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  • RFC 1918 address on open internet?

    - by longneck
    In trying to diagnose a failover problem with my Cisco ASA 5520 firewalls, I ran a traceroute to www.btfl.com and, much to my surprise, some of the hops came back as RFC 1918 addresses. Just to be clear, this host is not behind my firewall and there is no VPN involved. I have to connect across the open internet to get there. How/why is this possible? asa# traceroute www.btfl.com Tracing the route to 157.56.176.94 1 <redacted> 2 <redacted> 3 <redacted> 4 <redacted> 5 nap-edge-04.inet.qwest.net (67.14.29.170) 0 msec 10 msec 10 msec 6 65.122.166.30 0 msec 0 msec 10 msec 7 207.46.34.23 10 msec 0 msec 10 msec 8 * * * 9 207.46.37.235 30 msec 30 msec 50 msec 10 10.22.112.221 30 msec 10.22.112.219 30 msec 10.22.112.223 30 msec 11 10.175.9.193 30 msec 30 msec 10.175.9.67 30 msec 12 100.94.68.79 40 msec 100.94.70.79 30 msec 100.94.71.73 30 msec 13 100.94.80.39 30 msec 100.94.80.205 40 msec 100.94.80.137 40 msec 14 10.215.80.2 30 msec 10.215.68.16 30 msec 10.175.244.2 30 msec 15 * * * 16 * * * 17 * * * and it does the same thing from my FiOS connection at home: C:\>tracert www.btfl.com Tracing route to www.btfl.com [157.56.176.94] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms myrouter.home [192.168.1.1] 2 8 ms 7 ms 8 ms <redacted> 3 10 ms 13 ms 11 ms <redacted> 4 12 ms 10 ms 10 ms ae2-0.TPA01-BB-RTR2.verizon-gni.net [130.81.199.82] 5 16 ms 16 ms 15 ms 0.ae4.XL2.MIA19.ALTER.NET [152.63.8.117] 6 14 ms 16 ms 16 ms 0.xe-11-0-0.GW1.MIA19.ALTER.NET [152.63.85.94] 7 19 ms 16 ms 16 ms microsoft-gw.customer.alter.net [63.65.188.170] 8 27 ms 33 ms * ge-5-3-0-0.ash-64cb-1a.ntwk.msn.net [207.46.46.177] 9 * * * Request timed out. 10 44 ms 43 ms 43 ms 207.46.37.235 11 42 ms 41 ms 40 ms 10.22.112.225 12 42 ms 43 ms 43 ms 10.175.9.1 13 42 ms 41 ms 42 ms 100.94.68.79 14 40 ms 40 ms 41 ms 100.94.80.193 15 * * * Request timed out.

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  • How do large blobs affect SQL delete performance, and how can I mitigate the impact?

    - by Max Pollack
    I'm currently experiencing a strange issue that my understanding of SQL Server doesn't quite mesh with. We use SQL as our file storage for our internal storage service, and our database has about half a million rows in it. Most of the files (86%) are 1mb or under, but even on fresh copies of our database where we simply populate the table with data for the purposes of a test, it appears that rows with large amounts of data stored in a BLOB frequently cause timeouts when our SQL Server is under load. My understanding of how SQL Server deletes rows is that it's a garbage collection process, i.e. the row is marked as a ghost and the row is later deleted by the ghost cleanup process after the changes are copied to the transaction log. This suggests to me that regardless of the size of the data in the blob, row deletion should be close to instantaneous. However when deleting these rows we are definitely experiencing large numbers of timeouts and astoundingly low performance. In our test data set, its files over 30mb that cause this issue. This is an edge case, we don't frequently encounter these, and even though we're looking into SQL filestream as a solution to some of our problems, we're trying to narrow down where these issues are originating from. We ARE performing our deletes inside of a transaction. We're also performing updates to metadata such as file size stats, but these exist in a separate table away from the file data itself. Hierarchy data is stored in the table that contains the file information. Really, in the end it's not so much what we're doing around the deletes that matters, we just can't find any references to low delete performance on rows that contain a large amount of data in a BLOB. We are trying to determine if this is even an avenue worth exploring, or if it has to be one of our processes around the delete that's causing the issue. Are there any situations in which this could occur? Is it common for a database server to come to the point of complete timeouts when many of these deletes are occurring simultaneously? Is there a way to combat this issue if it exists? (cross-posted from StackOverflow )

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  • Thunderbird 3: can't change column width?

    - by rumtscho
    I recently installed Thunderbird 3.0.3. Just noticed a suboptimal UI setting: in the upper pane, which lists the e-mails in the current folder, the Date column is about 200px wide. So when I keep the window at 480x600, all I see in a row is: | tree icon | favourites icon | attachment icon | read icon | junk icon | Date and time, followed by 5cm whitespace | ... | P Where "P" is the first letter of the name of the sender. And the "..." is actually shown this way, I have no idea which column it is meant to be. But I don't see neither the sender, nor the message subject, which makes scrolling a folder for a certain mail rather pointless. I see these when I maximize the window, actually the columns are then not only bigger, they are arranged in another sequence. But I feel that holding a mail client permanently maximised at 1600x1200 is a waste of screen real estate. My naive solution attempt was to try to go with the mouse cursor to the right edge of the date column and try to shrink it by moving the cursor left while holding down the left mouse button. Not only is this default behaviour for all resizable columns I've ever encountered in GUIs, the cursor actually turns into a horizontal double-headed arrow. But pulling has no effect at all. I cannot make a wide column narrow, and I cannot make the narrow columns wide. I didn't find anything in the preferences either. So can please somebody explain how to get the columns arranged sensibly? Edit: I found out that I only have the problem when I drag the Thunderbird window to a GridMove screen area. It gets automatically resized, but doesn't notice the resize event or something, so the column width remains the same as under a maximized window. First making the window narrow using the mouse helps with column width, but the width of the mail pane is still too wide (rows don't reflow). Anyway, this seems to be a bug caused by the combination of the two applications and not a configuration problem, so I guess I'll have to live with it.

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  • Tool or script to detect moved or renamed files on Linux prior to a backup

    - by Pharaun
    Basically I am searching to see if there exists a tool or script that can detect moved or renamed files so that I can get a list of renamed/moved files and apply the same operation on the other end of the network to conserve on bandwidth. Basically disk storage is cheap but bandwidth isn't, and the problem is that the files often will be reorganized or moved around into a better directory structure thus when you use rsync to do the backup, rsync won't notice that its a renamed or moved file and re-transmission it over the network all over again despite having the same file on the other end. So I am wondering if there exists a script or tool that can record where all the files are and their names, then just prior to a backup, it would rescan and detect moved or renamed files, then I can take that list and re-apply the move/rename operation on the other side. Here's a list of the "general" features of the files: Large unchanging files They can be renamed or moved around [Edit:] These all are good answers, and what I end up doing in the end was looking at all of the answers and will be writing some code to deal with this. Basically what I am thinking/working on now is: Using something like AIDE for the "initial" scan and enable me to keep checksums on the files because they are supposed to never change, so it would aid on detecting corruption. Creating an inotify daemon that would monitor these files/directory and recording any changes relating to renames & moving the files around to a log file. There are some edge cases where inotify might fail to record that something happened to the file system, thus there is a final step of using find to search the file system for files that has a change time latter than the last backup. This has several benefits: Checksums/etc from AIDE to be able to check/make sure that some media did not get corrupt Inotify keeps resource usage low and no need to re-scan the filesystem over and over No need to patch rsync; If I have to patch things I can, but I would prefer to avoid patching things to keep the burden lower, (IE don't need to re-patch everytime there is an update). I've used Unison before and its really nice, however I could've sworn that Unison does keep copies around on the filesystem and that its "archive" files can grow to be rather large?

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  • how to setup kismet.conf on Ubuntu

    - by Registered User
    I installed Kismet on my Ubuntu 10.04 machine as apt-get install kismet every thing seems to work fine. but when I launch it I see following error kismet Launching kismet_server: //usr/bin/kismet_server Suid priv-dropping disabled. This may not be secure. No specific sources given to be enabled, all will be enabled. Non-RFMon VAPs will be destroyed on multi-vap interfaces (ie, madwifi-ng) Enabling channel hopping. Enabling channel splitting. NOTICE: Disabling channel hopping, no enabled sources are able to change channel. Source 0 (addme): Opening none source interface none... FATAL: Please configure at least one packet source. Kismet will not function if no packet sources are defined in kismet.conf or on the command line. Please read the README for more information about configuring Kismet. Kismet exiting. Done. I followed this guide http://www.ubuntugeek.com/kismet-an-802-11-wireless-network-detector-sniffer-and-intrusion-detection-system.html#more-1776 how ever in kismet.conf I am not clear with following line source=none,none,addme as to what should I change this to. lspci -vnn shows 0c:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g [14e4:4315] (rev 01) Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:000c] Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17 Memory at f69fc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [58] Vendor Specific Information <?> Capabilities: [e8] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask- 64bit+ Queue=0/0 Enable- Capabilities: [d0] Express Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting <?> Capabilities: [13c] Virtual Channel <?> Capabilities: [160] Device Serial Number Capabilities: [16c] Power Budgeting <?> Kernel driver in use: wl Kernel modules: wl, ssb and iwconfig shows lo no wireless extensions. eth0 no wireless extensions. eth1 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:"WIKUCD" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: <00:43:92:21:H5:09> Bit Rate=11 Mb/s Tx-Power:24 dBm Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Encryption key:off Power Managementmode:All packets received Link Quality=1/5 Signal level=-81 dBm Noise level=-90 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:169 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0 So what should I be putting in place of source=none,none,addme with output I mentioned above ?

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  • Nginx Reverse Proxy Node.js and Wordpress + Static Files Issue

    - by joemccann
    I have had quite a time trying to get nginx to serve static assets from my wordpress blog. Have a look at the config and let me know if you can help. ( https://gist.github.com/1130332 - to see the entire thing) server { listen 80; server_name subprint.com; access_log /var/www/subprint/logs/access.log; error_log /var/www/subprint/logs/error.log; root /var/www/subprint/server/public; # express serves static resources for subprint.com out of here location / { proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8124; root /var/www/subprint/server; access_log on; } #serve static assets location ~* ^(?!\/).+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|css|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|pdf|txt|tar|wav|bmp|rtf|js|flv|swf|html|htm)$ { expires max; access_log off; } # the route for the wordpress blog # unfortunately the static assets (css, img, etc.) are not being pathed/served properly location /blog { root /var/www/localhost/public; index index.php; access_log /var/www/localhost/logs/access.log; error_log /var/www/localhost/logs/error.log; if (!-e $request_filename) { rewrite ^/(.*)$ /index.php?q=$1 last; break; } if (!-f $request_filename) { rewrite /blog$ /blog/index.php last; break; } } # actually serves the wordpress and subsequently phpmyadmin location ~* (?!\/blog).+\.php$ { fastcgi_pass localhost:9000; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www/localhost/public$fastcgi_script_name; fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_script_name; include /usr/local/nginx/conf/fastcgi_params; } # This works fine, but ONLY with a symlink inside the /var/www/localhost/public directory pointing to /usr/share/phpmyadmin location /phpmyadmin { index index.php; access_log /var/www/phpmyadmin/logs/access.log; error_log /var/www/phpmyadmin/logs/error.log; alias /usr/share/phpmyadmin/; if (!-f $request_filename) { rewrite /phpmyadmin$ /phpmyadmin/index.php permanent; break; } } # opt-in to the future add_header "X-UA-Compatible" "IE=Edge,chrome=1"; }

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  • Fitting an Image to Screen on Rotation iPhone / iPad ?

