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• The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials

  - by Ross

  The Apple iPad is the latest new toy, and we’ve put together a comprehensive list of every tip, trick, and tutorial that we could find to help you get the most out of it—and we’re even giving one away to one lucky reader. So read on! Note: We’ll be keeping this page updated as we find more great articles, so you should bookmark this page for future reference. Want Your Own iPad? How-To Geek is Giving One Away! All you have to do to enter is become a fan of our Facebook page, and we’ll pick a random fan to win the prize. Win an iPad on the How-To Geek Facebook Fan Page Disable the “clicking sound” on the iPad Keyboard Does the clicking sound when you tap the iPad keyboard bother you? Thankfully it’s easy to disable with a couple of taps. How to disable the “clicking sound” on your iPad’s keyboard Enable and add bookmarks to the Safari Bookmarks Bar on your iPad By default, Safari doesn’t display the Bookmarks Bar. This tip shows you how to change that. How to enable and add bookmarks to the Safari Bookmarks Bar on your iPad Clear the Cache, History and Cookies in Safari for the iPad You’re probably used to clearing this kind of data right from within the browser. Not so with Safari on the iPad – but here’s how you can. How to clear the cache, history and cookies in Safari for iPad How to add more Apps to your iPad Dock The iPad has four icons in its ‘dock’. Did you know it can hold 6? How to add more Apps to your iPad Dock Convert PDF files to ePub files to read on your iPad with iBooks ePub is the format that iBooks are in. So for those of you with large eBook collections in PDF, here’s how you convert them to read in iBooks. How to convert PDF files to ePub files to read on your iPad with iBooks How to force your iPad to restart Has an app caused your iPad to freeze up, and you can’t escape? This tip shows you how to force your iPad to restart. How to force your iPad to restart How to export Keynote for iPad presentations to your Mac or PC Exporting Keynote presentations from your iPad to your Mac or PC isn’t as straight forward as you might have expected. This tutorial shows you how. How to export Keynote for iPad presentations to your Mac or PC How to import presentations to Keynote on your iPad Having trouble getting your presentations onto your iPad? How to import presentations to Keynote on your iPad How to import documents to Pages on your iPad This guide shows you how to transfer documents (MS Word or Pages) from your Mac/PC to your iPad. How to import documents to Pages on your iPad How to insert photos in a Pages document using iPad and share it as a PDF Want to spice up that doc with a picture you just took? This tutorial will show you how – and how to export that document as a PDF. How to insert photos in a Pages document using iPad and share it as a PDF How to lock your iPad If you have kids or co-workers/friends who think it’s funny to mess with your iPad – lock it. How to lock your iPad How to remove the “Sent from my iPad” signature from outgoing email on your iPad Does everyone need to know you just sent that email from your iPad? Probably not. This guide shows you how to remove the “Sent from my iPad” signature and replace it with your own (or none). How to remove the “Sent from my iPad” signature from outgoing email on your iPad How To Sync Multiple Calendars to the iPad With Google Sync This tutorial will show you a workaround on how to sync multiple calendars on your iPad using Google Sync. How to Sync Multiple Calendars to the iPad With Google Sync How to determine the MAC address of your iPad If your network restricts connections via MAC address – this guide will show you how to determine what yours is. How to determine the MAC address of your iPad How to take a screenshot of your iPad Do you need to take a screenshot of your iPad? This quick tip shows you how to do just that. How to take a screenshot of your iPad How to delete apps from your iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad Anyone who had an iPod Touch or iPhone before they had an iPad won’t need this tutorial. But if you’re new to the experience, this one will help. How to delete apps from your iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad How to determine the iPad ECID on Windows and Mac iPadintosh shows us how to determine the iPad’s ECID code – something you’ll want to have come Jailbreak time. How to grab the iPad ECID in Windows or OS X iPad Apps: Twitter and social networking essentials Enggadget has you covered with reviews of the first slew of iPad specific Twitter and other social networking apps. iPad Apps: Twitter and social networking essentials What does your website look like on an iPad? iPad Peek is a web based tool that allows you to enter any given URL, and it will display that page the same way Safari on the iPad does. Great for web site owners who don’t have access to an iPad. iPadPeek Stream Music and Videos to your iPad Gizmodo reviews the iPad app StreamToMe, which allows you to stream media from your Mac to your iPad across your local network. Their feelings in a nutshell – worth the $3, but not perfect. Review: StreamToMe for the iPad Apple iPad : Change links in Google Reader to point to full HTML webpage How to change links in Safari for iPad so that Google Reader points to a full HTML webpage How to connect an iPad to your existing wireless keyboard This video will show you how to connect your iPad to a wireless keyboard if you’re having any problems – and from the sound of things, quite a few folks are. via TUAW How to get started with the iPad Mashable has a very entry-level guide that will help you set up your iPad for the first time. Mashable’s Guide to Setting up the iPad Essential iPad Apps Downloadsquad gives mini-reviews to 8 iPad apps that you should install as soon as you get your iPad. iPad App Buyers Guide: Essential Apps you should get on day one Videos: The Official iPad Guided Tours From none other than Apple! Great getting started videos for all the included iPad apps. The Official iPad Guided Tours The Official iPad Manual When you buy an iPad, you don’t get a manual. But that’s not to say there isn’t one. Apple provides a 150 guide for your iPad in PDF format. The Official iPad Manual (pdf) How to print from your iPad Sure, it’s actually just an App (PrintCentral – $9.99 USD), but as of right now, it’s the only way. PrintCentral How to make your own iPad Wallpaper A perfectly detailed tutorial on how to make your own wallpaper for your iPad. The author also provides a really nice sample wallpaper, published under the Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic license. How to make your own iPad Wallpaper Got any more tips? Share them in the comments, and we’ll update the post with the links, or just the tip itself. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Want an iPad? How-To Geek is Giving One Away!Why Wait? Amazing New Add-on Turns Your iPhone into an iPad! [Comic]Clear the Auto-Complete Email Address Cache in OutlookAsk the Readers: Share Your Tips for Defeating Viruses and MalwareStupid Geek Tricks: Tile or Cascade Multiple Windows in Windows 7 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Are You Blocked On Gtalk? Find out Discover Latest Android Apps On AppBrain The Ultimate Guide For YouTube Lovers Will it Blend? iPad Edition Penolo Lets You Share Sketches On Twitter Visit Woolyss.com for Old School Games, Music and Videos

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• C#: System.Collections.Concurrent.ConcurrentQueue vs. Queue

