex3f(-5,0,-1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0,-1); glVertex3f(-5.05, 0.5, -1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right far goal post right face glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5,-0.95); glVertex3f(-5.05,0,-0.95); glVertex3f(-5,0,-0.95); glVertex3f(-5, 0.5, -0.95); glColor3f(1,1,1); //left near goal post front face glVertex3f(-5,0.5,0.95); glVertex3f(-5,0,0.95); glVertex3f(-5,0,1); glVertex3f(-5,0.5, 1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right near goal post back face glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5,0.95); glVertex3f(-5.05,0,0.95); glVertex3f(-5.05,0,1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5, 1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right near goal post left face glVertex3f(-5,0.5,1); glVertex3f(-5,0,1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0,1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5, 1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right near goal post right face glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5,0.95); glVertex3f(-5.05,0,0.95); glVertex3f(-5,0,0.95); glVertex3f(-5,0.5, 0.95); glColor3f(1,1,1); //left crossbar front face glVertex3f(-5,0.55,-1); glVertex3f(-5,0.55,1); glVertex3f(-5,0.5,1); glVertex3f(-5,0.5,-1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right crossbar back face glVertex3f(-5.05,0.55,-1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0.55,1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5,1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5,-1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right crossbar bottom face glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5,-1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5,1); glVertex3f(-5,0.5,1); glVertex3f(-5,0.5,-1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right crossbar top face glVertex3f(-5.05,0.55,-1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0.55,1); glVertex3f(-5,0.55,1); glVertex3f(-5,0.55,-1); glEnd(); // glPopMatrix(); // glPushMatrix(); // glTranslatef(0,0,0); // glutSolidSphere(0.10005,500,30); // glPopMatrix(); }

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• Intermittent Could not load file or assembly / PolicyExceptions

  - by Mark S. Rasmussen

  Intermittently we'll get errors like these from our .NET 3.5 web applications: Exception: System.Configuration.ConfigurationErrorsException: Could not load file or assembly 'itextsharp, Version=4.1.2.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=8354ae6d2174ddca' or one of its dependencies. Failed to grant permission to execute. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131418) (C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\Config\web.config line 59) ---> System.IO.FileLoadException: Could not load file or assembly 'itextsharp, Version=4.1.2.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=8354ae6d2174ddca' or one of its dependencies. Failed to grant permission to execute. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131418) File name: 'itextsharp, Version=4.1.2.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=8354ae6d2174ddca' ---> System.Security.Policy.PolicyException: Execution permission cannot be acquired. at System.Security.SecurityManager.ResolvePolicy(Evidence evidence, PermissionSet reqdPset, PermissionSet optPset, PermissionSet denyPset, PermissionSet& denied, Boolean checkExecutionPermission) at System.Security.SecurityManager.ResolvePolicy(Evidence evidence, PermissionSet reqdPset, PermissionSet optPset, PermissionSet denyPset, PermissionSet& denied, Int32& securitySpecialFlags, Boolean checkExecutionPermission) at System.Reflection.Assembly._nLoad(AssemblyName fileName, String codeBase, Evidence assemblySecurity, Assembly locationHint, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean throwOnFileNotFound, Boolean forIntrospection) at System.Reflection.Assembly.InternalLoad(AssemblyName assemblyRef, Evidence assemblySecurity, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean forIntrospection) at System.Reflection.Assembly.InternalLoad(String assemblyString, Evidence assemblySecurity, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean forIntrospection) at System.Reflection.Assembly.Load(String assemblyString) at System.Web.Configuration.CompilationSection.LoadAssemblyHelper(String assemblyName, Boolean starDirective) --- End of inner exception stack trace --- at System.Web.Configuration.CompilationSection.LoadAssemblyHelper(String assemblyName, Boolean starDirective) at System.Web.Configuration.CompilationSection.LoadAllAssembliesFromAppDomainBinDirectory() at System.Web.Configuration.CompilationSection.LoadAssembly(AssemblyInfo ai) at System.Web.Configuration.AssemblyInfo.get_AssemblyInternal() at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.GetReferencedAssemblies(CompilationSection compConfig) at System.Web.Compilation.WebDirectoryBatchCompiler..ctor(VirtualDirectory vdir) at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.BatchCompileWebDirectoryInternal(VirtualDirectory vdir, Boolean ignoreErrors) at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.CompileWebFile(VirtualPath virtualPath) at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.GetVPathBuildResultInternal(VirtualPath virtualPath, Boolean noBuild, Boolean allowCrossApp, Boolean allowBuildInPrecompile) at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.GetVPathBuildResultWithNoAssert(HttpContext context, VirtualPath virtualPath, Boolean noBuild, Boolean allowCrossApp, Boolean allowBuildInPrecompile) at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.GetVirtualPathObjectFactory(VirtualPath virtualPath, HttpContext context, Boolean allowCrossApp, Boolean noAssert) at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.GetCompiledType(String virtualPath) at System.Web.Script.Services.WebServiceData.GetWebServiceData(HttpContext context, String virtualPath, Boolean failIfNoData, Boolean pageMethods, Boolean inlineScript) at System.Web.Script.Services.RestHandler.CreateHandler(HttpContext context) at System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory.GetHandler(HttpContext context, String requestType, String url, String pathTranslated) at System.Web.HttpApplication.MaterializeHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() at System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) Inner exception: System.IO.FileLoadException: Could not load file or assembly 'itextsharp, Version=4.1.2.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=8354ae6d2174ddca' or one of its dependencies. Failed to grant permission to execute. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131418) File name: 'itextsharp, Version=4.1.2.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=8354ae6d2174ddca' ---> System.Security.Policy.PolicyException: Execution permission cannot be acquired. at System.Security.SecurityManager.ResolvePolicy(Evidence evidence, PermissionSet reqdPset, PermissionSet optPset, PermissionSet denyPset, PermissionSet& denied, Boolean checkExecutionPermission) at System.Security.SecurityManager.ResolvePolicy(Evidence evidence, PermissionSet reqdPset, PermissionSet optPset, PermissionSet denyPset, PermissionSet& denied, Int32& securitySpecialFlags, Boolean checkExecutionPermission) at System.Reflection.Assembly._nLoad(AssemblyName fileName, String codeBase, Evidence assemblySecurity, Assembly locationHint, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean throwOnFileNotFound, Boolean forIntrospection) at System.Reflection.Assembly.InternalLoad(AssemblyName assemblyRef, Evidence assemblySecurity, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean forIntrospection) at System.Reflection.Assembly.InternalLoad(String assemblyString, Evidence assemblySecurity, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean forIntrospection) at System.Reflection.Assembly.Load(String assemblyString) at System.Web.Configuration.CompilationSection.LoadAssemblyHelper(String assemblyName, Boolean starDirective) web.config line 59 being: <add assembly="*"/> When these occur, the sites will YSOD untill we recycle the application pool. The sites may run for days/weeks before this occurs, or it might happen twice within the hour. I have not been able to pinpoint this to any specific request/function in our system. In this case it points to itextsharp, but it randomly points to any assembly referenced by our application, both internal and external. Running caspol verifies that the DLL has full trust permissions: C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727>caspol -rsg D:\...\bin\itextsharp.dll Microsoft (R) .NET Framework CasPol 2.0.50727.3053 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Level = Enterprise Code Groups: 1. All code: FullTrust Level = Machine Code Groups: 1. All code: Nothing 1.1. Zone - MyComputer: FullTrust Level = User Code Groups: 1. All code: FullTrust Success Our application is running on three servers, two of them are on Server 2008 Web x64 while the third is running Server 2008 R2 Web x64, all have .NET 3.5 installed, no .NET 4.0 installations. The problem only occurs on the first two that are running 2008 non R2. Running depends.exe on all three servers gives equal results for the nonR2 servers: My DLL is shown as x86 (compiled as AnyCPU, running in x64 w3wp), all other modules show as x64. Missing IESHIMS.DLL and LINKINFO.DLL - both of these seem to be red herrings according to Google. The third server shows the same, except it does not miss LINKINFO.DLL All servers are running IIS7 (7.5 for the R2 one) under a custom domain account that has been granted the necessary permissions: aspnet_regiis -ga [user] Load user profile is set to false on all three servers. I've tried setting this to true on one of the faulting servers, according to: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1846816/iis7-failed-to-grant-minimum-permission-requests By running processmonitor I can see that it's now using the C:\Users\TEMP\AppData\Local\Temp directory for various temp files - the other ones are not using any such directory. So far I'll let it run in this way to see if this changes anything. I'm in doubt however given that the third server is not exhibiting the problems, yet still has "Load user profile" set to the same value, false. I've also tried running Fuslogvw on all three servers, logging binding failures to disk. All three servers report the same binding errors for VJSharpCodeProvider and CppCodeProvider, but these seem to be normal as well and can be solved by not defining the DEBUG and TRACE constants during build. We're running about 500 websites on each server (identical, load balanced), of which 50 are under moderate load, the problem has arisen both under heavy load as well as under minimal load however. Right now I'm waiting for the errors to happen again so I can hopefully see a pattern and determine whether "Load user profile" alleviates the issue. Any suggestions in the meantime would be very welcome! Also, I don't understand how the lack of "Load user profile" would cause an issue like this? And even further, how it would seemingly work on R2 but not on plain 2008? Thanks!

