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• Restyling RadDataPager for WPF and Silverlight

    A small but powerful control has joined the great family of Telerik XAML controls with the recent release. RadDataPager is a result of an increasing demand from our customers who needed to work with large amounts of server data presented in small portions at the client side.  The primary goal was to make a powerful data paging control to be used in any scenarios requiring getting and presenting portions of data. How good is RadDataPager in working with paged data you can see in Rossen's announcement. Yet being a XAML control it challenged us with making one more visually appealing and highly customizable control. It offers a slick look in all available WPF/Silverlight Telerik themes:     As you can see the default design is targeting mainly business scenarios. At the same time being an example for a truly lookless XAML control RadDataPager allows restyling with minimal efforts this way widening the possible range of applications.  Lets see what we can doo with a few lines of XAML : <Style x:Key="buttonStyle" TargetType="ButtonBase" > <Setter Property="Template"> <Setter.Value> <ControlTemplate TargetType="ButtonBase"> <Grid Width="40" Background="Black"> <Ellipse StrokeThickness="2" VerticalAlignment="Center" Width="15" Height="15" HorizontalAlignment="Center" Fill="Gray" /> <Ellipse Visibility="{Binding IsCurrent, Converter={StaticResource VisibilityConverter}}" VerticalAlignment="Center" Height="16" Fill="White" HorizontalAlignment="Center" Width="16"/> </Grid> </ControlTemplate> </Setter.Value> </Setter> </Style> ... <telerik:RadDataPager NumericButtonStyle="{StaticResource buttonStyle}" ... And the result: The IPhone-style-thing bellow the RadCoverFlow is actually our RadDataPager.       With a few more lines of XAML we may get  almost any imaginable look of the pager control including the fascinating result demonstrated in the short video on the top.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Is Microsoft&rsquo;s Cloud Bet Placed on the Ground?

  - by andrewbrust

  Today at the Unversity of Washington, Steve Ballmer gave a speech on Microsoft’s cloud strategy.  Significantly, Azure was only briefly mentioned and was not shown.  Instead, Ballmer spoke about what he called the five “dimensions” of the cloud, and used that as the basis for an almost philosophical discussion.  Ballmer opined on how the cloud should be distinguished from the Internet.as well as what the cloud will and should enable.  Ballmer worked hard to portray the cloud not as a challenger to Windows and PCs (as Google would certainly suggest it is) but  really as just the latest peripheral that adds value to PCs and devices. At one point during his speech, Ballmer said “We start with Windows at Microsoft.  It’s the most popular smart device on the planet.  And our design center for the future of Windows is to make it one of those smarter devices that the cloud really wants.”  I’m not sure I agree with Ballmer’s ambition here, but I must admit he’s taken the “software + services” concept and expanded on it in more consumer-friendly fashion. There were demos too.  For example, Blaise Aguera y Arcas reprised his Bing Maps demo from the TED conference held last month.  And Simon Atwell showed how Microsoft has teamed with Sky TV in the UK to turn Xbox into something that looks uncannily like Windows Media Center.  Specifically, an Xbox console app called Sky Player provides full access to Sky’s on-demand programming but also live TV access to an array of networks carried on its home TV service, complete with an on-screen programming guide.  Windows Phone 7 Series was shown quickly and Ballmer told us that while Windows Mobile/Phone 6.5 and earlier were designed for voice and legacy functionality, Windows Phone 7 Series is designed for the cloud. Over and over during Ballmer’s talk (and those of his guest demo presenters), the message was clear: Microsoft believes that client (“smart”) devices, and not mere HTML terminals, are the technologies to best deliver on the promise of the cloud.  The message was that PCs running Windows, game consoles and smart phones  whose native interfaces are Internet-connected offer the most effective way to utilize cloud capabilities.  Even the Bing Maps demo conveyed this message, because the advanced technology shown in the demo uses Silverlight (and thus the PCs computing power), and not AJAX (which relies only upon the browser’s native scripting and rendering capabilities) to produce the impressive interface shown to the audience. Microsoft’s new slogan, with respect to the cloud, is “we’re all in.”  Just as a Texas Hold ‘em player bets his entire stash of chips when he goes all in, so too is Microsoft “betting the company” on the cloud.  But it would seem that Microsoft’s bet isn’t on the cloud in a pure sense, and is instead on the power of the cloud to fuel new growth in PCs and other client devices, Microsoft’s traditional comfort zone.  Is that a bet or a hedge?  If the latter, is Microsoft truly all in?  I don’t really know.  I think many people would say this is a sucker’s bet.  But others would say it’s suckers who bet against Microsoft.  No matter what, the burden is on Microsoft to prove this contrarian view of the cloud is a sensible one.  To do that, they’ll need to deliver on cloud-connected device innovation.  And to do that, the whole company will need to feel that victory is crucial.  Time will tell.  And I expect to present progress reports in future posts.

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• Type Casting variables in PHP: Is there a practical example?

