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  • HTG Explains: What Is Juice Jacking and How Worried Should You Be?

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Your smartphone needs a recharge yet again and you’re miles from the charger at home; that public charging kiosk is looking pretty promising–just plug your phone in and get the sweet, sweet, energy you crave. What could possible go wrong, right? Thanks to common traits in cellphone hardware and software design, quite a few things–read on to learn more about juice jacking and how to avoid it.    

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  • What are the arguments against parsing the Cthulhu way?

    - by smarmy53
    I have been assigned the task of implementing a Domain Specific Language for a tool that may become quite important for the company. The language is simple but not trivial, it already allows nested loops, string concatenation, etc. and it is practically sure that other constructs will be added as the project advances. I know by experience that writing a lexer/parser by hand -unless the grammar is trivial- is a time consuming and error prone process. So I was left with two options: a parser generator à la yacc or a combinator library like Parsec. The former was good as well but I picked the latter for various reasons, and implemented the solution in a functional language. The result is pretty spectacular to my eyes, the code is very concise, elegant and readable/fluent. I concede it may look a bit weird if you never programmed in anything other than java/c#, but then this would be true of anything not written in java/c#. At some point however, I've been literally attacked by a co-worker. After a quick glance at my screen he declared that the code is uncomprehensible and that I should not reinvent parsing but just use a stack and String.Split like everybody does. He made a lot of noise, and I could not convince him, partially because I've been taken by surprise and had no clear explanation, partially because his opinion was immutable (no pun intended). I even offered to explain him the language, but to no avail. I'm positive the discussion is going to re-surface in front of management, so I'm preparing some solid arguments. These are the first few reasons that come to my mind to avoid a String.Split-based solution: you need lot of ifs to handle special cases and things quickly spiral out of control lots of hardcoded array indexes makes maintenance painful extremely difficult to handle things like a function call as a method argument (ex. add( (add a, b), c) very difficult to provide meaningful error messages in case of syntax errors (very likely to happen) I'm all for simplicity, clarity and avoiding unnecessary smart-cryptic stuff, but I also believe it's a mistake to dumb down every part of the codebase so that even a burger flipper can understand it. It's the same argument I hear for not using interfaces, not adopting separation of concerns, copying-pasting code around, etc. A minimum of technical competence and willingness to learn is required to work on a software project after all. (I won't use this argument as it will probably sound offensive, and starting a war is not going to help anybody) What are your favorite arguments against parsing the Cthulhu way?* *of course if you can convince me he's right I'll be perfectly happy as well

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  • bug: deviation from requirements vs deviation from expectations

    - by user970696
    I am not clear on this one. No matter the terminology, in the end the software fault/bug causes (according to a lot of sources): Deviation from requirements Devation from expectations But if the expectations are not in requirements, then stakeholder could see a bug everywhere as he expected it to be like this or that..So how can I really know? I did read that specification can miss things and then of course its expected but not specified (by mistake).

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  • Less Useful Soft Skills

    - by andyleonard
    Introduction This post is the fifty-sixth part of a ramble-rant about the software business. The current posts in this series can be found on the series landing page . Over a career that spans decades, one encounters useful and “less useful” soft skills in the modern enterprise. I thought I would share a few of the less useful variety: Free Advice If someone asks another for advice, that’s a cool compliment. The person asking has seen something that compels them to seek information about how-another-does-or-sees-things....(read more)

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  • Panama in on the road to MS hell

    <b>Maratux:</b> "If South Korea is an example of what Panama is attempting to do by following the Microsoft guide on how a country can jump into technological advancement, then things sound like it's going to be a bumpy road to get there."

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  • If Computer Problems were Physical Life Events [Video]

    - by Asian Angel
    Things can be bad (and frustrating) enough when you have problems with your computer, but what if those events actually crossed over into physical reality? Note: Video contains some language that may be considered inappropriate. If Computer Problems Were Real – Awkward Spaceship [via Fail Desk] How To Properly Scan a Photograph (And Get An Even Better Image) The HTG Guide to Hiding Your Data in a TrueCrypt Hidden Volume Make Your Own Windows 8 Start Button with Zero Memory Usage

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  • Welcome to the Oracle Cloud Blog

    - by rex.wang
    Welcome to the new Oracle Cloud blog, the home for all things related to cloud computing, including: Oracle Cloud Private cloud products Managed cloud services Here you will find everything from industry perspectives, best practices, product news, customers, events and more. Let’s start with a fun video: watch as a slick SalesDay.com rep gives his best pitch to a wise CIO. Cloud will be a big theme at Oracle OpenWorld this year, so if you're going, here’s a guide to all cloud-related sessions and demo.