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• OpenGL basics: calling glDrawElements once per object

  - by Bethor

  Hi all, continuing on from my explorations of the basics of OpenGL (see this question), I'm trying to figure out the basic principles of drawing a scene with OpenGL. I am trying to render a simple cube repeated n times in every direction. My method appears to yield terrible performance : 1000 cubes brings performance below 50fps (on a QuadroFX 1800, roughly a GeForce 9600GT). My method for drawing these cubes is as follows: done once: set up a vertex buffer and array buffer containing my cube vertices in model space set up an array buffer indexing the cube for drawing as 12 triangles done for each frame: update uniform values used by the vertex shader to move all cubes at once done for each cube, for each frame: update uniform values used by the vertex shader to move each cube to its position call glDrawElements to draw the positioned cube Is this a sane method ? If not, how does one go about something like this ? I'm guessing I need to minimize calls to glUniform, glDrawElements, or both, but I'm not sure how to do that. Full code for my little test : (depends on gletools and pyglet) I'm aware that my init code (at least) is really ugly; I'm concerned with the rendering code for each frame right now, I'll move to something a little less insane for the creation of the vertex buffers and such later on. import pyglet from pyglet.gl import * from pyglet.window import key from numpy import deg2rad, tan from gletools import ShaderProgram, FragmentShader, VertexShader, GeometryShader vertexData = [-0.5, -0.5, -0.5, 1.0, -0.5, 0.5, -0.5, 1.0, 0.5, -0.5, -0.5, 1.0, 0.5, 0.5, -0.5, 1.0, -0.5, -0.5, 0.5, 1.0, -0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 1.0, 0.5, -0.5, 0.5, 1.0, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 1.0] elementArray = [2, 1, 0, 1, 2, 3,## back face 4, 7, 6, 4, 5, 7,## front face 1, 3, 5, 3, 7, 5,## top face 2, 0, 4, 2, 4, 6,## bottom face 1, 5, 4, 0, 1, 4,## left face 6, 7, 3, 6, 3, 2]## right face def toGLArray(input): return (GLfloat*len(input))(*input) def toGLushortArray(input): return (GLushort*len(input))(*input) def initPerspectiveMatrix(aspectRatio = 1.0, fov = 45): frustumScale = 1.0 / tan(deg2rad(fov) / 2.0) fzNear = 0.5 fzFar = 300.0 perspectiveMatrix = [frustumScale*aspectRatio, 0.0 , 0.0 , 0.0 , 0.0 , frustumScale, 0.0 , 0.0 , 0.0 , 0.0 , (fzFar+fzNear)/(fzNear-fzFar) , -1.0, 0.0 , 0.0 , (2*fzFar*fzNear)/(fzNear-fzFar), 0.0 ] return perspectiveMatrix class ModelObject(object): vbo = GLuint() vao = GLuint() eao = GLuint() initDone = False verticesPool = [] indexPool = [] def __init__(self, vertices, indexing): super(ModelObject, self).__init__() if not ModelObject.initDone: glGenVertexArrays(1, ModelObject.vao) glGenBuffers(1, ModelObject.vbo) glGenBuffers(1, ModelObject.eao) glBindVertexArray(ModelObject.vao) initDone = True self.numIndices = len(indexing) self.offsetIntoVerticesPool = len(ModelObject.verticesPool) ModelObject.verticesPool.extend(vertices) self.offsetIntoElementArray = len(ModelObject.indexPool) ModelObject.indexPool.extend(indexing) glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, ModelObject.vbo) glEnableVertexAttribArray(0) #position glVertexAttribPointer(0, 4, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 0, 0) glBindBuffer(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, ModelObject.eao) glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, len(ModelObject.verticesPool)*4, toGLArray(ModelObject.verticesPool), GL_STREAM_DRAW) glBufferData(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, len(ModelObject.indexPool)*2, toGLushortArray(ModelObject.indexPool), GL_STREAM_DRAW) def draw(self): glDrawElements(GL_TRIANGLES, self.numIndices, GL_UNSIGNED_SHORT, self.offsetIntoElementArray) class PositionedObject(object): def __init__(self, mesh, pos, objOffsetUf): super(PositionedObject, self).__init__() self.mesh = mesh self.pos = pos self.objOffsetUf = objOffsetUf def draw(self): glUniform3f(self.objOffsetUf, self.pos[0], self.pos[1], self.pos[2]) self.mesh.draw() w = 800 h = 600 AR = float(h)/float(w) window = pyglet.window.Window(width=w, height=h, vsync=False) window.set_exclusive_mouse(True) pyglet.clock.set_fps_limit(None) ## input forward = [False] left = [False] back = [False] right = [False] up = [False] down = [False] inputs = {key.Z: forward, key.Q: left, key.S: back, key.D: right, key.UP: forward, key.LEFT: left, key.DOWN: back, key.RIGHT: right, key.PAGEUP: up, key.PAGEDOWN: down} ## camera camX = 0.0 camY = 0.0 camZ = -1.0 def simulate(delta): global camZ, camX, camY scale = 10.0 move = scale*delta if forward[0]: camZ += move if back[0]: camZ += -move if left[0]: camX += move if right[0]: camX += -move if up[0]: camY += move if down[0]: camY += -move pyglet.clock.schedule(simulate) @window.event def on_key_press(symbol, modifiers): global forward, back, left, right, up, down if symbol in inputs.keys(): inputs[symbol][0] = True @window.event def on_key_release(symbol, modifiers): global forward, back, left, right, up, down if symbol in inputs.keys(): inputs[symbol][0] = False ## uniforms for shaders camOffsetUf = GLuint() objOffsetUf = GLuint() perspectiveMatrixUf = GLuint() camRotationUf = GLuint() program = ShaderProgram( VertexShader(''' #version 330 layout(location = 0) in vec4 objCoord; uniform vec3 objOffset; uniform vec3 cameraOffset; uniform mat4 perspMx; void main() { mat4 translateCamera = mat4(1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, cameraOffset.x, cameraOffset.y, cameraOffset.z, 1.0f); mat4 translateObject = mat4(1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, objOffset.x, objOffset.y, objOffset.z, 1.0f); vec4 modelCoord = objCoord; vec4 positionedModel = translateObject*modelCoord; vec4 cameraPos = translateCamera*positionedModel; gl_Position = perspMx * cameraPos; }'''), FragmentShader(''' #version 330 out vec4 outputColor; const vec4 fillColor = vec4(1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f); void main() { outputColor = fillColor; }''') ) shapes = [] def init(): global camOffsetUf, objOffsetUf with program: camOffsetUf = glGetUniformLocation(program.id, "cameraOffset") objOffsetUf = glGetUniformLocation(program.id, "objOffset") perspectiveMatrixUf = glGetUniformLocation(program.id, "perspMx") glUniformMatrix4fv(perspectiveMatrixUf, 1, GL_FALSE, toGLArray(initPerspectiveMatrix(AR))) obj = ModelObject(vertexData, elementArray) nb = 20 for i in range(nb): for j in range(nb): for k in range(nb): shapes.append(PositionedObject(obj, (float(i*2), float(j*2), float(k*2)), objOffsetUf)) glEnable(GL_CULL_FACE) glCullFace(GL_BACK) glFrontFace(GL_CW) glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST) glDepthMask(GL_TRUE) glDepthFunc(GL_LEQUAL) glDepthRange(0.0, 1.0) glClearDepth(1.0) def update(dt): print pyglet.clock.get_fps() pyglet.clock.schedule_interval(update, 1.0) @window.event def on_draw(): with program: pyglet.clock.tick() glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT|GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT) glUniform3f(camOffsetUf, camX, camY, camZ) for shape in shapes: shape.draw() init() pyglet.app.run()