  - by Stephen

  PHP, as most of us know, has weak typing. For those who don't, PHP.net says: PHP does not require (or support) explicit type definition in variable declaration; a variable's type is determined by the context in which the variable is used. Love it or hate it, PHP re-casts variables on-the-fly. So, the following code is valid: $var = "10"; $value = 10 + $var; var_dump($value); // int(20) PHP also alows you to explicitly cast a variable, like so: $var = "10"; $value = 10 + $var; $value = (string)$value; var_dump($value); // string(2) "20" That's all cool... but, for the life of me, I cannot conceive of a practical reason for doing this. I don't have a problem with strong typing in languages that support it, like Java. That's fine, and I completely understand it. Also, I'm aware of—and fully understand the usefulness of—type hinting in function parameters. The problem I have with type casting is explained by the above quote. If PHP can swap types at-will, it can do so even after you force cast a type; and it can do so on-the-fly when you need a certain type in an operation. That makes the following valid: $var = "10"; $value = (int)$var; $value = $value . ' TaDa!'; var_dump($value); // string(8) "10 TaDa!" So what's the point? Can anyone show me a practical application or example of type casting—one that would fail if type casting were not involved? I ask this here instead of SO because I figure practicality is too subjective. Edit in response to Chris' comment Take this theoretical example of a world where user-defined type casting makes sense in PHP: You force cast variable $foo as int -- (int)$foo. You attempt to store a string value in the variable $foo. PHP throws an exception!! <--- That would make sense. Suddenly the reason for user defined type casting exists! The fact that PHP will switch things around as needed makes the point of user defined type casting vague. For example, the following two code samples are equivalent: // example 1 $foo = 0; $foo = (string)$foo; $foo = '# of Reasons for the programmer to type cast $foo as a string: ' . $foo; // example 2 $foo = 0; $foo = (int)$foo; $foo = '# of Reasons for the programmer to type cast $foo as a string: ' . $foo; UPDATE Guess who found himself using typecasting in a practical environment? Yours Truly. The requirement was to display money values on a website for a restaurant menu. The design of the site required that trailing zeros be trimmed, so that the display looked something like the following: Menu Item 1 .............. $ 4 Menu Item 2 .............. $ 7.5 Menu Item 3 .............. $ 3 The best way I found to do that wast to cast the variable as a float: $price = '7.50'; // a string from the database layer. echo 'Menu Item 2 .............. $ ' . (float)$price; PHP trims the float's trailing zeros, and then recasts the float as a string for concatenation.

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• How to stop Excel 2003 from loading a Gazillion files

  - by Gary M. Mugford

  One of my soon-to-be-ex-friends got an Excel file from another friend of his and decided to click on it. It started opening all kinds of files from within Excel. Over 200 and still counting when he called me. I told him to go to task manager, which showed a LOT of files in the applications tab, but only one Excel.exe in the processes tab. Closing it down there, closed down Excel. I then CrossLooped in to see if I could give him a helping hand. Each time Excel was re-opened, the mass influx of files started. They were all kinds of files, PDFs, Docs, JPGs, even some spreadsheets. It looked like the end of solitaire, with multiple windows opening (XP) and the counter on the lone Excel button on the task bar counting off the files. I did the task manager exit routine and went looking for temp files. I CrapCleaned out the system. Made sure I went through the files created in the last hour and deleted anything with a temp anywhere in it. I also deleted the crappy infected/corrupted file from it's place on the desktop (yeah, I know, I yelled for 15 minutes on THAT subject). Despite a delousing, the restart of Excel, which complained of a deactivated add-in, would start the cascading windows, whether I answered yes or no to that question. Yes, it knew it had a serious crash, but why would it just keep on trying to load the bad file, even when I got rid of it? But here's the real question. WHERE was it loading from? I went through the backup folder and NOTHING was there! So what's the process for starting Excel WITHOUT it trying to do a crash recovery? Sort of makes me feel stupid at times. Thanks for any light you can shed on this issue. GM

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• Vista ICS issue

  - by Bill Grey

  I have a strange problem with Internet Connection Sharing on a laptop running Vista Business. This laptop is connected to the internet via the ethernet port, which goes to an ADSL modem. it is automatically assigned the IP address 192.168.1.50, and the modem/gateway is 192.168.1.1 My friends laptop is running Vista Home. Previously, I would create an ad hoc wireless network, enable ICS, and everything would be perfect. My friend would have internet access via this. However, something has now mysteriously broken. If I enable ICS on the wireless connection, it resets my Local Area Connection, assigning it the manual IP address of 192.168.0.1, which means my connection to the internet is destroyed. Both wireless adapters on each network are assigned auto configuration addresses, in the 168. range. They can see each other fine, but my friends laptop cannot access the internet via mine, even after I have restored the Local Area Connection settings. I understand the computer with ICS enabled must have the IP of 192.168.0.1, but previously, before whatever went wrong, my wireless adapter would be 192.168.0.1 and my friends computer would get an IP via DHCP. I have also tried setting static IP address and making a bridge, none of which works. How can I fix this problem, and prevent enabling ICS from touching my Local Area Connection? Both machines have no firewall, have appropriate settings etc...

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• Need a new mouse: clicky scroll wheel and additional thumb-operated scroll wheel

  - by cksubs

  I'm having some carpel tunnel syndrome or RSI issues, and I need to get a new mouse. I've tried a friend's Logitech MX Revolution and it's almost perfect. I LOVE the thumb-operated scroll wheel, and I think that that alone would solve many of my hand pain issues. The problem is that it uses their newfangled smooth/click scroll wheel. It can be either smooth or clicky, and is switched by pressing in the scroll wheel. I really question Logitech's user research on that one. I've been using middle-click to open new links and close tabs for years now in my browser, and I'm not willing to give that up for this cool technology. In fact I HATE smooth scroll wheels in general, and need a clicky one. The option would be ok, but not if it's activated via the middle-click button. In closing, I'm looking for these items in my mouse: Thumb-operated scroll wheel or 'joystick'-like apparatus. Clicky, as-stiff-as-possible scroll wheel on top Normal middle-click functionality. Comfortable, preferably ergonomic design. Anyone have any suggestions? Logitech, want to get rid of that smoothing-scrolling crap so I can buy your mouse?