  - by James Michael Hare

  I love new toys, so of course when .NET 4.0 came out I felt like the proverbial kid in the candy store!  Now, some people get all excited about the IDE and it’s new features or about changes to WPF and Silver Light and yes, those are all very fine and grand.  But me, I get all excited about things that tend to affect my life on the backside of development.  That’s why when I heard there were going to be concurrent container implementations in the latest version of .NET I was salivating like Pavlov’s dog at the dinner bell. They seem so simple, really, that one could easily overlook them.  Essentially they are implementations of containers (many that mirror the generic collections, others are new) that have either been optimized with very efficient, limited, or no locking but are still completely thread safe -- and I just had to see what kind of an improvement that would translate into. Since part of my job as a solutions architect here where I work is to help design, develop, and maintain the systems that process tons of requests each second, the thought of extremely efficient thread-safe containers was extremely appealing.  Of course, they also rolled out a whole parallel development framework which I won’t get into in this post but will cover bits and pieces of as time goes by. This time, I was mainly curious as to how well these new concurrent containers would perform compared to areas in our code where we manually synchronize them using lock or some other mechanism.  So I set about to run a processing test with a series of producers and consumers that would be either processing a traditional System.Collections.Generic.Queue or a System.Collection.Concurrent.ConcurrentQueue. Now, I wanted to keep the code as common as possible to make sure that the only variance was the container, so I created a test Producer and a test Consumer.  The test Producer takes an Action<string> delegate which is responsible for taking a string and placing it on whichever queue we’re testing in a thread-safe manner: 1: internal class Producer 2: { 3: public int Iterations { get; set; } 4: public Action<string> ProduceDelegate { get; set; } 5: 6: public void Produce() 7: { 8: for (int i = 0; i < Iterations; i++) 9: { 10: ProduceDelegate(“Hello”); 11: } 12: } 13: } Then likewise, I created a consumer that took a Func<string> that would read from whichever queue we’re testing and return either the string if data exists or null if not.  Then, if the item doesn’t exist, it will do a 10 ms wait before testing again.  Once all the producers are done and join the main thread, a flag will be set in each of the consumers to tell them once the queue is empty they can shut down since no other data is coming: 1: internal class Consumer 2: { 3: public Func<string> ConsumeDelegate { get; set; } 4: public bool HaltWhenEmpty { get; set; } 5: 6: public void Consume() 7: { 8: bool processing = true; 9: 10: while (processing) 11: { 12: string result = ConsumeDelegate(); 13: 14: if(result == null) 15: { 16: if (HaltWhenEmpty) 17: { 18: processing = false; 19: } 20: else 21: { 22: Thread.Sleep(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(10)); 23: } 24: } 25: else 26: { 27: DoWork(); // do something non-trivial so consumers lag behind a bit 28: } 29: } 30: } 31: } Okay, now that we’ve done that, we can launch threads of varying numbers using lambdas for each different method of production/consumption.  First let's look at the lambdas for a typical System.Collections.Generics.Queue with locking: 1: // lambda for putting to typical Queue with locking... 2: var productionDelegate = s => 3: { 4: lock (_mutex) 5: { 6: _mutexQueue.Enqueue(s); 7: } 8: }; 9:  10: // and lambda for typical getting from Queue with locking... 11: var consumptionDelegate = () => 12: { 13: lock (_mutex) 14: { 15: if (_mutexQueue.Count > 0) 16: { 17: return _mutexQueue.Dequeue(); 18: } 19: } 20: return null; 21: }; Nothing new or interesting here.  Just typical locks on an internal object instance.  Now let's look at using a ConcurrentQueue from the System.Collections.Concurrent library: 1: // lambda for putting to a ConcurrentQueue, notice it needs no locking! 2: var productionDelegate = s => 3: { 4: _concurrentQueue.Enqueue(s); 5: }; 6:  7: // lambda for getting from a ConcurrentQueue, once again, no locking required. 8: var consumptionDelegate = () => 9: { 10: string s; 11: return _concurrentQueue.TryDequeue(out s) ? s : null; 12: }; So I pass each of these lambdas and the number of producer and consumers threads to launch and take a look at the timing results.  Basically I’m timing from the time all threads start and begin producing/consuming to the time that all threads rejoin.  I won't bore you with the test code, basically it just launches code that creates the producers and consumers and launches them in their own threads, then waits for them all to rejoin.  The following are the timings from the start of all threads to the Join() on all threads completing.  The producers create 10,000,000 items evenly between themselves and then when all producers are done they trigger the consumers to stop once the queue is empty. These are the results in milliseconds from the ordinary Queue with locking: 1: Consumers Producers 1 2 3 Time (ms) 2: ---------- ---------- ------ ------ ------ --------- 3: 1 1 4284 5153 4226 4554.33 4: 10 10 4044 3831 5010 4295.00 5: 100 100 5497 5378 5612 5495.67 6: 1000 1000 24234 25409 27160 25601.00 And the following are the results in milliseconds from the ConcurrentQueue with no locking necessary: 1: Consumers Producers 1 2 3 Time (ms) 2: ---------- ---------- ------ ------ ------ --------- 3: 1 1 3647 3643 3718 3669.33 4: 10 10 2311 2136 2142 2196.33 5: 100 100 2480 2416 2190 2362.00 6: 1000 1000 7289 6897 7061 7082.33 Note that even though obviously 2000 threads is quite extreme, the concurrent queue actually scales really well, whereas the traditional queue with simple locking scales much more poorly. I love the new concurrent collections, they look so much simpler without littering your code with the locking logic, and they perform much better.  All in all, a great new toy to add to your arsenal of multi-threaded processing!

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• How Linux is Built [Video]

  - by Asian Angel

  Many of the devices that we use each day such as computers, mobile phones, televisions, and more run on Linux, but how is Linux built? This wonderful video from The Linux Foundation shows just how it is done. How Linux is Built [via OMG! Ubuntu!] How To Customize Your Android Lock Screen with WidgetLocker The Best Free Portable Apps for Your Flash Drive Toolkit How to Own Your Own Website (Even If You Can’t Build One) Pt 3

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• SSAS 2008 R2– Little Gems

  - by ACALVETT

  I have spent the last few days working with SSAS 2008 R2 and noticed a few small enhancements which many people probably won’t notice but i will list them here and why they are important to me. New profiler events Commit: This is a new sub class event for “progress report end”. This represents the elapsed time taken for the server to commit your data. It is important because for the duration of this event a server level lock will be in place blocking all incoming connections and causing time out...(read more)

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• Parallelism in .NET – Part 6, Declarative Data Parallelism

