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• How Can I Test My Computer’s Power Supply?

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  You’re concerned your computer troubles stem from a failing (or outright fried) power supply unit. How can you test the unit to be sure that it’s the source of your hardware headaches? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader Sam Hoice has some PSU concerns: My computer powered off the other day on its own, and now when I push the power button, nothing happens. My assumption would naturally be that the power supply is done (possibly well done) but is there any good way to test this before I buy a new one? How can Sam test things without damaging his current computer or other hardware?   The Answer SuperUser contributor Grant writes: Unplug the power supply from any of the components inside the computer (or just remove it from the computer completely). USE CAUTION HERE (Though you’d only be shocked with a max of 24 volts) Plug the power supply into the wall. Find the big 24-ish pin connector that connects to the motherboard. Connect the GREEN wire with the adjacent BLACK wire. The power supply’s fan should start up. If it doesn’t then it’s dead. If the fan starts up, then it could be the motherboard that’s dead. You can use a multimeter to check if there is power output from the power supply. Adrien offers a solution for readers who may not be comfortable jamming wires into their power supply unit’s MOBO connector: Most well-stocked geek-stores sell a “power-supply tester” that has all the appropriate connectors to plug each part of your PSU into, with spiffy LEDs indicating status of the various rails, connectors for IDE/SATA/floppy power cables, etc. They run ~$20 US. With a little careful shopping you can even find a highly-rated PSU tester for a measly $6. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.     

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• Tron: Legacy, 3D goggles, and embedded UA

  - by Roger Hart

  The 3D edition of Tron: Legacy opens with embedded user assistance. The film starts with an iconic white-on-black command-prompt message exhorting viewers to keep their 3D glasses on throughout. I can't quote it verbatim, and at the time of writing nor could anybody findable with 5 minutes of googling. But it was something like: "Although parts of the movie are 2D, it was shot in 3D, and glasses should be worn at all times. This is how it was intended to be viewed" Yeah - "intended". That part is verbatim. Wow. Now, I appreciate that even out of the small sub-set of readers who care a rat's ass for critical theory, few will be quite so gung-ho for the whole "death of the author" shtick as I tend to be. And yes, this is ergonomic rather than interpretive, but really - telling an audience how you expect them to watch a movie? That's up there with Big Steve's "you're holding it wrong" Even if it solves the problem, it's pretty arrogant. If anything, it's worse than RTFM. And if enough people are doing it wrong that you have to include the announcement, then maybe - just maybe - you've got a UX and/or design problem. Plus, current 3D glasses are like sitting in a darkened room, cosplaying the lovechild of Spider Jerusalem and Jarvis Cocker. Ok, so that observation was weirder than it was helpful; but seriously, nobody wants to wear the glasses if they don't have to. They ruin the visual experience of the non-3D sections, and personally, I find them pretty disruptive to the suspension of disbelief. This is an old, old, problem, and I'm carping on about it because Tron is enjoyable mass-market slush. It's easier for me to say "no, I can't just put some text on it. It's fundamentally broken, redesign it." in the middle of a small-ish, agile, software project than it would be for some beleaguered production assistant at the end of editing a $200 million movie. But lots of folks in software don't even get to do that. Way more people are going to see Tron, and be annoyed by this, than will ever read a technical communication blog. So hopefully, after two hours of being mildly annoyed, wanting to turn the brightness up, and slowly getting a headache, they'll realise something very, very important: you just can't document your way out of a shoddy UI.

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• Character Stats and Power

  - by Stephen Furlani

  I'm making an RPG game system and I'm having a hard time deciding on doing detailed or abstract character statistics. These statistics define the character's natural - not learned - abilities. For example: Mass Effect: 0 (None that I can see) X20 (Xtreme Dungeon Mastery): 1 "STAT" Diablo: 4 "Strength, Magic, Dexterity, Vitality" Pendragon: 5 "SIZ, STR, DEX, CON, APP" Dungeons & Dragons (3.x, 4e): 6 "Str, Dex, Con, Wis, Int, Cha" Fallout 3: 7 "S.P.E.C.I.A.L." RIFTS: 8 "IQ, ME, MA, PS, PP, PE, PB, Spd" Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (1st ed?): 12-ish "WS, BS, S, T, Ag, Int, WP, Fel, A, Mag, IP, FP" HERO (5th ed): 14 "Str, Dex, Con, Body, Int, Ego, Pre, Com, PD, ED, Spd, Rec, END, STUN" The more stats, the more complex and detailed your character becomes. This comes with a trade-off however, because you usually only have limited resources to describe your character. D&D made this infamous with the whole min/max-ing thing where strong characters were typically not also smart. But also, a character with a high Str typically also has high Con, Defenses, Hit Points/Health. Without high numbers in all those other stats, they might as well not be strong since they wouldn't hold up well in hand-to-hand combat. So things like that force trade-offs within the category of strength. So my original (now rejected) idea was to force players into deciding between offensive and defensive stats: Might / Body Dexterity / Speed Wit / Wisdom Heart Soul But this left some stat's without "opposites" (or opposites that were easily defined). I'm leaning more towards the following: Body (Physical Prowess) Mind (Mental Prowess) Heart (Social Prowess) Soul (Spiritual Prowess) This will define a character with just 4 numbers. Everything else gets based off of these numbers, which means they're pretty important. There won't, however, be ways of describing characters who are fast, but not strong or smart, but absent minded. Instead of defining the character with these numbers, they'll be detailing their character by buying skills and powers like these: Quickness Add a +2 Bonus to Body Rolls when Dodging. for a character that wants to be faster, or the following for a big, tough character Body Building Add a +2 Bonus to Body Rolls when Lifting, Pushing, or Throwing objects. [EDIT - removed subjectiveness] So my actual questions is what are some pitfalls with a small stat list and a large amount of descriptive powers? Is this more difficult to port cross-platform (pen&paper, PC) for example? Are there examples of this being done well/poorly? Thanks,

