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• Restoring GRUB2 on Software RAID 0 after Windows 7 wiped it using Ubuntu 10.10 LiveCD

  - by unknownthreat

  I have installed Ubuntu 10.10 on my system. However, I need to install Windows 7 back, and I expect that it would alter GRUB and it did. Right now, my partition on my Software RAID 0 looks like this: nvidia_acajefec1 is Ubuntu 10.10 and nvidia_acajefec3 is Windows 7. I've been following some guides around and I am always stuck at GRUB not able to detect the usual RAID content. I've tried running: sudo grub > root (hd0,0) GRUB complains it couldn't find my hard disk. So I tried: find (hd0,0) And it complains that it couldn't find anything. So I tried: find /boot/grub/stage1 It said "file not found". Here's the text from the console: ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ grub Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time. [ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists the possible completions of a device/filename. ] grub> root (hd0,0) root (hd0,0) Error 21: Selected disk does not exist grub> find /boot/grub/stage1 find /boot/grub/stage1 Error 15: File not found Fortunately, I got one person suggesting that what I've been trying to do is for GRUB Legacy, not GRUB2. So I went to the suggested website, ** (http://grub.enbug.org/Grub2LiveCdInstallGuide) **try to look around, and try: ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l Unable to seek on /dev/sda This is just the step 2 of the instruction in the http://grub.enbug.org/Grub2LiveCdInstallGuide and I cannot proceed because it cannot seek /dev/sda. However, ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo dmraid -r /dev/sdb: nvidia, "nvidia_acajefec", stripe, ok, 488397166 sectors, data@ 0 /dev/sda: nvidia, "nvidia_acajefec", stripe, ok, 488397166 sectors, data@ 0 So what now? Do you have an idea for how to make fdisk see my RAID array on live cd (Ubuntu 10.10)? Honestly, I am lost, very lost in trying to restore GRUB2 on this software RAID 0 system right now.

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• 2012 Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards for Oracle Exalogic

  - by Sanjeev Sharma

  Companies from around the world were honored for their innovative solutions using Oracle Fusion Middleware. This year’s 27 award winners, representing 11 countries and a wide span of industries, wowed the judges with a range of projects across eight product categories. 4 awards were given out to customers who demonstrated innovative application of Oracle Exalogic for their mission-critical applications.Below is an overview of the 4 businesses that won the Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Award for Oracle Exalogic this year. Company: Netshoes About: Leading online retailer of sporting goods in Latin America.Challenges: Rapid business growth resulted in frequent outages and poor response-time of online store-front Conventional ad-hoc approach to horizontal scaling resulted in high CAPEX and OPEX Poor performance and unavailability of online store-front resulted in revenue loss from purchase abandonment Solution: Consolidated ATG Commerce and Oracle WebLogic running on Oracle Exalogic.Business Impact:Reduced abandonment rates resulting in a two-digit increase in online conversion rates translating directly into revenue up-liftCompany: ClaroAbout: Leading communications services provider in Latin America.Challenges: Support business growth over the next 3  - 5 years while maximizing re-use of existing middleware and application investments with minimal effort and risk Solution: Consolidated Oracle Fusion Middleware components (Oracle WebLogic, Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Tuxedo) and JAVA applications onto Oracle Exalogic and Oracle Exadata. Business Impact:Improved partner SLA’s 7x while improving throughput 5X and response-time 35x for  JAVA applicationsCompany: ULAbout: Leading safety testing and certification organization in the world.Challenges: Transition from being a non-profit to a profit oriented enterprise and grow from a $1B to $5B in annual revenues in the next 5 years Undertake a massive business transformation by aligning change strategy with execution Solution: Consolidated Oracle Applications (E-Business Suite, Siebel, BI, Hyperion) and Oracle Fusion Middleware (AIA, SOA Suite) on Oracle Exalogic and Oracle ExadataBusiness Impact:Reduced financial and operating risk in re-architecting IT services to support new business capabilities supporting 87,000 manufacturersCompany: Ingersoll RandAbout: Leading manufacturer of industrial, climate, residential and security solutions.Challenges: Business continuity risks due to complexity in enforcing consistent operational and financial controls; Re-active business decisions reduced ability to offer differentiation and compete Solution: Consolidated Oracle E-business Suite on Oracle Exalogic and Oracle ExadataBusiness Impact:Service differentiation with faster order provisioning and a shorter lead-to-cash cycle translating into higher customer satisfaction and quicker cash-conversionCheck out the winners of the Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation awards in other categories here.

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• Pet Peeves with the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace

  - by Bil Simser

  Have you ever noticed how something things just gnaw at your very being. This is the case with the WP7 marketplace, the Zune software, and the things that drive me batshit crazy with a side of fries. To go. I wanted to share. XBox Live is Not the Centre of the Universe Okay, it’s fine that the Zune software has an XBox live tag for games so can see them clearly but do we really need to have it shoved down our throats. On every click? Click on Games in the marketplace: The first thing that it defaults to on the filters on the right is XBox Live: Okay. Fine. However if you change it (say to Paid) then click onto a title when you come back from that title is the filter still set to Paid? No. It’s back to XBox Live again. Really? Give us a break. If you change to any filter on any other genre then click on the selected title, it doesn’t revert back to anything. It stays on the selection you picked. Let’s be fair here. The Games genre should behave just like every other one. If I pick Paid then when I come back to the list please remember that. Double Dipping On the subject of XBox Live titles, Microsoft (and developers who have an agreement with Microsoft to produce Live titles, which generally rules out indie game developers) is double dipping with regards to exposure of their titles. Here’s the Puzzle and Trivia Game section on the Marketplace for XBox Live titles: And here’s the same category filtered on Paid titles: See the problem? Two indie titles while the rest are XBox Live ones. So while XBL has it’s filter, they also get to showcase their wares in the Paid and Free filters as well. If you’re going to have an XBox Live filter then use it and stop pushing down indie titles until they’re off the screen (on some genres this is already the case). Free and Paid titles should be just that and not include XBox Live ones. If you’re really stoked that people can’t find the Free XBox Live titles vs. the paid ones, then create a Free XBox Live filter and a Paid XBox Live filter. I don’t think we would mind much. Whose Trial is it Anyways? You might notice apps in the marketplace with titles like “My Fart App Professional Lite” or “Silicon Lamb Spleen Builder Free”. When you submit and app to the marketplace it can either be free or paid. If it’s a paid app you also have the option to submit it with Trial capabilities. It’s up to you to decide what you offer in the trial version but trial versions can be purchased from within the app so after someone trys out your app (for free) and wants to unlock the Super Secret Obama Spy Ring Level, they can just go to the marketplace from your app (if you built that functionality in) and upgrade to the paid version. However it creates a rift of sorts when it comes to visibility. Some developers go the route of the paid app with a trial version, others decide to submit *two* apps instead of one. One app is the “Free” or “Lite” verions and the other is the paid version. Why go to the hassle of submitting two apps when you can just create a trial version in the same app? Again, visibility. There’s no way to tell Paid apps with Trial versions and ones without (it’s an option, you don’t have to provide trial versions, although I think it’s a good idea). However there is a way to see the Free apps from the Paid ones so some submit the two apps and have the Free version have links to buy the paid one (again through the Marketplace tasks in the API). What we as developers need for visibility is a new filter. Trial. That’s it. It would simply filter on Paid apps that have trial capabilities and surface up those apps just like the free ones. If Microsoft added this filter to the marketplace, it would eliminate the need for people to submit their “Free” and “Lite” versions and make it easier for the developer not to have to maintain two systems. I mean, is it really that hard? Can’t be any more difficult than the XBox Live Filter that’s already there. Location is Everything The last thing on my bucket list is about location. When I launch Zune I’m running in my native location setting, Canada. What’s great is that I navigate to the Travel Tools section where I have one of my apps and behold the splendour that I see: There are my apps in the number 1 and number 4 slot for top selling in that category. I show it to my wife to make up for the sleepless nights writing this stuff and we dance around and celebrate. Then I change my location on my operation system to United States and re-launch Zune. WTF? My flight app has slipped to the 10th spot (I’m only showing 4 across here out of the 7 in Zune) and my border check app that was #1 is now in the 32nd spot! End of celebration. Not only is relevance being looked at here, I value the comments people make on may apps as do most developers. I want to respond to them and show them that I’m listening. The next version of my border app will provide multiple camera angles. However when I’m running in my native Canada location, I only see two reviews. Changing over to United States I see fourteen! While there are tools out there to provide with you a unified view, I shouldn’t have to rely on them. My own Zune desktop software should allow me to see everything. I realize that some developers will submit an app and only target it for some locations and that’s their choice. However I shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to see what apps are ahead of mine, or see people comments and ratings. Another proposal. Either unify the marketplace (i.e. when I’m looking at it show me everything combined) or let me choose a filter. I think the first option might be difficult as you’re trying to average out top selling apps across all markets and have to deal with some apps that have been omitted from some markets. Although I think you could come up with a set of use cases that would handle that, maybe that’s too much work. At the very least, let us developers view the markets in a drop down or something from within the Zune desktop. Having to shut down Zune, change our location, and re-launch Zune to see other perspectives is just too onerous. A Call to Action These are just one mans opinion. Do you agree? Disagree? Feel hungry for a bacon sandwich? Let everyone know via the comments below. Perhaps someone from Microsoft will be reading and take some of these ideas under advisement. Maybe not, but at least let’s get the word out that we really want to see some change. Egypt can do it, why not WP7 developers!