  - by Reed

  When working with a problem that can be decomposed by data, we have a collection, and some operation being performed upon the collection.  I’ve demonstrated how this can be parallelized using the Task Parallel Library and imperative programming using imperative data parallelism via the Parallel class.  While this provides a huge step forward in terms of power and capabilities, in many cases, special care must still be given for relative common scenarios. C# 3.0 and Visual Basic 9.0 introduced a new, declarative programming model to .NET via the LINQ Project.  When working with collections, we can now write software that describes what we want to occur without having to explicitly state how the program should accomplish the task.  By taking advantage of LINQ, many operations become much shorter, more elegant, and easier to understand and maintain.  Version 4.0 of the .NET framework extends this concept into the parallel computation space by introducing Parallel LINQ. Before we delve into PLINQ, let’s begin with a short discussion of LINQ.  LINQ, the extensions to the .NET Framework which implement language integrated query, set, and transform operations, is implemented in many flavors.  For our purposes, we are interested in LINQ to Objects.  When dealing with parallelizing a routine, we typically are dealing with in-memory data storage.  More data-access oriented LINQ variants, such as LINQ to SQL and LINQ to Entities in the Entity Framework fall outside of our concern, since the parallelism there is the concern of the data base engine processing the query itself. LINQ (LINQ to Objects in particular) works by implementing a series of extension methods, most of which work on IEnumerable<T>.  The language enhancements use these extension methods to create a very concise, readable alternative to using traditional foreach statement.  For example, let’s revisit our minimum aggregation routine we wrote in Part 4: double min = double.MaxValue; foreach(var item in collection) { double value = item.PerformComputation(); min = System.Math.Min(min, value); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Here, we’re doing a very simple computation, but writing this in an imperative style.  This can be loosely translated to English as: Create a very large number, and save it in min Loop through each item in the collection. For every item: Perform some computation, and save the result If the computation is less than min, set min to the computation Although this is fairly easy to follow, it’s quite a few lines of code, and it requires us to read through the code, step by step, line by line, in order to understand the intention of the developer. We can rework this same statement, using LINQ: double min = collection.Min(item => item.PerformComputation()); Here, we’re after the same information.  However, this is written using a declarative programming style.  When we see this code, we’d naturally translate this to English as: Save the Min value of collection, determined via calling item.PerformComputation() That’s it – instead of multiple logical steps, we have one single, declarative request.  This makes the developer’s intentions very clear, and very easy to follow.  The system is free to implement this using whatever method required. Parallel LINQ (PLINQ) extends LINQ to Objects to support parallel operations.  This is a perfect fit in many cases when you have a problem that can be decomposed by data.  To show this, let’s again refer to our minimum aggregation routine from Part 4, but this time, let’s review our final, parallelized version: // Safe, and fast! double min = double.MaxValue; // Make a "lock" object object syncObject = new object(); Parallel.ForEach( collection, // First, we provide a local state initialization delegate. () => double.MaxValue, // Next, we supply the body, which takes the original item, loop state, // and local state, and returns a new local state (item, loopState, localState) => { double value = item.PerformComputation(); return System.Math.Min(localState, value); }, // Finally, we provide an Action<TLocal>, to "merge" results together localState => { // This requires locking, but it's only once per used thread lock(syncObj) min = System.Math.Min(min, localState); } ); Here, we’re doing the same computation as above, but fully parallelized.  Describing this in English becomes quite a feat: Create a very large number, and save it in min Create a temporary object we can use for locking Call Parallel.ForEach, specifying three delegates For the first delegate: Initialize a local variable to hold the local state to a very large number For the second delegate: For each item in the collection, perform some computation, save the result If the result is less than our local state, save the result in local state For the final delegate: Take a lock on our temporary object to protect our min variable Save the min of our min and local state variables Although this solves our problem, and does it in a very efficient way, we’ve created a set of code that is quite a bit more difficult to understand and maintain. PLINQ provides us with a very nice alternative.  In order to use PLINQ, we need to learn one new extension method that works on IEnumerable<T> – ParallelEnumerable.AsParallel(). That’s all we need to learn in order to use PLINQ: one single method.  We can write our minimum aggregation in PLINQ very simply: double min = collection.AsParallel().Min(item => item.PerformComputation()); By simply adding “.AsParallel()” to our LINQ to Objects query, we converted this to using PLINQ and running this computation in parallel!  This can be loosely translated into English easily, as well: Process the collection in parallel Get the Minimum value, determined by calling PerformComputation on each item Here, our intention is very clear and easy to understand.  We just want to perform the same operation we did in serial, but run it “as parallel”.  PLINQ completely extends LINQ to Objects: the entire functionality of LINQ to Objects is available.  By simply adding a call to AsParallel(), we can specify that a collection should be processed in parallel.  This is simple, safe, and incredibly useful.

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• Download Microsoft’s Series of ‘Work Smart’ Guides for Windows 8

  - by Asian Angel

  The general release date for Windows 8 is almost here and Microsoft has released a terrific set of free ‘Work Smart’ guides to help you get started with the new operating system. Whether it is an overview of Windows 8 itself, shortcut keys, backups, and more these guides cover a nice range of topics. HTG Explains: How Antivirus Software Works HTG Explains: Why Deleted Files Can Be Recovered and How You Can Prevent It HTG Explains: What Are the Sys Rq, Scroll Lock, and Pause/Break Keys on My Keyboard?

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• What if Google’s ‘Project Glass’ Ran on Windows? [Funny Video]

  - by Asian Angel

  The tech sphere has been abuzz lately about Google’s new ‘Project Glass’, but what would happen if it ran on Windows? You can view the original ‘Project Glass’ video below… Windows Project Glass: One day too… [via Geeks are Sexy] How to Stress Test the Hard Drives in Your PC or Server How To Customize Your Android Lock Screen with WidgetLocker The Best Free Portable Apps for Your Flash Drive Toolkit

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• Mario Goes Insane, Engages in Reign of Terror Throughout Mario Land [Video]

  - by Asian Angel

  Mario finally loses it and begins a reign of unholy terror throughout Mario Land. Will anyone be able to stop much less escape this new nightmare version of everyone’s favorite plumber? Note: Video contains some language that may be considered inappropriate. Mario Goes Berserk [via Geeks are Sexy] How to Stress Test the Hard Drives in Your PC or Server How To Customize Your Android Lock Screen with WidgetLocker The Best Free Portable Apps for Your Flash Drive Toolkit

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• Hyperlinked, externalized source code documentation

  - by Dave Jarvis

  Why do we still embed natural language descriptions of source code (i.e., the reason why a line of code was written) within the source code, rather than as a separate document? Given the expansive real-estate afforded to modern development environments (high-resolution monitors, dual-monitors, etc.), an IDE could provide semi-lock-step panels wherein source code is visually separated from -- but intrinsically linked to -- its corresponding comments. For example, developers could write source code comments in a hyper-linked markup language (linking to additional software requirements), which would simultaneously prevent documentation from cluttering the source code. What shortcomings would inhibit such a software development mechanism? A mock-up to help clarify the question: When the cursor is at a particular line in the source code (shown with a blue background, above), the documentation that corresponds to the line at the cursor is highlighted (i.e., distinguished from the other details). As noted in the question, the documentation would stay in lock-step with the source code as the cursor jumps through the source code. A hot-key could switch between "documentation mode" and "development mode". Potential advantages include: More source code and more documentation on the screen(s) at once Ability to edit documentation independently of source code (regardless of language?) Write documentation and source code in parallel without merge conflicts Real-time hyperlinked documentation with superior text formatting Quasi-real-time machine translation into different natural languages Every line of code can be clearly linked to a task, business requirement, etc. Documentation could automatically timestamp when each line of code was written (metrics) Dynamic inclusion of architecture diagrams, images to explain relations, etc. Single-source documentation (e.g., tag code snippets for user manual inclusion). Note: The documentation window can be collapsed Workflow for viewing or comparing source files would not be affected How the implementation happens is a detail; the documentation could be: kept at the end of the source file; split into two files by convention (filename.c, filename.c.doc); or fully database-driven By hyperlinked documentation, I mean linking to external sources (such as StackOverflow or Wikipedia) and internal documents (i.e., a wiki on a subdomain that could cross-reference business requirements documentation) and other source files (similar to JavaDocs). Related thread: What's with the aversion to documentation in the industry?

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• Ecommerce Design: Save Money on Stock Photos

  Andrew Lock's latest webisode features a new photo site could save you a bundle, affordable services to help you transfer and store large files and restaurant chain's marketing tip that you can apply to your e-tail biz.

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• Ecommerce Design: Save Money on Stock Photos

  Andrew Lock's latest webisode features a new photo site could save you a bundle, affordable services to help you transfer and store large files and restaurant chain's marketing tip that you can apply to your e-tail biz.

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• How to prevent screen locking when lid is closed?