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  • how to reset monitor display settings

    - by vector
    On Ubuntu 12.4 laptop with Gnome desktop, I tried to set an additional display through Catalyst (administrative) and slowly ended up making making a mess out of the whole thing. I tried several combinations of settings and at each iterration I just made things worse, ending up with 'mail battery sound time user power' icons repeating on the top bar. Now I'm lost as to how to restore everything to default settings.

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  • Determining cause of random latency and loading issues

    - by Sherwin Flight
    I'm not sure exactly what details to post in regards to my issue, because I'm not sure what is relevant. Prior to the end of September my websites all loaded quickly, in almost all cases. Loading time wasn't usually more than a few seconds. However, since the end of September I noticed a big increase in page loading times. In some cases pages were taking 30 seconds or more to load. I do have a remote monitoring service monitoring some of the sites as well, and the image below shows the response times over the past month. The response times shown at the beginning of this graph were what the usual response times were prior to this issue occurring. You can see that there has been a significant increase in response times from the beginning to the end of this graph. The thing is, the problem is not happening 100% of the time. If I click through the site, or even just keep refreshing the page, about 25% of the time the pages load quickly, the remaining 75% of the time they load slowly. Sometimes the pages take so long to load that they time out, and don't load at all. I have contacted my hosting provider, and they said things at their end was fine. I don't believe the problem is my home internet provider, because all other websites load without a problem. The server is located in Texas, USA. This also raises another interesting point. My remote monitor checks my site from two locations, California, USA, and London, England. As you can see in the chart below the response time is actually shorter when checked from London, which doesn't seem to make sense, since the server is physically closer to the California monitoring location. I would have expected the London monitoring location to have higher response times since they are physically farther away. I should also point out that in some traceroute test I've done it seem like the first connection to the server seems to take the longest, then after that the rest of the page loads quickly. Below is a little chart showing the times for the first connection to the server. So, what could be causing this problem, and what steps can I take to resolve it or at least narrow down the problem? Sending the request to the server was very quick, and receiving the reply back seems pretty quick, but the WAIT time is really long. So it connects, sends the request, but then waits close to 30 seconds before it starts receiving data back. I am also aware that there are things I can do to speed up page loading times, like reducing the number of CSS and JS files used on a page, compressing images, etc. This is not really what the source of the problem is though, because nothing has really changed on the site since before the problem started, and other sites on the same server are loading slowly as well.

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  • Marketing: Angry Birds - How it's done

    - by John
    Why do some apps, like Angry Birds, dominate the market while other cool/fun/addicting apps are never heard of? I'm trying to figure out the best marketing strategy, or best way to sell an app to mass market. Does anybody have any ideas or things they noticed about the marketing of major blockbuster apps, like Angry Birds, why they get so popular and stay at the top of charts. Thanks for any ideas, comments ...

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  • Database Administration as a Service

    A DBA should provide two things, a service and leadership. For Grant Fritchey, it was whilst serving a role in the Scouts of America that he had his epiphany. Creative chaos and energy, if tactfully harnessed and directed, led to effective ways to perform team-based tasks. Then he wondered why these skills couldn't be applied to the workplace. Are we DBAs doing it wrong in the way we interact with our co-workers?

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  • As a programmer, what would you use a personal Wiki for?

    - by Adam Harte
    Do any programmers out there keep a personal wiki? Either locally or online. What do you use your wiki for? or what might you use one for? I was thinking of starting a personal wiki as a place to record documentation and and other documents for my personal projects, and various notes etc, but how else is a personal (maybe private) Wiki useful to a programmer/developer? What type of things would you put in a personal Wiki?

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  • need some concrete examples on user stories, tasks and how they relate to functional and technical specifications