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• A Quick HLSL Question (How to modify some HLSL code)

  - by electroflame

  Thanks for wanting to help! I'm trying to create a circular, repeating ring (that moves outward) on a texture. I've achieved this, to a degree, with the following code: float distance = length(inTex - in_ShipCenter); float time = in_Time; ///* Simple distance/time combination */ float2 colorIndex = float2(distance - time, .3); float4 shipColor = tex2D(BaseTexture, inTex); float4 ringColor = tex2D(ringTexture, colorIndex); float4 finalColor; finalColor.rgb = (shipColor.rgb) + (ringColor.rgb); finalColor.a = shipColor.a; // Use the base texture's alpha (transparency). return finalColor; This works, and works how I want it to. The ring moves outward from the center of the texture at a steady rate, and is constrained to the edges of the base texture (i.e. it won't continue past an edge). However, there are a few issues with it that I would like some help on, though. They are: By combining the color additively (when I set finalColor.rgb), it makes the resulting ring color much lighter than I want (which, is pretty much the definition of additive blending, but I don't really want additive blending in this case). I would really like to be able to pass in the color that I want the ring to be. Currently, I have to pass in a texture that contains the color of the ring, but I think that doing it that way is kind of wasteful and overly-cumbersome. I know that I'm probably being an idiot over this, so I greatly appreciate the help. Some other (possibly relevant) information: I'm using XNA. I'm applying this by providing it to a SpriteBatch (as an Effect). The SpriteBatch is using BlendState.NonPremultiplied. Thanks in advance! EDIT: Thanks for the answers thus far, as they've helped me get a better grasp of the color issue. However, I'm still unsure of how to pass a color in and not use a texture. i.e. Can I create a tex2D by using a float4 instead of a texture? Or can I make a texture from a float4 and pass the texture in to the tex2D? DOUBLE EDIT: Here's some example pictures: With the effect off: With the effect on: With the effect on, but with the color weighting set to full: As you can see, the color weighting makes the base texture completely black (The background is black, so it looks transparent). You can also see the red it's supposed to be, and then the white-ish it really is when blended additively.

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• Thank you Geeks With Blogs for letting me join your community!

  - by GreeNTUG

  First, a link to the blog I can no longer edit because Office Live blew away my digital identity and so I can no longer log into it (the source of a loooong blog about protecting your digital identity sometime when I have more time and after it has played out to the end) http://greentug.spaces.live.com/ The following are the communities I participate in: Green & Sustainability.  I run a virtual user group on Green and Sustainability as it relates to developers and software architects.  It was located at greentug.groups.live.com, and we will need to find a new digital location for it, because I am locked out of that site as well. BizSpark Tampa Bay:  I run a BizSpark group for Microsoft technologists (meetup.com, search for BizSpark Tampa Bay) and speak at Code Camps about "No Better Time to Start Your Own Tech Business".  The meetup group facilitates a balanced presentation that is respectful to anyone wanting to start their own business, whether part-time or full-time, whether micro (just you), sustainable (grow to 2-25-ish, self-funded), high growth (get venture capital or other funding, grow it, sell it within 5 years, do it again), or hybrid (the new model going forward).  It is an "action" group, with assignments and homework if you want to get the most out of it.   At the end of a year you will either have your business on the path to where you want it to be, or you will know the steps you need to do to get it there. Women in Technology Have been participating in the Women in Technology community since 2008, my main interests in this area are mentoring women in the workplace to have them believe they can become geeks and double their income, and to mentor them with respect to starting and running their own business. Access 2010/SharePoint 2010.  This is a game-changer with respect to the Access community (the ap both devs and IT Pros love to hate, the other a-word that's not a fruit).  I conducted Lunch n Learns and Brunch n Learns around this topic before the Office 2010/SharePoint 2010 launch, and spoke on the topic at SharePoint Saturday Tampa in Nov 2009. Interested in learning more about: Using Silverlight HD Streaming out in the non-technical world (horses and equestrian sport).  Migrating to Access Web Services and VB .Net from VBA (see the Access 2010/SharePoint 2010 interest above) Windows Phone 7!  Exciting opportunities both for Green and Sustainability and for my "day job" of Environmental, Health & Safety (EHS). My day job is Environmental, Health & Safetey (EHS) consulting and software solutions, where that interfaces with the developer world is with respect to opportunities around Green and Sustainability, The SmartGrid and Juval Lowy's EnergyNet, both of which will require a lot of technology and software to make them work, The new Microsoft Partner competency for "Digital Home", and The Y2K kind of deadline around how managing chemicals in ERP systems is changing because of Global Harmonization, which hits the EU with a hard deadline on 11/30/10 (yes, this year), and hits the USA about 15 months later. Hope you enjoy my contributions to the digital geek community, and feel free to email me, [email protected] (the email leftover after my digital identity was blown away), and [email protected] (this one could go away at some future point) Best, Kathy Malone