    - by user356937
    I have been playing around with one of the iPhone examples from Apple' web site (ScrollViewSuite) . I am trying to tweak it a bit so that when I rotate the the iPad the image will fit into the screen in landscape mode vertical. I have been successful in getting the image to rotate, but the image is larger than the height of the landscape screen, so the bottom is below the screen. I would like to image to scale to the height of the landscape screen. I have been playing around with various autoSizingMask attributes without success. The imageView is called "zoomView" this is the actual image which loads into a scrollView called imageScrollView. I am trying to achieve the screen to rotate and look like this.... olsonvox.com/photos/correct.png However, this is what My screen is looking like. olsonvox.com/photos/incorrect.png I would really appreciate some advice or guidance. Below is the RootViewController.m for the project. Blade # import "RootViewController.h" #define ZOOM_VIEW_TAG 100 #define ZOOM_STEP 1.5 #define THUMB_HEIGHT 150 #define THUMB_V_PADDING 25 #define THUMB_H_PADDING 25 #define CREDIT_LABEL_HEIGHT 25 #define AUTOSCROLL_THRESHOLD 30 @interface RootViewController (ViewHandlingMethods) - (void)toggleThumbView; - (void)pickImageNamed:(NSString *)name; - (NSArray *)imageNames; - (void)createThumbScrollViewIfNecessary; - (void)createSlideUpViewIfNecessary; @end @interface RootViewController (AutoscrollingMethods) - (void)maybeAutoscrollForThumb:(ThumbImageView *)thumb; - (void)autoscrollTimerFired:(NSTimer *)timer; - (void)legalizeAutoscrollDistance; - (float)autoscrollDistanceForProximityToEdge:(float)proximity; @end @interface RootViewController (UtilityMethods) - (CGRect)zoomRectForScale:(float)scale withCenter:(CGPoint)center; @end @implementation RootViewController - (void)loadView { [super loadView]; imageScrollView = [[UIScrollView alloc] initWithFrame:[[self view]bounds]]; // this code makes the image resize to the width and height properly. imageScrollView.autoresizingMask = UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleHeight | UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleLeftMargin | UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleRightMargin| UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleBottomMargin| UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleBottomMargin; // TRY SETTNG CENTER HERE SOMEHOW&gt;.... [imageScrollView setBackgroundColor:[UIColor blackColor]]; [imageScrollView setDelegate:self]; [imageScrollView setBouncesZoom:YES]; [[self view] addSubview:imageScrollView]; [self toggleThumbView]; // intitializes with the first image. [self pickImageNamed:@"lookbook1"]; } - (void)dealloc { [imageScrollView release]; [slideUpView release]; [thumbScrollView release]; [super dealloc]; } #pragma mark UIScrollViewDelegate methods - (UIView *)viewForZoomingInScrollView:(UIScrollView *)scrollView { UIView *view = nil; if (scrollView == imageScrollView) { view = [imageScrollView viewWithTag:ZOOM_VIEW_TAG]; } return view; } /************************************** NOTE **************************************/ /* The following delegate method works around a known bug in zoomToRect:animated: */ /* In the next release after 3.0 this workaround will no longer be necessary */ /**********************************************************************************/ - (void)scrollViewDidEndZooming:(UIScrollView *)scrollView withView:(UIView *)view atScale:(float)scale { [scrollView setZoomScale:scale+0.01 animated:NO]; [scrollView setZoomScale:scale animated:NO]; } #pragma mark TapDetectingImageViewDelegate methods - (void)tapDetectingImageView:(TapDetectingImageView *)view gotSingleTapAtPoint:(CGPoint)tapPoint { // Single tap shows or hides drawer of thumbnails. [self toggleThumbView]; } - (void)tapDetectingImageView:(TapDetectingImageView *)view gotDoubleTapAtPoint:(CGPoint)tapPoint { // double tap zooms in float newScale = [imageScrollView zoomScale] * ZOOM_STEP; CGRect zoomRect = [self zoomRectForScale:newScale withCenter:tapPoint]; [imageScrollView zoomToRect:zoomRect animated:YES]; } - (void)tapDetectingImageView:(TapDetectingImageView *)view gotTwoFingerTapAtPoint:(CGPoint)tapPoint { // two-finger tap zooms out float newScale = [imageScrollView zoomScale] / ZOOM_STEP; CGRect zoomRect = [self zoomRectForScale:newScale withCenter:tapPoint]; [imageScrollView zoomToRect:zoomRect animated:YES]; } #pragma mark ThumbImageViewDelegate methods - (void)thumbImageViewWasTapped:(ThumbImageView *)tiv { [self pickImageNamed:[tiv imageName]]; [self toggleThumbView]; } - (void)thumbImageViewStartedTracking:(ThumbImageView *)tiv { [thumbScrollView bringSubviewToFront:tiv]; } // CONTROLS DRAGGING AND DROPPING THUMBNAILS... - (void)thumbImageViewMoved:(ThumbImageView *)draggingThumb { // check if we've moved close enough to an edge to autoscroll, or far enough away to stop autoscrolling [self maybeAutoscrollForThumb:draggingThumb]; /* The rest of this method handles the reordering of thumbnails in the thumbScrollView. See */ /* ThumbImageView.h and ThumbImageView.m for more information about how this works. */ // we'll reorder only if the thumb is overlapping the scroll view if (CGRectIntersectsRect([draggingThumb frame], [thumbScrollView bounds])) { BOOL draggingRight = [draggingThumb frame].origin.x &gt; [draggingThumb home].origin.x ? YES : NO; /* we're going to shift over all the thumbs who live between the home of the moving thumb */ /* and the current touch location. A thumb counts as living in this area if the midpoint */ /* of its home is contained in the area. */ NSMutableArray *thumbsToShift = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; // get the touch location in the coordinate system of the scroll view CGPoint touchLocation = [draggingThumb convertPoint:[draggingThumb touchLocation] toView:thumbScrollView]; // calculate minimum and maximum boundaries of the affected area float minX = draggingRight ? CGRectGetMaxX([draggingThumb home]) : touchLocation.x; float maxX = draggingRight ? touchLocation.x : CGRectGetMinX([draggingThumb home]); // iterate through thumbnails and see which ones need to move over for (ThumbImageView *thumb in [thumbScrollView subviews]) { // skip the thumb being dragged if (thumb == draggingThumb) continue; // skip non-thumb subviews of the scroll view (such as the scroll indicators) if (! [thumb isMemberOfClass:[ThumbImageView class]]) continue; float thumbMidpoint = CGRectGetMidX([thumb home]); if (thumbMidpoint &gt;= minX &amp;&amp; thumbMidpoint &lt;= maxX) { [thumbsToShift addObject:thumb]; } } // shift over the other thumbs to make room for the dragging thumb. (if we're dragging right, they shift to the left) float otherThumbShift = ([draggingThumb home].size.width + THUMB_H_PADDING) * (draggingRight ? -1 : 1); // as we shift over the other thumbs, we'll calculate how much the dragging thumb's home is going to move float draggingThumbShift = 0.0; // send each of the shifting thumbs to its new home for (ThumbImageView *otherThumb in thumbsToShift) { CGRect home = [otherThumb home]; home.origin.x += otherThumbShift; [otherThumb setHome:home]; [otherThumb goHome]; draggingThumbShift += ([otherThumb frame].size.width + THUMB_H_PADDING) * (draggingRight ? 1 : -1); } // change the home of the dragging thumb, but don't send it there because it's still being dragged CGRect home = [draggingThumb home]; home.origin.x += draggingThumbShift; [draggingThumb setHome:home]; } } - (void)thumbImageViewStoppedTracking:(ThumbImageView *)tiv { // if the user lets go of the thumb image view, stop autoscrolling [autoscrollTimer invalidate]; autoscrollTimer = nil; } #pragma mark Autoscrolling methods - (void)maybeAutoscrollForThumb:(ThumbImageView *)thumb { autoscrollDistance = 0; // only autoscroll if the thumb is overlapping the thumbScrollView if (CGRectIntersectsRect([thumb frame], [thumbScrollView bounds])) { CGPoint touchLocation = [thumb convertPoint:[thumb touchLocation] toView:thumbScrollView]; float distanceFromLeftEdge = touchLocation.x - CGRectGetMinX([thumbScrollView bounds]); float distanceFromRightEdge = CGRectGetMaxX([thumbScrollView bounds]) - touchLocation.x; if (distanceFromLeftEdge &lt; AUTOSCROLL_THRESHOLD) { autoscrollDistance = [self autoscrollDistanceForProximityToEdge:distanceFromLeftEdge] * -1; // if scrolling left, distance is negative } else if (distanceFromRightEdge &lt; AUTOSCROLL_THRESHOLD) { autoscrollDistance = [self autoscrollDistanceForProximityToEdge:distanceFromRightEdge]; } } // if no autoscrolling, stop and clear timer if (autoscrollDistance == 0) { [autoscrollTimer invalidate]; autoscrollTimer = nil; } // otherwise create and start timer (if we don't already have a timer going) else if (autoscrollTimer == nil) { autoscrollTimer = [NSTimer scheduledTimerWithTimeInterval:(1.0 / 60.0) target:self selector:@selector(autoscrollTimerFired:) userInfo:thumb repeats:YES]; } } - (float)autoscrollDistanceForProximityToEdge:(float)proximity { // the scroll distance grows as the proximity to the edge decreases, so that moving the thumb // further over results in faster scrolling. return ceilf((AUTOSCROLL_THRESHOLD - proximity) / 5.0); } - (void)legalizeAutoscrollDistance { // makes sure the autoscroll distance won't result in scrolling past the content of the scroll view float minimumLegalDistance = [thumbScrollView contentOffset].x * -1; float maximumLegalDistance = [thumbScrollView contentSize].width - ([thumbScrollView frame].size.width + [thumbScrollView contentOffset].x); autoscrollDistance = MAX(autoscrollDistance, minimumLegalDistance); autoscrollDistance = MIN(autoscrollDistance, maximumLegalDistance); } - (void)autoscrollTimerFired:(NSTimer*)timer { [self legalizeAutoscrollDistance]; // autoscroll by changing content offset CGPoint contentOffset = [thumbScrollView contentOffset]; contentOffset.x += autoscrollDistance; [thumbScrollView setContentOffset:contentOffset]; // adjust thumb position so it appears to stay still ThumbImageView *thumb = (ThumbImageView *)[timer userInfo]; [thumb moveByOffset:CGPointMake(autoscrollDistance, 0)]; } #pragma mark View handling methods - (void)toggleThumbView { [self createSlideUpViewIfNecessary]; // no-op if slideUpView has already been created CGRect frame = [slideUpView frame]; if (thumbViewShowing) { frame.origin.y = 0; } else { frame.origin.y = -225; } [UIView beginAnimations:nil context:nil]; [UIView setAnimationDuration:0.3]; [slideUpView setFrame:frame]; [UIView commitAnimations]; thumbViewShowing = !thumbViewShowing; } - (void)pickImageNamed:(NSString *)name { // first remove previous image view, if any [[imageScrollView viewWithTag:ZOOM_VIEW_TAG] removeFromSuperview]; UIImage *image = [UIImage imageNamed:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@.jpg", name]]; TapDetectingImageView *zoomView = [[TapDetectingImageView alloc] initWithImage:image]; zoomView.autoresizingMask = UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleWidth ; [zoomView setDelegate:self]; [zoomView setTag:ZOOM_VIEW_TAG]; [imageScrollView addSubview:zoomView]; [imageScrollView setContentSize:[zoomView frame].size]; [zoomView release]; // choose minimum scale so image width fits screen float minScale = [imageScrollView frame].size.width / [zoomView frame].size.width; [imageScrollView setMinimumZoomScale:minScale]; [imageScrollView setZoomScale:minScale]; [imageScrollView setContentOffset:CGPointZero]; } - (NSArray *)imageNames { // the filenames are stored in a plist in the app bundle, so create array by reading this plist NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"Images" ofType:@"plist"]; NSData *plistData = [NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:path]; NSString *error; NSPropertyListFormat format; NSArray *imageNames = [NSPropertyListSerialization propertyListFromData:plistData mutabilityOption:NSPropertyListImmutable format:&amp;format errorDescription:&amp;error]; if (!imageNames) { NSLog(@"Failed to read image names. Error: %@", error); [error release]; } return imageNames; } - (void)createSlideUpViewIfNecessary { if (!slideUpView) { [self createThumbScrollViewIfNecessary]; CGRect bounds = [[self view] bounds]; float thumbHeight = [thumbScrollView frame].size.height; float labelHeight = CREDIT_LABEL_HEIGHT; // create label giving credit for images UILabel *creditLabel = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, thumbHeight, bounds.size.width, labelHeight)]; [creditLabel setBackgroundColor:[UIColor clearColor]]; [creditLabel setTextColor:[UIColor whiteColor]]; // [creditLabel setFont:[UIFont fontWithName:@"Helvetica" size:16]]; // [creditLabel setText:@"SAMPLE TEXT"]; [creditLabel setTextAlignment:UITextAlignmentCenter]; // create container view that will hold scroll view and label CGRect frame = CGRectMake(0.0, -225.00, bounds.size.width+256, thumbHeight + labelHeight); slideUpView.autoresizingMask = UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleWidth | UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleTopMargin; slideUpView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:frame]; [slideUpView setBackgroundColor:[UIColor blackColor]]; [slideUpView setOpaque:NO]; [slideUpView setAlpha:.75]; [[self view] addSubview:slideUpView]; // add subviews to container view [slideUpView addSubview:thumbScrollView]; [slideUpView addSubview:creditLabel]; [creditLabel release]; } } - (void)createThumbScrollViewIfNecessary { if (!thumbScrollView) { float scrollViewHeight = THUMB_HEIGHT + THUMB_V_PADDING; float scrollViewWidth = [[self view] bounds].size.width; thumbScrollView = [[UIScrollView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, scrollViewWidth, scrollViewHeight)]; [thumbScrollView setCanCancelContentTouches:NO]; [thumbScrollView setClipsToBounds:NO]; // now place all the thumb views as subviews of the scroll view // and in the course of doing so calculate the content width float xPosition = THUMB_H_PADDING; for (NSString *name in [self imageNames]) { UIImage *thumbImage = [UIImage imageNamed:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@_thumb.jpg", name]]; if (thumbImage) { ThumbImageView *thumbView = [[ThumbImageView alloc] initWithImage:thumbImage]; [thumbView setDelegate:self]; [thumbView setImageName:name]; CGRect frame = [thumbView frame]; frame.origin.y = THUMB_V_PADDING; frame.origin.x = xPosition; [thumbView setFrame:frame]; [thumbView setHome:frame]; [thumbScrollView addSubview:thumbView]; [thumbView release]; xPosition += (frame.size.width + THUMB_H_PADDING); } } [thumbScrollView setContentSize:CGSizeMake(xPosition, scrollViewHeight)]; } } #pragma mark Utility methods - (CGRect)zoomRectForScale:(float)scale withCenter:(CGPoint)center { CGRect zoomRect; // the zoom rect is in the content view's coordinates. // At a zoom scale of 1.0, it would be the size of the imageScrollView's bounds. // As the zoom scale decreases, so more content is visible, the size of the rect grows. zoomRect.size.height = [imageScrollView frame].size.height / scale; zoomRect.size.width = [imageScrollView frame].size.width / scale; // choose an origin so as to get the right center. zoomRect.origin.x = center.x - (zoomRect.size.width / 2.0); zoomRect.origin.y = center.y - (zoomRect.size.height / 2.0); return zoomRect; } #pragma mark - #pragma mark Rotation support // Ensure that the view controller supports rotation and that the split view can therefore show in both portrait and landscape. - (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation { return YES; } @end

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  • xutility file???