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• Clear/ Reset Result Table of Search page in OAF

  - by PRajkumar

  Normally problem faced by developers after creating Search Page is how to Clear/ Reset Result Table when developer open search page first time or after search when developer redirecting back to same search page from any other page (say delete page or update page)   Add following Code in your Search page Controller where you have constructed your Query Region   import oracle.apps.fnd.framework.webui.beans.layout.OAQueryBean; ... public void processRequest(OAPageContext pageContext, OAWebBean webBean) {  super.processRequest(pageContext, webBean);  OAQueryBean queryBean = (OAQueryBean)webBean.findChildRecursive("QueryRN");   // Here QueryRN is your Query Region Name as shown in following snap shot  queryBean.clearSearchPersistenceCache(pageContext); }     Note – After add this code, no need to worry about state of Application Module (AM). This code will clean up result table automatically every time when you will open Search page first time and when you are redirecting back to search page. But still as per good coding standard while redirecting back to search page always keep AM state to FALSE

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• Login to Windows 8 Desktop Mode Automatically with ClassicStarter [Downloads]

  - by Asian Angel

  The other day we shared a quick keyboard tip for going straight to Desktop Mode in Windows 8 when you logged in. Today we are back with a small app that gets you straight to Desktop Mode with ‘set it and forget it’ ease. You will need to install ClassicStarter after you have extracted the contents of the zip file. Once that is done simply start the app up and this is what you will see… The only thing you will need to do is click on the Classic Desktop Button. Once you have clicked on the Classic Desktop Button it will ‘grey out’. Simply exit the app, log out, and then log back into your system. The Start Screen will display for a moment or two, but everything will shift over to Desktop Mode automatically without any additional actions required on your part. To reverse the process and set the Start Screen as the default just start the app up again and click on the Metro Desktop Button, exit the app, and then log out/log back in. Download ClassicStarter (MediaFire) VirusTotal Scan Results for the ClassicStarter Zip File [via NirmalTV.com] How to Use an Xbox 360 Controller On Your Windows PC Download the Official How-To Geek Trivia App for Windows 8 How to Banish Duplicate Photos with VisiPic

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• I have bluescreen-phobia

  - by Charlie Somerville

  I'm scared of the Blue Screen of Death. Seriously. Whenever I hibernate or shutdown my computer, I have to turn the screen off in case it bluescreens during that process. Whenever I see a bluescreen, it makes my heart skip a beat and I jump a little - especially if it's on my own computer. I decided that this is getting ridiculous after I experienced a BSOD this evening. My computer booted back up and I decided to switch off the screen and leave the room. I came back about a minute later and it still hadn't got to the login screen. To find out what happened, I actually covered the screen with two A4 pages and gradually peeled them back after I saw that the screen wasn't blue. This is going way too far, but I can't help it. I am legitimately afraid of BSODs. Does anyone have any advice on how I can help myself?

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• Redhat Software RAID 1 not syncing

  - by hamstar

  Hey guys, I setup a software RAID 1 on a Redhat server, everything went sweet and it synced the first time. The other day the raid failedover for some reason and the disks hadn't been syncing since that first time, so it went back to 2 weeks ago when we did the first sync. We got the system back up running off the master only. However what would cause the software raid to not sync? I used mdadm to setup the RAID. Any ideas? EDIT: Sorry I don't have the output from /proc/mdstat before the raid failedover, it is now running on only the master... I can put the slave back in no problems but I was wondering how to make it sync all the time instead of only when I add it.

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• ASP.NET MVC Postbacks and HtmlHelper Controls ignoring Model Changes

  - by Rick Strahl

  So here's a binding behavior in ASP.NET MVC that I didn't really get until today: HtmlHelpers controls (like .TextBoxFor() etc.) don't bind to model values on Postback, but rather get their value directly out of the POST buffer from ModelState. Effectively it looks like you can't change the display value of a control via model value updates on a Postback operation. To demonstrate here's an example. I have a small section in a document where I display an editable email address: This is what the form displays on a GET operation and as expected I get the email value displayed in both the textbox and plain value display below, which reflects the value in the mode. I added a plain text value to demonstrate the model value compared to what's rendered in the textbox. The relevant markup is the email address which needs to be manipulated via the model in the Controller code. Here's the Razor markup: <div class="fieldcontainer"> <label> Email: &nbsp; <small>(username and <a href="http://gravatar.com">Gravatar</a> image)</small> </label> <div> @Html.TextBoxFor( mod=> mod.User.Email, new {type="email",@class="inputfield"}) @Model.User.Email </div> </div>   So, I have this form and the user can change their email address. On postback the Post controller code then asks the business layer whether the change is allowed. If it's not I want to reset the email address back to the old value which exists in the database and was previously store. The obvious thing to do would be to modify the model. Here's the Controller logic block that deals with that:// did user change email? if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(oldEmail) && user.Email != oldEmail) { if (userBus.DoesEmailExist(user.Email)) { userBus.ValidationErrors.Add("New email address exists already. Please…"); user.Email = oldEmail; } else // allow email change but require verification by forcing a login user.IsVerified = false; }… model.user = user; return View(model); The logic is straight forward - if the new email address is not valid because it already exists I don't want to display the new email address the user entered, but rather the old one. To do this I change the value on the model which effectively does this:model.user.Email = oldEmail; return View(model); So when I press the Save button after entering in my new email address ([email protected]) here's what comes back in the rendered view: Notice that the textbox value and the raw displayed model value are different. The TextBox displays the POST value, the raw value displays the actual model value which are different. This means that MVC renders the textbox value from the POST data rather than from the view data when an Http POST is active. Now I don't know about you but this is not the behavior I expected - initially. This behavior effectively means that I cannot modify the contents of the textbox from the Controller code if using HtmlHelpers for binding. Updating the model for display purposes in a POST has in effect - no effect. (Apr. 25, 2012 - edited the post heavily based on comments and more experimentation) What should the behavior be? After getting quite a few comments on this post I quickly realized that the behavior I described above is actually the behavior you'd want in 99% of the binding scenarios. You do want to get the POST values back into your input controls at all times, so that the data displayed on a form for the user matches what they typed. So if an error occurs, the error doesn't mysteriously disappear getting replaced either with a default value or some value that you changed on the model on your own. Makes sense. Still it is a little non-obvious because the way you create the UI elements with MVC, it certainly looks like your are binding to the model value:@Html.TextBoxFor( mod=> mod.User.Email, new {type="email",@class="inputfield",required="required" }) and so unless one understands a little bit about how the model binder works this is easy to trip up. At least it was for me. Even though I'm telling the control which model value to bind to, that model value is only used initially on GET operations. After that ModelState/POST values provide the display value. Workarounds The default behavior should be fine for 99% of binding scenarios. But if you do need fix up values based on your model rather than the default POST values, there are a number of ways that you can work around this. Initially when I ran into this, I couldn't figure out how to set the value using code and so the simplest solution to me was simply to not use the MVC Html Helper for the specific control and explicitly bind the model via HTML markup and @Razor expression: <input type="text" name="User.Email" id="User_Email" value="@Model.User.Email" /> And this produces the right result. This is easy enough to create, but feels a little out of place when using the @Html helpers for everything else. As you can see by the difference in the name and id values, you also are forced to remember the naming conventions that MVC imposes in order for ModelBinding to work properly which is a pain to remember and set manually (name is the same as the property with . syntax, id replaces dots with underlines). Use the ModelState Some of my original confusion came because I didn't understand how the model binder works. The model binder basically maintains ModelState on a postback, which holds a value and binding errors for each of the Post back value submitted on the page that can be mapped to the model. In other words there's one ModelState entry for each bound property of the model. Each ModelState entry contains a value property that holds AttemptedValue and RawValue properties. The AttemptedValue is essentially the POST value retrieved from the form. The RawValue is the value that the model holds. When MVC binds controls like @Html.TextBoxFor() or @Html.TextBox(), it always binds values on a GET operation. On a POST operation however, it'll always used the AttemptedValue to display the control. MVC binds using the ModelState on a POST operation, not the model's value. So, if you want the behavior that I was expecting originally you can actually get it by clearing the ModelState in the controller code:ModelState.Clear(); This clears out all the captured ModelState values, and effectively binds to the model. Note this will produce very similar results - in fact if there are no binding errors you see exactly the same behavior as if binding from ModelState, because the model has been updated from the ModelState already and binding to the updated values most likely produces the same values you would get with POST back values. The big difference though is that any values that couldn't bind - like say putting a string into a numeric field - will now not display back the value the user typed, but the default field value or whatever you changed the model value to. This is the behavior I was actually expecting previously. But - clearing out all values might be a bit heavy handed. You might want to fix up one or two values in a model but rarely would you want the entire model to update from the model. So, you can also clear out individual values on an as needed basis:if (userBus.DoesEmailExist(user.Email)) { userBus.ValidationErrors.Add("New email address exists already. Please…"); user.Email = oldEmail; ModelState.Remove("User.Email"); } This allows you to remove a single value from the ModelState and effectively allows you to replace that value for display from the model. Why? While researching this I came across a post from Microsoft's Brad Wilson who describes the default binding behavior best in a forum post: The reason we use the posted value for editors rather than the model value is that the model may not be able to contain the value that the user typed. Imagine in your "int" editor the user had typed "dog". You want to display an error message which says "dog is not valid", and leave "dog" in the editor field. However, your model is an int: there's no way it can store "dog". So we keep the old value. If you don't want the old values in the editor, clear out the Model State. That's where the old value is stored and pulled from the HTML helpers. There you have it. It's not the most intuitive behavior, but in hindsight this behavior does make some sense even if at first glance it looks like you should be able to update values from the model. The solution of clearing ModelState works and is a reasonable one but you have to know about some of the innards of ModelState and how it actually works to figure that out.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in ASP.NET  MVC   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• That’s a wrap! Almost, there’s still one last chance to attend a SQL in the City event in 2012