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• Should I be an algorithm developer, or java web frameworks type developer?

  - by Derek

  So - as I see it, there are really two kinds of developers. Those that do frameworks, web services, pretty-making front ends, etc etc. Then there are developers that write the algorithms that solve the problem. That is, unless the problem is "display this raw data in some meaningful way." In that case, the framework/web developer guy might be doing both jobs. So my basic problem is this. I have been an algorithms kind of software developer for a few years now. I double majored in Math and Computer science, and I have a master's in systems engineering. I have never done any web-dev work, with the exception of a couple minor jobs, and some hobby level stuff. I have been job interviewing lately, and this is what happens: Job is listed as "programmer- 5 years of experience with the following: C/C++, Java,Perl, Ruby, ant, blah blah blah" Recruiter calls me, says they want me to come in for interview In the interview, find out they have some webservices development, blah blah blah When asked in the interview, talk about my experience doing algorithms, optimization, blah blah..but very willing to learn new languages, frameworks, etc Get a call back saying "we didn't think you were a fit for the job you interviewed wtih, but our algorithm team got wind of you and wants to bring you on" This has happened to me a couple times now - see a vague-ish job description looking for a "programmer" Go in, find out they are doing some sort of web-based tool, maybe with some hardcore algorithms running in the background. interview with people for the web-based tool, but get an offer from the algorithms people. So the question is - which job is the better job? I basically just want to get a wide berth of experience at this level of my career, but are algorithm developers so much in demand? Even more so than all these supposed hot in demand web developer guys? Will I be ok in the long run if I go into the niche of math based algorithm development, and just little to no, or hobby level web-dev experience? I basically just don't want to pigeon hole myself this early. My salary is already starting to get pretty high - and I can see a company later on saying "we really need a web developer, but we'll hire this 50k/year college guy, instead of this 100k/year experience algorithm guy" Cliffs notes: I have been doing algorithm development. I consider myself to be a "good programmer." I would have no problem picking up web technologies and those sorts of frameworks. During job interviews, I keep getting "we think you've got a good skillset - talk to our algorithm team" instead of wanting me to learn new skills on the job to do their web services or whhatever other new technology they are doing. Edit: Whenever I am talking about algorithm development here - I am talking about the code that produces the answer. Typically I think of more math-based algorithms: solving a financial problem, solving a finite element method, image processing, etc

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• Ubuntu 12.04.3 Graphics Issues: Broken Pipes, Reinstalled Xorg and Bumblebee

  - by user190488

  It seems I have a problem, and am only making it worse by following what I find online. I have a new Asus N550JV-D71 (not sure about the part after the dash, though I definitely know it includes 71). I decided to downgrade Windows 8 to 7, then dual boot Ubuntu 12.04 with it (there were issues with Windows 8, and I had a Windows 7 disk handy). It did work and, after installing Bumblebee in tty (because it wouldn't boot when it was first installed), it worked marvelously for a little less than a week. However, I restarted it last night and got the Could not write bytes: Broken pipes error. (I see it's a very common error, but I've looked at the majority of the suggested Similar Questions already.) I followed what I could find online, followed those instructions (making sure to not install any sort of graphics drivers other than what Bumblebee provides), and it just seems to go further and further downhill. I'm afraid I didn't write the exact steps to get to this point (it was late by the time I gave up the night before), but it involved reinstalling lightdm, xorg (and xserver?), and Bumblebee. I then changed the Bumblebee.conf file so that Device=nvidia. I'm pretty new to Linux in general (I've used it since 10.04, but I hadn't had issues up until this computer, so it let me stay a newbie), so I'm not exactly sure what log files to look at to find the errors to look up. However, I did look at lshw and noticed that displays was marked as unassigned. Also, if I try to start lightdm using the command line, it always stops at Stopping Mount network filesystems. I should note that there isn't an xorg.conf file, and no .Xauthority. I would really, really prefer not to reinstall 12.04 if possible. I managed to get grub to display only a short time ago, and I can't boot to the dvd drive unless I go into the BIOS settings and manually change the boot order (that was an issue from the beginning, before the Ubuntu install), and getting into those settings often means rebooting several times due to the fact that the window to get to it is extremely small. I have most of what I need backed up, however, in case it does get to that point. If I really have to, I can just use the latest Ubuntu version instead of the LTS, but the reason I chose 12.04 in the first place is because I need something stable-ish, and Windows isn't suitable to what I need to do. I should note that the reason I restarted last night in the first place was that it wasn't charging the battery, and the wifi kept on going out. Hardware: Nvidia GeForce GT 750M Intel HD graphics 4600

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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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• Are they asking too much of me?