    - by user574290
    Hi all. I'm trying to use c code with opencv in face detection and counting, but I cannot build the source. I am trying to compile my project and I am having a lot of problems with a line in the xutility file. the error message show that it error with xutility file. Please help me, how to solve this problem? this is my code // Include header files #include "stdafx.h" #include "cv.h" #include "highgui.h" #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <string.h> #include <assert.h> #include <math.h> #include <float.h> #include <limits.h> #include <time.h> #include <ctype.h> #include <iostream> #include <fstream> #include <vector> using namespace std; #ifdef _EiC #define WIN32 #endif int countfaces=0; int numFaces = 0; int k=0 ; int list=0; char filelist[512][512]; int timeCount = 0; static CvMemStorage* storage = 0; static CvHaarClassifierCascade* cascade = 0; void detect_and_draw( IplImage* image ); void WriteInDB(); int found_face(IplImage* img,CvPoint pt1,CvPoint pt2); int load_DB(char * filename); const char* cascade_name = "C:\\Program Files\\OpenCV\\OpenCV2.1\\data\\haarcascades\\haarcascade_frontalface_alt_tree.xml"; // BEGIN NEW CODE #define WRITEVIDEO char* outputVideo = "c:\\face_counting1_tracked.avi"; //int faceCount = 0; int posBuffer = 100; int persistDuration = 10; //faces can drop out for 10 frames int timestamp = 0; float sameFaceDistThreshold = 30; //pixel distance CvPoint facePositions[100]; int facePositionsTimestamp[100]; float distance( CvPoint a, CvPoint b ) { float dist = sqrt(float ( (a.x-b.x)*(a.x-b.x) + (a.y-b.y)*(a.y-b.y) ) ); return dist; } void expirePositions() { for (int i = 0; i < posBuffer; i++) { if (facePositionsTimestamp[i] <= (timestamp - persistDuration)) //if a tracked pos is older than three frames { facePositions[i] = cvPoint(999,999); } } } void updateCounter(CvPoint center) { bool newFace = true; for(int i = 0; i < posBuffer; i++) { if (distance(center, facePositions[i]) < sameFaceDistThreshold) { facePositions[i] = center; facePositionsTimestamp[i] = timestamp; newFace = false; break; } } if(newFace) { //push out oldest tracker for(int i = 1; i < posBuffer; i++) { facePositions[i] = facePositions[i - 1]; } //put new tracked position on top of stack facePositions[0] = center; facePositionsTimestamp[0] = timestamp; countfaces++; } } void drawCounter(IplImage* image) { // Create Font char buffer[5]; CvFont font; cvInitFont(&font, CV_FONT_HERSHEY_SIMPLEX, .5, .5, 0, 1); cvPutText(image, "Faces:", cvPoint(20, 20), &font, CV_RGB(0,255,0)); cvPutText(image, itoa(countfaces, buffer, 10), cvPoint(80, 20), &font, CV_RGB(0,255,0)); } #ifdef WRITEVIDEO CvVideoWriter* videoWriter = cvCreateVideoWriter(outputVideo, -1, 30, cvSize(240, 180)); #endif //END NEW CODE int main( int argc, char** argv ) { CvCapture* capture = 0; IplImage *frame, *frame_copy = 0; int optlen = strlen("--cascade="); const char* input_name; if( argc > 1 && strncmp( argv[1], "--cascade=", optlen ) == 0 ) { cascade_name = argv[1] + optlen; input_name = argc > 2 ? argv[2] : 0; } else { cascade_name = "C:\\Program Files\\OpenCV\\OpenCV2.1\\data\\haarcascades\\haarcascade_frontalface_alt_tree.xml"; input_name = argc > 1 ? argv[1] : 0; } cascade = (CvHaarClassifierCascade*)cvLoad( cascade_name, 0, 0, 0 ); if( !cascade ) { fprintf( stderr, "ERROR: Could not load classifier cascade\n" ); fprintf( stderr, "Usage: facedetect --cascade=\"<cascade_path>\" [filename|camera_index]\n" ); return -1; } storage = cvCreateMemStorage(0); //if( !input_name || (isdigit(input_name[0]) && input_name[1] == '\0') ) // capture = cvCaptureFromCAM( !input_name ? 0 : input_name[0] - '0' ); //else capture = cvCaptureFromAVI( "c:\\face_counting1.avi" ); cvNamedWindow( "result", 1 ); if( capture ) { for(;;) { if( !cvGrabFrame( capture )) break; frame = cvRetrieveFrame( capture ); if( !frame ) break; if( !frame_copy ) frame_copy = cvCreateImage( cvSize(frame->width,frame->height), IPL_DEPTH_8U, frame->nChannels ); if( frame->origin == IPL_ORIGIN_TL ) cvCopy( frame, frame_copy, 0 ); else cvFlip( frame, frame_copy, 0 ); detect_and_draw( frame_copy ); if( cvWaitKey( 30 ) >= 0 ) break; } cvReleaseImage( &frame_copy ); cvReleaseCapture( &capture ); } else { if( !input_name || (isdigit(input_name[0]) && input_name[1] == '\0')) cvNamedWindow( "result", 1 ); const char* filename = input_name ? input_name : (char*)"lena.jpg"; IplImage* image = cvLoadImage( filename, 1 ); if( image ) { detect_and_draw( image ); cvWaitKey(0); cvReleaseImage( &image ); } else { /* assume it is a text file containing the list of the image filenames to be processed - one per line */ FILE* f = fopen( filename, "rt" ); if( f ) { char buf[1000+1]; while( fgets( buf, 1000, f ) ) { int len = (int)strlen(buf); while( len > 0 && isspace(buf[len-1]) ) len--; buf[len] = '\0'; image = cvLoadImage( buf, 1 ); if( image ) { detect_and_draw( image ); cvWaitKey(0); cvReleaseImage( &image ); } } fclose(f); } } } cvDestroyWindow("result"); #ifdef WRITEVIDEO cvReleaseVideoWriter(&videoWriter); #endif return 0; } void detect_and_draw( IplImage* img ) { static CvScalar colors[] = { {{0,0,255}}, {{0,128,255}}, {{0,255,255}}, {{0,255,0}}, {{255,128,0}}, {{255,255,0}}, {{255,0,0}}, {{255,0,255}} }; double scale = 1.3; IplImage* gray = cvCreateImage( cvSize(img->width,img->height), 8, 1 ); IplImage* small_img = cvCreateImage( cvSize( cvRound (img->width/scale), cvRound (img->height/scale)), 8, 1 ); CvPoint pt1, pt2; int i; cvCvtColor( img, gray, CV_BGR2GRAY ); cvResize( gray, small_img, CV_INTER_LINEAR ); cvEqualizeHist( small_img, small_img ); cvClearMemStorage( storage ); if( cascade ) { double t = (double)cvGetTickCount(); CvSeq* faces = cvHaarDetectObjects( small_img, cascade, storage, 1.1, 2, 0/*CV_HAAR_DO_CANNY_PRUNING*/, cvSize(30, 30) ); t = (double)cvGetTickCount() - t; printf( "detection time = %gms\n", t/((double)cvGetTickFrequency()*1000.) ); if (faces) { //To save the detected faces into separate images, here's a quick and dirty code: char filename[6]; for( i = 0; i < (faces ? faces->total : 0); i++ ) { /* CvRect* r = (CvRect*)cvGetSeqElem( faces, i ); CvPoint center; int radius; center.x = cvRound((r->x + r->width*0.5)*scale); center.y = cvRound((r->y + r->height*0.5)*scale); radius = cvRound((r->width + r->height)*0.25*scale); cvCircle( img, center, radius, colors[i%8], 3, 8, 0 );*/ // Create a new rectangle for drawing the face CvRect* r = (CvRect*)cvGetSeqElem( faces, i ); // Find the dimensions of the face,and scale it if necessary pt1.x = r->x*scale; pt2.x = (r->x+r->width)*scale; pt1.y = r->y*scale; pt2.y = (r->y+r->height)*scale; // Draw the rectangle in the input image cvRectangle( img, pt1, pt2, CV_RGB(255,0,0), 3, 8, 0 ); CvPoint center; int radius; center.x = cvRound((r->x + r->width*0.5)*scale); center.y = cvRound((r->y + r->height*0.5)*scale); radius = cvRound((r->width + r->height)*0.25*scale); cvCircle( img, center, radius, CV_RGB(255,0,0), 3, 8, 0 ); //update counter updateCounter(center); int y=found_face(img,pt1,pt2); if(y==0) countfaces++; }//end for printf("Number of detected faces: %d\t",countfaces); }//end if //delete old track positions from facePositions array expirePositions(); timestamp++; //draw counter drawCounter(img); #ifdef WRITEVIDEO cvWriteFrame(videoWriter, img); #endif cvShowImage( "result", img ); cvDestroyWindow("Result"); cvReleaseImage( &gray ); cvReleaseImage( &small_img ); }//end if } //end void int found_face(IplImage* img,CvPoint pt1,CvPoint pt2) { /*if (faces) {*/ CvSeq* faces = cvHaarDetectObjects( img, cascade, storage, 1.1, 2, CV_HAAR_DO_CANNY_PRUNING, cvSize(40, 40) ); int i=0; char filename[512]; for( i = 0; i < (faces ? faces->total : 0); i++ ) {//int scale = 1, i=0; //i=iface; //char filename[512]; /* extract the rectanlges only */ // CvRect face_rect = *(CvRect*)cvGetSeqElem( faces, i); CvRect face_rect = *(CvRect*)cvGetSeqElem( faces, i); //IplImage* gray_img = cvCreateImage( cvGetSize(img), IPL_DEPTH_8U, 1 ); IplImage* clone = cvCreateImage (cvSize(img->width, img->height), IPL_DEPTH_8U, img->nChannels ); IplImage* gray = cvCreateImage (cvSize(img->width, img->height), IPL_DEPTH_8U, 1 ); cvCopy (img, clone, 0); cvNamedWindow ("ROI", CV_WINDOW_AUTOSIZE); cvCvtColor( clone, gray, CV_RGB2GRAY ); face_rect.x = pt1.x; face_rect.y = pt1.y; face_rect.width = abs(pt1.x - pt2.x); face_rect.height = abs(pt1.y - pt2.y); cvSetImageROI ( gray, face_rect); //// * rectangle = cvGetImageROI ( clone ); face_rect = cvGetImageROI ( gray ); cvShowImage ("ROI", gray); k++; char *name=0; name=(char*) calloc(512, 1); sprintf(name, "Image%d.pgm", k); cvSaveImage(name, gray); //////////////// for(int j=0;j<512;j++) filelist[list][j]=name[j]; list++; WriteInDB(); //int found=SIFT("result.txt",name); cvResetImageROI( gray ); //return found; return 0; // }//end if }//end for }//end void void WriteInDB() { ofstream myfile; myfile.open ("result.txt"); for(int i=0;i<512;i++) { if(strcmp(filelist[i],"")!=0) myfile << filelist[i]<<"\n"; } myfile.close(); } Error 3 error C4430: missing type specifier - int assumed. Note: C++ does not support default-int Error 8 error C4430: missing type specifier - int assumed. Note: C++ does not support default-int Error 13 error C4430: missing type specifier - int assumed. Note: C++ does not support default-int c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\xutility 766 Error 18 error C4430: missing type specifier - int assumed. Note: C++ does not support default-int c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\xutility 768 Error 23 error C4430: missing type specifier - int assumed. Note: C++ does not support default-int c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\xutility 769 Error 10 error C2868: 'std::iterator_traits<_Iter>::value_type' : illegal syntax for using-declaration; expected qualified-name c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\xutility 765 Error 25 error C2868: 'std::iterator_traits<_Iter>::reference' : illegal syntax for using-declaration; expected qualified-name c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\xutility 769 Error 20 error C2868: 'std::iterator_traits<_Iter>::pointer' : illegal syntax for using-declaration; expected qualified-name c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\xutility 768 Error 5 error C2868: 'std::iterator_traits<_Iter>::iterator_category' : illegal syntax for using-declaration; expected qualified-name c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\xutility 764 Error 15 error C2868: 'std::iterator_traits<_Iter>::difference_type' : illegal syntax for using-declaration; expected qualified-name c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\xutility 766 Error 9 error C2602: 'std::iterator_traits<_Iter>::value_type' is not a member of a base class of 'std::iterator_traits<_Iter>' c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\xutility 765 Error 24 error C2602: 'std::iterator_traits<_Iter>::reference' is not a member of a base class of 'std::iterator_traits<_Iter>' c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\xutility 769 Error 19 error C2602: 'std::iterator_traits<_Iter>::pointer' is not a member of a base class of 'std::iterator_traits<_Iter>' c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\xutility 768 Error 4 error C2602: 'std::iterator_traits<_Iter>::iterator_category' is not a member of a base class of 'std::iterator_traits<_Iter>' c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\xutility 764 Error 14 error C2602: 'std::iterator_traits<_Iter>::difference_type' is not a member of a base class of 'std::iterator_traits<_Iter>' c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\xutility 766 Error 7 error C2146: syntax error : missing ';' before identifier 'value_type' c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\xutility 765 Error 22 error C2146: syntax error : missing ';' before identifier 'reference' c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\xutility 769 Error 17 error C2146: syntax error : missing ';' before identifier 'pointer' c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\xutility 768 Error 2 error C2146: syntax error : missing ';' before identifier 'iterator_category' c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\xutility 764 Error 12 error C2146: syntax error : missing ';' before identifier 'difference_type' c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\xutility 766 Error 6 error C2039: 'value_type' : is not a member of 'CvPoint' c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\xutility 765 Error 21 error C2039: 'reference' : is not a member of 'CvPoint' c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\xutility 769 Error 16 error C2039: 'pointer' : is not a member of 'CvPoint' c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\xutility 768 Error 1 error C2039: 'iterator_category' : is not a member of 'CvPoint' c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\xutility 764 Error 11 error C2039: 'difference_type' : is not a member of 'CvPoint' c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\xutility 766