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• Need recommendation for transferring ASP.NET MVC skills to PHP

  - by Tuck

  I am looking to translate my skills in .NET to PHP - specifically in regards to ASP.NET MVC. At work I am currently using .NET MVC 2.0 on a variety of projects and thoroughly enjoy the platform. Specifically I enjoy the very minimal configuration required to get a project up and running (just create the project, define routes, and start coding), as well as the ability for controller actions to return different items (i.e. ActionResult, JsonResult). Another piece I really like is the way the view/model interaction can be handled. For example I like being able to call return View(model) and having a view page (.aspx) load and having the full model object available to the view, regardless of the model type. I'm looking for a PHP implementation of MVC that is the most similiar to what I am already familiar with. I don't anything apart from the MVC functionality. I've looked at Zend, Symfony, CodeIgniter, etc. and, while they look like they'll be fun to play with in the future, they provide much more functionality than I need. I'd prefer to write my own DAL, form helpers, delegate handlers, authentication/ACL pieces, etc. In short, I just need something to handle the routing and view interactions and will worry about the model implementation myself. Can someone please point me to some lightweight code that accomplishes or comes close to accomplishing my objectives above. Or, can someone identify just the portions of a larger framework that do the same (again, I'm not currently interested in implementing something on a big framework, just the MVC portion and want to implement the model portion myself as much as possible). Thanks in advance.

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• How can we make agile enjoyable for developers that like to personally, independently own large chunks from start to finish

  - by Kris

  We’re roughly midway through our transition from waterfall to agile using scrum; we’ve changed from large teams in technology/discipline silos to smaller cross-functional teams. As expected, the change to agile doesn’t suit everyone. There are a handful of developers that are having a difficult time adjusting to agile. I really want to keep them engaged and challenged, and ultimately enjoying coming to work each day. These are smart, happy, motivated people that I respect on both a personal and a professional level. The basic issue is this: Some developers are primarily motivated by the joy of taking a piece of difficult work, thinking through a design, thinking through potential issues, then solving the problem piece by piece, with only minimal interaction with others, over an extended period of time. They generally complete work to a high level of quality and in a timely way; their work is maintainable and fits with the overall architecture. Transitioning to a cross-functional team that values interaction and shared responsibility for work, and delivery of working functionality within shorter intervals, the teams evolve such that the entire team knocks that difficult problem over. Many people find this to be a positive change; someone that loves to take a problem and own it independently from start to finish loses the opportunity for work like that. This is not an issue with people being open to change. Certainly we’ve seen a few people that don’t like change, but in the cases I’m concerned about, the individuals are good performers, genuinely open to change, they make an effort, they see how the rest of the team is changing and they want to fit in. It’s not a case of someone being difficult or obstructionist, or wanting to hoard the juiciest work. They just don’t find joy in work like they used to. I’m sure we can’t be the only place that hasn’t bumped up on this. How have others approached this? If you’re a developer that is motivated by personally owning a big chunk of work from end to end, and you’ve adjusted to a different way of working, what did it for you?

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• Insert Special Characters & Coding in Online Forms in Firefox

  - by Asian Angel

  If you are active in forums or comment areas on different websites then you most likely use some type of special characters, HTML, or other code throughout the day. Now you can easily insert commonly used “items” with the SKeys extension for Firefox. Your New Special Text Edit Bar After installing the extension you will see the new toolbar that has been added to your browser. These are the kinds of text that can be added to online comment areas, forums, or other website areas that allow their use: Special characters HTML tags BB codes Wiki characters All that you will need to do is click on the appropriate special character or code to insert it into the website text area. The first two toolbar items are each singular in their function and insert the following types of text. A look at the special characters available for your use. The wiki code menu. The HTML menu… And the BB code menu. Here is a quick sample using the HTML menu…much better than doing it manually. This should definitely help speed things up throughout the day. Our only disappointment during testing was not being able to add additional items (i.e. characters, tags) to the toolbar at this time. Conclusion While a new toolbar may not be for everyone this extension can certainly prove useful when you need to quickly add special characters or coding in website text areas. Links Download the SKeys extension (Mozilla Add-ons) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Quick Tip: Use Tab Characters in Textarea Boxes in FirefoxUse Special Characters in WindowsUsing Password Phrases For Better SecuritySearch For Rows With Special Characters in SQL ServerExpand Text Areas in Web Forms in Firefox 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Enable Check Box Selection in Windows 7 OnlineOCR – Free OCR Service Betting on the Blind Side, a Vanity Fair article 30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less LEGO Digital Designer – Free Create a Personal Website Quickly using Flavors.me

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• Insert Special Characters & Coding in Online Forms in Firefox