  - by Tesserex

  Or am I just whining? Background: I work for a "startup," which I put in air quotes because the company has been around for 4 years. We have about 40 employees in three offices, 9 here plus some part time. We have a good amount of investment and bring in about 75% of what we spend (so not profitable just yet.) Standard work week is supposed to be about 60 hours, but they justify that as we have to be online when our international (Taiwan and Vietnam) offices are awake. When I started the job 6 months ago, I spent about a month prototyping an iphone app and did really well on my own. They also found out about my facebook applications and how many users they got. Putting 2 and 2 together (and winding up at -7) they realized 1. I'm independent and innovative (because I was able to use stackoverflow to answer my iOS questions instead of bugging my superiors) and 2. I must have an eye for marketing (since my fb apps grew totally organically without me doing any advertising), and assigned me to a project optimizing adwords campaigns. Today I got reviewed, and then chewed out, by our CEO for not totally rocking this project. Now I thought I was doing ok, but the CEO said the project is stagnant and they're expecting more from me. But since it's a startup, they play loose with job roles and I've had plenty of other things to do in the past three months. Every time I ask what's most important, I get conflicting responses depending who I ask, and the end result is that almost everything has equal priority - high. I could go on about how I don't think adwords is worthwhile for us since our profit margin is so slim, and how we should be trying to improve our website first, but that's not the point. I also have explained to the office director (who originally assigned me the project, not the CEO) that I don't actually know anything about marketing, I'm just a decent programmer, but they think my general smarts will prove capable of tackling this challenge. The CEO also clarified that he wants a more technical and algorithmic approach to the problem. So is there something I can do to address this? Combined with my existing and confusing workload, should I be raising an issue? Or should I do the grown up thing and give it my all, asking for help when I need it and hoping for the best? Sorry if this is very rant-ish.

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• ClearTrace Performance on 170GB of Trace Files

  - by Bill Graziano

  I’ve always worked to make ClearTrace perform well.  That’s probably because I spend so much time watching it work.  I’m often going through two or three gigabytes of trace files but I rarely get the chance to run it on a really large set of files. One of my clients wanted to run a full trace for a week and then analyze the results.  At the end of that week we had 847 200MB trace files for a total of nearly 170GB. I regularly use 200MB trace files when I monitor production systems.  I usually get around 300,000 statements in a file that size if it’s mostly stored procedures.  So those 847 trace files contained roughly 250 million statements.  (That’s 730 bytes per statement if you’re keeping track.  Newer trace files have some compression in them but I’m not exactly sure what they’re doing.)  On a system running 1,000 statements per second I get a new file every five minutes or so. It took 27 hours to process these files on an older development box.  That works out to 1.77MB/second.  That means ClearTrace processed about 2,654 statements per second. You can query the data while you’re loading it but I’ve found it works better to use a second instance of ClearTrace to do this.  I’m not sure why yet but I think there’s still some dependency between the two processes. ClearTrace is almost always CPU bound.  It’s really just a huge, ugly collection of regular expressions.  It only writes a summary to its database at the end of each trace file so that usually isn’t a bottleneck.  At the end of this process, the executable was using roughly 435MB of RAM.  Certainly more than when it started but I think that’s acceptable. The database where all this is stored started out at 100MB.  After processing 170GB of trace files the database had grown to 203MB.  The space savings are due to the “datawarehouse-ish” design and only storing a summary of each trace file. You can download ClearTrace for SQL Server 2008 or test out the beta version for SQL Server 2012.  Happy Tuning!

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• Office365 SPF record has too many lookups