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  • The Challenge with HTML5 – In Pictures

    - by dwahlin
    I love working with Web technologies and am looking forward to the new functionality that HTML5 will ultimately bring to the table (some of which can be used today). Having been through the div versus layer battle back in the IE4 and Netscape 4 days I think we’re headed down that road again as a result of browsers implementing features differently. I’ve been spending a lot of time researching and playing around with HTML5 samples and features (mainly because we’re already seeing demand for training on HTML5) and there’s a lot of great stuff there that will truly revolutionize web applications as we know them. However, browsers just aren’t there yet and many people outside of the development world don’t really feel a need to upgrade their browser if it’s working reasonably well (Mom and Dad come to mind) so it’s going to be awhile. There’s a nice test site at http://www.HTML5Test.com that runs through different HTML5 features and scores how well they’re supported. They don’t test for everything and are very clear about that on the site: “The HTML5 test score is only an indication of how well your browser supports the upcoming HTML5 standard and related specifications. It does not try to test all of the new features offered by HTML5, nor does it try to test the functionality of each feature it does detect. Despite these shortcomings we hope that by quantifying the level of support users and web developers will get an idea of how hard the browser manufacturers work on improving their browsers and the web as a development platform. The score is calculated by testing for the many new features of HTML5. Each feature is worth one or more points. Apart from the main HTML5 specification and other specifications created the W3C HTML Working Group, this test also awards points for supporting related drafts and specifications. Some of these specifications were initially part of HTML5, but are now further developed by other W3C working groups. WebGL is also part of this test despite not being developed by the W3C, because it extends the HTML5 canvas element with a 3d context. The test also awards bonus points for supporting audio and video codecs and supporting SVG or MathML embedding in a plain HTML document. These test do not count towards the total score because HTML5 does not specify any required audio or video codec. Also SVG and MathML are not required by HTML5, the specification only specifies rules for how such content should be embedded inside a plain HTML file. Please be aware that the specifications that are being tested are still in development and could change before receiving an official status. In the future new tests will be added for the pieces of the specification that are currently still missing. The maximum number of points that can be scored is 300 at this moment, but this is a moving goalpost.” It looks like their tests haven’t been updated since June, but the numbers are pretty scary as a developer because it means I’m going to have to do a lot of browser sniffing before assuming a particular feature is available to use. Not that much different from what we do today as far as browser sniffing you say? I’d have to disagree since HTML5 takes it to a whole new level. In today’s world we have script libraries such as jQuery (my personal favorite), Prototype, script.aculo.us, YUI Library, MooTools, etc. that handle the heavy lifting for us. Until those libraries handle all of the key HTML5 features available it’s going to be a challenge. Certain features such as Canvas are supported fairly well across most of the major browsers while other features such as audio and video are hit or miss depending upon what codec you want to use. Run the tests yourself to see what passes and what fails for different browsers. You can also view the HTML5 Test Suite Conformance Results at http://test.w3.org/html/tests/reporting/report.htm (a work in progress). The table below lists the scores that the HTML5Test site returned for different browsers I have installed on my desktop PC and laptop. A specific list of tests run and features supported are given when you go to the site. Note that I went ahead and tested the IE9 beta and it didn’t do nearly as good as I expected it would, but it’s not officially out yet so I expect that number will change a lot. Am I opposed to HTML5 as a result of these tests? Of course not - I’m actually really excited about what it offers.  However, I’m trying to be realistic and feel it'll definitely add a new level of headache to the Web application development process having been through something like this many years ago. On the flipside, developers that are able to target a specific browser (typically Intranet apps) or master the cross-browser issues are going to release some pretty sweet applications. Check out http://html5gallery.com/ for a look at some of the more cutting-edge sites out there that use HTML5. Also check out the http://www.beautyoftheweb.com site that Microsoft put together to showcase IE9. Chrome 8 Safari 5 for Windows     Opera 10 Firefox 3.6     Internet Explorer 9 Beta (Note that it’s still beta) Internet Explorer 8

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  • XNA Notes 006

    - by George Clingerman
    If you used to think the XNA community was small and inactive, hopefully these XNA Notes are opening your eyes. And I honestly feel like I’m still only catching the tail end of everything that’s going on. It’s a large and active community and you can be so mired down in one part of it you miss all sorts of cool stuff another part is doing. XNA is many things to a lot of people and that makes for a lot of really awesome things going on. So here’s what I saw going on this last week! Time Critical XNA New: XNA Team - Peer Review now closes for XNA 3.1 games http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2011/02/08/peer-review-pipeline-closed-for-new-xna-gs-3-1-games-or-updates-on-app-hub.aspx http://twitter.com/XNACommunity/statuses/34649816529256448 The XNA Team posts about a meet up with Microsoft for Creator’s going to be at GDC, March 3rd at the Lobby Bar http://on.fb.me/fZungJ XNA Team: @mklucher is busying playing the the bubblegum on WP7 made by a member of the XNA team (although reportedly made in Silverlight? Crazy! ;) ) http://twitter.com/mklucher/statuses/34645662737895426 http://bubblegum.me Shawn Hargreaves posts multiple posts (is this a sign that something new is coming from the XNA team? Usually when Shawn has time to post, something has just wrapped up…) Random Shuffle http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2011/02/09/random-shuffle.aspx Doing the right thing: resume, rewind or skip ahead http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2011/02/10/doing-the-right-thing-resume-rewind-or-skip-ahead.aspx XNA Developers: Andrew Russel was on .NET Rocks recently talking with Carl and Richard about developing games for Xbox, iPhone and Android http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?ShowNum=635 Eric W. releases the Fishing Girl source code into the wild http://ericw.ca/blog/posts/fishing-girl-now-open-source/ http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/74642/454512.aspx#454512 BinaryTweedDeej reminds that XNA community that Indie City wants you involved http://twitter.com/BinaryTweedDeej/statuses/34596114028044288 http://www.indiecity.com Mike McLaughlin (@mikebmcl) releases his first two XNA articles on the TechNet wiki http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/xna-framework-overview.aspx http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/content-pipeline-overview.aspx John Watte plays around with the Content Pipeline and Music Visualization exploring just what can be done. http://www.enchantedage.com/xna-content-pipeline-fft-song-analysis http://www.enchantedage.com/fft-in-xna-content-pipeline-for-beat-detection-for-the-win Simon Stevens writes up his talk on Vector Collision Physics http://www.simonpstevens.com/News/VectorCollisionPhysics @domipheus puts together an XNA Task Manager http://www.flickr.com/photos/domipheus/5405603197/ MadNinjaSkillz releases his fork of Nick's Easy Storage component on CodePlex http://twitter.com/MadNinjaSkillz/statuses/34739039068229634 http://ezstorage.codeplex.com @ActiveNick was interviewed by Rob Cameron and discusses Windows Phone 7, Bing Maps and XNA http://twitter.com/ActiveNick/statuses/35348548526546944 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/cc537546 Radiangames (Luke Schneider) posts about converting his games from XNA to Unity http://radiangames.com/?p=592 UberMonkey (@ElementCy) posts about a new project in the works, CubeTest a Minecraft style terrain http://www.ubergamermonkey.com/personal-projects/new-project-in-the-works/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Ubergamermonkey+%28UberGamerMonkey%29 Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): VideoGamer Rob review Bonded Realities http://videogamerrob.wordpress.com/2011/02/05/xblig-review-bonded-realities/ XBLIG Round Up on Gamergeddon http://www.gamergeddon.com/2011/02/06/xbox-indie-game-round-up-february-6th/ Are gamers still rating Indie Games after the Xbox Dashboard update? http://www.gamemarx.com/news/2011/02/06/are-gamers-still-rating-indie-games-after-the-xbox-dashboard-update.aspx Joystiq - Xbox Live Indie Gems: Corrupted http://www.joystiq.com/2011/02/04/xbox-live-indie-gems-corrupted/ Raymond Matthews of DarkStarMatryx reviews (Almost) Total Mayhem and Aban Hawkins & the 1000 Spikes http://www.darkstarmatryx.com/?p=225 http://www.darkstarmatryx.com/?p=229 8 Bit Horse reviews Aban Hawkins & the 1000 spikes http://8bithorse.blogspot.com/2011/01/aban-hawkins-1000-spikes-xbl-indie.html 2010 wrap-up for FunInfused Games http://www.krissteele.net/blogdetails.aspx?id=245 NeoGaf roundup of January's XBLIGs http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=420528 Armless Ocotopus interviews Michael Ventnor creator of Bonded Realities http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/02/07/interview-michael-ventnor-of-red-crest-studios/ @recharge_media posts about the new city music for Woodvale in Sin Rising http://rechargemedia.com/2011/02/08/new-city-theme-woodvale/ @DrMisty posts some footage of YoYoYo in action http://www.mstargames.co.uk/mistryblogmain/54-yoyoyoblogs/184-video-update.html Xona Games - Decimation X3 on Reviews on the Run http://video.citytv.com/video/detail/782443063001.000000/reviews-on-the-run--february-8-2011/g4/ @benkane gives an early peek at his action RPG coming to XBLIG http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDF_PrvtwU8 Rock, Paper Shotgun talks to Zeboyd games about bringing Cthulhu Saves the World to PC http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/02/11/summoning-cthulhu-natter-with-zeboyd/ Xbox LIVE Indieverse interviews the creator of Bonded Realities http://xbl-indieverse.blogspot.com/2011/02/xbl-indieverse-interview-red-crest.html XNA Game Development: Dream-In-Code posts about an upcoming XNA Challenge/Coding contest http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/blog/1385/entry-3192-xna-challengecontest/ Sgt.Conker covers Fishing Girl and IndieFreaks Game Framework release http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/02/fishing-girl-did-not-sell-a-single-copy/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/02/indiefreaks-game-framework-v0-2-0-0/ @slyprid releases Transmute v0.40a with lots of new features and fixes http://twitter.com/slyprid/statuses/34125423067533312 http://twitter.com/slyprid/statuses/35326876243337216 http://forgottenstarstudios.com/ Jeff Brown writes an XNA 4.0 tutorial on Saving/Loading on the Xbox 360 http://www.robotfootgames.com/xna-tutorials/92-xna-tutorial-savingloading-on-xbox-360-40 XNA for Silverlight Developers: Part 3- Animation http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-3-Animation-transforms.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+xna-connection-twitter-specific-stream+%28XNA+Connection%27s+Twitter+specific+stream%29 The news from Nokia is definitely something XNA developers will want to keep their eye on http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/nokia-developer-news/2011/02/11/letter-to-developers?sf1066337=1

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  • Mobile HCM: It’s not the future, it is right now

    - by Natalia Rachelson
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; 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;} A guest post by Steve Boese, Director Product Strategy, Oracle I’ll bet you reached for your iPhone or Android or BlackBerry and took a quick look at email or Facebook or last night’s text messages before you even got out of bed this morning. Come on, admit it, it’s ok, you are among friends here. See, feel better now? But seriously, the incredible growth and near-ubiquity of increasingly powerful, capable, and for many of us, essential in our daily lives mobile devices has profoundly changed the way we communicate, consume information, socialize, and more and more, conduct business and get our work done. And if you doubt that profound change has happened, just think for a moment about the last time you misplaced your iPhone.  The shivers, the cold sweats, the panic... We have all been there. And indeed your personal experiences with mobile technology echoes throughout the world - here are a few data points to consider: Market research firm IDC estimates 1.8 billion mobile phones will be shipped in 2012. A recent Pew study reports 46% of Americans own a smartphone of some kind. And finally in the USA, ownership of tablets like the iPad has doubled from 10% to 19% in the last year. So truly for the Human Resources leader, the question is no longer, ‘Should HR explore ways to exploit mobile devices and their always-on nature to better support and empower the modern workforce?’, but rather ‘How can HR best take advantage of smartphone and tablet capability to provide information, enable transactions, and enhance decision making?’. Because even though moving HCM applications to mobile devices seems inherently logical given today’s fast-moving and mobile workforces, and its promise to deliver incredible value to the organization, HR leaders also have to consider many factors before devising their Mobile HCM strategy and embarking on mobile HR technology projects. Here are just some of the important considerations for HR leaders as you build your strategies and evaluate mobile HCM solutions: Does your organization provide mobile devices to the workforce today, and if so, will the current set of deployed devices have the necessary capability and ecosystems to support your mobile HCM initiatives? Will you allow workers to use or bring their own mobile devices, (commonly abbreviated as ‘BYOD’), and if so are your IT and Security organizations in agreement and capable of supporting that strategy? Do you know which workers need access to mobile HCM applications? Often mobile HCM capability flows down in an organization, with executives and other ‘road-warrior’ types having the most immediate needs, followed by field sales staff, project managers, and even potential job candidates. But just as an organization will have to spend time understanding ‘who’ should have access to mobile HCM technology, the ‘what’ of the way the solutions should be deployed to these groups will also vary. What works and makes sense for the executive, (company-wide dashboards and analytics on an iPad), might not be as relevant for a retail store manager, (employee schedules, location-level sales and inventory data, transaction approvals, etc.). With Oracle Fusion HCM, we are taking an approach to mobile HR that encompasses not just the mobile solution needs for the various types of worker, but also incorporates the fundamental attributes of great mobile applications - the ability to support end-to-end transactions, apps that respond with lightning-fast speed, with functions that are embedded in a worker’s daily activities, and features that can be mashed-up easily with other business areas like Finance and CRM. Finally, and perhaps most importantly for the Oracle Fusion HCM team, delivering mobile experiences that truly enhance, enable, and empower the mobile workforce, and deliver on the design mantras of the best-in-class consumer applications, continues to shape and drive design decisions. Mobile is no longer the future, it is right now, and the cutting-edge HR leader of today will need to consider how mobile fits her HCM technology strategy from here on out. You can learn more about our ideas and plans for Oracle Fusion HCM mobile solutions at https://fusiontap.oracle.com/.