  - by Joe Casadonte

  I have Ubuntu 11.10 with Gnome 3 (no Unity), gnome-screen-saver has been removed and replaced with xscreensaver. The screensaver stuff all works fine -- no complaints there. When I close my laptop lid, even for a second, the screen locks (and the dialog box asking for my password is xscreensaver's). I'd like for this not to happen... Things I've tried/looked at already: xscreensaver settings - the "Lock Screen After" checkbox is not checked (though I've also tried it checked and set to 720 minutes) gconf-editor - apps -> gnome-screensaver -> lock_enabled is not checked System Settings - Power - "When the lid is closed" is set to "Do nothing" for both battery and A/C System Settings - Screen - Lock is "off" gconf-editor - apps -> gnome-power-manager -> buttons -> lid_ac && lid_battery are both set to "nothing" dconf-editor - apps -> org -> gnome -> desktop -> screensaver -> lock_enabled is not checked Output from: gsettings list-recursively org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power: org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power active true org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power button-hibernate 'hibernate' org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power button-power 'suspend' org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power button-sleep 'suspend' org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power button-suspend 'suspend' org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power critical-battery-action 'hibernate' org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power idle-brightness 30 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power idle-dim-ac false org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power idle-dim-battery true org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power idle-dim-time 10 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power lid-close-ac-action 'nothing' org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power lid-close-battery-action 'nothing' org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power notify-perhaps-recall true org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power percentage-action 2 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power percentage-critical 3 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power percentage-low 10 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power priority 1 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-display-ac 600 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-display-battery 600 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-ac false org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-ac-timeout 0 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-ac-type 'suspend' org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-battery true org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-battery-timeout 0 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-battery-type 'suspend' org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power time-action 120 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power time-critical 300 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power time-low 1200 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power use-time-for-policy true gnome-settings-daemon is running: <~> $ ps -ef | grep gnome-settings-daemon 1000 1719 1645 0 19:37 ? 00:00:01 /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-settings-daemon 1000 1726 1 0 19:37 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gsd-printer 1000 1774 1645 0 19:37 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-fallback-mount-helper Anything else I can check? Thanks!

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• GDC 2012: The Bleeding Edge of Open Web Tech

  GDC 2012: The Bleeding Edge of Open Web Tech (Pre-recorded GDC content) Web browsers from mobile to desktop devices are in a constant state of growth enabling ever richer and pervasive games. This presentation by Google software engineer Vincent Scheib focuses on the latest developments in client side web technologies, such as Web Sockets, WebGL, File API, Mouse Lock, Gamepads, Web Audio API and more. Speaker: Vincent Scheib From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 1279 31 ratings Time: 48:33 More in Science & Technology

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• JavaScript Intellisense Improvements with VS 2010

  - by ScottGu

  This is the twentieth in a series of blog posts I’m doing on the upcoming VS 2010 and .NET 4 release.  Today’s blog post covers some of the nice improvements coming with JavaScript intellisense with VS 2010 and the free Visual Web Developer 2010 Express.  You’ll find with VS 2010 that JavaScript Intellisense loads much faster for large script files and with large libraries, and that it now provides statement completion support for more advanced scenarios compared to previous versions of Visual Studio. [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] Improved JavaScript Intellisense Providing Intellisense for a dynamic language like JavaScript is more involved than doing so with a statically typed language like VB or C#.  Correctly inferring the shape and structure of variables, methods, etc is pretty much impossible without pseudo-executing the actual code itself – since JavaScript as a language is flexible enough to dynamically modify and morph these things at runtime.  VS 2010’s JavaScript code editor now has the smarts to perform this type of pseudo-code execution as you type – which is how its intellisense completion is kept accurate and complete.  Below is a simple walkthrough that shows off how rich and flexible it is with the final release. Scenario 1: Basic Type Inference When you declare a variable in JavaScript you do not have to declare its type.  Instead, the type of the variable is based on the value assigned to it.  Because VS 2010 pseudo-executes the code within the editor, it can dynamically infer the type of a variable, and provide the appropriate code intellisense based on the value assigned to a variable. For example, notice below how VS 2010 provides statement completion for a string (because we assigned a string to the “foo” variable): If we later assign a numeric value to “foo” the statement completion (after this assignment) automatically changes to provide intellisense for a number: Scenario 2: Intellisense When Manipulating Browser Objects It is pretty common with JavaScript to manipulate the DOM of a page, as well as work against browser objects available on the client.  Previous versions of Visual Studio would provide JavaScript statement completion against the standard browser objects – but didn’t provide much help with more advanced scenarios (like creating dynamic variables and methods).  VS 2010’s pseudo-execution of code within the editor now allows us to provide rich intellisense for a much broader set of scenarios. For example, below we are using the browser’s window object to create a global variable named “bar”.  Notice how we can now get intellisense (with correct type inference for a string) with VS 2010 when we later try and use it: When we assign the “bar” variable as a number (instead of as a string) the VS 2010 intellisense engine correctly infers its type and modifies statement completion appropriately to be that of a number instead: Scenario 3: Showing Off Because VS 2010 is psudo-executing code within the editor, it is able to handle a bunch of scenarios (both practical and wacky) that you throw at it – and is still able to provide accurate type inference and intellisense. For example, below we are using a for-loop and the browser’s window object to dynamically create and name multiple dynamic variables (bar1, bar2, bar3…bar9).  Notice how the editor’s intellisense engine identifies and provides statement completion for them: Because variables added via the browser’s window object are also global variables – they also now show up in the global variable intellisense drop-down as well: Better yet – type inference is still fully supported.  So if we assign a string to a dynamically named variable we will get type inference for a string.  If we assign a number we’ll get type inference for a number.  Just for fun (and to show off!) we could adjust our for-loop to assign a string for even numbered variables (bar2, bar4, bar6, etc) and assign a number for odd numbered variables (bar1, bar3, bar5, etc): Notice above how we get statement completion for a string for the “bar2” variable.  Notice below how for “bar1” we get statement completion for a number:   This isn’t just a cool pet trick While the above example is a bit contrived, the approach of dynamically creating variables, methods and event handlers on the fly is pretty common with many Javascript libraries.  Many of the more popular libraries use these techniques to keep the size of script library downloads as small as possible.  VS 2010’s support for parsing and pseudo-executing libraries that use these techniques ensures that you get better code Intellisense out of the box when programming against them. Summary Visual Studio 2010 (and the free Visual Web Developer 2010 Express) now provide much richer JavaScript intellisense support.  This support works with pretty much all popular JavaScript libraries.  It should help provide a much better development experience when coding client-side JavaScript and enabling AJAX scenarios within your ASP.NET applications. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. You can read my previous blog post on VS 2008’s JavaScript Intellisense to learn more about our previous JavaScript intellisense (and some of the scenarios it supported).  VS 2010 obviously supports all of the scenarios previously enabled with VS 2008.

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• From the Tips Box: Monitoring Android Battery Use, DIY Camera Stabilizers, and Decluttering Pages in Chrome

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Once a week we round up some of the tips and tricks you mail in and share them with everyone. This week we’re looking at monitoring your Android device’s battery, DIY camera stabilizers, and a handy Chrome tool for tidying up web pages. HTG Explains: How Antivirus Software Works HTG Explains: Why Deleted Files Can Be Recovered and How You Can Prevent It HTG Explains: What Are the Sys Rq, Scroll Lock, and Pause/Break Keys on My Keyboard?

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• BIND9 server not responding to external queries