  - by Sammitch

  For some utterly ridiculous administrative reasons we've got a split domain with one mailbox on Office365 which requires us to add include:outlook.com to our SPF record. The problem with this is that that rule alone requires nine DNS lookups of the maximum of 10. Seriously, it's horrible. Just look at it: v=spf1 include:spf-a.outlook.com include:spf-b.outlook.com ip4:157.55.9.128/25 include:spfa.bigfish.com include:spfb.bigfish.com include:spfc.bigfish.com include:spf-a.hotmail.com include:_spf-ssg-b.microsoft.com include:_spf-ssg-c.microsoft.com ~all Given that we have our own large-ish mail system we need to have rules for a, mx, include:_spf1.mydomain.com, and include:_spf2.mydomain.com which puts us at 13 DNS lookups which causes PERMERRORs with strict SPF validators, and completely unreliable/unpredictable validation with non-strict/badly implemented validators. Is it possible to somehow eliminate 3 of those include: rules from the bloated outlook.com record, but still cover the servers used by O365? Edit: Commentors have mentioned that we should simply use the shorter spf.protection.outlook.com record. While that is news to me, and it is shorter, it's only one record shorter: spf.protection.outlook.com include:spf-a.outlook.com include:spf-b.outlook.com include:spf-c.outlook.com include:spf.messaging.microsoft.com include:spfa.frontbridge.com include:spfb.frontbridge.com include:spfc.frontbridge.com Edit² I suppose we can technically pare this down to: v=spf1 a mx include:_spf1.mydomain.com include:_spf2.mydomain.com include:spf-a.outlook.com include:spf-b.outlook.com include:spf-c.outlook.com include:spfa.frontbridge.com include:spfb.frontbridge.com include:spfc.frontbridge.com ~all but the potential issues I see with this are: We need to keep abreast of any changes to the parent spf.protection.outlook.com and spf.messaging.microsoft.com records. If anything is changed or [god forbid] added we would have to manually update ours to reflect that. With our actual domain name the record's length is 260 chars, which would require 2 strings for the TXT record, and I honestly don't trust that all of the DNS clients and SPF resolvers out there will properly accept a TXT record longer than 255 bytes.

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• Install Ubuntu on a new netbook?

  - by torbengb

  I'm planning to buy a netbook, and I am considering to install Ubuntu on it. It would mainly be used by my wife at home for web browsing and email at home (lightweight is important, hence a netbook!), and we'd occasionally bring it along on travels (mostly as digital photo dropzone). I want to use Ubuntu instead of Windows because I'm sick of all the Windows hassle and updates. I'm not concerned about Windows applications; I'd switch to native alternatives as far as possible because really only Firefox and something like Picasa are needed. I'm considering an ASUS Eee PC 1001P or an MSI Wind U100 or an Point of View Mobii II (click the links for specs; nevermind that the rest is German). I'm not in the USA. Whatever I buy will most likely have Windows 7 on it but no optical drive. I would also buy a large-ish USB stick but not an external optical drive. Should I (and can I) install Ubuntu alongside Windows 7, or remove Windows? If I remove Windows first, how would I be able to reinstall it if I change my mind? Can I make a backup? Is a recovery CD usually provided? Should I choose the regular Ubuntu, or the Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR)? Does UNR allow me to install additional applications just as easily? Note: I'm asking about Ubuntu vs. Windows; let's skip the hardware discussion for now. Edit: I'm assuming that Windows is already installed; if it isn't then I would only install Ubuntu and this question is irrelevant.

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• Toshiba Qosmio: Battery Stuck at 60%, does not Charges, PC can't power up, can't remain on with out

  - by Fellknight

  Just like the tittle says, now let me try to give some more detail about the symptoms; The battery is stuck at 60 percent (68% at the moment of this writing).When hovering over the battery icon in Windows 7 Home Premium x64 it reads:"68% available (plugged in, charging)", there's no x or any sing the OS is displaying any error. No matter how much time left connected to the AC adapter the battery doesn't charge, it seems however it continues to discharge at its normal rate when disconnected from the laptop (about 1% each 2 weeks). Now this last symptom is the one i find most strange it "seems" the laptop somehow isn't recognizing the battery because even with the remaining charge of 60%(ish) the laptop wont power up or remain on if disconnected from its AC adapter(if it's on and is unplugged it will immediately turn off). Meaning that even with the battery attached correctly in its right place is as if running the laptop with no battery at all. Toshiba's Utilities haven't detected anything strange (or anything for that matter) with the battery or the hardware. The laptop when in use is connected 90% of the time to a Belkin surge protector (like my 1TB EHD). The protector is working correctly (green light on) and the 1TB HD too, thus a power surge having damaged it's very unlikely. Thnx in advance

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• Migrating to Amazon AWS etc: What key statistics/questions should be analyzed and asked?

  - by cerd

  I searched SOverflow pretty extensively for something similar to this set of questions. BACKGROUND: We are a growing 'big(ish)' data chemical data company that are outgrowing our lab and our dedicated production workhorses. Make no mistake, we need to do some serious query optimization. Our data (It comes from a certain govt. agency so the schema and lack of indexing is atrocious). So yes, I know, AWS or EC2 is not a silver bullet in the face of spending time to maybe rework your queries/code entirely 'out of the box'. With that said I would appreciate any input on the following questions: We produce on CentOS and lab on Ubuntu LTS which I prefer especially with their growing cloud / AWS integration. If we are mysql centric, and our biggest problem is these big cartesian products that produce slow queries, should we roll out what we know after more optimization with respect to Ubuntu/mySQL with the added Amazon horsepower? Or is there some merit to the NoSQL and other technologies they offer? What are the key metrics I need to gather from apache and mysql other than like: Disk I/O operations, Data up/down avgs and trends and special high usage periods/scenarios? I've reviewed AWS/EC2 fine print, but want 2nd opinions. What other services aside from the basic web/database have proven valuable to you? I know nothing of Hadoop or many other technologies they offer, echoing my prev. question, do you sometimes find it worth it (Initially having it be a gamble aside from basic homework) to dive/break into a whole new environment and try to/or end up finding a way of more efficiently producing your data/site product? Anything I should watch out for in projecting costs, or any other general advice when working with AWS folks from anyone else where your company is very niche and very very technical (Scientifically - or anybody for that matter)? Thanks very much for your input - I think this thread could be valuable to others as well.