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• Any ideas out there as to how the data can be recovered from an SSD?

  - by ben

  A friend had some form of catastrophic failure on an HP mini 1000, unbootable. Of course there was data that wasn't backed up. I've removed the SSD and hooked it up to a ZIF 40 enclosure but can not seem to get the drive to be recognized in Windows 7. In Disk Management it displays as present, but uninitialized. Attempting to initialize it presents an error Virtual Disk Manager - "The device is not ready". There is scant information on MIE (the custom OS), so I'm not even sure what kind of file system I'm dealing with. In any case, if the filesystem is indeed some flavor other than FAT or NTFS, is this error consistent with that? Are there any creative ideas out there as to how the data can be recovered? Update: Thanks for all the suggestions! I hadn't even considered running a live cd. Unfortunately no luck with Ubuntu (live cd) or explore2fs. The zif connection seems ok (color coded green led for proper connect, orange for not). The drive can't be initialized and therefore can't be formatted, so I guess there may be some real damage. Probably needs to head to a specialist. Thanks again for the feedback, much appreciated.

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• To sample or not to sample...

  - by [email protected]

  Ideally, we would know the exact answer to every question. How many people support presidential candidate A vs. B? How many people suffer from H1N1 in a given state? Does this batch of manufactured widgets have any defective parts? Knowing exact answers is expensive in terms of time and money and, in most cases, is impractical if not impossible. Consider asking every person in a region for their candidate preference, testing every person with flu symptoms for H1N1 (assuming every person reported when they had flu symptoms), or destructively testing widgets to determine if they are "good" (leaving no product to sell). Knowing exact answers, fortunately, isn't necessary or even useful in many situations. Understanding the direction of a trend or statistically significant results may be sufficient to answer the underlying question: who is likely to win the election, have we likely reached a critical threshold for flu, or is this batch of widgets good enough to ship? Statistics help us to answer these questions with a certain degree of confidence. This focuses on how we collect data. In data mining, we focus on the use of data, that is data that has already been collected. In some cases, we may have all the data (all purchases made by all customers), in others the data may have been collected using sampling (voters, their demographics and candidate choice). Building data mining models on all of your data can be expensive in terms of time and hardware resources. Consider a company with 40 million customers. Do we need to mine all 40 million customers to get useful data mining models? The quality of models built on all data may be no better than models built on a relatively small sample. Determining how much is a reasonable amount of data involves experimentation. When starting the model building process on large datasets, it is often more efficient to begin with a small sample, perhaps 1000 - 10,000 cases (records) depending on the algorithm, source data, and hardware. This allows you to see quickly what issues might arise with choice of algorithm, algorithm settings, data quality, and need for further data preparation. Instead of waiting for a model on a large dataset to build only to find that the results don't meet expectations, once you are satisfied with the results on the initial sample, you can  take a larger sample to see if model quality improves, and to get a sense of how the algorithm scales to the particular dataset. If model accuracy or quality continues to improve, consider increasing the sample size. Sampling in data mining is also used to produce a held-aside or test dataset for assessing classification and regression model accuracy. Here, we reserve some of the build data (data that includes known target values) to be used for an honest estimate of model error using data the model has not seen before. This sampling transformation is often called a split because the build data is split into two randomly selected sets, often with 60% of the records being used for model building and 40% for testing. Sampling must be performed with care, as it can adversely affect model quality and usability. Even a truly random sample doesn't guarantee that all values are represented in a given attribute. This is particularly troublesome when the attribute with omitted values is the target. A predictive model that has not seen any examples for a particular target value can never predict that target value! For other attributes, values may consist of a single value (a constant attribute) or all unique values (an identifier attribute), each of which may be excluded during mining. Values from categorical predictor attributes that didn't appear in the training data are not used when testing or scoring datasets. In subsequent posts, we'll talk about three sampling techniques using Oracle Database: simple random sampling without replacement, stratified sampling, and simple random sampling with replacement.

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• ESXi 4.0 Guests Locking up

  - by Brendan Sherwin

  I installed ESXi 4.0 on an HP Proliant g5 with a 64bit Xeon processor and took advantage of the free license as I work for a public school. I created two instances of server 2003 from scratch, one to be the DC, DHCP, the other to be a file server and DNS/DHCP backup. I had both guests up and running fine, setup my user accounts, transferred the data, etc etc. Once I joined a client machine to the domain, I would find that both of my Windows guests would lock up. Sometimes it would be for five or so minutes, once it was overnight. The "locked up" state means that as far I could tell, all services were stopped; dhcp no longer handed out IP's, DNS stopped working, I couldn't RDP into the server. The ESXi host, my HP server, was still running fine. VSphere was working, and I could look at the performance of the individual guests.I would try Powering off the hosts from inside VSPhere, and the hosts would start powering off, but get stuck at 95%, and stay that way, sometimes only for 10 minutes, others for hours. Several times I had to restart ESXi from it's console in order to restart my machines. Now, can anyone tell me what is happening, and how I can fix it, or take steps to prevent it? I hired a consultant to come take a look at it, someone who's experience and knowledge I trust, and he told me he had never seen anything like this ever before. He spoke to a friend of his who is VM certified, and he also said he had never heard of this issue. Thanks for your replies, and I'll do my best to respond ASAP. Currently, the server is powered off, and I've reinstituted my nine year old Server 2000 boxes, and I'm considering installing ESXi 3.5. Does anyone know a host created in 4.0 will work in 3.5? I'd really like to avoid having to rebuild those accounts! I know 4.0 works on this server, as I have another server in another school with the same exact hardware running 4.0 fine. Brendan