  - by Twitchy

  I have set up a BIND server on my dedicated box which I want to host a nameserver for my domain on. When I use dig @202.169.196.59 nzserver.co.nz locally on the server I get the following response... ; <<>> DiG 9.8.1-P1 <<>> @202.169.196.59 nzserver.co.nz ; (1 server found) ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 43773 ;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 2 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;nzserver.co.nz. IN A ;; ANSWER SECTION: nzserver.co.nz. 3600 IN A 202.169.196.59 ;; AUTHORITY SECTION: nzserver.co.nz. 3600 IN NS ns2.nzserver.co.nz. nzserver.co.nz. 3600 IN NS ns1.nzserver.co.nz. ;; ADDITIONAL SECTION: ns1.nzserver.co.nz. 3600 IN A 202.169.196.59 ns2.nzserver.co.nz. 3600 IN A 202.169.196.59 ;; Query time: 0 msec ;; SERVER: 202.169.196.59#53(202.169.196.59) ;; WHEN: Sat Oct 27 15:40:45 2012 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 116 Which is good, and is the output I want. But when simply using dig nzserver.co.nz I get... ; <<>> DiG 9.8.1-P1 <<>> nzserver.co.nz ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 16970 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;nzserver.co.nz. IN A ;; Query time: 308 msec ;; SERVER: 202.169.192.61#53(202.169.192.61) ;; WHEN: Sat Oct 27 17:09:12 2012 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 32 And if I use dig @202.169.196.59 nzserver.co.nz on another linux machine I get... ; <<>> DiG 9.7.3 <<>> @202.169.196.59 nzserver.co.nz ; (1 server found) ;; global options: +cmd ;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached Am I doing something wrong here? Port 53 is definitely open. /etc/bind/named.conf.options options { directory "/var/cache/bind"; forwarders { 202.169.192.61; 202.169.206.10; }; listen-on { 202.169.196.59; }; }; /etc/bind/named.conf.local zone "nzserver.co.nz" { type master; file "/etc/bind/nzserver.co.nz.zone"; }; /etc/bind/nzserver.co.nz.zone ; BIND db file for nzserver.co.nz $ORIGIN nzserver.co.nz. @ IN SOA ns1.nzserver.co.nz. mr.steven.french.gmail.com. ( 2012102606 28800 7200 864000 3600 ) NS ns1.nzserver.co.nz. NS ns2.nzserver.co.nz. MX 10 mail.nzserver.co.nz. @ IN A 202.169.196.59 * IN A 202.169.196.59 ns1 IN A 202.169.196.59 ns2 IN A 202.169.196.59 www IN A 202.169.196.59 mail IN A 202.169.196.59

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• Web Marketing Tips: Tracking Direct Mailings

  Andrew Lock shows how to use the Web to track your snail-mail marketing campaigns. Plus, a tool for pricing real estate and why an old-as-dirt advertising tactic is so successful.

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• Hard drive mounted at / , duplicate mounted hard drive after using MountManager

  - by HellHarvest

  possible duplicate post I'm running 12.04 64bit. My system is a dual boot for both Ubuntu and Windows7. Both operating systems are sharing the drive named "Elements". My volume named "Elements" is a 1TB SATA NTFS hard drive that shows up twice in the side bar in nautilus. One of the icons is functional and even has the convenient "eject" icon next to it. Below is a picture of the left menu in Nautilus, with System Monitor-File Systems tab open on top of it. Can someone advise me about how to get rid of this extra icon? I think the problem is much more deep-rooted than just a GUI glitch on Nautilus' part. The other icon does nothing but spit out the following error when I click on it (image below). This only happened AFTER I tried using Mount Manager to automate mounting the drive at start up. I've already uninstalled Mount Manager, and restarted, but the problem didn't go away. The hard drive does mount automatically now, so I guess that's cool. But now, every time I boot up now and open Nautilus, BOTH of these icons appear, one of which is fictitious and useless. According to the image above and the outputs of several other commands, it appears to be mounted at / In which case, no matter where I am in Nautilus when I try to click on that icon, of course it will tell me that that drive is in use by another program... Nautilus. I'm afraid of trying to unmount this hard drive (sdb6) because of where it appears to be mounted. I'm kind of a noob, and I have this gut feeling that tells me trying to unmount a drive at / will destroy my entire file system. This fear was further strengthened by the output of "$ fsck" at the very bottom of this post. Error immediately below when that 2nd "Elements" hard drive is clicked in Nautilus: Unable to mount Elements Mount is denied because the NTFS volume is already exclusively opened. The volume may be already mounted, or another software may use it which could be identified for example by the help of the 'fuser' command. It's odd to me that that error message above claims that it's an NTFS volume when everything else tell me that it's an ext4 volume. The actual hard drive "Elements" is in fact an NTFS volume. Here's the output of a few commands and configuration files that may be of interest: $ fuser -a / /: 2120r 2159rc 2160rc 2172r 2178rc 2180rc 2188r 2191rc 2200rc 2203rc 2205rc 2206r 2211r 2212r 2214r 2220r 2228r 2234rc 2246rc 2249rc 2254rc 2260rc 2261r 2262r 2277rc 2287rc 2291rc 2311rc 2313rc 2332rc 2334rc 2339rc 2343rc 2344rc 2352rc 2372rc 2389rc 2422r 2490r 2496rc 2501rc 2566r 2573rc 2581rc 2589rc 2592r 2603r 2611rc 2613rc 2615rc 2678rc 2927r 2981r 3104rc 4156rc 4196rc 4206rc 4213rc 4240rc 4297rc 5032rc 7609r 7613r 7648r 9593rc 18829r 18833r 19776r $ sudo df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sdb6 496G 366G 106G 78% / udev 2.0G 4.0K 2.0G 1% /dev tmpfs 791M 1.5M 790M 1% /run none 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock none 2.0G 672K 2.0G 1% /run/shm /dev/sda1 932G 312G 620G 34% /media/Elements /home/solderblob/.Private 496G 366G 106G 78% /home/solderblob /dev/sdb2 188G 100G 88G 54% /media/A2B24EACB24E852F /dev/sdb1 100M 25M 76M 25% /media/System Reserved $ sudo fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00093cab Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 2048 1953519615 976758784 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT Disk /dev/sdb: 750.2 GB, 750156374016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders, total 1465149168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x000e8d9b Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 2048 206847 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sdb2 206848 392378768 196085960+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sdb3 392380414 1465147391 536383489 5 Extended /dev/sdb5 1456762880 1465147391 4192256 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sdb6 392380416 1448374271 527996928 83 Linux /dev/sdb7 1448376320 1456758783 4191232 82 Linux swap / Solaris Partition table entries are not in disk order $ cat /etc/fstab # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> UUID=77039a2a-83d4-47a1-8a8c-a2ec4e4dfd0e / ext4 defaults 0 1 UUID=F6549CC4549C88CF /media/Elements ntfs-3g users 0 0 $ sudo blkid /dev/sda1: LABEL="Elements" UUID="F6549CC4549C88CF" TYPE="ntfs" /dev/sdb1: LABEL="System Reserved" UUID="5CDE130FDE12E156" TYPE="ntfs" /dev/sdb2: UUID="A2B24EACB24E852F" TYPE="ntfs" /dev/sdb6: UUID="77039a2a-83d4-47a1-8a8c-a2ec4e4dfd0e" TYPE="ext4" $ sudo blkid -c /dev/null (appears to be exactly the same as above) /dev/sda1: LABEL="Elements" UUID="F6549CC4549C88CF" TYPE="ntfs" /dev/sdb1: LABEL="System Reserved" UUID="5CDE130FDE12E156" TYPE="ntfs" /dev/sdb2: UUID="A2B24EACB24E852F" TYPE="ntfs" /dev/sdb6: UUID="77039a2a-83d4-47a1-8a8c-a2ec4e4dfd0e" TYPE="ext4" $ mount /dev/sdb6 on / type ext4 (rw) proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw) none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw) none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw) udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755) devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620) tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755) none on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880) none on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev) /dev/sda1 on /media/Elements type fuseblk (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096) binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) /home/solderblob/.Private on /home/solderblob type ecryptfs (ecryptfs_check_dev_ruid,ecryptfs_cipher=aes,ecryptfs_key_bytes=16,ecryptfs_unlink_sigs,ecryptfs_sig=76a47b0175afa48d,ecryptfs_fnek_sig=391b2d8b155215f7) gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/solderblob/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=solderblob) /dev/sdb2 on /media/A2B24EACB24E852F type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,default_permissions,blksize=4096) /dev/sdb1 on /media/System Reserved type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,default_permissions,blksize=4096) $ ls -a . A2B24EACB24E852F Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS amd64 .. Elements System Reserved $ cat /proc/mounts rootfs / rootfs rw 0 0 sysfs /sys sysfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0 proc /proc proc rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0 udev /dev devtmpfs rw,relatime,size=2013000k,nr_inodes=503250,mode=755 0 0 devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000 0 0 tmpfs /run tmpfs rw,nosuid,relatime,size=809872k,mode=755 0 0 /dev/disk/by-uuid/77039a2a-83d4-47a1-8a8c-a2ec4e4dfd0e / ext4 rw,relatime,user_xattr,acl,barrier=1,data=ordered 0 0 none /sys/fs/fuse/connections fusectl rw,relatime 0 0 none /sys/kernel/debug debugfs rw,relatime 0 0 none /sys/kernel/security securityfs rw,relatime 0 0 none /run/lock tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=5120k 0 0 none /run/shm tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime 0 0 /dev/sda1 /media/Elements fuseblk rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,allow_other,blksize=4096 0 0 binfmt_misc /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc binfmt_misc rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0 /home/solderblob/.Private /home/solderblob ecryptfs rw,relatime,ecryptfs_fnek_sig=391b2d8b155215f7,ecryptfs_sig=76a47b0175afa48d,ecryptfs_cipher=aes,ecryptfs_key_bytes=16,ecryptfs_unlink_sigs 0 0 gvfs-fuse-daemon /home/solderblob/.gvfs fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=1000 0 0 /dev/sdb2 /media/A2B24EACB24E852F fuseblk rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,allow_other,blksize=4096 0 0 /dev/sdb1 /media/System\040Reserved fuseblk rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,allow_other,blksize=4096 0 0 gvfs-fuse-daemon /root/.gvfs fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0 0 0 $ fsck fsck from util-linux 2.20.1 e2fsck 1.42 (29-Nov-2011) /dev/sdb6 is mounted. WARNING!!! The filesystem is mounted. If you continue you ***WILL*** cause ***SEVERE*** filesystem damage. Do you really want to continue<n>? no check aborted.