  - by Asian Angel

  If you are active in forums or comment areas on different websites then you most likely use some type of special characters, HTML, or other code throughout the day. Now you can easily insert commonly used “items” with the SKeys extension for Firefox. Your New Special Text Edit Bar After installing the extension you will see the new toolbar that has been added to your browser. These are the kinds of text that can be added to online comment areas, forums, or other website areas that allow their use: Special characters HTML tags BB codes Wiki characters All that you will need to do is click on the appropriate special character or code to insert it into the website text area. The first two toolbar items are each singular in their function and insert the following types of text. A look at the special characters available for your use. The wiki code menu. The HTML menu… And the BB code menu. Here is a quick sample using the HTML menu…much better than doing it manually. This should definitely help speed things up throughout the day. Our only disappointment during testing was not being able to add additional items (i.e. characters, tags) to the toolbar at this time. Conclusion While a new toolbar may not be for everyone this extension can certainly prove useful when you need to quickly add special characters or coding in website text areas. Links Download the SKeys extension (Mozilla Add-ons) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Quick Tip: Use Tab Characters in Textarea Boxes in FirefoxUse Special Characters in WindowsUsing Password Phrases For Better SecuritySearch For Rows With Special Characters in SQL ServerExpand Text Areas in Web Forms in Firefox 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Enable Check Box Selection in Windows 7 OnlineOCR – Free OCR Service Betting on the Blind Side, a Vanity Fair article 30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less LEGO Digital Designer – Free Create a Personal Website Quickly using Flavors.me

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• ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0

  - by James Michael Hare

  I had always been a fan of ANTS products (Reflector is absolutely invaluable, and their performance profiler is great as well – very easy to use!), so I was curious to see what the ANTS Memory Profiler could show me. Background While a performance profiler will track how much time is typically spent in each unit of code, a memory profiler gives you much more detail on how and where your memory is being consumed and released in a program. As an example, I’d been working on a data access layer at work to call a market data web service.  This web service would take a list of symbols to quote and would return back the quote data.  To help consolidate the thousands of web requests per second we get and reduce load on the web services, we implemented a 5-second cache of quote data.  Not quite long enough to where customers will typically notice a quote go “stale”, but just long enough to be able to collapse multiple quote requests for the same symbol in a short period of time. A 5-second cache may not sound like much, but it actually pays off by saving us roughly 42% of our web service calls, while still providing relatively up-to-date information.  The question is whether or not the extra memory involved in maintaining the cache was worth it, so I decided to fire up the ANTS Memory Profiler and take a look at memory usage. First Impressions The main thing I’ve always loved about the ANTS tools is their ease of use.  Pretty much everything is right there in front of you in a way that makes it easy for you to find what you need with little digging required.  I’ve worked with other, older profilers before (that shall remain nameless other than to hint it was created by a very large chip maker) where it was a mind boggling experience to figure out how to do simple tasks. Not so with AMP.  The opening dialog is very straightforward.  You can choose from here whether to debug an executable, a web application (either in IIS or from VS’s web development server), windows services, etc. So I chose a .NET Executable and navigated to the build location of my test harness.  Then began profiling. At this point while the application is running, you can see a chart of the memory as it ebbs and wanes with allocations and collections.  At any given point in time, you can take snapshots (to compare states) zoom in, or choose to stop at any time.  Snapshots Taking a snapshot also gives you a breakdown of the managed memory heaps for each generation so you get an idea how many objects are staying around for extended periods of time (as an object lives and survives collections, it gets promoted into higher generations where collection becomes less frequent). Generating a snapshot brings up an analysis view with very handy graphs that show your generation sizes.  Almost all my memory is in Generation 1 in the managed memory component of the first graph, which is good news to me, because Gen 2 collections are much rarer.  I once3 made the mistake once of caching data for 30 minutes and found it didn’t get collected very quick after I released my reference because it had been promoted to Gen 2 – doh! Analysis It looks like (from the second pie chart) that the majority of the allocations were in the string class.  This also is expected for me because the majority of the memory allocated is in the web service responses, so it doesn’t seem the entities I’m adapting to (to prevent being too tightly coupled to the web service proxy classes, which can change easily out from under me) aren’t taking a significant portion of memory. I also appreciate that they have clear summary text in key places such as “No issues with large object heap fragmentation were detected”.  For novice users, this type of summary information can be critical to getting them to use a tool and develop a good working knowledge of it. There is also a handy link at the bottom for “What to look for on the summary” which loads a web page of help on key points to look for. Clicking over to the session overview, it’s easy to compare the samples at each snapshot to see how your memory is growing, shrinking, or staying relatively the same.  Looking at my snapshots, I’m pretty happy with the fact that memory allocation and heap size seems to be fairly stable and in control: Once again, you can check on the large object heap, generation one heap, and generation two heap across each snapshot to spot trends. Back on the analysis tab, we can go to the [Class List] button to get an idea what classes are making up the majority of our memory usage.  As was little surprise to me, System.String was the clear majority of my allocations, though I found it surprising that the System.Reflection.RuntimeMehtodInfo came in second.  I was curious about this, so I selected it and went into the [Instance Categorizer].  This view let me see where these instances to RuntimeMehtodInfo were coming from. So I scrolled back through the graph, and discovered that these were being held by the System.ServiceModel.ChannelFactoryRefCache and I was satisfied this was just an artifact of my WCF proxy. I also like that down at the bottom of the Instance Categorizer it gives you a series of filters and offers to guide you on which filter to use based on the problem you are trying to find.  For example, if I suspected a memory leak, I might try to filter for survivors in growing classes.  This means that for instances of a class that are growing in memory (more are being created than cleaned up), which ones are survivors (not collected) from garbage collection.  This might allow me to drill down and find places where I’m holding onto references by mistake and not freeing them! Finally, if you want to really see all your instances and who is holding onto them (preventing collection), you can go to the “Instance Retention Graph” which creates a graph showing what references are being held in memory and who is holding onto them. Visual Studio Integration Of course, VS has its own profiler built in – and for a free bundled profiler it is quite capable – but AMP gives a much cleaner and easier-to-use experience, and when you install it you also get the option of letting it integrate directly into VS. So once you go back into VS after installation, you’ll notice an ANTS menu which lets you launch the ANTS profiler directly from Visual Studio.   Clicking on one of these options fires up the project in the profiler immediately, allowing you to get right in.  It doesn’t integrate with the Visual Studio windows themselves (like the VS profiler does), but still the plethora of information it provides and the clear and concise manner in which it presents it makes it well worth it. Summary If you like the ANTS series of tools, you shouldn’t be disappointed with the ANTS Memory Profiler.  It was so easy to use that I was able to jump in with very little product knowledge and get the information I was looking it for. I’ve used other profilers before that came with 3-inch thick tomes that you had to read in order to get anywhere with the tool, and this one is not like that at all.  It’s built for your everyday developer to get in and find their problems quickly, and I like that! Tweet Technorati Tags: Influencers,ANTS,Memory,Profiler

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• Is there a name for a testing method where you compare a set of very different designs?