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  • ASP.NET MVC 3: Razor’s @: and <text> syntax

    - by ScottGu
    This is another in a series of posts I’m doing that cover some of the new ASP.NET MVC 3 features: New @model keyword in Razor (Oct 19th) Layouts with Razor (Oct 22nd) Server-Side Comments with Razor (Nov 12th) Razor’s @: and <text> syntax (today) In today’s post I’m going to discuss two useful syntactical features of the new Razor view-engine – the @: and <text> syntax support. Fluid Coding with Razor ASP.NET MVC 3 ships with a new view-engine option called “Razor” (in addition to the existing .aspx view engine).  You can learn more about Razor, why we are introducing it, and the syntax it supports from my Introducing Razor blog post.  Razor minimizes the number of characters and keystrokes required when writing a view template, and enables a fast, fluid coding workflow. Unlike most template syntaxes, you do not need to interrupt your coding to explicitly denote the start and end of server blocks within your HTML. The Razor parser is smart enough to infer this from your code. This enables a compact and expressive syntax which is clean, fast and fun to type. For example, the Razor snippet below can be used to iterate a list of products: When run, it generates output like:   One of the techniques that Razor uses to implicitly identify when a code block ends is to look for tag/element content to denote the beginning of a content region.  For example, in the code snippet above Razor automatically treated the inner <li></li> block within our foreach loop as an HTML content block because it saw the opening <li> tag sequence and knew that it couldn’t be valid C#.  This particular technique – using tags to identify content blocks within code – is one of the key ingredients that makes Razor so clean and productive with scenarios involving HTML creation. Using @: to explicitly indicate the start of content Not all content container blocks start with a tag element tag, though, and there are scenarios where the Razor parser can’t implicitly detect a content block. Razor addresses this by enabling you to explicitly indicate the beginning of a line of content by using the @: character sequence within a code block.  The @: sequence indicates that the line of content that follows should be treated as a content block: As a more practical example, the below snippet demonstrates how we could output a “(Out of Stock!)” message next to our product name if the product is out of stock: Because I am not wrapping the (Out of Stock!) message in an HTML tag element, Razor can’t implicitly determine that the content within the @if block is the start of a content block.  We are using the @: character sequence to explicitly indicate that this line within our code block should be treated as content. Using Code Nuggets within @: content blocks In addition to outputting static content, you can also have code nuggets embedded within a content block that is initiated using a @: character sequence.  For example, we have two @: sequences in the code snippet below: Notice how within the second @: sequence we are emitting the number of units left within the content block (e.g. - “(Only 3 left!”). We are doing this by embedding a @p.UnitsInStock code nugget within the line of content. Multiple Lines of Content Razor makes it easy to have multiple lines of content wrapped in an HTML element.  For example, below the inner content of our @if container is wrapped in an HTML <p> element – which will cause Razor to treat it as content: For scenarios where the multiple lines of content are not wrapped by an outer HTML element, you can use multiple @: sequences: Alternatively, Razor also allows you to use a <text> element to explicitly identify content: The <text> tag is an element that is treated specially by Razor. It causes Razor to interpret the inner contents of the <text> block as content, and to not render the containing <text> tag element (meaning only the inner contents of the <text> element will be rendered – the tag itself will not).  This makes it convenient when you want to render multi-line content blocks that are not wrapped by an HTML element.  The <text> element can also optionally be used to denote single-lines of content, if you prefer it to the more concise @: sequence: The above code will render the same output as the @: version we looked at earlier.  Razor will automatically omit the <text> wrapping element from the output and just render the content within it.  Summary Razor enables a clean and concise templating syntax that enables a very fluid coding workflow.  Razor’s smart detection of <tag> elements to identify the beginning of content regions is one of the reasons that the Razor approach works so well with HTML generation scenarios, and it enables you to avoid having to explicitly mark the beginning/ending of content regions in about 95% of if/else and foreach scenarios. Razor’s @: and <text> syntax can then be used for scenarios where you want to avoid using an HTML element within a code container block, and need to more explicitly denote a content region. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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  • How to Use An Antivirus Boot Disc or USB Drive to Ensure Your Computer is Clean

    - by Chris Hoffman
    If your computer is infected with malware, running an antivirus within Windows may not be enough to remove it. If your computer has a rootkit, the malware may be able to hide itself from your antivirus software. This is where bootable antivirus solutions come in. They can clean malware from outside the infected Windows system, so the malware won’t be running and interfering with the clean-up process. The Problem With Cleaning Up Malware From Within Windows Standard antivirus software runs within Windows. If your computer is infected with malware, the antivirus software will have to do battle with the malware. Antivirus software will try to stop the malware and remove it, while the malware will attempt to defend itself and shut down the antivirus. For really nasty malware, your antivirus software may not be able to fully remove it from within Windows. Rootkits, a type of malware that hides itself, can be even trickier. A rootkit could load at boot time before other Windows components and prevent Windows from seeing it, hide its processes from the task manager, and even trick antivirus applications into believing that the rootkit isn’t running. The problem here is that the malware and antivirus are both running on the computer at the same time. The antivirus is attempting to fight the malware on its home turf — the malware can put up a fight. Why You Should Use an Antivirus Boot Disc Antivirus boot discs deal with this by approaching the malware from outside Windows. You boot your computer from a CD or USB drive containing the antivirus and it loads a specialized operating system from the disc. Even if your Windows installation is completely infected with malware, the special operating system won’t have any malware running within it. This means the antivirus program can work on the Windows installation from outside it. The malware won’t be running while the antivirus tries to remove it, so the antivirus can methodically locate and remove the harmful software without it interfering. Any rootkits won’t be able to set up the tricks they use at Windows boot time to hide themselves from the rest o the operating system. The antivirus will be able to see the rootkits and remove them. These tools are often referred to as “rescue disks.” They’re meant to be used when you need to rescue a hopelessly infected system. Bootable Antivirus Options As with any type of antivirus software, you have quite a few options. Many antivirus companies offer bootable antivirus systems based on their antivirus software. These tools are generally free, even when they’re offered by companies that specialized in paid antivirus solutions. Here are a few good options: avast! Rescue Disk – We like avast! for offering a capable free antivirus with good detection rates in independent tests. avast! now offers the ability to create an antivirus boot disc or USB drive. Just navigate to the Tools -> Rescue Disk option in the avast! desktop application to create bootable media. BitDefender Rescue CD – BitDefender always seems to receive good scores in independent tests, and the BitDefender Rescue CD offers the same antivirus engine in the form of a bootable disc. Kaspersky Rescue Disk – Kaspersky also receives good scores in independent tests and offers its own antivirus boot disc. These are just a handful of options. If you prefer another antivirus for some reason — Comodo, Norton, Avira, ESET, or almost any other antivirus product — you’ll probably find that it offers its own system rescue disk. How to Use an Antivirus Boot Disc Using an antivirus boot disc or USB drive is actually pretty simple. You’ll just need to find the antivirus boot disc you want to use and burn it to disc or install it on a USB drive. You can do this part on any computer, so you can create antivirus boot media on a clean computer and then take it to an infected computer. Insert the boot media into the infected computer and then reboot. The computer should boot from the removable media and load the secure antivirus environment. (If it doesn’t, you may need to change the boot order in your BIOS or UEFI firmware.) You can then follow the instructions on your screen to scan your Windows system for malware and remove it. No malware will be running in the background while you do this. Antivirus boot discs are useful because they allow you to detect and clean malware infections from outside an infected operating system. If the operating system is severely infected, it may not be possible to remove — or even detect — all the malware from within it. Image Credit: aussiegall on Flickr     

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  • Last week I was presented with a Microsoft MVP award in Virtual Machines – time to thank all who hel

    - by Liam Westley
    MVP in Virtual Machines Last week, on 1st April, I received an e-mail from Microsoft letting me know that I had been presented with a 2010 Microsoft® MVP Award for outstanding contributions in Virtual Machine technical communities during the past year.   It was an honour to be nominated, and is a great reflection on the vibrancy of the UK user group community which made this possible. Virtualisation for developers, not just IT Pros I consider it a special honour as my expertise in virtualisation is as a software developer utilising virtual machines to aid my software development, rather than an IT Pro who manages data centre and network infrastructure.  I’ve been on a minor mission over the past few years to enthuse developers in a topic usually seen as only for network admins, but which can make their life a whole lot easier once understood properly. Continuous learning is fun In 1676, the scientist Isaac Newton, in a letter to Robert Hooke used the phrase (http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/268025.html) ‘If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants’ I’m a nuclear physicist by education, so I am more than comfortable that any knowledge I have is based on the work of others.  Although far from a science, software development and IT is equally built upon the work of others. It’s one of the reasons I despise software patents. So in that sense this MVP award is a result of all the great minds that have provided virtualisation solutions for me to talk about.  I hope that I have always acknowledged those whose work I have used when blogging or giving presentations, and that I have executed my responsibility to share any knowledge gained as widely as possible. Thanks to all those who helped – a big thanks to the UK user group community I reckon this journey started in 2003 when I started attending a user group called the London .Net Users Group (http://www.dnug.org.uk) started by a nice chap called Ian Cooper. The great thing about Ian was that he always encouraged non professional speakers to take the stage at the user group, and my first ever presentation was on 30th September 2003; SQL Server CE 2.0 and the.NET Compact Framework. In 2005 Ian Cooper was on the committee for the first DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper! day, the free community conference held at Microsoft’s UK HQ in Thames Valley park in Reading.  He encouraged me to take part and so on 14th May 2005 I presented a talk previously given to the London .Net User Group on Simplifying access to multiple DB providers in .NET.  From that point on I definitely had the bug; presenting at DDD2, DDD3, groking at DDD4 and SQLBits I and after a break, DDD7, DDD Scotland and DDD8.  What definitely made me keen was the encouragement and infectious enthusiasm of some of the other DDD organisers; Craig Murphy, Barry Dorrans, Phil Winstanley and Colin Mackay. During the first few DDD events I met the Dave McMahon and Richard Costall from NxtGenUG who made it easy to start presenting at their user groups.  Along the way I’ve met a load of great user group organisers; Guy Smith-Ferrier of the .Net Developer Network, Jimmy Skowronski of GL.Net and the double act of Ray Booysen and Gavin Osborn behind what was Vista Squad and is now Edge UG. Final thanks to those who suggested virtualisation as a topic ... Final thanks have to go the people who inspired me to create my Virtualisation for Developers talk.  Toby Henderson (@holytshirt) ensured I took notice of Sun’s VirtualBox, Peter Ibbotson for being a fine sounding board at the Kew Railway over quite a few Adnam’s Broadside and to Guy Smith-Ferrier for allowing his user group to be the guinea pigs for the talk before it was seen at DDD7.  Thanks to all of you I now know much more about virtualisation than I would have thought possible and it continues to be great fun. Conclusion If this was an academy award acceptance speech I would have been cut off after the first few paragraphs, so well done if you made it this far.  I’ll be doing my best to do justice to the MVP award and the UK community.  I’m fortunate in having a new employer who considers presenting at user groups as a good thing, so don’t expect me to stop any time soon. If you’ve never seen me in action, then you can view the original DDD7 Virtualisation for Developers presentation (filmed by the Microsoft Channel 9 team) as part of the full DDD7 video list here, http://www.craigmurphy.com/blog/?p=1591.  Also thanks to Craig Murphy’s fine video work you can also view my latest DDD8 presentation on Commercial Software Development, here, http://vimeo.com/9216563 P.S. If I’ve missed anyone out, do feel free to lambast me in comments, it’s your duty.