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• Techniques for modeling a dynamic dataflow with Java concurrency API

  - by Maian

  Is there an elegant way to model a dynamic dataflow in Java? By dataflow, I mean there are various types of tasks, and these tasks can be "connected" arbitrarily, such that when a task finishes, successor tasks are executed in parallel using the finished tasks output as input, or when multiple tasks finish, their output is aggregated in a successor task (see flow-based programming). By dynamic, I mean that the type and number of successors tasks when a task finishes depends on the output of that finished task, so for example, task A may spawn task B if it has a certain output, but may spawn task C if has a different output. Another way of putting it is that each task (or set of tasks) is responsible for determining what the next tasks are. Sample dataflow for rendering a webpage: I have as task types: file downloader, HTML/CSS renderer, HTML parser/DOM builder, image renderer, JavaScript parser, JavaScript interpreter. File downloader task for HTML file HTML parser/DOM builder task File downloader task for each embedded file/link If image, image renderer If external JavaScript, JavaScript parser JavaScript interpreter Otherwise, just store in some var/field in HTML parser task JavaScript parser for each embedded script JavaScript interpreter Wait for above tasks to finish, then HTML/CSS renderer (obviously not optimal or perfectly correct, but this is simple) I'm not saying the solution needs to be some comprehensive framework (in fact, the closer to the JDK API, the better), and I absolutely don't want something as heavyweight is say Spring Web Flow or some declarative markup or other DSL. To be more specific, I'm trying to think of a good way to model this in Java with Callables, Executors, ExecutorCompletionServices, and perhaps various synchronizer classes (like Semaphore or CountDownLatch). There are a couple use cases and requirements: Don't make any assumptions on what executor(s) the tasks will run on. In fact, to simplify, just assume there's only one executor. It can be a fixed thread pool executor, so a naive implementation can result in deadlocks (e.g. imagine a task that submits another task and then blocks until that subtask is finished, and now imagine several of these tasks using up all the threads). To simplify, assume that the data is not streamed between tasks (task output-succeeding task input) - the finishing task and succeeding task won't exist together, so the input data to the succeeding task will not be changed by the preceeding task (since it's already done). There are only a couple operations that the dataflow "engine" should be able to handle: A mechanism where a task can queue more tasks A mechanism whereby a successor task is not queued until all the required input tasks are finished A mechanism whereby the main thread (or other threads not managed by the executor) blocks until the flow is finished A mechanism whereby the main thread (or other threads not managed by the executor) blocks until certain tasks have finished Since the dataflow is dynamic (depends on input/state of the task), the activation of these mechanisms should occur within the task code, e.g. the code in a Callable is itself responsible for queueing more Callables. The dataflow "internals" should not be exposed to the tasks (Callables) themselves - only the operations listed above should be available to the task. Note that the type of the data is not necessarily the same for all tasks, e.g. a file download task may accept a File as input but will output a String. If a task throws an uncaught exception (indicating some fatal error requiring all dataflow processing to stop), it must propagate up to the thread that initiated the dataflow as quickly as possible and cancel all tasks (or something fancier like a fatal error handler). Tasks should be launched as soon as possible. This along with the previous requirement should preclude simple Future polling + Thread.sleep(). As a bonus, I would like to dataflow engine itself to perform some action (like logging) every time task is finished or when no has finished in X time since last task has finished. Something like: ExecutorCompletionService<T> ecs; while (hasTasks()) { Future<T> future = ecs.poll(1 minute); some_action_like_logging(); if (future != null) { future.get() ... } ... } Are there straightforward ways to do all this with Java concurrency API? Or if it's going to complex no matter what with what's available in the JDK, is there a lightweight library that satisfies the requirements? I already have a partial solution that fits my particular use case (it cheats in a way, since I'm using two executors, and just so you know, it's not related at all to the web browser example I gave above), but I'd like to see a more general purpose and elegant solution.

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• The clock hands of the buffer cache

  - by Tony Davis

  Over a leisurely beer at our local pub, the Waggon and Horses, Phil Factor was holding forth on the esoteric, but strangely poetic, language of SQL Server internals, riddled as it is with 'sleeping threads', 'stolen pages', and 'memory sweeps'. Generally, I remain immune to any twinge of interest in the bowels of SQL Server, reasoning that there are certain things that I don't and shouldn't need to know about SQL Server in order to use it successfully. Suddenly, however, my attention was grabbed by his mention of the 'clock hands of the buffer cache'. Back at the office, I succumbed to a moment of weakness and opened up Google. He wasn't lying. SQL Server maintains various memory buffers, or caches. For example, the plan cache stores recently-used execution plans. The data cache in the buffer pool stores frequently-used pages, ensuring that they may be read from memory rather than via expensive physical disk reads. These memory stores are classic LRU (Least Recently Updated) buffers, meaning that, for example, the least frequently used pages in the data cache become candidates for eviction (after first writing the page to disk if it has changed since being read into the cache). SQL Server clearly needs some mechanism to track which pages are candidates for being cleared out of a given cache, when it is getting too large, and it is this mechanism that is somewhat more labyrinthine than I previously imagined. Each page that is loaded into the cache has a counter, a miniature "wristwatch", which records how recently it was last used. This wristwatch gets reset to "present time", each time a page gets updated and then as the page 'ages' it clicks down towards zero, at which point the page can be removed from the cache. But what is SQL Server is suffering memory pressure and urgently needs to free up more space than is represented by zero-counter pages (or plans etc.)? This is where our 'clock hands' come in. Each cache has associated with it a "memory clock". Like most conventional clocks, it has two hands; one "external" clock hand, and one "internal". Slava Oks is very particular in stressing that these names have "nothing to do with the equivalent types of memory pressure". He's right, but the names do, in that peculiar Microsoft tradition, seem designed to confuse. The hands do relate to memory pressure; the cache "eviction policy" is determined by both global and local memory pressures on SQL Server. The "external" clock hand responds to global memory pressure, in other words pressure on SQL Server to reduce the size of its memory caches as a whole. Global memory pressure – which just to confuse things further seems sometimes to be referred to as physical memory pressure – can be either external (from the OS) or internal (from the process itself, e.g. due to limited virtual address space). The internal clock hand responds to local memory pressure, in other words the need to reduce the size of a single, specific cache. So, for example, if a particular cache, such as the plan cache, reaches a defined "pressure limit" the internal clock hand will start to turn and a memory sweep will be performed on that cache in order to remove plans from the memory store. During each sweep of the hands, the usage counter on the cache entry is reduced in value, effectively moving its "last used" time to further in the past (in effect, setting back the wrist watch on the page a couple of hours) and increasing the likelihood that it can be aged out of the cache. There is even a special Dynamic Management View, sys.dm_os_memory_cache_clock_hands, which allows you to interrogate the passage of the clock hands. Frequently turning hands equates to excessive memory pressure, which will lead to performance problems. Two hours later, I emerged from this rather frightening journey into the heart of SQL Server memory management, fascinated but still unsure if I'd learned anything that I'd put to any practical use. However, I certainly began to agree that there is something almost Tolkeinian in the language of the deep recesses of SQL Server. Cheers, Tony.