  - by DVK

  "A/B testing" is defined as "a method of marketing testing by which a baseline control sample is compared to a variety of single-variable test samples in order to improve response rates". The point here, of course, is to know which small single-variable changes are more optimal, with the goal of finding the local optimum. However, one can also envision a somewhat related but different scenario for testing the response rate of major re-designs: take a baseline control design, take one or more completely different designs, and run test samples on those redesigns to compare response rates. As a practical but contrived example, imagine testing a set of designs for the same website, one being minimalist "googly" design, one being cluttered "Amazony" design, and one being an artsy "designy" design (e.g. maximum use of design elements unlike Google but minimal simultaneously presented information, like Google but unlike Amazon) Is there an official name for such testing? It's definitely not A/B testing, since the main component of it (finding local optimum by testing single-variable small changes that can be attributed to response shift) is not present. This is more about trying to compare a set of local optimums, and compare to see which one works better as a global optimum. It's not a multivriable, A/B/N or any other such testing since you don't really have specific variables that can be attributed, just different designs.

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• ODI 12c - Getting up and running fast

  - by David Allan

  Here's a quick A-B-C to show you how to quickly get up and running with ODI 12c, from getting the software to creating a repository via wizard or the command line, then installing an agent for running load plans and the like. A. Get the software from OTN and install studio. Check out this viewlet here for quickly doing this. B. Create a repository using the RCU, check out this viewlet here which uses the FMW Repository Creation Utility.  You can also silently create (and drop) a repository using the command line, this is really easy. .\rcu -silent -createRepository -connectString yourhost:1521:orcl.st-users.us.oracle.com -dbUser sys -dbRole sysdba -useSamePasswordForAllSchemaUsers true -schemaPrefix X -component ODI -component IAU  -component IAU_APPEND  -component IAU_VIEWER -component OPSS < passwords.txt where the passwords file contains info such as; sysdba_passwd newschema_passwd odi_user_passwd D workreposname workrepos_passwd  You can find details about the silent use of RCU here in the FMW documentation. C. Quickly create an agent for executing load plans and the like -  there is a great OBE for this, check it out here. If you are on your laptop and just wanting as minimal an agent as possible then this link is a must. With these three steps you are ready to get to the fun stuff! Check out more OBEs here - keep on the lookout for more!

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• #altnetseattle &ndash; Collaboration, Why is it so hard!

  - by GeekAgilistMercenary

  The session convened and we began a discussion about why collaboration is so hard. To work together in software better us engineers have to overcome traditional software approaches (silos of work) and the human element of tending to go off in a corner to work through an issue. It was agreed upon that software engineers are jack asses of jack assery. Breaking down the stoic & silent types by presenting a continuous enthusiasm until the stoic and silent types break down and open up to the group.  Knowing it is ok to ask the dumb question or work through basic things once in a while. Non-work interactions are pivotal to work related collaboration. Collaboration is mostly autonomous of process (i.e. Agile or Waterfall) Latency time should be minimal in the feedback loop for software development. Collaboration is enhanced by Agile Ideals, and things like Scrum or Lean Process. Agile is not a process, Lean and Scrum are process.  Agile is an ideal. Lean, Agile, Scrum, Waterfall, Six Sigma, CMMI, oh dear. . . Great session.  Off to the next session and more brain crunching. . . weeeeeeee!

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• Do we really need a thousand Linux distributions?

  - by nebukadnezzar

  Pointed from an answer to a (possibly related) question, I came across this graphic, and I'm shocked how many linux distributions currently exist. However, it seems that most of these distributions are forks of already popular distributions with minimal changes, usually limited to themes, wallpapers, buttons, the kind of stuff most people probably wouldn't see as a reason to fork a Linux distribution. Of course, someone will always say "Opensource is also about the freedom of choice", and while I wholeheartedly agree, I do not believe that this is a valid reason to fork an already perfectly working Distribution into a new one, which might possibly result in less security/stability due to smaller group of developers. There's another problem: Those, who want to switch to Linux, are confronted with a neverending list of Linux distributions, and wonder rightfully which they're supposed to chose (infact, I was facing that problem before I've discovered Ubuntu). There might be (very few) valid reasons to fork a distribution: Specializing on a particular topic (FOSS Only, work-related topic (i.e., for a Hospital), etc) An exceptional architecture, that requires a special set of software Use of non-FOSS, propietary technology, and such But even with these points in mind, it would still seem easier to create a subdistribution with the required changes, such as XUbuntu with XFCE4, KUbuntu with KDE4, Fluxbuntu with Fluxbox, etc. So, why exactly do we need so many distributions?

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• Is there a modified LGPL license that allows static linking?

  - by Petr Pudlák

  úLGPL requires that it if a program uses LGPL-ed library, users must be able to re-link the program with a different version of the library: ... d) Do one of the following: 0) Convey the Minimal Corresponding Source under the terms of this License, and the Corresponding Application Code in a form suitable for, and under terms that permit, the user to recombine or relink the Application with a modified version of the Linked Version to produce a modified Combined Work, in the manner specified by section 6 of the GNU GPL for conveying Corresponding Source. 1) Use a suitable shared library mechanism for linking with the Library. A suitable mechanism is one that (a) uses at run time a copy of the Library already present on the user's computer system, and (b) will operate properly with a modified version of the Library that is interface-compatible with the Linked Version. ... However in some cases, this can pose considerable difficulties. In particular, Haskell programs are almost always statically compiled. Moreover, the compiler does cross-module optimizations so it's very hard to satisfy this condition. (See this link at Haskell Wiki.) Therefore, I'm looking for a standard LGPL-like license that wouldn't require the possibility of re-linking. Some projects use their own modification of LGPL, for example wxWidgets. But I'd rather use some standard license that is somewhat more official, perhaps checked by some law experts, and (L)GPL compatible. Is there some like that? (Also I'd be interested to know if are there some unforeseen consequences of such a modification of LGPL.)

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• How can I access one desktop session from another on the same machine?

  - by d3vid

  I want to run a desktop session as user A, and from that session access a different desktop session as user B. This way I can test, screencast or share my screen from session B, while having access to apps/resources in session A that I do not want running/visible in session B. What application can I do this with? I assume some kind of a remote desktop client/server is what I'm looking for. So far I have tried: VNC. Logged in as user A and user B. In session B run Desktop Sharing. Switched to session A. Tried to access share with Remmina. Failed. (Can get image to appear but it's frozen.) x2go. Installed server and client from stable PPA (needed a workaround for installation to succeed). Created a connection which starts then fails instantly. Discovered mailing list post suggesting that accessing localhost is not supported. On the non-remote front: VirtualBox. Created a minimal virtual machine for session B. Too resource heavy. Am I attempting the impossible? Should I be looking for something other than a remote desktop tool?