    - by gideon
    Little heads up, Im the only lonely dev building/planning/mocking my project as I go. Ive come up with a preview release that does only the core aspects of the system, with good business value and I've coded most of the UI as dirty throw-able mockups over nicely abstracted and very minimal base code. In the end I know quite well what my clients want on the whole. I can't take agile-ish cowboying anymore because Im completely dis-organized and have no paper plan and since my clients are happy, things are getting more complex with more features and ideas. So I started using and learning Agile & Scrum Here are my problems: I know what a functional spec is.(sample): Do all user stories and/or scenarios become part of the functional spec? I know what user stories and tasks are. Are these kinda user stories? I dont see any Business Value reason added to them. I made a mind map using freemind, I had problems like this: Actor : Finance Manager Can Add a Financial Plan into the system because well thats the point of it? What Business Value reason do I add for things like this? Example : A user needs to be able to add a blog article (in the blogger app) because..?? Its the point of a blogger app, it centers around that feature? How do I go into the finer details and system definitions: Actor: Finance Manager Action: Adds a finance plan. This adding is a complicated process with lots of steps. What User Story will describe what a finance plan in the system is ?? I can add it into the functional spec under definitions explaining what a finance plan is and how one needs to add it into the system, but how do I get to the backlog planning from there? Example: A Blog Article is mostly a textual document that can be written in rich text in the system. To add a blog article one must...... But how do you create backlog list/features out of this? Where are the user stories for what a blog article is and how one adds/removes it? Finally, I'm a little confused about the relations between functional specs and user stories. Will my spec contain user stories in them with UI mockups? Now will these user stories then branch out tasks which will make up something like a technical specification? Example : EditorUser Can add a blog article. Use XML to store blog article. Add a form to add blog. Add Windows Live Writer Support. That would be agile tasks but would that also be part of/or form the technical specs? Some concrete examples/answers of my questions would be nice!!

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  • Questions about game states

    - by MrPlow
    I'm trying to make a framework for a game I've wanted to do for quite a while. The first thing that I decided to implement was a state system for game states. When my "original" idea of having a doubly linked list of game states failed I found This blog and liked the idea of a stack based game state manager. However there were a few things I found weird: Instead of RAII two class methods are used to initialize and destroy the state Every game state class is a singleton(and singletons are bad aren't they?) Every GameState object is static So I took the idea and altered a few things and got this: GameState.h class GameState { private: bool m_paused; protected: StateManager& m_manager; public: GameState(StateManager& manager) : m_manager(manager), m_paused(false){} virtual ~GameState() {} virtual void update() = 0; virtual void draw() = 0; virtual void handleEvents() = 0; void pause() { m_paused = true; } void resume() { m_paused = false; } void changeState(std::unique_ptr<GameState> state) { m_manager.changeState(std::move(state)); } }; StateManager.h class GameState; class StateManager { private: std::vector< std::unique_ptr<GameState> > m_gameStates; public: StateManager(); void changeState(std::unique_ptr<GameState> state); void StateManager::pushState(std::unique_ptr<GameState> state); void popState(); void update(); void draw(); void handleEvents(); }; StateManager.cpp StateManager::StateManager() {} void StateManager::changeState( std::unique_ptr<GameState> state ) { if(!m_gameStates.empty()) { m_gameStates.pop_back(); } m_gameStates.push_back( std::move(state) ); } void StateManager::pushState(std::unique_ptr<GameState> state) { if(!m_gameStates.empty()) { m_gameStates.back()->pause(); } m_gameStates.push_back( std::move(state) ); } void StateManager::popState() { if(!m_gameStates.empty()) m_gameStates.pop_back(); } void StateManager::update() { if(!m_gameStates.empty()) m_gameStates.back()->update(); } void StateManager::draw() { if(!m_gameStates.empty()) m_gameStates.back()->draw(); } void StateManager::handleEvents() { if(!m_gameStates.empty()) m_gameStates.back()->handleEvents(); } And it's used like this: main.cpp StateManager states; states.changeState( std::unique_ptr<GameState>(new GameStateIntro(states)) ); while(gamewindow::gameWindow.isOpen()) { states.handleEvents(); states.update(); states.draw(); } Constructors/Destructors are used to create/destroy states instead of specialized class methods, state objects are no longer static but

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  • Off-Page SEO Tactics - General

    Off-page or off the page means just that - things that we can do to help our website rank more highly in the search engines that are not carried out on the site itself. There is really only one way we can use off-page techniques to rank our site higher and that is to encourage backlinks. How do we do that though?