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• SOA Suite 11g Dynamic Payload Testing with soapUI Free Edition

  - by Greg Mally

  Overview Many web service developers use soapUI for various tests like: smoke test, unit test, and load testing because you can get a free edition that is fairly robust. However, if you need to venture into more complex testing that requires a dynamic payload, then the free edition doesn't necessarily make it easy. This feature does exist in soapUI, but for obvious reasons it is in the Pro version. In this blog I will show you how to use soapUI free edition for dynamic payloads in a simplified example. Hopefully this will open the doors for you to expand into more complex scenarios. The following assumes that you have a working knowledge of soapUI and will not go into concepts like setting up a project etc. For the basics, please review the documentation for soapUI: http://www.soapui.org/Getting-Started/. Additionally, we will be using asynchronous web services and you can review the setup for this in my blog: SOA Suite 11g Asynchronous Testing with soapUI. Features in soapUI Free Edition Relating to this Topic The soapUI test tool provides a very feature rich environment that can do many things provided you are willing to go beyond point and click. For this example, we will be leveraging just a couple features for our dynamic payload example: Test Case Properties Scripting with Groovy Basically, we will be using a property as a global variable and we will manipulate that property using a Groovy script. Setting Up Our Property Properties are available throughout soapUI and here is a snippet from the soapUI website defining the locations: Projects : for handling Project scope values, for example a subscription ID TestSuite : for handling TestSuite scoped values, can be seen as "arguments" to a TestSuite TestCases : for handling TestCase scoped values, can be seen as "arguments" to a TestCase Properties TestStep : for providing local values/state within a TestCase Local TestStep properties : several TestStep types maintain their own list of properties specific to their functionality : DataSource, DataSink, Run TestCase MockServices : for handling MockService scoped values/arguments MockResponses : for handling MockResponse scoped values Global Properties : for handling Global properties, optionally from an external source For our example, we will be defining a custom property in a TestCase called SimpleAsyncPayload. The property can be created in either the Custom Properties tab located at the bottom of the Navigator panel when the TestCase is selected in the Navigator or the Properties label in the TestCase editor: Navigator Panel TestCase Editor You will notice that I set a value of “0” for the custom property. For this simplified example, we will need to retrieve that value and manipulate it prior to making the web service request invocation. In order to accomplish this, we will need to get Groovy ;) Let's Get Groovy We will now add a new Groovy Script step to the TestCase called Manipulate Payload: TestCase Editor > Append Step > Groovy Script Once we have added the Groovy Script step to our TestCase, we can open the Groovy Script editor to add the code to: Get the current value of the property we created called SimpleAsyncPayload. Convert the value of the property to an integer. Increment the value. Store the incremented value back into the TestCase property called SimpleAsyncPayload. The script should look something like the following: Groovy Script Editor – Manipulate Payload At this point we can test the script to see if it is working by simply running the TestCase (left-click on the green triangle in the upper left-hand corner of the TestCase editor). To verify if it ran correctly, we can look at the value of the SimpleAsyncPayload property which should now be 1: TestCase Editor – Run Results All that is left to complete the TestCase is to append another step of type Test Request. The information required to append the request is a name and an operation to invoke. In this example we will use the default name and select the SimpleAsyncBPELProcessBingd -> process as the operation (any other information being requested, simply use the defaults unless you are calling an asynchronous operation then do not add any assertions). We are now in familiar ground with the Test Request editor. Depending upon the type of operation you are invoking (synchronous or asynchronous), please update the request with the necessary information (e.g., callback information for asynchronous operations). We will now tweak the Test Request payload to retrieve the value of the SimpleAsyncPayload property. The soapUI editor makes this very simple: right-click in the payload and navigate to the property (e.g., right-click > Get Data.. > TestCase: [Groovy TestCase] > Property [SimpleAsyncPayload]): Test Request Editor – Insert Property Value Your payload should now look something like the following: Test Request Editor – Inserted Property Value Just like before, we are now ready to run the TestCase. If everything goes as expected we should see a response like the following: Message Viewer – Results of TestCase Run We are now setup to be able to run a stress test where the payload will change for each request. This simple example can be expanded to include multiple payload values, complex calculations in the scripts, or whatever can be done via the soapUI scripting. Hopefully you have found this useful and happy testing to you :)

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• Whoosh: PASS Board Year 1, Q4