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• Partner Webcast - Oracle Reports to BI Publisher migration

  - by dmitry.nefedkin(at)oracle.com

  Normal 0 false false false RU X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Monday, March 21, 2011 9 a.m. CET (10 a.m. EET) Description Oracle Reports, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware is Oracle's classic, high-fidelity enterprise reporting tool. Oracle remains committed to the development of this technology, and to the ongoing release as a component of the Oracle Fusion Middleware platform, but also enables conversion of Oracle Reports to Oracle BI Publisher. Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher (BI Publisher)--Oracle's enterprise reporting server to author, manage, and deliver all types of highly formatted documents. Extremely efficient and highly scalable, BI Publisher can generate tens of thousands of documents per hour with minimal impact to transactional systems. After a quick introduction to BI Publisher we will look at the process of Oracle Reports to BI Publisher convestion. AgendaOracle Reports strategy & support policyReporting challengesBenefits of BI PublisherOracle Reports -> BI Publisher Conversion UtilityDemoUpgrade BI Publisher to 11gQ&A Delivery Format This Free online Live Internet Seminar will be delivered over the Web and Conference Call. Duration: 1hour To register, click HERE. For any questions please contact [email protected].

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• Are More Comments Better in High-Turnover Environments?

  - by joshin4colours

  I was talking with a colleague today. We work on code for two different projects. In my case, I'm the only person working on my code; in her case, multiple people work on the same codebase, including co-op students who come and go fairly regularly (between every 8-12 months). She said that she is liberal with her comments, putting them all over the place. Her reasoning is that it helps her remember where things are and what things do since much of the code wasn't written by her and could be changed by someone other than her. Meanwhile, I try to minimize the comments in my code, putting them in only in places with a unobvious workaround or bug. However, I have a better understanding of my code overall, and have more direct control over it. My opinion in that comments should be minimal and the code should tell most of the story, but her reasoning makes sense too. Are there any flaws in her reasoning? It may clutter the code but it ultimately could be quite helpful if there are many people working on it in the short- to medium-run.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 24, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 24, 2014Popular ReleasesSimCityPak: SimCityPak 0.3.1.0: Main New Features: Fixed Importing of Instance Names (get rid of the Dutch translations) Added advanced editor for Decal Dictionaries Added possibility to import .PNG to generate new decals Added advanced editor for Path display entriesTiny Deduplicator: Tiny Deduplicator 1.0.1.0: Increased version number to 1.0.1.0 Moved all options to a separate 'Options' dialog window. Allows the user to specify a selection strategy which will help when dealing with large numbers of duplicate files. Available options are "None," "Keep First," and "Keep Last"C64 Studio: 3.5: Add: BASIC renumber function Add: !PET pseudo op Add: elseif for !if, } else { pseudo op Add: !TRACE pseudo op Add: Watches are saved/restored with a solution Add: Ctrl-A works now in export assembly controls Add: Preliminary graphic import dialog (not fully functional yet) Add: range and block selection in sprite/charset editor (Shift-Click = range, Alt-Click = block) Fix: Expression evaluator could miscalculate when both division and multiplication were in an expression without parenthesisSEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.031.009 Release 1: Added mirroring of ConveyorTubeCurved. Updated Ship cube rotation to rotate ship back to original location (cubes are reoriented but ship appears no different to outsider), and to rotate Grouped items. Repair now fixes the loss of Grouped controls due to changes in Space Engineers 01.030. Added export asteroids. Rejoin ships will merge grouping and conveyor systems (even though broken ships currently only maintain the Grouping on one part of the ship). Installation of this version wi...Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows and WP v2.0: Support for new Universal and Windows Phone 8.1 projects for both Xaml and JavaScript projects. See a detailed list of improvements, breaking changes and a general overview of version 2 ADDITIONAL DOWNLOADSSmooth Streaming Client SDK for Windows 8 Applications Smooth Streaming Client SDK for Windows 8.1 Applications Smooth Streaming Client SDK for Windows Phone 8.1 Applications Microsoft PlayReady Client SDK for Windows 8 Applications Microsoft PlayReady Client SDK for Windows 8.1 Applicat...TerraMap (Terraria World Map Viewer): TerraMap 1.0.6: Added support for the new Terraria v1.2.4 update. New items, walls, and tiles Added the ability to select multiple highlighted block types. Added a dynamic, interactive highlight opacity slider, making it easier to find highlighted tiles with dark colors (and fixed blurriness from 1.0.5 alpha). Added ability to find Enchanted Swords (in the stone) and Water Bolt books Fixed Issue 35206: Hightlight/Find doesn't work for Demon Altars Fixed finding Demon Hearts/Shadow Orbs Fixed inst...DotNet.Highcharts: DotNet.Highcharts 4.0 with Examples: DotNet.Highcharts 4.0 Tested and adapted to the latest version of Highcharts 4.0.1 Added new chart type: Heatmap Added new type PointPlacement which represents enumeration or number for the padding of the X axis. Changed target framework from .NET Framework 4 to .NET Framework 4.5. Closed issues: 974: Add 'overflow' property to PlotOptionsColumnDataLabels class 997: Split container from JS 1006: Series/Categories with numeric names don't render DotNet.Highcharts.Samples Updated s...Compile Mono With Visual Studio: 0.9 Beta 1 Release: exciting 0.9 Beta Release ( 0.9.0.2 )PowerShell App Deployment Toolkit: PowerShell App Deployment Toolkit v3.1.3: Added CompressLogs option to the config file. Each Install / Uninstall creates a timestamped zip file with all MSI and PSAppDeployToolkit logs contained within Added variable expansion to all paths in the configuration file Added documentation for each of the Toolkit internal variables that can be used Changed Install-MSUpdates to continue if any errors are encountered when installing updates Implement /Force parameter on Update-GroupPolicy (ensure that any logoff message is ignored) ...WordMat: WordMat v. 1.07: A quick fix because scientific notation was broken in v. 1.06 read more at http://wordmat.blogspot.com????: 《????》: 《????》（c???）??“????”???????，???????????????C?????????。???????,???????????????????????. ??????????????????????????????????；????????????????????????????。Mini SQL Query: Mini SQL Query (1.0.72.457): Apologies for the previous update! FK issue fixed and also a template data cache issue.Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1405.17: Add Russian translation (thanks to VSharmanov) Fix a bug that make WPP to crash if the user click on "Connect/Reload" while the Report Tab is loading. Enhance the way WPP store the password for remote computers command.MoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): More Terra 1.12.9: =========== = Compatibility = =========== Updated to account for new format 1.2.4.1 =========== = Issues = =========== all items have not been added. Some colors for new tiles may be off. I wanted to get this out so people have a usable program.LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v3.0.3: Supports .NET 4.5x, Windows Phone 8.x, Windows 8.x, Windows Azure, Xamarin.Android, and Xamarin.iOS. New features include Status/Lookup, Mute APIs, and bug fixes. 100% Twitter API v1.1 coverage, Async, Portable Class Library (PCL).CS-Script for Notepad++ (C# intellisense and code execution): Release v1.0.26.0: Added access to the Release Notes during 'Check for Updates...'' Debug panels Added support for generic types members Members are grouped into 'Raw View' and 'Non-Public members' categories Implemented dedicated (array-like) view for Lists and Dictionaries http://download-codeplex.sec.s-msft.com/Download?ProjectName=csscriptnpp&DownloadId=846498ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.70.0: A lot of fixes. See history.TBox - tool to make developer's life easier.: TBox 1.29: Bug fixing. Add LocalizationTool pluginYAXLib: Yet Another XML Serialization Library for the .NET Framework: YAXLib 2.13: Fixed a bug and added unit tests related to serializing path like aliases with one letter (e.g., './B'). Thanks go to CodeProject user B.O.B. for reporting this bug. Added `Bin/*.dll.mdb` to `.gitignore`. Fixed the issue with Indexer properties. Indexers must not be serialized/deserialized. YAXLib will ignore delegate (callback/function pointer) properties, so that the exception upon serializing them is prevented. Significant improve in cycling object reference detection Self Referr...SFDL.NET: SFDL.NET (2.2.9.2): Changelog: Neues Icon Xup.in CnL Plugin BugfixNew ProjectsA minimal UDP based logger: a minimal udp loggerApr-Jul-2014: Educational project for studying .NET and C#CliqSafe - Safe Email - An Add on for Microsoft Outlook & Windows Mobile Devices: CliqSafe - Safe Email - An Add on for Microsoft Outlook & Windows Mobile Devices:CodePlex Testing Project: Project for testing codeplex features.EF6: Project EF6electronixwebform: tesekkürü bir borc bilirizelektronix: tesekkuru bir borc bilirizI-Ching: This class can generate fortune telling phrases with the I-Ching book of changes.J-Processors: Various project to develop microprocessors based on FPGAs and a hardware decription language. Software environment for operation.Kart-Trie: Manage and search associative array with Kart tree.NewBreeze: NewBreeze - Fast and light-weight Qt4 based File ManagerOE Orchard Project: interactive educationPostal: Postal is a collection of open-source aspects for PostSharp.SoundCloud Downloader: SoundCloud Downloader for people who are searching for one!Ternary Search Tree: This class can insert and search text using ternary search trees.?????-?????【??】?????????: ????????????,????,?????、???、?????,???????,?????,???????????100%。??????！ ?????-?????【??】?????????: ?????????????????????,??????,???????????,????????????????,????????.??????. ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????????:??????!?????!???:????、????、????、????。??,??????????!??????. ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????????????????,????,????“???、???、???”?????,?????,?????????????????。??????！ ?????-?????【??】?????????: ????????,???????????,??????????,????:??,????,???????? ??????????,????????。??????！ ?????-?????【??】?????????: ??????????????,????????????,????????,???,???????????,????,????。?????,??????. ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????????????????,????,????“???、???、???”?????,?????,?????????????????。??????！ ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????2005?,????????????????????,??????????,??????。?????,???????????????????，??????！ ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????2005?,????????????????????,??????????,??????。?????,???????????????????，??????！ ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????????:??????!?????!???:????、????、????、????。??,??????????!??????. ?? API C# ??: ??.NET，?? C# ????? API ????，????????? API。?????-?????【??】?????????: ?????1992?,????????????????。??????????????????????。????????????,????，????????！ ?????-?????【??】?????????: ????????????,????,?????、???、?????,???????,?????,???????????100%。??????！ ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????????????????,???????????,??????,??????????????...????????。??????！ ?????-?????【??】?????????: ??????????????,????????????,????????,???,???????????,????,????。?????,??????. ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????????,??????,??????,??????、??????,??????、??，????，??????！ ?????-?????【??】?????????: ????????,???????????,??????????,????:??,????,???????? ??????????,????????。??????！ ?????-?????【??】?????????: ??????、??????????????????,???????.??????????,????????。 ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????????????????,???????????,??????,??????????????...????????。??????！ ?????-?????【??】?????????: ?????????????????????,??????,???????????,????????????????,????????.??????. ?????-?????【??】?????????: ?????1992?,????????????????。??????????????????????。????????????,????，????????！ ?????-?????【??】?????????: ??????、??????????????????,???????.??????????,????????。