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• deploy LAMP config to new boxes with low/no effort

  - by user1444233

  I'm spending a lot of time setting up new Centos 6 instances. I use a VCS (Subversion) for most of the config files and all of the webapp source files (Github), but even with excellent package managers (like yum, npm, easy_install, etc.) it still takes time. I'd like to get to the point where I could try out a new potential web host by just signing up for an account, logging in and automatically sucking my standardised config onto the box. I know there are a set of tools that can help: Puppet Chef Vagrant and a set of services that sell solutions: [Jumpbox] http://www.jumpbox.com/ [BitNami Cloud] http://bitnami.org/cloud I don't mind investing time in learning a new tool, but as a no-budget start-up, I'm keen to keep monthly costs down. My biggest concern is that time spent on the server config is time away from the codebase, and that's where I think my team and I should be investing our energy, at least until we get funded and scale up a bit. I'd be grateful of some recommendations for which way to jump on config: stick with SSH and manual deploys, at least until you get big. bite the bullet and learn [say] puppet. You may only use it 8-10 times, but it pays to have such an easy tunable server bootstrap. don't bother, just pay the $100/month for a standard config service. It'll cost you $1000/year, but you should focus on the code. Other questions in this domain I use quite a complex stack (Drupal, Zend Server, MySQL, PHP, MongoDB, Python, django), but are there standard(ish) setups that include these or that I could build upon more quickly? Are the configs optimised for small, medium, large VPS (1GB, 4GB, 16GB)? How secure are they?

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• access an IP restricted service from a dynamic IP (Broadband modem) on a windows machine

  - by Joel Alenchery

  Hi, I dont know if this is the correct place to ask this question but here goes .. (please note that I am pretty much a newbie in terms of networking and I work primarily on the windows platform) I have been working on accessing and consuming some web services in C#/ASP.Net, these web services that I consume are IP restricted. Currently they allow access only from my work network (we have a static ip set up through which all our internet requests are routed). Every now and then we have people who go out and about and are stuck with using a usb dongle based internet connection and hence are not able to now access these web services that they are working on. What I would like to do is to provide some way for these remote workers to access the IP restricted web services using the static ip at our office. For example when the remote worker tries to access a service say http://exampleService.com .. the request gets routed to some box at our office and then out to the actual service. That way the service always sees the static ip of the office and not the dynamic ip that the remote user is actually using. I have done a fair bit of googling and its difficult to search for it as most of the results come back for dynamic DNS which is not really what I am looking for. I have also looked at a couple of posts on here namely Accessing IP restricted server from dynamic IP which does provide some insight but the fellow seems to have access to the source that does the ip restriction and is able to change the restrictions. In my case i dont have that access. another one that looked interesting was Static IP for dynamic IP the first answer seems exactly what I need but I dont know how I would go about doing the same on a windows machine. any help would be really appreciated. (am sorry about being soo noob-ish) PS: Right now everyone is using RDC/LogMeIn to access an internet connected machine in the office to manually check the webservice and getting work done. Which is a very tedious process.

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• access an IP restricted service from a dynamic IP (Broadband modem) on a windows machine

  - by Joel Alenchery

  Hi, I dont know if this is the correct place to ask this question but here goes .. (please note that I am pretty much a newbie in terms of networking and I work primarily on the windows platform) I have been working on accessing and consuming some web services in C#/ASP.Net, these web services that I consume are IP restricted. Currently they allow access only from my work network (we have a static ip set up through which all our internet requests are routed). Every now and then we have people who go out and about and are stuck with using a usb dongle based internet connection and hence are not able to now access these web services that they are working on. What I would like to do is to provide some way for these remote workers to access the IP restricted web services using the static ip at our office. For example when the remote worker tries to access a service say http://exampleService.com .. the request gets routed to some box at our office and then out to the actual service. That way the service always sees the static ip of the office and not the dynamic ip that the remote user is actually using. I have done a fair bit of googling and its difficult to search for it as most of the results come back for dynamic DNS which is not really what I am looking for. I have also looked at a couple of posts on here namely http://serverfault.com/questions/187231/accessing-ip-restricted-server-from-dynamic-ip which does provide some insight but the fellow seems to have access to the source that does the ip restriction and is able to change the restrictions. In my case i dont have that access. another one that looked interesting was http://serverfault.com/questions/136806/static-ip-for-dynamic-ip the first answer seems exactly what I need but I dont know how I would go about on a windows machine. any help would be really appreciated. (am sorry about being soo noob-ish) PS: Right now everyone is using RDC/LogMeIn to access an internet connected machine in the office to manually check the webservice and getting work done. Which is a very tedious process.