  - by Denise McInerney

  "Whoosh". That's the sound the last quarter of 2012 made as it rushed by. My first year on the PASS Board is complete, and the last three months of it were probably the busiest. PASS Summit 2012 Much of October was devoted to preparing for Summit. Every Board  member, HQ staffer and dozens of volunteers were busy in the run-up to our flagship event. It takes a lot of work to put on the Summit. The community meetings,  first-timers program, keynotes, sessions and that fabulous Community Appreciation party are the result of many hours of preparation. Virtual Chapters at the Summit With a lot of help from Karla Landrum, Michelle Nalliah, Lana Montgomery and others at HQ the VCs had a good presence at Summit. We started the week with a VC leaders meeting. I shared some information about the activities and growth during the first part of the year.   From January - September 2012: The number of VCs increased from 14 to 20 VC membership  grew from 55,200 to 80,100 Total attendance at VC meetings increased from 1,480 to 2,198 Been part of PASS Global Growth with language-based VC- including Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese. We also heard from some VC leaders and volunteers. Ryan Adams (Performance VC) shared his tips for successful marketing of VC events. Amy Lewis (Business Intelligence VC) described how the BI chapter has expanded to support PASS' global growth by finding volunteers to organize events at times that are convenient for people in Europe and Australia. Felipe Ferreira (Portuguese language VC) described the experience of building a user group first in Brazil, then expanding to work with Portuguese-speaking data professionals around the world. Virtual Chapter leaders and volunteers were in evidence throughout Summit, beginning with the Welcome Reception. For the past several years VCs have had an organized presence at this event, signing up new members and advertising their meetings. Many VC leaders also spent time at the Community Zone. This new addition to the Summit proved to be a vibrant spot were new members and volunteers could network with others and find out how to start a chapter or host a SQL Saturday. Women In Technology 2012 was the 10th WIT Luncheon to be held at Summit. I was honored to be asked to be on the panel to discuss the topic "Where Have We Been and Where are We Going?" The PASS community has come a long way in our understanding of issues facing women in tech and our support of women in the organization. It was great to hear from panelists Stefanie Higgins and Kevin Kline who were there at the beginning as well as Kendra Little and Jen Stirrup who are part of the progress being made by women in our community today. Bylaw Changes The Board spent a good deal of time in 2012 discussing how to move our global growth initiatives forward. An important component of this is a proposed change to how the Board is elected with some seats representing geographic regions. At the end of December we voted on these proposed bylaw changes which have been published for review. The member review and feedback is open until February 8. I encourage all members to review these changes and send any feedback to [email protected]  In addition to reading the bylaws, I recommend reading Bill Graziano's blog post on the subject. Business Analytics Conference At Summit we announced a new event: the PASS Business Analytics Conference. The inaugural event will be April 10-12, 2013 in Chicago. The world of data is changing rapidly. More and more businesses want to extract value and insight from their data. Data professionals who provide these insights or enable others to do so are in demand. The BA Conference offers expert content on predictive analytics, data exploration and visualization, content delivery strategies and more. By holding this new event PASS is participating in important discussions happening in our industry, offering our members more educational value and reaching out to data professionals who are not currently part of our organization. New Year, New Portfolio In addition to my work with the Virtual Chapters I am also now responsible for the 24 Hours of PASS portfolio. Since the first 24HOP of 2013 is scheduled for January 30 we started the transition of the portfolio work from Rob Farley to me right after Summit. Work immediately started to secure speakers for the January event. We have also been evaluating webinar platforms that can be used for 24HOP as well as the Virtual Chapters. Next Up 24 Hours of PASS: Business Analytics Edition will be held on January 30. I'll be there and will moderate one or two sessions. The 24HOP topics are a sneak peek into the type of content that will be offered at the Business Analytics Conference. I hope to see some of you there. The Virtual Chapters have hit the ground running in 2013; many of them have events scheduled. The Application Development VC is getting restarted  and a new Business Analytics VC will be starting soon. Check out the lineup and join the VCs that interest you. And watch the Events page and Connector for announcements of upcoming meetings. At the end of January I will be attending a Board meeting in Seattle, and February 23 I will be at SQL Saturday #177 in Silicon Valley.

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• Marketing Tips: How to Track Direct Mailings on the Web

  Plus, Andrew Lock offers a small business marketing lesson on solution selling and an interview with business success coach, Marc Accetta on the value of edutainment.

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• Star Wars – Battle of Hoth Recreated in Minecraft [Video]

  - by Asian Angel

  Star Wars and Minecraft each stand out on their own, but what if you combine the two into one awesome video? Enjoy the result with this video that YouTube user ParadiseDecay has created. Minecraft – Star Wars – Battle For Hoth [via Dorkly] HTG Explains: How Antivirus Software Works HTG Explains: Why Deleted Files Can Be Recovered and How You Can Prevent It HTG Explains: What Are the Sys Rq, Scroll Lock, and Pause/Break Keys on My Keyboard?

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• The 20 Most Important Keyboard Shortcuts For Windows PCs

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Keyboard shortcuts are practically essential for using any type of PC. They’ll speed up almost everything you do. But long lists of keyboard shortcuts can quickly become overwhelming if you’re just getting started. This list will cover the most useful keyboard shortcuts that every Windows user should know. If you haven’t used keyboard shortcuts much, these will show you just how useful keyboard shortcuts can be. Windows Key + Search The Windows key is particularly important on Windows 8 — especially before Windows 8.1 — because it allows you to quickly return to the Start screen. On Windows 7, it opens the Start menu. Either way, you can start typing immediately after you press the Windows key to search for programs, settings, and files. For example, if you want to launch Firefox, you can press the Windows key, start typing the word Firefox, and press Enter when the Firefox shortcut appears. It’s a quick way to launch programs, open files, and locate Control Panel options without even touching your mouse and without digging through a cluttered Start menu. You can also use the arrow keys to select the shortcut you want to launch before pressing Enter. Copy, Cut, Paste Copy, Cut, and Paste are extremely important keyboard shortcuts for text-editing. If you do any typing on your computer, you probably use them. These options can be accessed using the mouse, either by right-clicking on selected text or opening the application’s Edit menu, but this is the slowest way to do it. After selecting some text, press Ctrl+C to copy it or Ctrl+X to cut it. Position the cursor where you want the text and use Ctrl+V to paste it. These shortcuts can save you a huge amount of time over using the mouse. Search the Current Page or File To quickly perform a search in the current application — whether you’re in a web browser, PDF viewer, document editor, or almost any other type of application — press Ctrl+F. The application’s search (or “Find”) feature will pop up, and you can instantly start typing a phrase you want to search for. You can generally press Enter to  go to the next appearance of the word or phrase in the document, quickly searching through it for what you’re interested in. Switch Between Applications and Tabs Rather than clicking buttons on your taskbar, Alt+Tab is a very quick way to switch between running applications. Windows orders the list of open windows by the order you accessed them, so if you’re only using two different applications, you can just press Alt+Tab to quickly switch between them. If switching between more than two windows, you’ll have to hold the Alt key and press Tab repeatedly to toggle through the list of open windows. If you miss the window you want, you can always press Alt+Shift+Tab to move through the list in reverse. To move between tabs in an application — such as the browser tabs in your web browser — press Ctrl+Tab. Ctrl+Shift+Tab will move through tabs in reverse. Quickly Print If you’re the kind of person who still prints things, you can quickly open the print window by pressing Ctrl+P. This can be faster than hunting down the Print option in every program you want to print something from. Basic Browser Shortcuts Web browser shortcuts can save you tons of time, too. Ctrl+T is a very useful one, as it will open a new tab with the address bar focused, so you can quickly press Ctrl +T, type a search phrase or web address, and press Enter to go there. To go back or forward while browsing, hold the Ctrl key and press the left or right arrow keys. If you’d just like to focus your web browser’s address bar so you can type a new web address or search without opening a new tab, press Ctrl + L. You can then start typing something and press Enter. Close Tabs and Windows To quickly close the current application, press Alt+F4. This works on the desktop and even in new Windows 8-style applications. To quickly close the current browser tab or document, press Ctrl+W. This will often close the current window if there are no other tabs open. Lock Your Computer When you’re done using your computer and want to step away, you may want to lock it. People won’t be able to log in and access your desktop unless they know your password. You can do this from the Start menu or Start screen, but the fastest way to lock your screen is by quickly pressing Windows Key + L before you get up. Access the Task Manager Ctrl+Alt+Delete will take you to a screen that allows you to quickly launch the Task Manager or perform other operations, such as signing out. This is particularly useful because if can be used to recover from situations where your computer doesn’t appear responsive or isn’t accepting input. For example, if a full-screen game becomes unresponsive, Ctrl+Alt+Delete will often allow you to escape from it and end it via the Task Manager. Windows 8 Shortcuts On Windows 8 PCs, there are other very important keyboard shortcuts. Windows Key + C will open your Charms bar, while Windows Key + Tab will open the new App Switcher. These keyboard shortcuts will allow you to avoid the hot corners, which can be tedious to use with a mouse. On the desktop side, Windows Key + D will take you back to the desktop from anywhere. Windows Key + X will open a special “power user menu” that gives you quick access to options that are hidden in the new Windows 8 interface, including Shut Down, Restart, and Control Panel. If you’re interested in learning more keyboard shortcuts, be sure to check our longer lists of 47 keyboard shortcuts that work in all web browsers and 42+ keyboard shortcuts to speed up text-editing. Image Credit: Jeroen Bennink on Flickr     

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