  - by Red and the Community

  The communities team are back from the SQL in the City multi-city US Tour and we are delighted to have met so many happy SQL Server professionals and Red Gate customers. We set out to run a series of back-to-back events in order to meet, talk to and delight as many SQL Server and Red Gate enthusiasts as possible in 5 different cities in 11 days. We did it! The attendees had a good time too and 99% of them would attend another SQL in the City event in 2013 – so it seems we left an impression. There were a range of topics on the event agenda, ranging from ‘The Whys & Hows of Continuous Integration’, ‘Database Maintenance Essentials’, ‘Red Gate tools – The Complete Lifecycle’, ‘Automated Deployment: Application And Database Releases Without The Headache’, ‘The Ten Commandments of SQL Server Monitoring’ and many more. Videos and slides from the events will be posted to the event website in November, after our last event of 2012. SQL in the City Seattle – November 5 Join us for free and hear from some of the very best names in the SQL Server world. SQL Server MVPs such as; Steve Jones, Grant Fritchey, Brent Ozar, Gail Shaw and more will be presenting at the Bell Harbor conference center for one day only. We’re even taking on board some of the recent attendee-suggestions of how we can improve the events (feedback from the 65% of attendees who came to our US tour events), first off we’re extending the drinks celebration in the evening! Rather than just a 30 minute drink and run, attendees will have up to 2 hours to enjoy free drinks, relax and network in a fantastic environment amongst some really smart like-minded professionals. If you’re interested in expanding your SQL Server knowledge, would like to learn more about Red Gate tools, get yourself registered for the last SQL in the City event of 2012. It’s free, fun and we’re very friendly! I look forward to seeing you in Seattle on Monday November 5. Cheers, Annabel.

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• IUSR account and SCCM 2007 R3 agent

  - by steve schofield

  I recently started working with SCCM and rolling the agent out with machine having IIS 7.x installed.  I ran into issues where the SCCM agent wouldn't install.  The errors mostly were 0x80004005 and 1603, another key one I found was Return Value 3 in the SCCM setup log.  During the troubleshooting, I found a cool utility called WMI Diag  WMI diag is a VBS script that reads the local WMI store and helps diagnose issue.  Anyone working with SMS or SCCM should keep this handy tool around.  The good thing my particular case WMI was healthy.  The issue turned out I changed the Anonymous Authentication module from using the IUSR account to inherit Application Pool identity.  Once we temporarily switched back to IUSR, installed the agent, then switched the setting back to inherit application pool identity, the SCCM agent installed with no issues. I'm not sure why switching back to the IUSR account solved my issue, if I find out I'll update the post.  More information on IIS 7 builtin accounts http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/140/understanding-built-in-user-and-group-accounts-in-iis-7 Specify an application pool identity  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771170(WS.10).aspx SCCM resources (Config Mgr Setup  / Deployment forums) http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/configmgrsetup/threads http://www.myitforum.com (the best independent SCCM community resource) Hope this helps. Steve SchofieldMicrosoft MVP - IIS

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• Remotely sync Time Machine drives

  - by Off Rhoden

  I have an Xserve that runs Time Machine to a local terabyte drive. I also connected my external terabyte drive for a time period and had Time Machine use it to establish the seed data. I plan to take my drive back home with me (out of state) and have the Xserve return to using its local drive for Time Machine. But when I get back home, is there a way to keep my external drive's copy of the Time Machine Backups folder in sync with the Backups folder back on the Xserve? I'm wanting a full copy of the history (makes an awesome remote backup). I've thought of using the unix command rsync. In fact, that's how I had been doing it but I was looking the compactness that Time Machine was able to achieve. Thanks.

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• On mobile is there a reason why processes are often short lived and must persist their state explicitly?

  - by Alexandre Jasmin

  Most mobile platforms (such as Android, iOS, Windows phone 7 and I believe the new WinRT) can kill inactive application processes under memory pressure. To prevent this from affecting the user experience applications are expected to save and restore their state as their process is killed and restarted. Having application processes killed in this way makes the developers job harder. On various occasions I've seen a mobile app that would: Return to the welcome screen each time I switch back to it. Crash when I switch back to it (possibly accessing some state that no longer exists after the process was killed) Misbehave when I switch back to it (sometimes requiring a restart or tasks killer to fix) Otherwise misbehave in some hard to reproduce way (e.g. android service killed and restarted at the wrong time) I don't really understand why these mobile operating systems are designed to kill tasks in this way especially since it makes application development more difficult and error prone. Desktop operating systems don't kill processes like that. They swap out unused pages of memory to mass storage. Is there a reason why the same approach isn't used on mobile? Mobile hardware is only a few years behind PC hardware in term of performance. I'm sure there are very good reasons why mobile operating systems are designed this way. If you can point me to a paper or blog post that explain these reasons or can give me some insight I'd very much appreciate it.

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• Re-Calibrate Toshiba battery meter with Windows 7

  - by Mark Henderson

  I have a Toshiba U300 laptop. Back in the olden days (circa-2000) you could re-calibrate the battery meter from the BIOS when your battery was no longer reading accurately. My battery was shot, so I bought a brand new one, however Windows 7 still seems to count down the battery life in at the same speed as the old one did. This time, when it alleged 0%, I turned the laptop back on and got another 90 minutes of life out of it, at 0%. Is there a tool or utility for Toshiba laptops that can fix it back to being accurate? I've read the other threads on SU about cycling the battery but that just doesn't seem to do it in this case. Update: After the last cycle, the battery meter now reads 100% but the indicator on the front of the laptop is still orange (indicating not fully charged)

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• Oracle B2B 11g - Transport Layer Acknowledgement

  - by Nitesh Jain Oracle

  In Health Care Industry,Acknowledgement or Response should be sent back very fast. Once any message received, Acknowledgement should be sent back to TP. Oracle B2B provides a solution to send acknowledgement or Response from transport layer of mllp that is called as immediate acknowledgment. Immediate acknowledgment is generated and transmitted in the transport layer. It is an alternative to the functional acknowledgment, which generates after processing/validating the data in document layer. Oracle B2B provides four types of immediate acknowledgment: Default: Oracle B2B parses the incoming HL7 message and generates an acknowledgment from it. This mode uses the details from incoming payload and generate the acknowledgement based on incoming HL7 message control number, sender and application identification. By default, an Immediate ACK is a generic ACK. Trigger event can also sent back by using Map Trigger Event property. If mapping the MSH.10 of the ACK with the MSH.10 of the incoming business message is required, then enable the Map ACK Control ID property. Simple: B2B sends the predefined acknowledgment message to the sender without parsing the incoming message. Custom: Custom immediate Ack/Response mode gives a user to define their own response/acknowledgement. This is configurable using file in the Custom Immediate ACK File property. Negative: In this case, immediate ACK will be returned only in the case of exceptions.