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  • Memory Glutton

    - by AreYouSerious
    I have to admit that I can't get enough storage. I have hard drives just sitting around in case I need to move somthing, or I'm going to a friends and either they want something I have or I want something they might have. What I'm going to talk about today is cost effective memory for devices. I don't know how this particualr device will work in a camera, as That's not what I use in my camera, in fact I don't have a camera that doesn't either use SD, or the old compact flash card, that's not so compact anymore. There's this thing that uses two micro sd cards to double the capacity of your memory, and it costs about 4 bucks, without the Micro SD card. I have had one for about a year and was going to throw it away because I couldn't get it to work with my computer, or with my Sony Reader. However I found out by one last ditch effort that this thing works beautifully with my Sony PSP. there is no software to speak of associated with this thing, you simply put in two SD cards of the same size... (if you put in two different sizes it will still work, you'll only double the smallest cards size though) and format through the psp. Viola you know have a 29 GB memory card for your PSP. why is this important ? well for starters you can carry more music and more videos. Second if you have gone the way of the hacker.... you can store more games on your card... There are just a few things you have to note.... I speak from experience... you have to use the usb connection to the PSP to do any file moving, as I said previously said card doesn't play well with my computers or card readers... I not saying it won't work at all, just hasn't work with anything I own. Second. If for some reason you try to Hack/crack your PSP don't attempt to delete a game from the psp, use the usb file browser to remove games. if you delete from the PSP you are likely to have to move all your files off, reformat and start again... just a couple things I have noticed... if I had done something like that.   anyway, Here's a link.... http://www.photofast-adapter.com/  and if you want to buy one, get it off ebay, I've seen them as low as $1.99

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

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

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  • Is syncing private keys a good idea?

    - by Jacob Johan Edwards
    Ubuntu One's Security FAQ indicates that Canonical encrypts connections and restricts access to user data. This all well and fine, and I do trust SSL for online banking and other things more valuable than my private keys. That said, I am quite anxious about putting my ~/.ssh/id_dsa up in the cloud. Obviously, no system is totally secure. Could some knowledgeable party, then, pragmatically quantify the risks?

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  • Gnome Shell Thunderbird Mail Notification

    - by Nerdfest
    Does anyone know of a way to get persistent Gnome 3 panel notifications in Gnome 3 in Oneiric? It's one of the few things holding me back from using Gnome 3 regularly. I've actually found a way of moving the notifications from the (usually) hidden bottom bar to the top, but it does not move the Thunderbird icon. The icon also only tends to appear the first time mail is received. I'm very surprised this basic piece of functionality doesn't exist for Gnome Shell.

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  • Meet the WebCenter Product Marketing Team!

    - by Kellsey Ruppel
    As we wrap up this week recapping all the great things that happened at Oracle OpenWorld, we thought we'd share with our community the faces behind this blog and the Oracle WebCenter Product Marketing team! With the majority of the team working remotely, OpenWorld is the one time we are all together for an entire week. L to R: Lance Shaw (WebCenter Content), Christie Flanagan (WebCenter Sites), Peggy Chen (leads WebCenter product marketing), Kellsey Ruppel (WebCenter Portal & Oracle Social Network), & Michael Snow (WebCenter Suite).

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  • Microsoft Delivers Full Suite of SQL Server Powershell Cmdlets

    - by merrillaldrich
    We’ve all been waiting several years for this, and finally it’s here! Coinciding (approximately) with the release of SQL Server 2012, a new Feature Pack has appeared on the Microsoft web site that adds a full suite of PowerShell cmdlets for DDL and other functions. This means that, at last, we can do things like fully-featured SQL deployment scripts without all the (severe) limitations of T-SQL, such as primitive use of variables, flow control, exception handling. Taking a cue, finally, from the...(read more)

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  • How do game engines implement certain features?

    - by Milo
    I have always wondered how modern game engines do things such as realistic water, ambient occluded lighting, eye adaptation, global illumination, etc. I'm not so much interested in the implementation details, but more on what part of the graphics API such as D3D or OpenGL allow adding such functionality. The only thing I can think of is shaders, but I do not think just shaders can do all that. So really what I'm asking is, what functions or capabilities of graphics APIs enable developers to implement these types of features into their engines? Thanks

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  • Conducting Effective Web Meetings