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• Trouble installing Server 12.10 - Dead keyboard, Blank Screen, Network Config

  - by Mikey

  Installing 12.10 server from cd - minimal installation: basic system, ssh server,postgreSQL, manual updates. Hardware is brand new HP server that also runs Win 2003 Server Standard as a DNC excellently - I installed the grub boot manager on the primary partition and it is working fine - can boot to Win or Ubuntu without issue. Everything seemed to go OK on the installation - BUT when I restarted the system after install and booted to Ubuntu, I got the command prompt for Ubuntu, but the keyboard was UNREPSONSIVE - dead. There is nothing wrong with the keyboard - works fine if I boot to Win. With a completely unrepsonsive keyboard I had to hit the power switch - when I restarted and booted to Ubuntu, Ubuntu started but no command prompt came up at all - just black screen. I powered down and rebooted to advanced Ubuntu options - it tried to reinstall/initliaze a long list of packages - when it got to 'waiting for network configuration' it waited, then a message 'waiting 60 seconds for network configuration'... it waited 60 seconds and then I got a 'failed to configure network message' and it continued. Finally it finished, I hit enter and got to a prompt - but again, keyboard UNREPSONSIVE - dead. I went through this several times - tried 'repairing broken installation' option and also reinstalling entirely - always same results. I am flummoxed. The only clue I have is that for the Windows DNC config, the IP address is static - not via DHCP. But I don't think that should impact Ubuntu at all - perhaps I am mistaken. What is wrong?

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• How can we make agile enjoyable for developers that like to personally, independently own large chunks from start to finish

  - by Kris

  We’re roughly midway through our transition from waterfall to agile using scrum; we’ve changed from large teams in technology/discipline silos to smaller cross-functional teams. As expected, the change to agile doesn’t suit everyone. There are a handful of developers that are having a difficult time adjusting to agile. I really want to keep them engaged and challenged, and ultimately enjoying coming to work each day. These are smart, happy, motivated people that I respect on both a personal and a professional level. The basic issue is this: Some developers are primarily motivated by the joy of taking a piece of difficult work, thinking through a design, thinking through potential issues, then solving the problem piece by piece, with only minimal interaction with others, over an extended period of time. They generally complete work to a high level of quality and in a timely way; their work is maintainable and fits with the overall architecture. Transitioning to a cross-functional team that values interaction and shared responsibility for work, and delivery of working functionality within shorter intervals, the teams evolve such that the entire team knocks that difficult problem over. Many people find this to be a positive change; someone that loves to take a problem and own it independently from start to finish loses the opportunity for work like that. This is not an issue with people being open to change. Certainly we’ve seen a few people that don’t like change, but in the cases I’m concerned about, the individuals are good performers, genuinely open to change, they make an effort, they see how the rest of the team is changing and they want to fit in. It’s not a case of someone being difficult or obstructionist, or wanting to hoard the juiciest work. They just don’t find joy in work like they used to. I’m sure we can’t be the only place that hasn’t bumped up on this. How have others approached this? If you’re a developer that is motivated by personally owning a big chunk of work from end to end, and you’ve adjusted to a different way of working, what did it for you?

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• Change from Bullet/OgreAnim to Havok?