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• The Internet of Things & Commerce: Part 2 -- Interview with Brian Celenza, Commerce Innovation Strategist

  - by Katrina Gosek, Director | Commerce Product Strategy-Oracle

  Internet of Things & Commerce Series: Part 2 (of 3) Welcome back to the second installation of my three part series on the Internet of Things & Commerce. A few weeks ago, I wrote “The Next 7,000 Days” about how we’ve become embedded in a digital architecture in the last 7,000 days since the birth of the internet – an architecture that everyday ties the massive expanse of the internet evermore closely with our physical lives. This blog series explores how this new blend of virtual and material will change how we shop and how businesses sell. Now enjoy reading my interview with Brian Celenza, one of the chief strategists in our Oracle Commerce innovation group. He comments on the past, present, and future of the how the growing Internet of Things relates and will relate to the buying and selling of goods on and offline. -------------------------------------------- QUESTION: You probably have one of the coolest jobs on our team, Brian – and frankly, one of the coolest jobs in our industry. As part of the innovation team for Oracle Commerce, you’re regularly working on bold features and groundbreaking commerce-focused experiences for our vision demos. As you look back over the past couple of years, what is the biggest trend (or trends) you’ve seen in digital commerce that started to bring us closer to this idea of what people are calling an “Internet of Things”? Brian: Well as you look back over the last couple of years, the speed at which change in our industry has moved looks like one of those blurred movement photos – you know the ones where the landscape blurs because the observer is moving so quickly your eye focus can’t keep up. But one thing that is absolutely clear is that the biggest catalyst for that speed of change – especially over the last three years – has been mobile. Mobile technology changed everything. Over the last three years the entire thought process of how to sell on (and offline) has shifted because of mobile technology advances. Particularly for eCommerce professionals who have started to move past the notion of “channels” for selling goods to this notion of “Mobile First”… then the Web site. Or more accurately, that everything – smartphones, web, store, tablet – is just one channel or has to act like one singular access point to the same product catalog, information and content. The most innovative eCommerce professionals realized some time ago that it’s not ideal to build an eCommerce Web site and then build everything on top of or off of it. Rather, they want to build an eCommerce API and then integrate it will all other systems. To accomplish this, they are leveraging all the latest mobile technologies or possibilities mobile technology has opened up: 4G and LTE, GPS, bluetooth, touch screens, apps, html5… How has this all started to come together for shopping experiences on and offline? Well to give you a personal example, I remember visiting an Apple store a few years ago and being amazed that I didn’t have to wait in line because a store associate knew everything about me from my ID – right there on the sales floor – and could check me out anywhere. Then just a few months later (when like any good addict) I went back to get the latest and greatest new gadget, I felt like I was stealing it because I could check myself out with my smartphone. I didn’t even need to see a sales associate OR go to a cash register. Amazing. And since then, all sort sorts of companies across all different types of industries – from food service to apparel –  are starting to see mobile payments in the billions of dollars now thanks not only to the convenience factor but to smart loyalty rewards programs as well. These are just some really simple current examples that come to mind. So many different things have happened in the last couple of years, it’s hard to really absorb all of the quickly – because as soon as you do, everything changes again! Just like that blurry speed photo image. For eCommerce, however, this type of new environment underscores the importance of building an eCommerce API – a platform that has services you can tap in to and build on as the landscape changes at a fever pitch. It’s a mobile first perspective. A web service perspective – particularly if you are thinking of how to engage customers across digital and physical spaces. —— QUESTION: Thanks for bringing us into the present – some really great examples you gave there to put things into perspective. So what do you see as the biggest trend right now around the “Internet of Things” – and what’s coming next few years? Brian: Honestly, even sitting where I am in the innovation group – it’s hard to look out even 12 months because, well, I don’t even think we’ve fully caught up with what is possible now. But I can definitely say that in the last 12 months and in the coming 12 months, in the technology and eCommerce world it’s all about iBeacons. iBeacons are awesome tools we have right now to tie together physical and digital shopping experiences. They know exactly where you are as a shopper and can communicate that to businesses. Currently there seem to be two camps of thought around iBeacons. First, many people are thinking of them like an “indoor GPS”, which to be fair they literally are. The use case this first camp envisions for iBeacons is primarily for advertising and marketing. So they use iBeacons to push location-based promotions to customers if they are close to a store or in a store. You may have seen these types of mobile promotions start to pop up occasionally on your smart phone as you pass by a store you’ve bought from in the past. That’s the work of iBeacons. But in my humble opinion, these promotions probably come too early in the customer journey and although they may be well timed and work to “convert” in some cases, I imagine in most they are just eroding customer trust because they are kind of a “one-size-fits-all” solution rather than one that is taking into account what exactly the customer might be looking for in that particular moment. Maybe they just want more information and a promotion is way too soon for that type of customer. The second camp is more in line with where my thinking falls. In this case, businesses take a more sensitive approach with iBeacons to customers’ needs. Instead of throwing out a “one-size-fits-all” to any passer by with iBeacons, the use case is more around looking at the physical proximity of a customer as an opportunity to provide a service: show expert reviews on a product they may be looking at in a particular aisle of a store, offer the opportunity to compare prices (and then offer a promotion), signal an in-store associate if a customer has been in the store for more than 10 minutes in one place. These are all less intrusive more value-driven uses of iBeacons. And they are more about building customer trust through service. To take this example a bit further into the future realm of “Big Data” and “Internet of Things” businesses could actually use the Oracle Commerce Platform and iBeacons to “silently” track customer movement w/in the store to provide higher quality service. And this doesn’t have to be creepy or intrusive. Simply if a customer has been in a particular department or aisle for more than a 5 or 10 minutes, an in-store associate could come over an offer some assistance already knowing customer preferences from their online profile and maybe even seeing the items in a shopping cart they started at home. None of this has to be revealed to the customer, but it certainly could boost the level of service an in-store sales associate could provide. Or, in another futuristic example, stores could use the digital footprint of the physical store transmitted by iBeacons to generate heat maps of the store that could be tracked over time. Imagine how much you could find out about which parts of the store are more busy during certain parts of the day or seasons. This could completely revolutionize how physical merchandising is deployed or where certain high value / new items are placed. And / or this use of iBeacons could also help businesses figure out if customers are getting held up in certain parts of the store during busy days like Black Friday. If long lines are causing customers to bounce from a physical store and leave those holiday gifts behind, maybe having employees with mobile check as an option could remove the cash register bottleneck. But going to back to my original statement, it’s all still very early in the story for iBeacons. The hardware manufacturers are still very new and there is still not one clear standard.  Honestly, it all goes back to building and maintaining an extensible and flexible platform for anywhere engagement. What you’re building today should allow you to rapidly take advantage of whatever unimaginable use cases wait around the corner. ------------------------------------------------------ I hope you enjoyed the brief interview with Brian. It’s really awesome to have such smart and innovation-minded individuals on our Oracle Commerce innovation team. Please join me again in a few weeks for Part 3 of this series where I interview one of the product managers on our team about how the blending of digital and in-store selling in influencing our product development and vision.

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• Page debugging got easier in UCM 11g

  - by kyle.hatlestad

  UCM is famous for it's extra parameters you can add to the URL to do different things. You can add &IsJava=1 to get all of the local data and result set information that comes back from the idc_service. You can add &IsSoap=1 and get back a SOAP message with that information. Or &IsJson=1 will send it in JSON format. There are ones that change the display like &coreContentOnly=1 which will hide the footer and navigation on the page. In 10g, you could add &ScriptDebugTrace=1 and it would display the list of resources that were called through includes or eval functions at the bottom of the page. And it would list them in nested order so you could see the order in which they were called and which components overrode each other. But in 11g, that parameter flag no longer works. Instead, you get a much more powerful one called &IsPageDebug=1. When you add that to a page, you get a small gray tab at the bottom right-hand part of the browser window. When you click it, it will expand and let you choose several pieces of information to display. You can select 'idocscript trace' and display the nested includes you used to get with ScriptDebugTrace. You can select 'initial binder' and see the local data and result sets coming back from the service, just as you would with IsJava. But in this display, it formats the results in easy to read tables (instead of raw HDA format). Then you can get the final binder which would contain all of the local data and result sets after executing all of the includes for the display of the page (and not just from the Service call). And then a 'javascript log' for reporting on the javascript functions and times being executed on the page. Together, these new data displays make page debugging much easier in 11g. *Note: This post also applies to Universal Records Management (URM).