    - by BuckWoody
    There are several forms of corporate communication. From immediate, rich communications like phones and IM messaging to historical transactions like e-mail, there are a lot of ways to get information to one or more people. From time to time, it's even useful to have a meeting. (This is where a witty picture of a guy sleeping in a meeting goes. I won't bother actually putting one here; you're already envisioning it in your mind) Most meetings are pointless, and a complete waste of time. This is the fault, completely and solely, of the organizer. It's because he or she hasn't thought things through enough to think about alternate forms of information passing. Here's the criteria for a good meeting - whether in-person or over the web: 100% of the content of a meeting should require the participation of 100% of the attendees for 100% of the time It doesn't get any simpler than that. If it doesn't meet that criteria, then don't invite that person to that meeting. If you're just conveying information and no one has the need for immediate interaction with that information (like telling you something that modifies the message), then send an e-mail. If you're a manager, and you need to get status from lots of people, pick up the phone.If you need a quick answer, use IM. I once had a high-level manager that called frequent meetings. His real need was status updates on various processes, so 50 of us would sit in a room while he asked each one of us questions. He believed this larger meeting helped us "cross pollinate ideas". In fact, it was a complete waste of time for most everyone, except in the one or two moments that they interacted with him. So I wrote some code for a Palm Pilot (which was a kind of SmartPhone but with no phone and no real graphics, but this was in the days when we had just discovered fire and the wheel, although the order of those things is still in debate) that took an average of the salaries of the people in the room (I guessed at it) and ran a timer which multiplied the number of people against the salaries. I left that running in plain sight for him, and when he asked about it, I explained how much the meetings were really costing the company. We had far fewer meetings after. Meetings are now web-enabled. I believe that's largely a good thing, since it saves on travel time and allows more people to participate, but I think the rule above still holds. And in fact, there are some other rules that you should follow to have a great meeting - and fewer of them. Be Clear About the Goal This is important in any meeting, but all of us have probably gotten an invite with a web link and an ambiguous title. Then you get to the meeting, and it's a 500-level deep-dive on something everyone expects you to know. This is unfair to the "expert" and to the participants. I always tell people that invite me to a meeting that I will be as detailed as I can - but the more detail they can tell me about the questions, the more detailed I can be in my responses. Granted, there are times when you don't know what you don't know, but the more you can say about the topic the better. There's another point here - and it's that you should have a clearly defined "win" for the meeting. When the meeting is over, and everyone goes back to work, what were you expecting them to do with the information? Have that clearly defined in your head, and in the meeting invite. Understand the Technology There are several web-meeting clients out there. I use them all, since I meet with clients all over the world. They all work differently - so I take a few moments and read up on the different clients and find out how I can use the tools properly. I do this with the technology I use for everything else, and it's important to understand it if the meeting is to be a success. If you're running the meeting, know the tools. I don't care if you like the tools or not, learn them anyway. Don't waste everyone else's time just because you're too bitter/snarky/lazy to spend a few minutes reading. Check your phone or mic. Check your video size. Install (and learn to use)  ZoomIT (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897434.aspx). Format your slides or screen or output correctly. Learn to use the voting features of the meeting software, and especially it's whiteboard features. Figure out how multiple monitors work. Try a quick meeting with someone to test all this. Do this *before* you invite lots of other people to your meeting.   Use a WebCam I'm not a pretty man. I have a face fit for radio. But after attending a meeting with clients where one Microsoft person used a webcam and another did not, I'm convinced that people pay more attention when a face is involved. There are tons of studies around this, or you can take my word for it, but toss a shirt on over those pajamas and turn the webcam on. Set Up Early Whether you're attending or leading the meeting, don't wait to sign on to the meeting at the time when it starts. I can almost plan that a 10:00 meeting will actually start at 10:10 because the participants/leader is just now installing the web client for the meeting at 10:00. Sign on early, go on mute, and then wait for everyone to arrive. Mute When Not Talking No one wants to hear your screaming offspring / yappy dog / other cubicle conversations / car wind noise (are you driving in a desert storm or something?) while the person leading the meeting is trying to talk. I use the Lync software from Microsoft for my meetings, and I mute everyone by default, and then tell them to un-mute to talk to the group. Share Collateral If you have a PowerPoint deck, mail it out in case you have a tech failure. If you have a document, share it as an attachment to the meeting. Don't make people ask you for the information - that's why you're there to begin with. Even better, send it out early. "But", you say, "then no one will come to the meeting if they have the deck first!" Uhm, then don't have a meeting. Send out the deck and a quick e-mail and let everyone get on with their productive day. Set Actions At the Meeting A meeting should have some sort of outcome (see point one). That means there are actions to take, a follow up, or some deliverable. Otherwise, it's an e-mail. At the meeting, decide who will do what, when things are needed, and so on. And avoid, if at all possible, setting up another meeting, unless absolutely necessary. So there you have it. Whether it's on-premises or on the web, meetings are a necessary evil, and should be treated that way. Like politicians, you should have as few of them as are necessary to keep the roads paved and public libraries open.

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  • [New England] SQL Saturday 71 - April 2 - Boston Area

    - by Adam Machanic
    April in the Boston area means many things. The Boston Marathon, the beginning of baseball season, and -- hopefully -- a bit of a respite from the ridiculously cold and snowy winter we've been having. This April will mean one more thing: A full-day, free SQL Server event featuring 30 top-notch sessions . SQL Saturday 71 will be the third full-day event in the area in as many years, and is shaping up to be the best yet. For the past several months I've been working and planning in conjunction with...(read more)

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