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• Apache2, making my site publicly available

  - by Shackler

  Hello, I want to make my apache 2 development server public to the internet, it is a Django based website. Here is my apache2 config: <VirtualHost *:80> Alias /media /home/user/myproject/statics Alias /admin_media /home/myuser/django/Django-1.1.1/django/contrib/admin/media WSGIScriptAlias / /home/myuser/myproject/myproject_wsgi.py WSGIDaemonProcess myproject user=myuser group=myuser threads=25 WSGIProcessGroup myproject </VirtualHost> When I do netstat -lntup I get: Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State PID/Program name tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:3306 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN - tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:22 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN - tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:631 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN - tcp6 0 0 :::80 :::* LISTEN - tcp6 0 0 :::22 :::* LISTEN - tcp6 0 0 ::1:631 :::* LISTEN - udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:5353 0.0.0.0:* - udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:38582 0.0.0.0:* I connect with ADSL thus I am behind a router. For this I have made my computer DMZ enabled to my machine. What can be the problem? When I try to login with my ip, I get my routers config page, when a friend tries to connect to me from internet, he gets "not authorized".

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• Anatomy of a serialization killer

  - by Brian Donahue

  As I had mentioned last month, I have been working on a project to create an easy-to-use managed debugger. It's still an internal tool that we use at Red Gate as part of product support to analyze application errors on customer's computers, and as such, should be easy to use and not require installation. Since the project has got rather large and important, I had decided to use SmartAssembly to protect all of my hard work. This was trivial for the most part, but the loading and saving of results was broken by SA after using the obfuscation, rendering the loading and saving of XML results basically useless, although the merging and error reporting was an absolute godsend and definitely worth the price of admission. (Well, I get my Red Gate licenses for free, but you know what I mean!)My initial reaction was to simply exclude the serializable results class and all of its' members from obfuscation, and that was just dandy, but a few weeks on I decided to look into exactly why serialization had broken and change the code to work with SA so I could write any new code to be compatible with SmartAssembly and save me some additional testing and changes to the SA project.In simple terms, SA does all that it can to prevent serialization problems, for instance, it will not obfuscate public members of a DLL and it will exclude any types with the Serializable attribute from obfuscation. This prevents public members and properties from being made private and having the name changed. If the serialization is done inside the executable, however, public members have the access changed to private and are renamed. That was my first problem, because my types were in the executable assembly and implemented ISerializable, but did not have the Serializable attribute set on them!public class RedFlagResults : ISerializable        {        }The second problem caused by the pruning feature. Although RedFlagResults had public members, they were not truly properties, and used the GetObjectData() method of ISerializable to serialize the members. For that reason, SA could not exclude these members from pruning and further broke the serialization. public class RedFlagResults : ISerializable        {                public List<RedFlag.Exception> Exceptions;                 #region ISerializable Members                 public void GetObjectData(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)                {                                info.AddValue("Exceptions", Exceptions);                }                 #endregionSo to fix this, it was necessary to make Exceptions a proper property by implementing get and set on it. Also, I added the Serializable attribute so that I don't have to exclude the class from obfuscation in the SA project any more. The DoNotPrune attribute means I do not need to exclude the class from pruning.[Serializable, SmartAssembly.Attributes.DoNotPrune]        public class RedFlagResults        {                public List<RedFlag.Exception> Exceptions {get;set;}        }Similarly, the Exception class gets the Serializable and DoNotPrune attributes applied so all of its' properties are excluded from obfuscation.Now my project has some protection from prying eyes by scrambling up the code so it's harder to reverse-engineer, without breaking anything. SmartAssembly has also provided the benefit of merging so that the end-user doesn't need to extract all of the DLL files needed by RedFlag into a directory, and can be run directly from the .zip archive. When an error occurs (hey, I'm only human!), an exception report can be sent to me so I can see what went wrong without having to, er, debug the debugger.

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• Linux Kernel Packet Forwarding Performance

  - by Bob Somers

  I've been using a Linux box as a router for some time now. Nothing too fancy, just enabling forwarding in the kernel, turning on masquerading, and setting up iptables to poke a few holes in the firewall. Recently a friend of mine pointed out a performance problem. Single TCP connections seem to experience very poor performance. You have to open multiple parallel TCP connections to get decent speed. For example, I have a 10 Mbit internet connection. When I download a file from a known-fast source using something like the DownThemAll! extension for Firefox (which opens multiple parallel TCP connections) I can get it to max out my downstream bandwidth at around 1 MB/s. However, when I download the same file using the built-in download manager in Firefox (uses only a single TCP connection) it starts fast and the speed tanks until it tops out around 100 KB/s to 350 KB/s. I've checked the internal network and it doesn't seem to have any problems. Everything goes through a 100 Mbit switch. I've also run iperf both internally (from the router to my desktop) and externally (from my desktop to a Linux box I own out on the net) and haven't seen any problems. It tops out around 1 MB/s like it should. Speedtest.net also reports 10 Mbits speeds. The load on the Linux machine is around 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 all the time, and it's got plenty of free RAM. It's an older laptop with a Pentium M 1.6 GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM. The internal network is connected to the built in Intel NIC and the cable modem is connected to a Netgear FA511 32-bit PCMCIA network card. I think the problem is with the packet forwarding in the router, but I honestly am not sure where the problem could be. Is there anything that would substantially slow down a single TCP stream?