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• Move Firefox’s Tab Bar to the Top

  - by Asian Angel

  Would you prefer to have Firefox’s Tab Bar located at the top of the browser instead of its’ default location? See how easy it is to move the Tab Bar back and forth between the top and current positions “flip switch style” with the Tabs On Top extension. Note: Tabs On Top extension supports multi-row feature in TabMixPlus. Before You can see the “Tab Bar” in its’ default location here in our test browser…not bad but what if you prefer having it located at the top of the browser? After As soon as you have installed the extension and restarted Firefox the “Tab Bar” will have automatically moved to the top of the browser. You will most likely notice a slight decrease in tab height as well (which occurred during our tests). To move the “Tab Bar” back and forth between the top and default locations just select/deselect “Tab Bar on top” in the “Toolbars Context Menu”. You can quickly reduce the size of the upper UI after hiding some of the other toolbars and go even further if you like using extensions that will hide the “Title Bar”. This is definitely a good UI matching extension for anyone using a Chrome based theme in Firefox. Conclusion If you are unhappy with default location for Firefox’s “Tab Bar” then this extension will certainly provide an alternative option for you. Links Download the Tabs On Top extension (Mozilla Add-ons) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Use the Keyboard to Move Items Up or Down in Microsoft WordAdd Copy To / Move To on Windows 7 or Vista Right-Click MenuBring Misplaced Off-Screen Windows Back to Your Desktop (Keyboard Trick)Moving Your Personal Data Folders in Windows Vista the Easy WayAdd Copy To / Move To to the Windows Explorer Right Click Menu TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Live PDF Searches PDF Files and Ebooks Converting Mp4 to Mp3 Easily Use Quick Translator to Translate Text in 50 Languages (Firefox) Get Better Windows Search With UltraSearch Scan News With NY Times Article Skimmer SpeedyFox Claims to Speed up your Firefox

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• Methodology behind fetching large XML data sets in pieces

  - by Jerry Dodge

  I am working on an HTTP Server in Delphi which simply sends back a custom XML dataset. I am not following any type of standard formatting, such as SOAP. I have the system working seamlessly, except one small flaw: When I have a very large dataset to send back to the client, it might take up to 2 minutes for all the data to be transferred. The HTTP Server I'm building is essentially an XML Data based API around a database, implementing the common business rule - therefore, the requests are specific to the data behind the system. When, for example, I fetch a large set of product data, I would like to break this down and send it back piece by piece. However, a single HTTP request calls for a single response. I can't necessarily keep feeding the client with multiple different XML packets unless the client explicitly requests it. I don't have any session management, but rather an API Key. I know if I had sessions, I could keep-alive a dataset temporarily for a client, and they could request bits and pieces of it. However, without session management, I would have to execute the SQL query multiple times (for each chunk of data), and in the mean-time, if that data changes, the "pages" might get messed up, therefore causing items to show on the wrong pages, after navigating to a different page. So how is this commonly handled? What's the methodology behind breaking down a large XML dataset into chunks to save the load?

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• When Your Boss Doesn't Want you to Succeed

  - by Phil Factor

  You're working hard to get an application finished. You are programming long into the evenings sometimes, and eating sandwiches at your desk instead of taking a lunch break. Then one day you glance up at the IT manager, serene in his mysterious round of meetings, and think 'Does he actually care whether this project succeeds or not?'. The question may seem absurd. Of course the project must succeed. The truth, as always, is often far more complex. Your manager may even be doing his best to make sure you don't succeed. Why? There have always been rich pickings for the unscrupulous in IT.  In extreme cases, where administrators struggle with scarcely-comprehended technical issues, huge sums of money can be lost and gained without any perceptible results. In a very few cases can fraud be proven: most of the time, the intricacies of the 'game' are such that one can do little more than harbor suspicion.  Where does over-enthusiastic salesmanship end and fraud begin? The Business of Information Technology provides rich opportunities for White-collar crime. The poor developer has his, or her, hands full with the task of wrestling with the sheer complexity of building an application. He, or she, has no time for following the complexities of the chicanery of the management that is directing affairs.  Most likely, the developers wouldn't even suspect that their company management had ulterior motives. I'll illustrate what I mean with an entirely fictional, hypothetical, example. The Opportunist and the Aged Charities often do good, unexciting work that is funded by the income from a bequest that dates back maybe hundreds of years.  In our example, it isn't exciting work, for it involves the welfare of elderly people who have fallen on hard times.  Volunteers visit, giving a smile and a chat, and check that they are all right, but are able to spend a little money on their discretion to ameliorate any pressing needs for these old folk.  The money is made to work very hard and the charity averts a great deal of suffering and eases the burden on the state. Daisy hears the garden gate creak as Mrs Rainer comes up the path. She looks forward to her twice-weekly visit from the nice lady from the trust. She always asked ‘is everything all right, Love’. Cheeky but nice. She likes her cheery manner. She seems interested in hearing her memories, and talking about her far-away family. She helps her with those chores in the house that she couldn’t manage and once even paid to fill the back-shed with coke, the other year. Nice, Mrs. Rainer is, she thought as she goes to open the door. The trustees are getting on in years themselves, and worry about the long-term future of the charity: is it relevant to modern society? Is it likely to attract a new generation of workers to take it on. They are instantly attracted by the arrival to the board of a smartly dressed University lecturer with the ear of the present Government. Alain 'Stalin' Jones is earnest, persuasive and energetic. The trustees welcome him to the board and quickly forgive his humorless political-correctness. He talks of 'diversity', 'relevance', 'social change', 'equality' and 'communities', but his eye is on that huge bequest. Alain first came to notice as a Trotskyite union official, who insinuated himself into one of the duller Trades Unions and turned it, through his passionate leadership, into a radical, headline-grabbing organization.  Middle age, and the rise of European federal socialism, had brought him quiet prosperity and charcoal suits, an ear in the current government, and a wide influence as a member of various Quangos (government bodies staffed by well-paid unelected courtiers).  He was employed as a 'consultant' by several organizations that relied on government contracts. After gaining the confidence of the trustees, and showing a surprising knowledge of mundane processes and the regulatory framework of charities, Alain launches his plan.  The trust will expand their work by means of a bold IT initiative that will coordinate the interventions of several 'caring agencies', and provide  emergency cover, a special Website so anxious relatives can see how their elderly charges are doing, and a vastly more efficient way of coordinating the work of the volunteer carers. It will also provide a special-purpose site that gives 'social networking' facilities, rather like Facebook, to the few elderly folk on the lists with access to the internet. The trustees perk up. Their own experience of the internet is restricted to the occasional scanning of railway timetables, but they can see that it is 'relevant'. In his next report to the other trustees, Alain proudly announces that all this glamorous and exciting technology can be paid for by a grant from the government. He admits darkly that he has influence. True to his word, the government promises a grant of a size that is an order of magnitude greater than any budget that the trustees had ever handled. There was the understandable proviso that the company that would actually do the IT work would have to be one of the government's preferred suppliers and the work would need to be tendered under EU competition rules. The only company that tenders, a multinational IT company with a long track record of government work, quotes ten million pounds for the work. A trustee questions the figure as it seems enormous for the reasonably trivial internet facilities being built, but the IT Salesmen dazzle them with presentations and three-letter acronyms until they subside into quiescent acceptance. After all, they can’t stay locked in the Twentieth century practices can they? The work is put in hand with a large project team, in a splendid glass building near west London. The trustees see rooms of programmers working diligently at screens, and who talk with enthusiasm of the project. Paul, the project manager, looked through his resource schedule with growing unease. His initial excitement at being given his first major project hadn’t lasted. He’d been allocated a lackluster team of developers whose skills didn’t seem right, and he was allowed only a couple of contractors to make good the deficit. Strangely, the presentation he’d given to his management, where he’d saved time and resources with a OTS solution to a great deal of the development work, and a sound conservative architecture, hadn’t gone down nearly as big as he’d hoped. He almost got the feeling they wanted a more radical and ambitious solution. The project starts slipping its dates. The costs build rapidly. There are certain uncomfortable extra charges that appear, such as the £600-a-day charge by the 'Business Manager' appointed to act as a point of liaison between the charity and the IT Company.  When he appeared, his face permanently split by a 'Mr Sincerity' smile, they'd thought he was provided at the cost of the IT Company. Derek, the DBA, didn’t have to go to the server room quite some much as he did: but It got him away from the poisonous despair of the development group. Wave after wave of events had conspired to delay the project.  Why the management had imposed hideous extra bureaucracy to cover ISO 9000 and 9001:2008 accreditation just as the project was struggling to get back on-schedule was  beyond belief.  Then  the Business manager was coming back with endless changes in scope, sorrowing saying that the Trustees were very insistent, though hopelessly out in touch with the reality of technical challenges. Suddenly, the costs mount to the point of consuming the government grant in its entirety. The project remains tantalizingly just out of reach. Alain Jones gives an emotional rallying speech at the trustees review meeting, urging them not to lose their nerve. Sadly, the trustees dip into the accumulated capital of the trust, the seed-corn of all their revenues, in order to save the IT project. A few months later it is all over. The IT project is never delivered, even though it had seemed so incredibly close.  With the trust's capital all gone, the activities it funded have to be terminated and the trust becomes just a shell. There aren't even the funds to mount a legal challenge against the IT company, even had the trust's solicitor advised such a foolish thing. Alain leaves as suddenly as he had arrived, only to pop up a few months later, bronzed and rested, at another charity. The IT workers who were permanent employees are dispersed to other projects, and the contractors leave to other contracts. Within months the entire project is but a vague memory. One or two developers remain  puzzled that their managers had been so obstructive when they should have welcomed progress toward completion of the project, but they put it down to incompetence and testosterone. Few suspected that they were actively preventing the project from getting finished. The relationships between the IT consultancy, and the government of the day are intricate, and made more complex by the Private Finance initiatives and political patronage.  The losers in this case were the taxpayers, and the beneficiaries of the trust, and, perhaps the soul of the original benefactor of the trust, whose bid to give his name some immortality had been scuppered by smooth-talking white-collar political apparatniks.  Even now, nobody is certain whether a crime was ever committed. The perfect heist, I guess. Where’s the victim? "I hear that Daisy’s cottage is up for sale. She’s had to go into a care home.  She didn’t want to at all, but then there is nobody to keep an eye on her since she had that minor stroke a while back.  A charity used to help out. The ‘social’ don’t have the funding, evidently for community care. Yes, her old cat was put down. There was a good clearout, and now the house is all scrubbed and cleared ready for sale. The skip was full of old photos and letters, memories. No room in her new ‘home’."