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  • Multitask Like a Pro with AquaSnap

    - by Matthew Guay
    Are you tired of shuffling back and forth between windows?  Here’s a handy app that can help you keep all of your windows organized and accessible. AquaSnap is a great free utility that helps you use multiple windows at the same time easily and efficiently.  One of Windows 7’s greatest new features is Aero Snap, which lets you easily view windows side by side by simply dragging windows to side of your screen.  After using Windows 7 for the past year, Aero Snap is one of the features we really miss when using older versions of Windows. With AquaSnap, you now have all of the features of Aero Snap and more in Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and of course Windows 7.  Not only does it give you Aero Snap features, but AquaSnap also gives you more control over your windows to make you more productive. Getting Started AquaSnap is a a free download for Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and 7.  Download the small installer (link below) and install it with the default settings. AquaSnap automatically runs as soon as it is installed, and you will notice a new icon in your system tray. Now you can go ahead and put it to use.  Drag a window to any edge or corner of your desktop, and you will see an icon showing what part of the screen the window will cover. Dragging it to the side of the screen expanded the window to fill the right half of the screen, just like the default Aero Snap in Windows 7.  You can drag the window away to restore it to its former size. AquaSnap works on any corner of the screen too, so you can have 4 windows side-by-side.  We already have 3 windows snapped to the corners, and notice that we’re dragging a fourth window to the bottom right corner. You can also snap windows to the bottom and top of the screen.  Here we have Word snapped to the bottom half of the screen, and we’re dragging Chrome to the top. You can even snap internal windows in Multiple Document Interface (MDI) programs such as Excel.  Here we are snapping a workbook in Excel to the left to view 2 workbooks side-by-side.   Additionally, AquaSnap lets you keep any window always on top.  Simply shake any window, and it will turn semi-transparent and stay on top of all other windows.  Notice the transparent calculator here on top of Excel. All of AquaSnap’s features work great in Windows 2000, XP, and Vista too.  Here we are snapping IE6 to the left of the screen in XP. Here are 3 windows snapped to the sides in XP.  You can mix the snap modes, and have, for instance, two windows on the right side and one window on the left.  This is a great way to maximize productivity if you need more space in one of the windows. Even AquaShake works to keep a window transparent and on top in XP. Settings AquaSnap has a detailed settings dialog where you can tweak it to work exactly like you want.  Simply right-click on its icon in the taskbar, and select Settings. From the first screen, you can choose if you want AquaSnap to start with Windows, and if you want it to show an icon in the system tray.  If you turn off the system tray icon, you can access the AquaSnap settings from Start > All Programs > AquaSnap > Configuration (or simply search for Configuration in Vista or Windows 7). The second tab in settings lets you choose what you want each snapping region to do.  You can also choose two other presets, including AeroSnap (which works just like the default Aero Snap in Windows 7) and AquaSnap simple (which only snaps at the edges of the screen, not the corners). The third tab lets you increase or decrease the opacity of pinned windows when using AquaShake, and also lets you increase or decrease the shaking sensitivity.  Additionally, if you prefer the standard AeroShake functionality, which minimizes all other open windows when you shake a window, you can choose that too. The fourth tab lets you activate an optional feature, AquaGlass.  If you activate this, it will make windows turn transparent when you drag them across the screen.   Finally, the last tab lets you change the color and opacity of the preview rectangle, or simply turn it off. Or, if you want to temporarily turn AquaSnap off, simply right-click on its icon and select Off.  In Windows 7, turning off AquaSnap will restore your standard Windows Aero Snap functionality, and in other version of Windows it will stop letting you snap windows at all.  You can then repeat the steps and select On when you want to use AquaSnap again. Conclusion AquaSnap is a handy tool to make you more productive at your computer.  With a wide variety of useful features, there’s something here for everyone.  Download AquaSnap Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to Get Virtual Desktops on Windows XP 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 Out of band Security Update for Internet Explorer 7 Cool Looking Screensavers for Windows SyncToy syncs Files and Folders across Computers on a Network (or partitions on the same drive) If it were only this easy Classic Cinema Online offers 100’s of OnDemand Movies OutSync will Sync Photos of your Friends on Facebook and Outlook

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  • Rob Blackwell on interoperability and Azure

    - by Eric Nelson
    At QCon in March we had a sample Azure application implemented in both Java and Ruby to demonstrate that the Windows Azure Platform is not just about .NET. The following is an interesting interview with Rob Blackwell, the R&D director of the partner who implemented the application. UK Interoperability Team Interviews Rob Blackwell, R&D Director at Active Web Solutions. Is Microsoft taking interoperability seriously? Yes. In the past, I think Microsoft has, quite rightly come in for criticism, but architects and developers should look at this again. The Interoperability Bridges site (http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/ ) shows a wide range of projects that allow interoperability from Java, Ruby and PHP for example. The Windows Azure platform has been architected with interoperable APIs in mind. It's straightforward to access the various storage facilities from just about any language or platform. Azure compute is capable of running more than just C# applications! Why is interoperability important to you? My company provides consultancy and bespoke development services. We're a Microsoft Gold Partner, but we live in the real world where companies have a mix of technologies provided by a variety of vendors. When developing an enterprise software solution, you rarely have a completely blank canvas. We often see integration scenarios where we need to exchange data with legacy systems. It's not unusual to see modern Silverlight applications being built on top of Java or Mainframe based back ends. Could you give us some examples of where interoperability has been important for your projects? We developed an innovative Sea Safety system for the RNLI Lifeboats here in the UK. Commercial Fishing is one of the most dangerous professions and we helped developed the MOB Guardian System which uses satellite technology and man overboard devices to raise the alarm when a fisherman gets into trouble. The solution is implemented in .NET running on Windows, but without interoperable standards, it would have been impossible to communicate with the satellite gateway technology. For more information, please see the case study: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=4000005892 More recently, we were asked to build a web site to accompany the QCon 2010 conference in London to help demonstrate and promote interoperability. We built the site using Java and Restlet and hosted it in Windows Azure Compute. The site accepts feedback from visitors and all the data is stored in Windows Azure Storage. We also ported the application to Ruby on Rails for demonstration purposes. Visitors to the stand were surprised that this was even possible. Why should Java developers be interested in Windows Azure? Windows Azure Storage consists of Blobs, Queues and Tables. The storage is scalable, durable, secure and cost-effective. Using the WindowsAzure4j library, it's easy to use, and takes just a few lines of code. If you are writing an application with large data storage requirements, or you want an offsite backup, it makes a lot of sense. Running Java applications in Azure Compute is straightforward with tools like the Tomcat Solution Accelerator (http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/winazuretomcat )and AzureRunMe (http://azurerunme.codeplex.com/ ). The Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus can also be used to connect heterogeneous systems running on different networks and in different data centres. How can The Service Bus be considered an interoperability solution? I think that the Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus is one of Microsoft’s best kept secrets. Think of it as “a globally scalable application plumbing kit in the sky”. If you have used Enterprise Service Buses before, you’ll be familiar with the concept. Applications can connect to the service bus to securely exchange data – these can be point to point or multicast links. With the AppFabric Service Bus, the applications can exist anywhere that has access to the Internet and the connections can traverse firewalls. This makes it easy to extend or scale your application or reach out to other networks and technologies. For example, let’s say you have a SQL Server database running on premises and you want to expose the data to a Java application running in the cloud. You could set up a point to point Service Bus connection and use JDBC. Traditionally this would have been difficult or impossible without punching holes in firewalls and compromising security. Rob Blackwell is R&D Director at Active Web Solutions, www.aws.net , a Microsoft Gold Partner specialising in leading edge software solutions. He is an occasional writer and conference speaker and blogs at www.robblackwell.org.uk Related Links: UK Azure Online Community – join today. UK Windows Azure Site Start working with Windows Azure

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  • SQL SERVER – Beginning of SQL Server Architecture – Terminology – Guest Post

    - by pinaldave
    SQL Server Architecture is a very deep subject. Covering it in a single post is an almost impossible task. However, this subject is very popular topic among beginners and advanced users.  I have requested my friend Anil Kumar who is expert in SQL Domain to help me write  a simple post about Beginning SQL Server Architecture. As stated earlier this subject is very deep subject and in this first article series he has covered basic terminologies. In future article he will explore the subject further down. Anil Kumar Yadav is Trainer, SQL Domain, Koenig Solutions. Koenig is a premier IT training firm that provides several IT certifications, such as Oracle 11g, Server+, RHCA, SQL Server Training, Prince2 Foundation etc. In this Article we will discuss about MS SQL Server architecture. The major components of SQL Server are: Relational Engine Storage Engine SQL OS Now we will discuss and understand each one of them. 1) Relational Engine: Also called as the query processor, Relational Engine includes the components of SQL Server that determine what your query exactly needs to do and the best way to do it. It manages the execution of queries as it requests data from the storage engine and processes the results returned. Different Tasks of Relational Engine: Query Processing Memory Management Thread and Task Management Buffer Management Distributed Query Processing 2) Storage Engine: Storage Engine is responsible for storage and retrieval of the data on to the storage system (Disk, SAN etc.). to understand more, let’s focus on the following diagram. When we talk about any database in SQL server, there are 2 types of files that are created at the disk level – Data file and Log file. Data file physically stores the data in data pages. Log files that are also known as write ahead logs, are used for storing transactions performed on the database. Let’s understand data file and log file in more details: Data File: Data File stores data in the form of Data Page (8KB) and these data pages are logically organized in extents. Extents: Extents are logical units in the database. They are a combination of 8 data pages i.e. 64 KB forms an extent. Extents can be of two types, Mixed and Uniform. Mixed extents hold different types of pages like index, System, Object data etc. On the other hand, Uniform extents are dedicated to only one type. Pages: As we should know what type of data pages can be stored in SQL Server, below mentioned are some of them: Data Page: It holds the data entered by the user but not the data which is of type text, ntext, nvarchar(max), varchar(max), varbinary(max), image and xml data. Index: It stores the index entries. Text/Image: It stores LOB ( Large Object data) like text, ntext, varchar(max), nvarchar(max),  varbinary(max), image and xml data. GAM & SGAM (Global Allocation Map & Shared Global Allocation Map): They are used for saving information related to the allocation of extents. PFS (Page Free Space): Information related to page allocation and unused space available on pages. IAM (Index Allocation Map): Information pertaining to extents that are used by a table or index per allocation unit. BCM (Bulk Changed Map): Keeps information about the extents changed in a Bulk Operation. DCM (Differential Change Map): This is the information of extents that have modified since the last BACKUP DATABASE statement as per allocation unit. Log File: It also known as write ahead log. It stores modification to the database (DML and DDL). Sufficient information is logged to be able to: Roll back transactions if requested Recover the database in case of failure Write Ahead Logging is used to create log entries Transaction logs are written in chronological order in a circular way Truncation policy for logs is based on the recovery model SQL OS: This lies between the host machine (Windows OS) and SQL Server. All the activities performed on database engine are taken care of by SQL OS. It is a highly configurable operating system with powerful API (application programming interface), enabling automatic locality and advanced parallelism. SQL OS provides various operating system services, such as memory management deals with buffer pool, log buffer and deadlock detection using the blocking and locking structure. Other services include exception handling, hosting for external components like Common Language Runtime, CLR etc. I guess this brief article gives you an idea about the various terminologies used related to SQL Server Architecture. In future articles we will explore them further. Guest Author  The author of the article is Anil Kumar Yadav is Trainer, SQL Domain, Koenig Solutions. Koenig is a premier IT training firm that provides several IT certifications, such as Oracle 11g, Server+, RHCA, SQL Server Training, Prince2 Foundation etc. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Security, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, T SQL, Technology

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  • SQLAuthority News – Why VoIP Service Providers Should Think About NuoDB’s Geo Distribution

    - by Pinal Dave
    You can always tell when someone’s showing off their cool, cutting edge comms technology. They tend to raise their voice a lot. Back in the day they’d announce their gadget leadership to the rest of the herd by shouting into their cellphone. Usually the message was no more urgent than “Hi, I’m on my cellphone!” Now the same types will loudly name-drop a different technology to the rest of the airport lounge. “I’m leveraging the wifi,” a fellow passenger bellowed, the other day, as we filtered through the departure gate. Nobody needed to know that, but the subtext was “look at me everybody”. You can tell the really advanced mobile user – they tend to whisper. Their handset has a microphone (how cool is that!) and they know how to use it. Sometimes these shouty public broadcasters aren’t even connected anyway because the database for their Voice over IP (VoIP) platform can’t cope. This will happen if they are using a traditional SQL model to try and cope with a phone network which has far flung offices and hundreds of mobile employees. That, like shouting into your phone, is just wrong on so many levels. What VoIP needs now is a single, logical database across multiple servers in different geographies. It needs to be updated in real-time and automatically scaled out during times of peak demand. A VoIP system should scale up to handle increased traffic, but just as importantly is must then go back down in the off peak hours. Try this with a MySQL database. It can’t scale easily enough, so it will keep your developers busy. They’ll have spent many hours trying to knit the different databases together. Traditional relational databases can possibly achieve this, at a price. Mind you, you could extend baked bean cans and string to every point on the network and that would be no less elegant. That’s not really following engineering principles though is it? Having said that, most telcos and VoIP systems use a separate, independent solution for each office location, which they link together – loosely.  The more office locations, the more complex and expensive the solution becomes and so the more you spend on maintenance. Ideally, you’d have a fluid system that can automatically shift its shape as the need arises. That’s the point of software isn’t it – it adapts. Otherwise, we might as well return to the old days. A MySQL system isn’t exactly baked bean cans attached by string, but it’s closer in spirit to the old many teethed mechanical beast that was employed in the first type of automated switchboard. NuoBD’s NewSQL is designed to be a single database that works across multiple servers, which can scale easily, and scale on demand. That’s one system that gives high connectivity but no latency, complexity or maintenance issues. MySQL works in some circumstances, but a period of growth isn’t one of them. So as a company moves forward, the MySQL database can’t keep pace. Data storage and data replication errors creep in. Soon the diaspora of offices becomes a problem. Your telephone system isn’t just distributed, it is literally all over the place. Though voice calls are often a software function, some of the old habits of telephony remain. When you call an engineer out, some of them will listen to what you’re asking for and announce that it cannot be done. This is what happens if you ask, say, database engineers familiar with Oracle or Microsoft to fulfill your wish for a low maintenance system built on a single, fluid, scalable database. No can do, they’d say. In fact, I heard one shouting something similar into his VoIP handset at the airport. “I can’t get on the network, Mac. I’m on MySQL.” You can download NuoDB from here. “NuoDB provides the ability to replicate data globally in real-time, which is not available with any other product offering,” states Weeks.  “That alone is remarkable and it works. I’ve seen it. I’ve used it.  I’ve tested it. The ability to deploy NuoDB removes a tremendous burden from our support and engineering teams.” Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: NuoDB