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• The new Auto Scaling Service in Windows Azure

  - by shiju

  One of the key features of the Cloud is the on-demand scalability, which lets the cloud application developers to scale up or scale down the number of compute resources hosted on the Cloud. Auto Scaling provides the capability to dynamically scale up and scale down your compute resources based on user-defined policies, Key Performance Indicators (KPI), health status checks, and schedules, without any manual intervention. Auto Scaling is an important feature to consider when designing and architecting cloud based solutions, which can unleash the real power of Cloud to the apps for providing truly on-demand scalability and can also guard the organizational budget for cloud based application deployment. In the past, you have had to leverage the the Microsoft Enterprise Library Autoscaling Application Block (WASABi) or a services like  MetricsHub for implementing Automatic Scaling for your cloud apps hosted on the Windows Azure. The WASABi required to host your auto scaling block in a Windows Azure Worker Role for effectively implementing the auto scaling behaviour to your Windows Azure apps. The newly announced Auto Scaling service in Windows Azure lets you add automatic scaling capability to your Windows Azure Compute Services such as Cloud Services, Web Sites and Virtual Machine. Unlike WASABi hosted on a Worker Role, you don’t need to host any monitoring service for using the new Auto Scaling service and the Auto Scaling service will be available to individual Windows Azure Compute Services as part of the Scaling. Configure Auto Scaling for a Windows Azure Cloud Service Currently the Auto Scaling service supports Cloud Services, Web Sites and Virtual Machine. In this demo, I will be used a Cloud Services app with a Web Role and a Worker Role. To enable the Auto Scaling, select t your Windows Azure app in the Windows Azure management portal, and choose “SCLALE” tab. The Scale tab will show the all information regards with Auto Scaling. The below image shows that we have currently disabled the AutoScale service. To enable Auto Scaling, you need to choose either CPU or QUEUE. The QUEUE option is not available for Web Sites. The image below demonstrates how to configure Auto Scaling for a Web Role based on the utilization of CPU. We have configured the web role app for running with 1 to 5 Virtual Machine instances based on the CPU utilization with a range of 50 to 80%. If the aggregate utilization is becoming above above 80%, it will scale up instances and it will scale down instances when utilization is becoming below 50%. The image below demonstrates how to configure Auto Scaling for a Worker Role app based on the messages added into the Windows Azure storage Queue. We configured the worker role app for running with 1 to 3 Virtual Machine instances based on the Queue messages added into the Windows Azure storage Queue. Here we have specified the number of messages target per machine is 2000. The image below shows the summary of the Auto Scaling for the Cloud Service after configuring auto scaling service. Summary Auto Scaling is an extremely important behaviour of the Cloud applications for providing on-demand scalability without any manual intervention. Windows Azure provides greater support for enabling Auto Scaling for the apps deployed on the Windows Azure cloud platform. The new Auto Scaling service in Windows Azure lets you add automatic scaling capability to your Windows Azure Compute Services such as Cloud Services, Web Sites and Virtual Machine. In the new Auto Scaling service, you don’t have to host any monitor service like you have had in WASABi block. The Auto Scaling service is an excellent alternative to the manually hosting WASABi block in a Worker Role app.

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• Reconciling the Boy Scout Rule and Opportunistic Refactoring with code reviews

  - by t0x1n

  I am a great believer in the Boy Scout Rule: Always check a module in cleaner than when you checked it out." No matter who the original author was, what if we always made some effort, no matter how small, to improve the module. What would be the result? I think if we all followed that simple rule, we'd see the end of the relentless deterioration of our software systems. Instead, our systems would gradually get better and better as they evolved. We'd also see teams caring for the system as a whole, rather than just individuals caring for their own small little part. I am also a great believer in the related idea of Opportunistic Refactoring: Although there are places for some scheduled refactoring efforts, I prefer to encourage refactoring as an opportunistic activity, done whenever and wherever code needs to cleaned up - by whoever. What this means is that at any time someone sees some code that isn't as clear as it should be, they should take the opportunity to fix it right there and then - or at least within a few minutes Particularly note the following excerpt from the refactoring article: I'm wary of any development practices that cause friction for opportunistic refactoring ... My sense is that most teams don't do enough refactoring, so it's important to pay attention to anything that is discouraging people from doing it. To help flush this out be aware of any time you feel discouraged from doing a small refactoring, one that you're sure will only take a minute or two. Any such barrier is a smell that should prompt a conversation. So make a note of the discouragement and bring it up with the team. At the very least it should be discussed during your next retrospective. Where I work, there is one development practice that causes heavy friction - Code Review (CR). Whenever I change anything that's not in the scope of my "assignment" I'm being rebuked by my reviewers that I'm making the change harder to review. This is especially true when refactoring is involved, since it makes "line by line" diff comparison difficult. This approach is the standard here, which means opportunistic refactoring is seldom done, and only "planned" refactoring (which is usually too little, too late) takes place, if at all. I claim that the benefits are worth it, and that 3 reviewers will work a little harder (to actually understand the code before and after, rather than look at the narrow scope of which lines changed - the review itself would be better due to that alone) so that the next 100 developers reading and maintaining the code will benefit. When I present this argument my reviewers, they say they have no problem with my refactoring, as long as it's not in the same CR. However I claim this is a myth: (1) Most of the times you only realize what and how you want to refactor when you're in the midst of your assignment. As Martin Fowler puts it: As you add the functionality, you realize that some code you're adding contains some duplication with some existing code, so you need to refactor the existing code to clean things up... You may get something working, but realize that it would be better if the interaction with existing classes was changed. Take that opportunity to do that before you consider yourself done. (2) Nobody is going to look favorably at you releasing "refactoring" CRs you were not supposed to do. A CR has a certain overhead and your manager doesn't want you to "waste your time" on refactoring. When it's bundled with the change you're supposed to do, this issue is minimized. The issue is exacerbated by Resharper, as each new file I add to the change (and I can't know in advance exactly which files would end up changed) is usually littered with errors and suggestions - most of which are spot on and totally deserve fixing. The end result is that I see horrible code, and I just leave it there. Ironically, I feel that fixing such code not only will not improve my standings, but actually lower them and paint me as the "unfocused" guy who wastes time fixing things nobody cares about instead of doing his job. I feel bad about it because I truly despise bad code and can't stand watching it, let alone call it from my methods! Any thoughts on how I can remedy this situation ?