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• sudo: must be setuid root

  - by Phuong Nguyen

  Recently, due to some messy stuff with master boot record, I have to re-install my Ubuntu. Before doing that, I back up all folder (exclude root, bin, sbin, tmp, media, mnt) to a NTFS partition. After installation of Ubuntu, I copied back all the folder using a nautilus (running by sudo nautilus). After that, I reboot my computer. And boom, now I cannot run sudo any more, my network services cannot run. When I run sudo from a terminal, I ge "must be setuid root" error. In ubuntu, root account is disabled by default, I don't know why all these files is no longer under ownership of my account. How would I recover back?

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• Accessing Server-Side Data from Client Script: Accessing JSON Data From an ASP.NET Page Using jQuery

  When building a web application, we must decide how and when the browser will communicate with the web server. The ASP.NET WebForms model greatly simplifies web development by providing a straightforward mechanism for exchanging data between the browser and the server. With WebForms, each ASP.NET page's rendered output includes a <form> element that performs a postback to the same page whenever a Button control within the form is clicked, or whenever the user modifies a control whose AutoPostBack property is set to True. On postback, the server sends the entire contents of the web page back to the browser, which then displays this new content. With WebForms we don't need to spend much time or effort thinking about how or when the browser will communicate with the server or how that returned information will be processed by the browser. It just works. While this approach certainly works and has its advantages, it's not without its drawbacks. The primary concern with postback forms is that they require a large amount of information to be exchanged between the browser and the server. Specifically, the browser sends back all of its form fields (including hidden ones, like view state, which may be quite large) and then the server sends back the entire contents of the web page. Granted, there are scenarios where this large quantity of data needs to be exchanged, but in many cases we can use techniques that exchange much less information. However, these techniques necessitate spending more time and effort thinking about how and when to have the browser communicate with the server and intelligently deciding on what information needs to be exchanged. This article, the first in a multi-part series, examines different techniques for accessing server-side data from a browser using client-side script. Throughout this series we will explore alternative ways to expose data on the server so that it can be accessed from the browser using script; we will also examine various tools for communicating with the server from JavaScript, including jQuery and the ASP.NET AJAX library. Read on to learn more! Read More >

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• Create user in Oracle 11g with same priviledges as in Oracle 10g XE