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  • SOA, Empowerment and Continuous Improvement

    - by Tanu Sood
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Rick Beers is Senior Director of Product Management for Oracle Fusion Middleware. Prior to joining Oracle, Rick held a variety of executive operational positions at Corning, Inc. and Bausch & Lomb. With a professional background that includes senior management positions in manufacturing, supply chain and information technology, Rick brings a unique set of experiences to cover the impact that technology can have on business models, processes and organizations. Rick will be hosting the IT Leader Editorial on a regular basis. I met my twin at Open World. We share backgrounds, experiences and even names. I hosted an invitation-only AppAdvantage Leadership Forum with an overcapacity 85 participants: 55 customers, 15 from the Oracle AppAdvantage team and 15 Partners. It was a lively, open and positive discussion of pace layered architectures and Oracle’s AppAdvantage approach to a unified view of Applications and Middleware. Rick Hassman from Pella was one of the customer panelists and during the pre event prep, Rick and I shared backgrounds and found that we had both been plant managers and led ERP deployments prior to leading IT itself. During the panel conversation I explored this with him, discussing the unique perspectives that this provides to CIO’s. He then hit on a point that I wasn’t able to fully appreciate until a week later. First though, some background. The week after the Forum, one of the participants emailed me with the following thoughts: “I am 150% behind this concept……but we are struggling with the concept of web services and the potential use of the Oracle Service Bus technology let alone moving into using the full SOA/BPM/BAM software to extend our JD Edwards application to both integrate and support business processes”. After thinking a bit I responded this way: While I certainly appreciate the degree of change and effort involved, perhaps I could offer the following: One of the underlying principles behind Oracle AppAdvantage is that more often than not, the choice between changing a business process and invasively customizing ERP represents a Hobson's Choice: neither is acceptable. In this case the third option, moving the process out of ERP, is the only acceptable one. Providing this choice typically requires end to end, real time interoperability across applications and/or services. This real time interoperability, to be sustainable over time requires a service oriented architecture. There's just no way around this. SOA adaptation is admittedly tough at the beginning. New skills, new technology and new headaches. But, like any radically new technology, it has a learning curve that drives cost down rather dramatically over time. Tough choices to be sure, but not entirely different than we face with every major technology cycle. Good points of course, but I felt that something was missing. The points were convincing, perhaps even a bit insightful, but they didn’t get at the heart of what Oracle AppAdvantage is focused upon: how the optimization of technology, applications, processes and relationships can change the very way that organizations operate. And then I thought back to the panel discussion with Rick Hassman at Oracle OpenWorld. Rick stressed that Continuous Improvement is a fundamental business strategy at Pella. I remember Continuous Improvement well as I suspect does everyone who was in American manufacturing during the 80’s. Pioneered by W. Edwards Deming in Japan (and still known alternatively as Kaizen), Continuous Improvement sets in place the business culture that we must not become complacent with success and resistant to the ongoing need for change. Many believe that this single handedly drove the renaissance in American manufacturing through the last two decades, which had become complacent during the 70’s and early 80’s. But what exactly does this have to do with SOA? It was Rick’s next point. He drew the connection that moving those business processes that need to continually change over time out of ERP and into edge applications and services enables continuous improvement by empowering people to continually strive for better ways of doing things rather than be being bound by workflows that cannot change. A compelling connection: that SOA, and the overall Oracle AppAdvantage framework of which it is an integral part, can empower people towards continuous improvement in business processes and as a result drive business leadership and business excellence. What better a case for technology innovation?

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  • Goodby jQuery Templates, Hello JsRender

    - by SGWellens
    A funny thing happened on my way to the jQuery website, I blinked and a feature was dropped: jQuery Templates have been discontinued. The new pretender to the throne is JsRender. jQuery Templates looked pretty useful when they first came out. Several articles were written about them but I stayed away because being on the bleeding edge of technology is not a productive place to be. I wanted to wait until it stabilized…in retrospect, it was a serendipitous decision. This time however, I threw all caution to the wind and took a close look at JSRender. Why? Maybe I'm having a midlife crisis; I'll go motorcycle shopping tomorrow. Caveat, here is a message from the site: Warning: JsRender is not yet Beta, and there may be frequent changes to APIs and features in the coming period. Fair enough, we've been warned. The first thing we need is some data to render. Below is some JSON formatted data. Typically this will come from an asynchronous call to a web service. For simplicity, I hard coded a variable:     var Golfers = [         { ID: "1", "Name": "Bobby Jones", "Birthday": "1902-03-17" },         { ID: "2", "Name": "Sam Snead", "Birthday": "1912-05-27" },         { ID: "3", "Name": "Tiger Woods", "Birthday": "1975-12-30" }         ]; We also need some templates, I created two. Note: The script blocks have the id property set. They are needed so JsRender can locate them.     <script id="GolferTemplate1" type="text/html">         {{=ID}}: <b>{{=Name}}</b> <i>{{=Birthday}}</i> <br />     </script>       <script id="GolferTemplate2" type="text/html">         <tr>             <td>{{=ID}}</td>             <td><b>{{=Name}}</b></td>             <td><i>{{=Birthday}}</i> </td>         </tr>     </script> Including the correct JavaScript files is trivial:     <script src="Scripts/jquery-1.7.js" type="text/javascript"></script>     <script src="Scripts/jsrender.js" type="text/javascript"></script> Of course we need some place to render the output:     <div id="GolferDiv"></div><br />     <table id="GolferTable"></table> The code is also trivial:     function Test()     {         $("#GolferDiv").html($("#GolferTemplate1").render(Golfers));         $("#GolferTable").html($("#GolferTemplate2").render(Golfers));           // you can inspect the rendered html if there are poblems.         // var html = $("#GolferTemplate2").render(Golfers);     } And here's what it looks like with some random CSS formatting that I had laying around.    Not bad, I hope JsRender lasts longer than jQuery Templates. One final warning, a lot of jQuery code is ugly, butt-ugly. If you do look inside the jQuery files, you may want to cover your keyboard with some plastic in case you get vertigo and blow chunks. I hope someone finds this useful. Steve Wellens CodeProject

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  • Building InstallShield based Installers using Team Build 2010

    - by jehan
    Last few weeks, I have been working on Application Packaging stuff using all the widely used tools like InstallShield, WISE, WiX and Visual Studio Installer. So, I thought it would be good to post about how to Build the Installers developed using these tools with Team Build 2010. This post will focus on how to build the InstallShield generated packages using Team Build 2010. For the release of VS2010, Microsoft has partnered with Flexera who are the makers of InstallShield to create InstallShield Limited Edition, especially for the customers of Visual Studio. First Microsoft planned to release WiX (Windows Installer Xml) with VS2010, but later Microsoft dropped  WiX from VS2010 due to reasons which are best known to them and partnered with InstallShield for Limited Edition. It disappointed lot of people because InstallShield Limited Edition provides only few features of InstallShield and it may not feasable to build complex installer packages using this and it also requires License, where as WiX is an open source with no license costs and it has proved efficient in building most complex packages. Only the last three features are available in InstallShield Limited Edition from the total features offered by InstallShield as shown in below list.                                                                                            Feature Limited Edition for Visual Studio 2010 Standalone Build System Maintain a clean build machine by using only the part of InstallShield that compiles the installations. InstallShield Best Practices Validation Suite Avoid common installation issues. Try and Die Functionality RCreate a fully functional trial version of your product. InstallShield Repackager Create Windows Installer setups from any legacy installation. Multilingual Support Present installation text in up to 35 languages. Microsoft App-V™ Support Deploy your applications as App-V virtual packages that run without conflict. Industry-Standard InstallScript Achieve maximum flexibility in your installations. Dialog Editor Modify the layout of existing end-user dialogs, create new custom dialogs, and more. Patch Creation Build updates and patches for your products. Setup Prerequisite Editor Easily control prerequisite restart behavior and source locations. String Editor View Control the localizable text strings displayed at run time with this spreadsheet-like table. Text File Changes View Configure search-and-replace actions for content in text files to be modified at run time. Virtual Machine Detection Block your installations from running on virtual machines. Unicode Support Improve multi-language installation development. Support for 64-Bit COM Extraction Extract COM data from a 64-bit COM server. Windows Installer Installation Chaining Add MSI packages to your main installation and chain them together. XML Support Save time by quickly testing XML configuration changes to installation projects. Billboard Support for Custom Branding Display Adobe Flash billboards and other graphic files during the install process. SaaS Support (IIS 7 and SSL Technologies) Easily deploy Windows-based Web applications. Project Assistant Jumpstart a project by using a simplified set of views. Support for Digital Signatures Save time by digitally signing all your files at build time. Easily Run Custom Actions Schedule a custom action to run at precisely the right moment in your installation. Installation Prerequisites Check for and install prerequisites before your installation is executed. To create a InstallShield project in Visual Studio and Build it using Team Build 2010, first you have to add the InstallShield Project template  to your Solution file. If you want to use InstallShield Limited edition you can add it from FileàNewà project àother Project Types àSetup and Deploymentà InstallShield LE and if you are using other versions of InstallShield, then you have to add it from  from FileàNewà project àInstallShield Projects. Here, I’m using  InstallShield 2011 Premier edition as I already have it Installed. I have created a simple package for TailSpin Application which has a Feature called Web, few components and a IIS Web Site for  TailSpin application.   Before started working on this, I thought I may need to build the package by calling invoke process activity in build process template or have to create a new custom activity. But, it got build without any changes to build process template. But, it was failing with below error message. C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\InstallShield\2011\InstallShield.targets (68): The "InstallShield.Tasks.InstallShield" task could not be loaded from the assembly C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\InstallShield\2010Limited\InstallShield.Tasks.dll. Could not load file or assembly 'file:///C:\Program Files(x86)\MSBuild\InstallShield\2011\InstallShield.Tasks.dll' or one of its dependencies. An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format. Confirm that the <UsingTask> declaration is correct, that the assembly and all its dependencies are available, and that the task contains a public class that implements Microsoft.Build.Framework.ITask. This error is due to 64-bit build machine which I’m using. This issue will be replicable if you are queuing a build on a 64-bit build machine. To avoid this you have to ensure that you configured the build definition for your InstallShield project to load the InstallShield.Tasks.dll file (which is a 32-bit file); otherwise, you will encounter this build error informing you that the InstallShield.Tasks.dll file could not be loaded. To select the 32-bit version of MSBuild, click the Process tab of your build definition in Team Explorer. Then, under the Advanced node, find the MSBuild Platform setting, and select x86. Note that if you are using a 32-bit build machine, you can select either Auto or x86 for the MSBuild Platform setting.  Once I did above changes, the build got successful.

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  • A Graduate&rsquo;s Journey at Oracle &ndash; Bhaskar Ghosh From Oracle India

    - by david.talamelli
    I am Bhaskar Ghosh, and I work as an Applications Engineer with Oracle. Well, it was three years ago when my journey with one of the largest software companies started. It was a fine day and a decisive moment, when I was placed in Oracle as a campus recruit from College of Engineering Guindy, Anna University, Chennai! I always thought of looking back, the time that helped me learn beyond my boundaries, think broader and ahead, and grow – technically, professionally and personally. Hmmn! Let me recall the eventful moments once again. My first day as an intern at Oracle started in late 2007. I met one of the Oracle Managers at the Oracle Campus in Hyderabad and on the same day I also met another Oracle employee who was to later to become my first manager. I was charged and thrilled with the environment and the wonderful people around me! I was joined by two other interns, who also had a Masters in Computer Applications. We formed a very friendly group with all the interns and the new hires, and shared our excitement and learning. Myself and one of the other Graduates started working on a very interesting project on Semantic technology. We finally had our names added as co-developers for this very project. This phase of five months was the time and we learnt tremendously and worked very hard, partly because we had to travel back and forth to our colleges to submit reports and present for the Masters in Computer Applications final year project reviews. After completing my MCA, I joined as a full-time employee in 2008. During the next year, we worked on interesting and bleeding edge technologies - OWL, RDF, SPARQL, Visualization, J2EE, Social Web features, Semantic Web technologies, Web Services and many more! We developed cool, rich internet and desktop applications. Little did I know at that time, that this learning would help me tremendously for my the next project in Oracle. The following year saw me being assigned a role in a different project that my other team members were working on for the last two years. It took me two months to understand and get into a flow with this new task. I was fortunate that this phase helped me enhance my inter-personal and communication skills, as much as it helped me grow professionally with better ability to tackle multiple priorities and switch between tasks based on the team’s requirements. I was made the POC for all communications with our team and other product teams. I personally feel that this time enhanced me tremendously in technologies like Oracle Forms, J2EE, and Java and Web Services. The last six months, saw myself becoming an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineer member, and continuing my higher education International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad. Oracle supports its employees becoming members of professional bodies, and higher studies are supported by management, I think it is tremendously helpful in the professional and technical growth of the employees. Last three months, I have been working on great and useful enhancements to our product. Ah beautiful! All these years, there have been other moments and events of fun that are too worth mentioning. Clubs and groups at Oracle such as Employee Club, Oracle Volunteers, Football Club, etc. have always kept on organizing numerous events and competitions, full of fun and entertainment. I really enjoyed participating, even if it was small, in the intra-Oracle football tourney, Oracle Volunteer Days, OraFora, OraOvations, and a few more. Those ‘Seasons of Sharing’, those ‘Blood Donation camps’, those ‘Diwali and Christmas gifts and events’, those ‘fun events at the annual function called OraOvations’, those ‘books and cycle stalls’, and those so many other things… It only fills my mind with pleasure. The last three years have been very eventful:they have been full of learning and growth, and under the very able and encouraging guidance of my manager. I have got the opportunity to know about and/or interact with many wonderful personalities, and learn from them, here at Oracle. The environment, the people, and the fellow developers have been so friendly, and always ever ready to help, when we were in doubt.. I really love the big office space, and the flexible timings, and the caring people around. I look forward to a beautiful, learning and motivating journey with Oracle.