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• How to render remote assistance to a person using Live Messenger?

  - by Cheeso

  There is a feature within Windows Live Messenger v9 that allows a person to ask for remote assistance. BBut as I understand it, this works only if the router is UPnP enabled on both ends. Today I tried this with a friend during an active chat session, and nothing happened. I suspect a router problem. as I am remote, I cannot configure the router for them. What's a good way to render remote assistance? Here's the scenario: it will be based on invitation only (it's not a remote desktop or "logmein" situation). It's a younger person, a computer novice, on the other end of the wire. I'll be assiting with their use of applications on the PC. I'd l ike to be able to SEE the screen, and also use the mouse and keyboard. I have used Ultra-Vnc on the target machine and vncviewer on my machine, on a LAN. It works well. But I don't think I can use that, because it's my kids' computer in my ex-wife's place, and I don't want her to accuse me of spying on her computer. That's why I need it to be invitation only. Advice please. Is there an easy way for me to set up Remote Assistance? IS there some other tool I can use?

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• What can I do to lower bandwidth cost on a bandwidth heavy site?

  - by acidzombie24

  The easiest answer is CDN but I'd like to ask. A friend of mine has a server that is used for mirror downloads. He says he is doing about 10TB of bandwidth a month which shocked me (I wonder if he is lying). I seen his site and he has no ads. I suspect he might close his website once he gets the bill. Anyways I was wondering since his CPU/RAM is not being used and his HD usage is around 15gb what he can do to lower cost if he continues this site. I said put up ads but I don't know if ads would cover it I found one CDN which offers $0.070 / GB. 10240gb (10TB) * .07 = $717 a month. That seems a little steep but he is using lots of traffic due to it being a mirror site. Also using a CDN doesnt make sense as he doesn't need multiple servers hosting the files in different areas (which is one reason he isn't using that now). He just needs a big upload pipe Is there something he can do? At the moment he is paying $200 a month on a dedicated server and he is using WAY more bandwidth then he should be using. Side question: Can gz-ing files large already compressed files help? like on (zip, rars, etc)

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• The Oracle Retail Week Awards - most exciting awards yet?

  - by sarah.taylor(at)oracle.com

  Last night's annual Oracle Retail Week Awards saw the UK's top retailers come together to celebrate the very best of our industry over the last year.  The Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane in London was the setting for an exciting ceremony which this year marked several significant milestones in British - and global - retail.  Check out our videos about the event at our Oracle Retail YouTube channel, and see if you were snapped by our photographer on our Oracle Retail Facebook page. There were some extremely hot contests for many of this year's awards - and all very deserving winners.  The entries have demonstrated beyond doubt that retailers have striven to push their standards up yet again in all areas over the past year.  The judging panel includes some of the most prestigious names in the retail industry - to impress the panel enough to win an award is a substantial achievement.  This year the panel included the likes of Andy Clarke - Chief Executive of ASDA Group; Mark Newton Jones - CEO of Shop Direct Group; Richard Pennycook - the finance director at Morrisons; Rob Templeman - Chief Executive of Debenhams; and Stephen Sunnucks - the president of Gap Europe.  These are retail veterans  who have each helped to shape the British High Street over the last decade.  It was great to chat with many of them in the Oracle VIP area last night.  For me, last night's highlight was honouring both Sir Stuart Rose and Sir Terry Leahy for their contributions to the retail industry.  Both have set the standards in retailing over the last twenty years and taken their respective businesses from strength to strength, demonstrating that there is always a need for innovation even in larger businesses, and that a business has to adapt quickly to new technology in order to stay competitive.  Sir Terry Leahy's retirement this year marks the end of an era of global expansion for the Tesco group and a milestone in the progression of British retail.  Sir Terry has helped steer Tesco through nearly 20 years of change, with 14 years as Chief Executive.  During this time he led the drive for international expansion and an aggressive campaign to increase market share.  He has led the way for High Street retailers in adapting to the rise of internet retailing and nurtured a very successful home delivery service.  More recently he has pioneered the notion of cross-channel retailing with the introduction of Tesco apps for the iPhone and Android mobile phones allowing customers to scan barcodes of items to add to a shopping list which they can then either refer to in store or order for delivery.  John Lewis Partnership was a very deserving winner of The Oracle Retailer of the Year award for their overall dedication to excellent retailing practices.  The business was also named the American Express Marketing/Advertising Campaign of the Year award for their memorable 'Never Knowingly Undersold' advert series, which included a very successful viral video and radio campaign with Fyfe Dangerfield's cover of Billy Joel's 'She's Always a Woman' used for the adverts.  Store Design of the Year was another exciting category with Topshop taking the accolade for its flagship Oxford Street store in London, which combines boutique concession-style stalls with high fashion displays and exclusive collections from leading designers.  The store even has its own hairdressers and food hall, making it a truly all-inclusive fashion retail experience and a global landmark for any self-respecting international fashion shopper. Over the next few weeks we'll be exploring some of the winning entries in more detail here on the blog, so keep an eye out for some unique insights into how the winning retailers have made such remarkable achievements. 