  - by Álvaro G. Vicario

  I'm a PHP developer (not a DBA) and I've been working with Oracle 10g XE for a while. I'm used to XE's simplified user management: Go to Administration/ Users/ Create user Assign user name and password Roles: leave the default ones (connect and resource) Privileges: click on "Enable all" to select the 11 possible ones Create This way I get a user that has full access to its data and no access to everything else. This is fine since I only need it to develop my app. When the app is to be deployed, the client's DBAs configure the environment. Now I have to create users in a full Oracle 11g server and I'm completely lost. I have a new concept (profiles) and there're like 20 roles and hundreds of privileges in various categories. What steps do I need to complete in Oracle Enterprise Manager in order to obtain a user with the same privileges I used to assign in XE? ==== UPDATE ==== I think I'd better provide a detailed explanation so I make myself clearer. This is how I create a user in 10g XE: Roles: [X] CONNECT [X] RESOURCE [ ] DBA Direct Asignment System Privileges: [ ] CREATE DATABASE LINK [ ] CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW [ ] CREATE PROCEDURE [ ] CREATE PUBLIC SYNONYM [ ] CREATE ROLE [ ] CREATE SEQUENCE [ ] CREATE SYNONYM [ ] CREATE TABLE [ ] CREATE TRIGGER [ ] CREATE TYPE [ ] CREATE VIEW I click on Enable All and I'm done. This is what I'm asked when doing the same in 11g: Profile: (*) DEFAULT ( ) WKSYS_PROF ( ) MONITORING_PROFILE Roles: CONNECT: [ ] Admin option [X] Default value Edit List: AQ_ADMINISTRATOR_ROLE AQ_USER_ROLE AUTHENTICATEDUSER CSW_USR_ROLE CTXAPP CWM_USER DATAPUMP_EXP_FULL_DATABASE DATAPUMP_IMP_FULL_DATABASE DBA DELETE_CATALOG_ROLE EJBCLIENT EXECUTE_CATALOG_ROLE EXP_FULL_DATABASE GATHER_SYSTEM_STATISTICS GLOBAL_AQ_USER_ROLE HS_ADMIN_ROLE IMP_FULL_DATABASE JAVADEBUGPRIV JAVAIDPRIV JAVASYSPRIV JAVAUSERPRIV JAVA_ADMIN JAVA_DEPLOY JMXSERVER LOGSTDBY_ADMINISTRATOR MGMT_USER OEM_ADVISOR OEM_MONITOR OLAPI_TRACE_USER OLAP_DBA OLAP_USER OLAP_XS_ADMIN ORDADMIN OWB$CLIENT OWB_DESIGNCENTER_VIEW OWB_USER RECOVERY_CATALOG_OWNER RESOURCE SCHEDULER_ADMIN SELECT_CATALOG_ROLE SPATIAL_CSW_ADMIN SPATIAL_WFS_ADMIN WFS_USR_ROLE WKUSER WM_ADMIN_ROLE XDBADMIN XDB_SET_INVOKER XDB_WEBSERVICES XDB_WEBSERVICES_OVER_HTTP XDB_WEBSERVICES_WITH_PUBLIC System Privileges: <Empty> Edit List: ACCESS_ANY_WORKSPACE ADMINISTER ANY SQL TUNING SET ADMINISTER DATABASE TRIGGER ADMINISTER RESOURCE MANAGER ADMINISTER SQL MANAGEMENT OBJECT ADMINISTER SQL TUNING SET ADVISOR ALTER ANY ASSEMBLY ALTER ANY CLUSTER ALTER ANY CUBE ALTER ANY CUBE DIMENSION ALTER ANY DIMENSION ALTER ANY EDITION ALTER ANY EVALUATION CONTEXT ALTER ANY INDEX ALTER ANY INDEXTYPE ALTER ANY LIBRARY ALTER ANY MATERIALIZED VIEW ALTER ANY MINING MODEL ALTER ANY OPERATOR ALTER ANY OUTLINE ALTER ANY PROCEDURE ALTER ANY ROLE ALTER ANY RULE ALTER ANY RULE SET ALTER ANY SEQUENCE ALTER ANY SQL PROFILE ALTER ANY TABLE ALTER ANY TRIGGER ALTER ANY TYPE ALTER DATABASE ALTER PROFILE ALTER RESOURCE COST ALTER ROLLBACK SEGMENT ALTER SESSION ALTER SYSTEM ALTER TABLESPACE ALTER USER ANALYZE ANY ANALYZE ANY DICTIONARY AUDIT ANY AUDIT SYSTEM BACKUP ANY TABLE BECOME USER CHANGE NOTIFICATION COMMENT ANY MINING MODEL COMMENT ANY TABLE CREATE ANY ASSEMBLY CREATE ANY CLUSTER CREATE ANY CONTEXT CREATE ANY CUBE CREATE ANY CUBE BUILD PROCESS CREATE ANY CUBE DIMENSION CREATE ANY DIMENSION CREATE ANY DIRECTORY CREATE ANY EDITION CREATE ANY EVALUATION CONTEXT CREATE ANY INDEX CREATE ANY INDEXTYPE CREATE ANY JOB CREATE ANY LIBRARY CREATE ANY MATERIALIZED VIEW CREATE ANY MEASURE FOLDER CREATE ANY MINING MODEL CREATE ANY OPERATOR CREATE ANY OUTLINE CREATE ANY PROCEDURE CREATE ANY RULE CREATE ANY RULE SET CREATE ANY SEQUENCE CREATE ANY SQL PROFILE CREATE ANY SYNONYM CREATE ANY TABLE CREATE ANY TRIGGER CREATE ANY TYPE CREATE ANY VIEW CREATE ASSEMBLY CREATE CLUSTER CREATE CUBE CREATE CUBE BUILD PROCESS CREATE CUBE DIMENSION CREATE DATABASE LINK CREATE DIMENSION CREATE EVALUATION CONTEXT CREATE EXTERNAL JOB CREATE INDEXTYPE CREATE JOB CREATE LIBRARY CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW CREATE MEASURE FOLDER CREATE MINING MODEL CREATE OPERATOR CREATE PROCEDURE CREATE PROFILE CREATE PUBLIC DATABASE LINK CREATE PUBLIC SYNONYM CREATE ROLE CREATE ROLLBACK SEGMENT CREATE RULE CREATE RULE SET CREATE SEQUENCE CREATE SESSION CREATE SYNONYM CREATE TABLE CREATE TABLESPACE CREATE TRIGGER CREATE TYPE CREATE USER CREATE VIEW CREATE_ANY_WORKSPACE DEBUG ANY PROCEDURE DEBUG CONNECT SESSION DELETE ANY CUBE DIMENSION DELETE ANY MEASURE FOLDER DELETE ANY TABLE DEQUEUE ANY QUEUE DROP ANY ASSEMBLY DROP ANY CLUSTER DROP ANY CONTEXT DROP ANY CUBE DROP ANY CUBE BUILD PROCESS DROP ANY CUBE DIMENSION DROP ANY DIMENSION DROP ANY DIRECTORY DROP ANY EDITION DROP ANY EVALUATION CONTEXT DROP ANY INDEX DROP ANY INDEXTYPE DROP ANY LIBRARY DROP ANY MATERIALIZED VIEW DROP ANY MEASURE FOLDER DROP ANY MINING MODEL DROP ANY OPERATOR DROP ANY OUTLINE DROP ANY PROCEDURE DROP ANY ROLE DROP ANY RULE DROP ANY RULE SET DROP ANY SEQUENCE DROP ANY SQL PROFILE DROP ANY SYNONYM DROP ANY TABLE DROP ANY TRIGGER DROP ANY TYPE DROP ANY VIEW DROP PROFILE DROP PUBLIC DATABASE LINK DROP PUBLIC SYNONYM DROP ROLLBACK SEGMENT DROP TABLESPACE DROP USER ENQUEUE ANY QUEUE EXECUTE ANY ASSEMBLY EXECUTE ANY CLASS EXECUTE ANY EVALUATION CONTEXT EXECUTE ANY INDEXTYPE EXECUTE ANY LIBRARY EXECUTE ANY OPERATOR EXECUTE ANY PROCEDURE EXECUTE ANY PROGRAM EXECUTE ANY RULE EXECUTE ANY RULE SET EXECUTE ANY TYPE EXECUTE ASSEMBLY EXPORT FULL DATABASE FLASHBACK ANY TABLE FLASHBACK ARCHIVE ADMINISTER FORCE ANY TRANSACTION FORCE TRANSACTION FREEZE_ANY_WORKSPACE GLOBAL QUERY REWRITE GRANT ANY OBJECT PRIVILEGE GRANT ANY PRIVILEGE GRANT ANY ROLE IMPORT FULL DATABASE INSERT ANY CUBE DIMENSION INSERT ANY MEASURE FOLDER INSERT ANY TABLE LOCK ANY TABLE MANAGE ANY FILE GROUP MANAGE ANY QUEUE MANAGE FILE GROUP MANAGE SCHEDULER MANAGE TABLESPACE MERGE ANY VIEW MERGE_ANY_WORKSPACE ON COMMIT REFRESH QUERY REWRITE READ ANY FILE GROUP REMOVE_ANY_WORKSPACE RESTRICTED SESSION RESUMABLE ROLLBACK_ANY_WORKSPACE SELECT ANY CUBE SELECT ANY CUBE DIMENSION SELECT ANY DICTIONARY SELECT ANY MINING MODEL SELECT ANY SEQUENCE SELECT ANY TABLE SELECT ANY TRANSACTION UNDER ANY TABLE UNDER ANY TYPE UNDER ANY VIEW UNLIMITED TABLESPACE UPDATE ANY CUBE UPDATE ANY CUBE BUILD PROCESS UPDATE ANY CUBE DIMENSION UPDATE ANY TABLE Object Privileges: <Empty> Add: Clase Java Clases de Trabajos Cola Columna de Tabla Columna de Vista Espacio de Trabajo Función Instantánea Origen Java Paquete Planificaciones Procedimiento Programas Secuencia Sinónimo Tabla Tipos Trabajos Vista Consumer Group Privileges: <Empty> Default Consumer Group: (*) None Edit List: AUTO_TASK_CONSUMER_GROUP BATCH_GROUP DEFAULT_CONSUMER_GROUP INTERACTIVE_GROUP LOW_GROUP ORA$AUTOTASK_HEALTH_GROUP ORA$AUTOTASK_MEDIUM_GROUP ORA$AUTOTASK_SPACE_GROUP ORA$AUTOTASK_SQL_GROUP ORA$AUTOTASK_STATS_GROUP ORA$AUTOTASK_URGENT_GROUP ORA$DIAGNOSTICS SYS_GROUP And, of course, I wonder what options I should pick.

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• Receiving Event ID: 10107, Hyper-V -VMMS

  - by Stargaten

  We are using physical disk on two of Guest operating systems. Is this a know issue? Do we need to have DPM 2010? "One or more physical disks are attached to virtual machine 'Myserver'. Back up programs that use the Hyper-V VSS writer cannot back up volumes that are attached to virtual machines as physical disks. To avoid potential data loss, use another method to back up the data on the physical disks. If you restore the data on this virtual machine, make sure to check the data of the physical disk for integrity. (Virtual machine ID 8EF3C0CB-967D-4D67-B4D8-7B782C7AC07C)"

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