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• Mountain Lion overheating issue have to do with launchd/Python?

  - by Christopher Jones

  So, Ever since I installed ML, my MacBook Air has been running SUPER hot. Opened up activity monitor, and everything seemed to be pretty normal, until I had it refresh every .5 seconds... and then I started seeing some interesting things. A 'Python' process appears and is terminated several times a second, and uses TONS of CPU 70-110. It's parent process is 'launchd' - and when I sample the process, there is a lot going on with Python. http://db.tt/ovuX3hZM These appear and disappear too quickly to get one... this one only happened to be using 70 ish percent of CPU... but they consistently hit 100-110%. http://db.tt/ovuX3hZMg The parent process... launchd. lots of context switches and UNIX system calls... What is the deal here? (photo goes here when I earn the street cred) The sample of launchd. ANY help here could be of help to not only me, but possibly many others experiencing decreased battery life and warmer laps these days because of this Mountain Lion weirdness. PLEASE HELP! PS - I'd put the screen grabs inline, but i don't have enough street cred yet.

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• Will Parallel-port dongle work on USB-to-Parallel Adapter?

  - by Gary M. Mugford

  We have a niche program running on a Win2K laptop that uses a security dongle connected to a parallel port for authentication. The laptop is getting creaky and I spent a frustrating night last night shopping various websites for a new laptop that had a parallel port. Seems I'm about three years late [G]. The question I have, is, if I buy a new(ish) laptop and use a USB-to-Parallel Port adapter, will the security dongle work? I know I'm not being specific about the app, but it's one most people wouldn't have heard of anyways. I've been guessing the answer to my question is no, since the app won't know to send a request out to the non-existent port. But, if the process actually is that the dongle sends a message INTO the computer every now and then, then it might work. And, I'm not sure whether the dongle is only needed at program startup time or randomly. The dongle is a 'permanent' addition to the old laptop. This is all about the money. We can have a newly-updated version of the program (which won't add any features we need) for the princely sum of $2700. Or we can spend $500 on a refurbed laptop still running WinXP, add a 30 buck adapter and keep the same solid, stolid performance we've come to appreciate. But it all comes down to the dongle behaviour. Oh, and a dock won't work. The whole laptop issue is about moving about the various nooks and crannies of the building with laptop in hand. Thanks for any suggestions/guidance. GM

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• Computer Comparison - which is "better"

  - by David Murdoch

  A company I work with recently replaced their old server and gave it to me. Their old server is a Dell PowerEdge 2600. I've been playing with the machine and even installed Windows Server 2008 on it...and it seems to run it pretty well. Here are the specs for the two machines: Dev Machine: AMD Athlon64 3000+ 2.38 GHz (overclocked from 1.8GHz [@ 280x8.5] - it is stable-ish) Memory (RAM): 1x1GB OCZ PC3200 (Dual-Channel) 300GB HD OS: Windows XP Pro (32bit) SuperPi 1M digit test: 40 seconds Dell PowerEdge 2600 Server: Intel Xeon CPU 2.8GHz 2.8GHz Memory (RAM): 512MBx2 (PC2700, not dual channel) 68GB HD (RAID 5) OS: Windows Server 2000 (32bit) SuperPi 1M digit test: 56 seconds [using 1 processor] (Themes and Aero-Flass UI turned off, of course) I use my computer to regularly run Photoshop CS5, Illustrator CS5, Flash CS5, 5 browsers (Chrome, FF, IE, Safari, Opera), iTunes, Visual Studio 2010, and Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 [sometimes simultaneously :-) ]. The SuperPi test has my dev machine coming in about 30% faster than the Server machine...though this could be due to the server running "Vista" with background processes prioritized. Do you think it would be realistic/advantageous for me to move from my dev machine to the Dell PowerEdge 2600? Is it possible to install additional DVD drives/burners on the server? Can I install my internal 300 GB hard drive on the server? Can I add some USB 2.0 ports? Note: I'll probably install Win XP Pro on the dev machine if I do switch. If not, are there any creative and useful way for me to take advantage of this server (with the goal of faster computing)?

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• How to fix display on external Samsung Syncmaster shifted to the right when connected to Macbook Pro?