  - by Brett Powell

  I have been working on a game in Ogre for the last 6 months or so. It started as a learning project, and after a few rewrites it actually turned into a real game project. Physics scared me, and using Bullet with its lack of documentation was a nightmare, but I was able to atleast get some basics added and learned a lot. So as of now I am using Ogre with its default animation system (fairly basic) and Bullet Physics. I had always wanted to use Havok when I started out, but due to lack of integration information on the Ogre forums, and lack of tutorials on the net, I decided against it. Now that I am actually at the point where Bullet is just too much of a headache to proceed with (staring at forum threads praying someone answers) and the Ogre animation system is so basic, I am considering switching to Havok for Physics and Animation. The Physics system looks extremely polished and easy to use. The animation system looks incredible with the retargeting/blending/etc. The documentation is incredibly detailed as well (I guess when you come from Bullet, any documentation looks amazing) So my question is, as I am still somewhat of a 'newbie' to game development, should I just stick with what I am using now or should I make the switch over to Havok? The physics looks like I could get my project back to where it is now with minimal effort, and be able to expand much faster. The animation aspect looks extremely daunting as far as integrating it with Ogre.

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• Azure Florida Association

  - by Dave Noderer

  Herve Roggero, SQL Azure MVP,  has created a virtual community to focus on Azure. Here is the outline from Herve:   User Group Name:  Azure Florida Association Purpose: Start a virtual Florida user group that targets the Azure platform Venues: Most meetings will be virtual; however I plan to host a few physical events across Florida if possible from time to time; physical events may be a few hours long with potentially more than one speaker Possible Topics: The topics will touch Azure generally speaking, but can have a wide array of concern such as Integration, Data Migration, Hosting, Security, Scalability, Mobile Device integration, successful ventures/lessons learned, cross cloud integration patterns, testing in the cloud, deployment management, reporting… Target Members: Architects, Developers, IT Managers Membership: Membership will be free; virtual events will be free; physical events may involve a minimal cover charge Speakers: If you are interested in speaking or if you have topic ideas, please let me know Frequency: Initially these meetings will be held every other month   The first meeting will be held on January 25, 2012 at 4PM EST. Vikas Sahni, SQL Azure MVP, will be presenting on Demystifying SQL Azure. Vikas will introduce SQL Azure, value proposition, usage scenarios, concepts and architecture, what is there and what is not, including Tips and Tricks.  The actual meeting link will be available in January but please join the linked in group now to be kept informed of this and future events: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=4177626.

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• When is meta description still relevant?

  - by Jeff Atwood

  I received this bit of advice about the meta description tag recently: Meta descriptions are used by Google probably 80% of the time for the snippet. They don’t help with rankings but you should probably use them. You could just auto generate them from the first part of the question. The description tag exists in the header, like so: <meta name="Description" content="A brief summary of the content on the page."> I'm not sure why we would need this field, as Google seems perfectly capable of showing the relevant search terms in context in the search result pages, like so (I searched for c# list performance): In other words, where would a meta description summary improve these results? We want the page to show context around the actual search hits, not a random summary we inserted! Google Webmaster Central has this advice: For some sites, like news media sources, generating an accurate and unique description for each page is easy: since each article is hand-written, it takes minimal effort to also add a one-sentence description. For larger database-driven sites, like product aggregators, hand-written descriptions are more difficult. In the latter case, though, programmatic generation of the descriptions can be appropriate and is encouraged -- just make sure that your descriptions are not "spammy." Good descriptions are human-readable and diverse, as we talked about in the first point above. The page-specific data we mentioned in the second point is a good candidate for programmatic generation. I'm struggling to think of any scenario when I would want the Google-generated summary, that is, actual context from the page for the search terms, to be replaced by a hard-coded meta description summary of the question itself.

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• What is the correct UI interface to learn for creating Windows phone 8 apps? [closed]

  - by Robert Oschler

  I am a veteran Delphi 6 programmer transitioning to C# development. My first project is a open source library that will have a minimal user interface since it is meant to be used as a Component primarily on desktop PCs running Visual Studio. My next project is going to be a Windows 8 phone app and I intend for that platform to be my primary focus for future C# development, not the desktop. My concern is that I waste as little time as possible learning a presentation framework that will benefit or distract me from writing Windows 8 phone apps. The plethora of framework names I have already encountered include, WinForms, WPF (Windows Presentation Framework), Silverlight, Silverlight Mobile, Metro and there may be others. Given my goal outlined in the first paragraph above, I have a few questions: 1) Which of the frameworks should I use for the small amount of UI work I will do with the desktop Component project that will help me the most, or hurt me the least, when I move to Windows 8 phone app development? 2) Which is the correct framework to study for developing Windows 8 phone apps? 3) Any awesome tutorials, resources or books you have run into targeted towards veteran programmers from other platforms? I read about the Portable Library Tools on this Stack Overflow thread: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5522355/windows-phone-7-wpf-sharing-a-codebase But the reply by Simon Guindon seemed to indicate to me that it's not the best solution for writing a competitive Windows 8 phone app.

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• How to talk a client out of a Flash website?

  - by bunglestink

  I have recently been doing a bunch of web side projects through word of mouth recommendations only. Although I am much more a of a programmer than a designer by any means, my design skills are not terrible, and do not hate dealing with UI like many programmers. As a result, I find myself lured into a bunch of side projects where aside from a minimal back end for content administration, most of the programming is on front end interfaces (read javascript/css). By far the biggest frustration I have had is convincing clients that they do not want Flash. Aside the fact that I really do not enjoy Flash "development", there are many practical reasons why Flash is not desirable (lack of compatibility across devices, decreased client accessibility, plug-in requirements, increased development time, etc.). Instead of just flat out telling the clients "I will not build you a flash website", I would much rather use tactics to convince/explain to them that this is not what they actually want, ie: meet their requirements any better than standard html/css/js and distract users from their content. What kind of first hand experience do others have with this? How do you explain to someone that javascript/css/AJAX is usually a better option for most websites? Why do people want to use Flash so bad to begin with? This question pertains to clients who do not have any technical reasons for wanting flash, but just want it because they think it makes pretty websites.

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• The Return Of __FILE__ And __LINE__ In .NET 4.5