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• Cannot Delete Item "Could Not Find This Item" issue

  - by aronchick

  A friend sent a long a file (a .rar) he wanted me to check out for him before he installed it. I downloaded it and unrared it with no problems, but it was full of .exe's instead of the intended contents (fonts) so I advised him to delete it immediately and not use. I then proceeded to do the same, but the folder simply will not delete. Oddly the files went fine, and I never ran anything, but this is what I'm seeing: Could not find this item This is no longer located in C:\Users\This_User\Desktop. verify the item's location and try again. I've tried the following things with no help: Using "Unlocker" to Unlock and delete Using move on reboot and rebooting Using PendMoves (from sysinternals) and rebooting Elevating a cmd line, doing a dir /x to get the short name of the folder, and then del 'shortna~1' Moving the folder to a new folder and then trying to delete the parent folder I'm on Windows 7 RTM, very fresh install. Any thoughts? Update: Just to confirm, I've run Hijack this and half a dozen other malware detectors, and everything came back clean (no extra processes, no other obvious badness). Rebooting in safe mode didn't help either.

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• Changing the interface language in Windows 7 Home Premium

  - by Cristián Romo

  A friend of mine has recently purchased a laptop in the U.S. that has Windows 7 Home Premium on it with an English interface. Not being a native English speaker, I'm trying to change the interface language to traditional Chinese. I've looked through the Control Panel in search of something that might let me change the interface language. Naturally, I looked at the Region and Language section and managed to change the formats the computer uses and install a working keyboard, but I haven't found a way to change the interface language. Upon doing some research, I found out that there are two kinds of interface packs, Multilingual User Interface (MUI) and Language Interface Packs (LIP). It seems that MUIs can only be installed through Windows Update, so I looked through the list of updates. To my dismay, the language packs are not present. The optional updates tab doesn't even show up. Many sites show a drop down menu the under Keyboards and Languages tab in the Region and Language options, yet it doesn't show up for me. We also don't have the Windows 7 DVD which might contain this useful file. As far as the LIPs go, I can't find one in Chinese at all, let alone traditional Chinese. Can the interface language be changed in Home Premium at all? If it can, how would I do so?

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• Meet Thomas, the Most Innovational person in Oracle Direct EMEA of Q1

  - by Maria Sandu

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Thomas was voted, by his peers,  the most Innovational person in Oracle Direct EMEA of Q1, the first quarter of this fiscal! Thomas, a Business Development Consultant at Oracle Direct’s Applications Team, taught himself how to use and leverage the power of social engagement consistent with Oracle’s Social Media Policy.  From these learning's he provided both his and other applications teams in Dublin with huge amounts of training and has presented his findings to the teams on more than one occasion. It is important to recognise that this isn't just a great idea....it actually works! The results speak for themselves. Thomas is engaging with customers and prospects via their preferred channel of communication and creating a strong personal social brand. We congratulate Thomas for his efforts of raising Social Media to the next level within Business Development Group. He put a lot of work into Social Selling, as one of the first within the BDG and set the example for a new innovative approach on how to sell anno 2013. He deserves to be recognized for this. His contribution to social media has been a great inspiration for all Business Development Consultants or Business Relationship Consultants. He knows what he talks about and has great conversion rates out of his social media campaigns. And he doesn't mind sharing his knowledge with everybody. Great effort in searching for new ways of communication and social selling. Thomas has shown great initiative towards leveraging the social media and networks (twitter, linkedin) to find new business opportunities in a previously way. He has shown great out-of-the-box thinking while addressing new companies and prospects and has shared those experiences and ideas to help his colleagues use the same approach. This included a presentation, informational emails and a general helpful attitude from him. He also shared his success stories from his innovational approach.  Thomas is showing initiative with an innovative and fresh character, truly helping people to try something new  with a focus on selling across channels and working for the CRM team which is focused on selling social. We think the way Thomas positions social, by using social is innovative and inspirational. What better way to tell your clients do social, by engaging with them on a social platform? Going always the extra mile, we believe, that Thomas Brits, is an innovator from the day he walked into Oracle Direct. The way Thomas operates on the work floor by introducing new ideas to find the best opportunities as possible shows he runs the extra mile for coming up with new ideas around how to engage with customers more efficiently for instance via Social Media. Thomas also organises power hours/days for the team. He is the best! /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• IE9 will not navigate to some websites but Google Chrome can

  - by Storchburp

  Was recommended by a friend to ask for help here. I am using Internet Explorer 9. As of two days ago I was suddenly unable to navigate to any part of the following websites: www.computerandvideogames.com www.deviantart.com www.cnet.com However I can still access all of them normally through Google Chrome. I am on a college network but these sites are also accessible through fixed terminals provided by the school and are definitely not blocked. I do not know of any other sites similarly affected. There is no popup, no error message, no diversion to a site telling me I can't access / am blocked etc. I can be on www.google.com and attempt to access these sites through the URL or google search, and my cursor will just show the little moving blue wheel next to the arrow for a couple of seconds, and the page displayed on my browser will not change; ie. not navigating at all. Running antivirus software, changing proxy settings in IE, clearing cookies, unplugging/plugging in computer, restarting PC etc have not changed the situation. Any assistance or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

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• How do I troubleshoot a slow hard drive?