  - by joe larson

  Is there something special I need to do to be able to use external LCD displays with my new MacBook Pro? Do I need extra software, or do I possibly need a different cable? I'm attempting to use an external display with my MBP. I've got a "Mini DisplayPort to VGA Female Adapter for Mac", plugged into the thunderbolt port on my MBP, which I understood should be compatible with thunderbolt. I've tried this with three different SyncMaster models: a B2330 (21.5"), a EX2220 (22"), and a third (also 22" ish) which I don't have the model # for -- but all are 1920x1080 resolution; plus an additional HP monitor of similar size and resolution. In all four cases, the MBP recognizes the screen and choses the correct resolution. However, the display is shifted over about 1 inch. This is true no matter if I change screen resolutions also. The controls on the monitor for horizontal position don't help. Also, sometimes (especially if I drag an app over into the second screen), the screen starts skipping left to right and having bands of fuzz. Additionally, the monitor will periodically blink off for a moment, trying to switch from Digital to Analog and back (the Syncmaster shows text on the screen to tell you it's trying to do this). Often when it comes back from one of these blank-outs, it will show OK (no skipping or fuzz) but still shifted right; then after a few seconds it will go wrong again skipping and fuzzy. This photo shows the worst of it. I've added red rectangles to show the physical edge of the screen, and a yellow rectangle to show the empty space on the left of the screen. (Sorry for the awful quality and lighting!) Also, it's worth noting I am on Mac OS X 10.6.7, and yes I have this update 1.4 installed.

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• Good visuals supporting adopting Macintosh in a Windows company

  - by jdmuys

  I work in a Windows only software service company, which just put up an internal contest for innovative ideas for the company. The idea I submitted is to let employees use a Mac instead of the mandatory PC if they wished to. My idea has been selected (among a few others) to reach the next stage of the contest. One of the items requested for the next stage is ONE visual that best illustrates the idea. While my pitch is rather good (I think), I have a hard time coming up with ONE visual that would be suggestive enough and not too fanboy-ish, or too restricted. That's why I am requesting suggestions. For reference, some of the points I intend to develop are (not in order): de facto safety (little or no malware) Apple as a company reached its leading position through innovation (bio)diversity is a source of value for a service company, that expands its reach. it makes financial sense the Mac is the most compatible machine, making it a lot easier to test our software (especially web sites). Some OS X technologies can be valuable to a software service company (eg Applescript) Some Apple tools can help us improve (eg Keynote) It's good citizenship for our company as Apple is now best in class according to Greenpeace. I realize this question may be out of topic here. I'd be happy to have suggestions on where to post this question. Please do not argue why OS X might be better or worse than Windows. My question is very narrow. Thanks.

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• Distributing processing for an application that wasn't designed with that in mind

  - by Tim

  We've got the application at work that just sits and does a whole bunch of iterative processing on some data files to perform some simulations. This is done by an "old" Win32 application that isn't multi-processor aware, so new(ish) computers and workstations are mostly sitting idle running this application. However, since it's installed by a typical Windows Install Shield installer, I can't seem to install and run multiple copies of the application. The work can be split up manually before processing, enabling the work to be distributed across multiple machines, but we still can't take advantage of multiple core CPUs. The results can be joined back together after processing to make a complete simulation. Is there a product out there that would let me "compartmentalize" an installation (or 4) so I can take advantage of a multi-core CPU? I had thought of using MS Softgrid, but I believe that still depends on a remote server to do the heavy lifting (though please correct me if I'm wrong). Furthermore, is there a way I can distribute the workload off the one machine? So an input could be split into 50 chunks, handed out to 50 machines, and worked on? All without really changing the initial application? In a perfect world, I'd get the application to take advantage of a DesktopGrid (BOINC), but like most "mission critical corporate applications", the need is there, but the money is not. Thank you in advance (and sorry if this isn't appropriate for serverfault).

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• Streaming music throughout the house on a budget?

  - by greggannicott

  I was wondering whether anyone knew of a way to stream music throughout a house on a budget? I want to avoid spending any money on this (eg. I don't want to buy a d-link style device). It would be ideal if I could use my existing hardware and some open source software. I have three old(ish) PCs knocking around. I'm happy to stick either Windows or Linux on them. They can all be hooked up to speakers. The ideal solution would result in: the same audio being heard from every device (eg. when you hear a beat on one device, you'd hear it at the exact same time on another (so you don't get any echo)) I'd be able to control the source application (eg. the songs lined up) with my iPhone. I realise I'm being cheeky with those two wishes - but you never know your luck. Am I asking for too much, or is there a piece of software/protocol out there with this purpose in mind? I've been searching for sometime now, but haven't had any joy. Thanks in advance.

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• Server Crash Diagnosis...Are there any 'black box recorder' style programs available.

  - by columbo

  My redhat server is crashing every three weeks or so at 4:15am ish on Sunday mornings. (well it was sundays the last two have been Thursday mornings at 4:15ish) Looking at the logs (mysql, httpd, messages) there are no clues as to why. They just seem to stop. I ran a little script to take memory readings every 15 minutes and it too stops (with normal readings) at this time. The server is remote at a provider so I can only access it via the web. I use Plesk. It appears to be a set job or something that is causing the issue. I can see nothing in crontab. So my question is...has anyone else had this and can offer advice? Failing that. Does any one know of a way to get more detailed logging than that offered by the messages file? I was thinking of a black box style recording program or maybe something as simple as an option somewhere to increase the level of reporting in the messages log. Thanks

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