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  • The way I think about Diagnostic tools

    - by Daniel Moth
    Every software has issues, or as we like to call them "bugs". That is not a discussion point, just a mere fact. It follows that an important skill for developers is to be able to diagnose issues in their code. Of course we need to advance our tools and techniques so we can prevent bugs getting into the code (e.g. unit testing), but beyond designing great software, diagnosing bugs is an equally important skill. To diagnose issues, the most important assets are good techniques, skill, experience, and maybe talent. What also helps is having good diagnostic tools and what helps further is knowing all the features that they offer and how to use them. The following classification is how I like to think of diagnostics. Note that like with any attempt to bucketize anything, you run into overlapping areas and blurry lines. Nevertheless, I will continue sharing my generalizations ;-) It is important to identify at the outset if you are dealing with a performance or a correctness issue. If you have a performance issue, use a profiler. I hear people saying "I am using the debugger to debug a performance issue", and that is fine, but do know that a dedicated profiler is the tool for that job. Just because you don't need them all the time and typically they cost more plus you are not as familiar with them as you are with the debugger, doesn't mean you shouldn't invest in one and instead try to exclusively use the wrong tool for the job. Visual Studio has a profiler and a concurrency visualizer (for profiling multi-threaded apps). If you have a correctness issue, then you have several options - that's next :-) This is how I think of identifying a correctness issue Do you want a tool to find the issue for you at design time? The compiler is such a tool - it gives you an exact list of errors. Compilers now also offer warnings, which is their way of saying "this may be an error, but I am not smart enough to know for sure". There are also static analysis tools, which go a step further than the compiler in identifying issues in your code, sometimes with the aid of code annotations and other times just by pointing them at your raw source. An example is FxCop and much more in Visual Studio 11 Code Analysis. Do you want a tool to find the issue for you with code execution? Just like static tools, there are also dynamic analysis tools that instead of statically analyzing your code, they analyze what your code does dynamically at runtime. Whether you have to setup some unit tests to invoke your code at runtime, or have to manually run your app (and interact with it) under the tool, or have to use a script to execute your binary under the tool… that varies. The result is still a list of issues for you to address after the analysis is complete or a pause of the execution when the first issue is encountered. If a code path was not taken, no analysis for it will exist, obviously. An example is the GPU Race detection tool that I'll be talking about on the C++ AMP team blog. Another example is the MSR concurrency CHESS tool. Do you want you to find the issue at design time using a tool? Perform a code walkthrough on your own or with colleagues. There are code review tools that go beyond just diffing sources, and they help you with that aspect too. For example, there is a new one in Visual Studio 11 and searching with my favorite search engine yielded this article based on the Developer Preview. Do you want you to find the issue with code execution? Use a debugger - let’s break this down further next. This is how I think of debugging: There is post mortem debugging. That means your code has executed and you did something in order to examine what happened during its execution. This can vary from manual printf and other tracing statements to trace events (e.g. ETW) to taking dumps. In all cases, you are left with some artifact that you examine after the fact (after code execution) to discern what took place hoping it will help you find the bug. Learn how to debug dump files in Visual Studio. There is live debugging. I will elaborate on this in a separate post, but this is where you inspect the state of your program during its execution, and try to find what the problem is. More from me in a separate post on live debugging. There is a hybrid of live plus post-mortem debugging. This is for example what tools like IntelliTrace offer. If you are a tools vendor interested in the diagnostics space, it helps to understand where in the above classification your tool excels, where its primary strength is, so you can market it as such. Then it helps to see which of the other areas above your tool touches on, and how you can make it even better there. Finally, see what areas your tool doesn't help at all with, and evaluate whether it should or continue to stay clear. Even though the classification helps us think about this space, the reality is that the best tools are either extremely excellent in only one of this areas, or more often very good across a number of them. Another approach is to offer a toolset covering all areas, with appropriate integration and hand off points from one to the other. Anyway, with that brain dump out of the way, in follow-up posts I will dive into live debugging, and specifically live debugging in Visual Studio - stay tuned if that interests you. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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  • Data Mining Resources

    - by Dejan Sarka
    There are many different types of analyses, each one with its own pros and cons. Relational reports have a predefined structure, and end users cannot change it. They are simple to use for end users. Reports can use real-time data and snapshots of data to show the state of a report at specific points in time. One of the drawbacks is that report authoring is limited to IT pros and advanced users. Any kind of dynamic restructuring is very limited. If real-time data is used for a report, the report has a negative impact on the performance of the source system. Processing of the reports might be slow because the data comes from relational database management systems, which are not optimized for reporting only. If you create a semantic model of your data, your end users can create ad-hoc report structures. However, the development is more complex because a developer is needed to create these semantic models. For OLAP, you typically use specialized database management systems. You get lightning speed of analyses. End users can use rich and thin clients to interactively change the structure of the report. Typically, they do it graphically. However, the development of an OLAP system is many times quite complex. It involves the preparation and maintenance of an enterprise data warehouse and OLAP cubes. In order to exploit the possibility of real-time restructuring of reports, the users must be both active and educated. The data is usually stale, as it is loaded into data warehouses and OLAP cubes with a scheduled process. With data mining, a structure is not selected in advance; it searches for the structure. As a result, data mining can give you the most valuable results because you can discover patterns you did not expect. A data mining model structure is limited only by the attributes that you use to train the model. One of the drawbacks is that a lot of knowledge is needed for a successful data mining project. End users have to understand the results. Subject matter experts and IT professionals need to understand business problem thoroughly. The development might be sometimes even more complex than the development of OLAP cubes. Each type of analysis has its own place in an enterprise system. SQL Server has tools for all kinds of analyses. However, data mining is the most advanced way of analyzing the data; this is the “I” in BI. In order to get the most out of it, you need to learn quite a lot. In this blog post, I am gathering together resources for learning, including forthcoming events. Books Multiple authors: SQL Server MVP Deep Dives – I wrote an introductory data mining chapter there. Erik Veerman, Teo Lachev and Dejan Sarka: MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-448): Microsoft SQL Server 2008 - Business Intelligence Development and Maintenance – you can find a good overview of a complete BI solution, including data mining, in this book. Jamie MacLennan, ZhaoHui Tang, and Bogdan Crivat: Data Mining with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 – can’t miss this book if you want to mine your data with SQL Server tools. Michael Berry, Gordon Linoff: Mastering Data Mining: The Art and Science of Customer Relationship Management – data mining from both, business and technical perspective. Dorian Pyle: Data Preparation for Data Mining – an in-depth book about data preparation. Thomas and Ronald Wonnacott: Introductory Statistics – if you thought that you could get away without statistics, then you are not serious about data mining. Jiawei Han and Micheline Kamber: Data Mining Concepts and Techniques – in-depth explanation of the most popular data mining algorithms. Michael Berry and Gordon Linoff: Data Mining Techniques – another book that explains data mining algorithms, more fro a business perspective. Paolo Guidici: Applied Data Mining – very mathematical book, only if you enjoy statistics and mathematics in general. Forthcoming presentations I am presenting two data mining related sessions during the PASS Summit in Charlotte, NC: Wednesday, October 16th, 2013 - Fraud Detection: Notes from the Field – I am showing how to use data mining for a specific business problem. The presentation is based on real-life projects. Friday, October 18th: Excel 2013 Advanced Analytics – I am focusing on Excel Data Mining Add-ins, and how to use them together with Power Pivot and other add-ins. This is the most you can get out of Excel. Sinergija 2013, Belgrade, Serbia Tuesday, October 22nd: Excel 2013 Analytics to the Max – another presentation focusing on the most advanced analytics you can get in Excel. SQL Rally Amsterdam, Netherlands Thursday, November 7th: Advanced Analytics in Excel 2013 – and again I am presenting about data mining in Excel. Why three different titles for the same presentation? I don’t know, I guess I forgot the name I proposed every time right after I sent the proposal. Courses Data Mining with SQL Server 2012 – I wrote a 3-day course for SolidQ. If you are interested in this course, which I could also deliver in a shorter seminar way, you can contact your closes SolidQ subsidiary, or, of course, me directly on addresses [email protected] or [email protected]. This course could also complement the existing courseware portfolio of training providers, which are welcome to contact me as well. OK, now you know: no more excuses, start learning data mining, get the most out of your data

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  • Using real fonts in HTML 5 & CSS 3 pages

    - by nikolaosk
    This is going to be the fifth post in a series of posts regarding HTML 5. You can find the other posts here, here , here and here.In this post I will provide a hands-on example on how to use real fonts in HTML 5 pages with the use of CSS 3.Font issues have been appearing in all websites and caused all sorts of problems for web designers.The real problem with fonts for web developers until now was that they were forced to use only a handful of fonts.CSS 3 allows web designers not to use only web-safe fonts.These fonts are in wide use in most user's operating systems.Some designers (when they wanted to make their site stand out) resorted in various techniques like using images instead of fonts. That solution is not very accessible-friendly and definitely less SEO friendly.CSS (through CSS3's Fonts module) 3 allows web developers to embed fonts directly on a web page.First we need to define the font and then attach the font to elements.Obviously we have various formats for fonts. Some are supported by all modern browsers and some are not.The most common formats are, Embedded OpenType (EOT),TrueType(TTF),OpenType(OTF). I will use the @font-face declaration to define the font used in this page.  Before you download fonts (in any format) make sure you have understood all the licensing issues. Please note that all these real fonts will be downloaded in the client's computer.A great resource on the web (maybe the best) is http://www.typekit.com/.They have an abundance of web fonts for use. Please note that they sell those fonts.Another free (best things in life a free, aren't they?) resource is the http://www.google.com/webfonts website. I have visited the website and downloaded the Aladin webfont.When you download any font you like make sure you read the license first. Aladin webfont is released under the Open Font License (OFL) license. Before I go on with the actual demo I will use the (http://www.caniuse.com) to see the support for web fonts from the latest versions of modern browsers.Please have a look at the picture below. We see that all the latest versions of modern browsers support this feature. In order to be absolutely clear this is not (and could not be) a detailed tutorial on HTML 5. There are other great resources for that.Navigate to the excellent interactive tutorials of W3School.Another excellent resource is HTML 5 Doctor.Two very nice sites that show you what features and specifications are implemented by various browsers and their versions are http://caniuse.com/ and http://html5test.com/. At this times Chrome seems to support most of HTML 5 specifications.Another excellent way to find out if the browser supports HTML 5 and CSS 3 features is to use the Javascript lightweight library Modernizr.In this hands-on example I will be using Expression Web 4.0.This application is not a free application. You can use any HTML editor you like.You can use Visual Studio 2012 Express edition. You can download it here.I create a simple HTML 5 page. The markup follows and it is very easy to use and understand<!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en">  <head>    <title>HTML 5, CSS3 and JQuery</title>    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" >    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css">       </head>  <body>      <div id="header">      <h1>Learn cutting edge technologies</h1>      <p>HTML 5, JQuery, CSS3</p>    </div>        <div id="main">          <h2>HTML 5</h2>                        <p>            HTML5 is the latest version of HTML and XHTML. The HTML standard defines a single language that can be written in HTML and XML. It attempts to solve issues found in previous iterations of HTML and addresses the needs of Web Applications, an area previously not adequately covered by HTML.          </p>      </div>             </body>  </html> Then I create the style.css file.<style type="text/css">@font-face{font-family:Aladin;src: url('Aladin-Regular.ttf')}h1{font-family:Aladin,Georgia,serif;}</style> As you can see we want to style the h1 tag in our HTML 5 markup.I just use the @font-face property,specifying the font-family and the source of the web font. Then I just use the name in the font-family property to style the h1 tag.Have a look below to see my page in IE10. Make sure you open this page in all your browsers installed in your machine. Make sure you have downloaded the latest versions. Now we can make our site stand out with web fonts and give it a really unique look and feel. Hope it helps!!!  

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