  - by Bruce Connor

  My computer is suffering of slow-downs and I'm not surprised (it's around 6 years old). Here's what I've verified: They are not very frequent (only a couple of times a day). When they happen a single application will hang for 10-60 seconds, while the rest don't hang but also get slow. Even as it is happening, the CPU usage stays low. It happens to applications (such as text editor, firefox, skype). It never happens to some applications (such as games) which I use for hours under heavy CPU load. Also of note: The Graphics card and PSU are new (around a year). Though I have a decent amount of software installed right now, this was happening even right after I reinstalled Windows. This HDD has been through many partinioning schemes, and a few heavy operations (such as moving around 200GB of data). Because of the above, I am already 70% sure the problem is with the hard drive. Before I replace it, however, I want to rule out other less likely possibilities (such as RAM, software, or PSU). I don't have the money to replace the entire box right now, but I can easily replace one of the components. I've read several questions (such as this one) which give general guidance on troubleshooting an unknown issue, that is not what I'm looking for here. My main question is: What tests or benchmarks can I run to verify I have a problematic hard drive? I don't need to solve this problem, I am content with just making sure it's the hard drive. I could borrow a newer hard drive from a friend and see if it gets better. A positive result would rule out all other components, but it wouldn't rule out a software issue (since this new hard drive won't have any of the software I use daily). Running on Windows/Linux.

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• Parental Controls in Ubuntu - per user

  - by Hamish Downer

  I would like to set up parental controls on Ubuntu for a friend of mine. I want it so that the child user has the controls set, but the parent user is not restricted. To be clear, they are sharing one computer, so a router based solution won't help. And I would like a set of step by step instructions to do this. Just one way of doing it. I'm an experienced Ubuntu user, happy at the command line. I've spent quite some time googling for this along the way. I hope that the GChildCare project will eventually make this easy, but it is not ready yet. In the meantime, the WebContentControl GUI provides a way of managing parental controls, but apply them to every user on the computer (easy WebContentContol install instructions and detailed instructions, discussion and related links on ubuntuforums). The ubuntuforums post has a FAQ that states that user-specific configuration is not possible with WebContentControl, and then provides 3 links he used to help him do it. But they are far from step by step instructions. There is this thread which is notes along the way and linking to this article about squid and dansguardian. And then to these two dansguardian articles which are somewhat in depth ... So does anyone know of an existing guide to how to set up parental controls on ubuntu with some users not affected? If no one has come up with an answer after a little bit, I'll set up a community wiki answer so we can come up with a guide.

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• Enabling AHCI in BIOS for SSD

  - by Robert

  I am trying to help a friend with a desktop upgrade. It is an old machine with an Intel DG31 main board. The board has 1 IDE port to which a DVD-ROM drive is connected, and 2 SATA ports. 1 SATA port had a hard drive with XP on it. I have made that the secondary drive now and wiped the OS as requested, so it is just for data. The new SSD has been installed but I read that for best results one must enable AHCI in the BIOS? So I checked and in the BIOS there is a SATA Mode setting with 2 options - Native and Legacy. I think Native means AHCI? After setting to Native, I installed Windows 7 Home Premium and all the latest drivers from Intel's website and all Windows Updates. Now when I check Device Manager I see this: Also Microsoft says HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci\Start and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\IastorV\Start should have value 0 for AHCI but I see that the value is 3 for both. So does this mean that Native mode is not AHCI? Or Windows 7 ignored BIOS setting and installed in IDE mode, maybe because both cables are present? Please help me enable AHCI on this system. Thanks!

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• My Doors - Why Standards Matter to Business

  - by Brian Dayton

  "Standards save money." "Standards accelerate projects." "Standards make better solutions."   What do these statements mean to you? You buy technology solutions like Oracle Applications but you're a business person--trying to close the quarter, get performance reviews processed, negotiate a new sourcing contract, etc.   When "standards" come up in presentations and discussions do you: -          Nod your head politely -          Tune out and check your smart phone -          Turn to your IT counterpart and say "Bob's all over this standards thing, right Bob?"   Here's why standards matter. My wife wants new external doors downstairs, ones that would get more light into the rooms. Am I OK with that? "Uhh, sure...it's a little dark in the kitchen."   -          24 hours ago - wife calls to tell me that she's going to the hardware store and may look at doors -          20 hours ago - wife pulls into driveway, informs me that two doors are in the back of her station wagon, ready for me to carry -          19 hours ago - I re-discovered the fact that it's not fun to carry a solid wood door by myself -          5 hours ago - Local handyman, who was at our house anyway, tells me that the doors we bought will likely cost 2-3x the material cost in installation time and labor...the doors are standard but our doorways aren't   We could have done more research. I could be more handy. Sure. But the fact is, my 1951 house wasn't built with me in mind. They built what worked and called it a day.   The same holds true with a lot of business applications. They were designed and architected for one-time use with one use-case in mind. Today's business climate is different. If you're going to use your processes and technology to differentiate your business you should have at least a working knowledge of: -          How standards can benefit your business -          Your IT organization's philosophy around standards -          Your vendor's track-record around standards...and watch for those who pay lip-service to standards but don't follow through   The rallying cry in most IT organizations today is "learn more about the business, drop the acronyms." I'm not advocating that you go out and learn how to code in Java. But I do believe it will help your business and your decision-making process if you meet IT ½...even ¼ of the way there.   Epilogue: The door project has been put on hold and yours truly has to return the doors to the hardware store tomorrow.

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