  - by Alois Kraus

  Good things are hard to kill. One of the most useful predefined compiler macros in C/C++ were __FILE__ and __LINE__ which do expand to the compilation units file name and line number where this value is encountered by the compiler. After 4.5 versions of .NET we are on par with C/C++ again. It is of course not a simple compiler expandable macro it is an attribute but it does serve exactly the same purpose. Now we do get CallerLineNumberAttribute  == __LINE__ CallerFilePathAttribute        == __FILE__ CallerMemberNameAttribute  == __FUNCTION__ (MSVC Extension)   The most important one is CallerMemberNameAttribute which is very useful to implement the INotifyPropertyChanged interface without the need to hard code the name of the property anymore. Now you can simply decorate your change method with the new CallerMemberName attribute and you get the property name as string directly inserted by the C# compiler at compile time.   public string UserName { get { return _userName; } set { _userName=value; RaisePropertyChanged(); // no more RaisePropertyChanged(“UserName”)! } } protected void RaisePropertyChanged([CallerMemberName] string member = "") { var copy = PropertyChanged; if(copy != null) { copy(new PropertyChangedEventArgs(this, member)); } } Nice and handy. This was obviously the prime reason to implement this feature in the C# 5.0 compiler. You can repurpose this feature for tracing to get your hands on the method name of your caller along other stuff very fast now. All infos are added during compile time which is much faster than other approaches like walking the stack. The example on MSDN shows the usage of this attribute with an example public static void TraceMessage(string message, [CallerMemberName] string memberName = "", [CallerFilePath] string sourceFilePath = "", [CallerLineNumber] int sourceLineNumber = 0) { Console.WriteLine("Hi {0} {1} {2}({3})", message, memberName, sourceFilePath, sourceLineNumber); }   When I do think of tracing I do usually want to have a API which allows me to Trace method enter and leave Trace messages with a severity like Info, Warning, Error When I do print a trace message it is very useful to print out method and type name as well. So your API must either be able to pass the method and type name as strings or extract it automatically via walking back one Stackframe and fetch the infos from there. The first glaring deficiency is that there is no CallerTypeAttribute yet because the C# compiler team was not satisfied with its performance.   A usable Trace Api might therefore look like   enum TraceTypes { None = 0, EnterLeave = 1 << 0, Info = 1 << 1, Warn = 1 << 2, Error = 1 << 3 } class Tracer : IDisposable { string Type; string Method; public Tracer(string type, string method) { Type = type; Method = method; if (IsEnabled(TraceTypes.EnterLeave,Type, Method)) { } } private bool IsEnabled(TraceTypes traceTypes, string Type, string Method) { // Do checking here if tracing is enabled return false; } public void Info(string fmt, params object[] args) { } public void Warn(string fmt, params object[] args) { } public void Error(string fmt, params object[] args) { } public static void Info(string type, string method, string fmt, params object[] args) { } public static void Warn(string type, string method, string fmt, params object[] args) { } public static void Error(string type, string method, string fmt, params object[] args) { } public void Dispose() { // trace method leave } } This minimal trace API is very fast but hard to maintain since you need to pass in the type and method name as hard coded strings which can change from time to time. But now we have at least CallerMemberName to rid of the explicit method parameter right? Not really. Since any acceptable usable trace Api should have a method signature like Tracexxx(… string fmt, params [] object args) we not able to add additional optional parameters after the args array. If we would put it before the format string we would need to make it optional as well which would mean the compiler would need to figure out what our trace message and arguments are (not likely) or we would need to specify everything explicitly just like before . There are ways around this by providing a myriad of overloads which in the end are routed to the very same method but that is ugly. I am not sure if nobody inside MS agrees that the above API is reasonable to have or (more likely) that the whole talk about you can use this feature for diagnostic purposes was not a core feature at all but a simple byproduct of making the life of INotifyPropertyChanged implementers easier. A way around this would be to allow for variable argument arrays after the params keyword another set of optional arguments which are always filled by the compiler but I do not know if this is an easy one. The thing I am missing much more is the not provided CallerType attribute. But not in the way you would think of. In the API above I did add some filtering based on method and type to stay as fast as possible for types where tracing is not enabled at all. It should be no more expensive than an additional method call and a bool variable check if tracing for this type is enabled at all. The data is tightly bound to the calling type and method and should therefore become part of the static type instance. Since extending the CLR type system for tracing is not something I do expect to happen I have come up with an alternative approach which allows me basically to attach run time data to any existing type object in super fast way. The key to success is the usage of generics.   class Tracer<T> : IDisposable { string Method; public Tracer(string method) { if (TraceData<T>.Instance.Enabled.HasFlag(TraceTypes.EnterLeave)) { } } public void Dispose() { if (TraceData<T>.Instance.Enabled.HasFlag(TraceTypes.EnterLeave)) { } } public static void Info(string fmt, params object[] args) { } /// <summary> /// Every type gets its own instance with a fresh set of variables to describe the /// current filter status. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="T"></typeparam> internal class TraceData<UsingType> { internal static TraceData<UsingType> Instance = new TraceData<UsingType>(); public bool IsInitialized = false; // flag if we need to reinit the trace data in case of reconfigured trace settings at runtime public TraceTypes Enabled = TraceTypes.None; // Enabled trace levels for this type } } We do not need to pass the type as string or Type object to the trace Api. Instead we define a generic Api that accepts the using type as generic parameter. Then we can create a TraceData static instance which is due to the nature of generics a fresh instance for every new type parameter. My tests on my home machine have shown that this approach is as fast as a simple bool flag check. If you have an application with many types using tracing you do not want to bring the app down by simply enabling tracing for one special rarely used type. The trace filter performance for the types which are not enabled must be therefore the fasted code path. This approach has the nice side effect that if you store the TraceData instances in one global list you can reconfigure tracing at runtime safely by simply setting the IsInitialized flag to false. A similar effect can be achieved with a global static Dictionary<Type,TraceData> object but big hash tables have random memory access semantics which is bad for cache locality and you always need to pay for the lookup which involves hash code generation, equality check and an indexed array access. The generic version is wicked fast and allows you to add more features to your tracing Api with minimal perf overhead. But it is cumbersome to write the generic type argument always explicitly and worse if you do refactor code and move parts of it to other classes it might be that you cannot configure tracing correctly. I would like therefore to decorate my type with an attribute [CallerType] class Tracer<T> : IDisposable to tell the compiler to fill in the generic type argument automatically. class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { using (var t = new Tracer()) // equivalent to new Tracer<Program>() { That would be really useful and super fast since you do not need to pass any type object around but you do have full type infos at hand. This change would be breaking if another non generic type exists in the same namespace where now the generic counterpart would be preferred. But this is an acceptable risk in my opinion since you can today already get conflicts if two generic types of the same name are defined in different namespaces. This would be only a variation of this issue. When you do think about this further you can add more features like to trace the exception in your Dispose method if the method is left with an exception with that little trick I did write some time ago. You can think of tracing as a super fast and configurable switch to write data to an output destination or to execute alternative actions. With such an infrastructure you can e.g. Reconfigure tracing at run time. Take a memory dump when a specific method is left with a specific exception. Throw an exception when a specific trace statement is hit (useful for testing error conditions). Execute a passed delegate which e.g. dumps additional state when enabled. Write data to an in memory ring buffer and dump it when specific events do occur (e.g. method is left with an exception, triggered from outside). Write data to an output device. …. This stuff is really useful to have when your code is in production on a mission critical server and you need to find the root cause of sporadic crashes of your application. It could be a buggy graphics card driver which throws access violations into your application (ok with .NET 4 not anymore except if you enable a compatibility flag) where you would like to have a minidump or you have reached after two weeks of operation a state where you need a full memory dump at a specific point in time in the middle of an transaction. At my older machine I do get with this super fast approach 50 million traces/s when tracing is disabled. When I do know that tracing is enabled for this type I can walk the stack by using StackFrameHelper.GetStackFramesInternal to check further if a specific action or output device is configured for this method which is about 2-3 times faster than the regular StackTrace class. Even with one String.Format I am down to 3 million traces/s so performance is not so important anymore since I do want to do something now. The CallerMemberName feature of the C# 5 compiler is nice but I would have preferred to get direct access to the MethodHandle and not to the stringified version of it. But I really would like to see a CallerType attribute implemented to fill in the generic type argument of the call site to augment the static CLR type data with run time data.

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