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• Dotfuscator Deep Dive with WP7

  - by Bil Simser

  I thought I would share some experience with code obfuscation (specifically the Dotfuscator product) and Windows Phone 7 apps. These days twitter is a buzz with black hat and white operations coming out about how the marketplace is insecure and Microsoft failed, blah, blah, blah. So it’s that much more important to protect your intellectual property. You should protect it no matter what when releasing apps into the wild but more so when someone is paying for them. You want to protect the time and effort that went into your code and have some comfort that the casual hacker isn’t going to usurp your next best thing. Enter code obfuscation. Code obfuscation is one tool that can help protect your IP. Basically it goes into your compiled assemblies, rewrites things at an IL level (like renaming methods and classes and hiding logic flow) and rewrites it back so that the assembly or executable is still fully functional but prying eyes using a tool like ILDASM or Reflector can’t see what’s going on.  You can read more about code obfuscation here on Wikipedia. A word to the wise. Code obfuscation isn’t 100% secure. More so on the WP7 platform where the OS expects certain things to be as they were meant to be. So don’t expect 100% obfuscation of every class and every method and every property. It’s just not going to happen. What this does do is give you some level of protection but don’t put all your eggs in one basket and call it done. Like I said, this is just one step in the process. There are a few tools out there that provide code obfuscation and support the Windows Phone 7 platform (see links to other tools at the end of this post). One such tool is Dotfuscator from PreEmptive solutions. The thing about Dotfuscator is that they’ve struck a deal with Microsoft to provide a *free* copy of their commercial product for Windows Phone 7. The only drawback is that it only runs until March 31, 2010. However it’s a good place to start and the focus of this article. Getting Started When you fire up Dotfuscator you’re presented with a dialog to start a new project or load a previous one. We’ll start with a new project. You’re then looking at a somewhat blank screen that shows an Input tab (among others) and you’re probably wondering what to do? Click on the folder icon (first one) and browse to where your xap file is. At this point you can save the project and click on the arrow to start the process. Bam! You’re done. Right? Think again. The program did indeed run and create a new version of your xap (doing it’s thing and rewriting back your *obfuscated* assemblies) but let’s take a look at the assembly in Reflector to see the end result. Remember a xap file is really just a glorified zip file (or cab file if you prefer). When you ran Dotfuscator for the first time with the default settings you’ll see it created a new version of your xap in a folder under “My Documents” called “Dotfuscated” (you can configure the output directory in settings). Here’s the new xap file. Since a xap is just a zip, rename it to .cab or .zip or something and open it with your favorite unarchive program (I use WinRar but it doesn’t matter as long as it can unzip files). If you already have the xap file associated with your unarchive tool the rename isn’t needed. Once renamed extract the contents of the xap to your hard drive: Now you’ll have a folder with the contents of the xap file extracted: Double click or load up your assembly (WindowsPhoneDataBoundApplication1.dll in the example) in Reflector and let’s see the results: Hmm. That doesn’t look right. I can see all the methods and the code is all there for my LoadData method I wanted to protect. Product failure. Let’s return it for a refund. Hold your horses. We need to check out the settings in the program first. Remember when we loaded up our xap file. It started us on the Input tab but there was a settings tab before that. Wonder what it does? Here’s the default settings: Renaming Taking a closer look, all of the settings in Feature are disabled. WTF? Yeah, it leaves me scratching my head why an obfuscator by default doesn’t obfuscate. However it’s a simple fix to change these settings. Let’s enable Renaming as it sounds like a good start. Renaming obscures code by renaming methods and fields to names that are not understandable. Great. Run the tool again and go through the process of unzipping the updated xap and let’s take a look in Reflector again at our project. This looks a lot better. Lots of methods named a, b, c, d, etc. That’ll help slow hackers down a bit. What about our logic that we spent days weeks on? Let’s take a look at the LoadData method: What gives? We have renaming enabled but all of our code is still there. If you look through all your methods you’ll find it’s still sitting there out in the open. Control Flow Back to the settings page again. Let’s enable Control Flow now. Control Flow obfuscation synthesizes branching, conditional, and iterative constructs (such as if, for, and while) that produce valid executable logic, but yield non-deterministic semantic results when decompilation is attempted. In other words, the code runs as before, but decompilers cannot reproduce the original code. Do the dance again and let’s see the results in Reflector. Ahh, that’s better. Methods renamed *and* nobody can look at our LoadData method now. Life is good. More than Minimum This is the bare minimum to obfuscate your xap to at least a somewhat comfortable level. However I did find that while this worked in my Hello World demo, it didn’t work on one of my real world apps. I had to do some extra tweaking with that. Below are the screens that I used on one app that worked. I’m not sure what it was about the app that the approach above didn’t work with (maybe the extra assembly?) but it works and I’m happy with it. YMMV. Remember to test your obfuscated app on your device first before submitting to ensure you haven’t obfuscated the obfuscator. settings tab: rename tab: string encryption tab: premark tab: A few final notes Play with the settings and keep bumping up the bar to try to get as much obfuscation as you can. The more the better but remember you can overdo it. Always (always, always, always) deploy your obfuscated xap to your device and test it before submitting to the marketplace. I didn’t and got rejected because I had gone overboard with the obfuscation so the app wouldn’t launch at all. Not everything is going to be obfuscated. Specifically I don’t see a way to obfuscate auto properties and a few other language features. Again, if you crank the settings up you might hide these but I haven’t spent a lot of time optimizing the process. Some people might say to obfuscate your xaml using string encryption but again, test, test, test. Xaml is picky so too much obfuscation (or any) might disable your app or produce odd rendering effets. Remember, obfuscation is not 100% secure! Don’t rely on it as a sole way of protecting your assets. Other Tools Dotfuscator is one just product and isn’t the end-all be-all to obfuscation so check out others below. For example, Crypto can make it so Reflector doesn’t even recognize the app as a .NET one and won’t open it. Others can encrypt resources and Xaml markup files. Here are some other obfuscators that support the Windows Phone 7 platform. Feel free to give them a try and let people know your experience with them! Dotfuscator Windows Phone Edition Crypto Obfuscator for .NET DeepSea Obfuscation

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• Looking Back at MIX10

  - by WeigeltRo

  It’s the sad truth of my life that even though I’m fascinated by airplanes and flight in general since my childhood days, my body doesn’t like flying. Even the ridiculously short flights inside Germany are taking their toll on me each time. Now combine this with sitting in the cramped space of economy class for many hours on a transatlantic flight from Germany to Las Vegas and back, and factor in some heavy dose of jet lag (especially on my way eastwards), and you get an idea why after coming back home I had this question on my mind: Was it really worth it to attend MIX10? This of course is a question that will also be asked by my boss at Comma Soft (for other reasons, obviously), who decided to send me and my colleague Jens Schaller, to the MIX10 conference. (A note to my German readers: An dieser Stelle der Hinweis, dass Comma Soft noch Silverlight-Entwickler und/oder UI-Designer für den Standort Bonn sucht – aussagekräftige Bewerbungen bitte an [email protected]) Too keep things short: My answer is yes. Before I’ll go into detail, let me ask the heretical questions whether tech conferences in general still make sense. There was a time, where actually being at a tech conference gave you a head-start in regard to learning about new technologies. Nowadays this is no longer true, where every bit of information and every detail is immediately twittered, blogged and whatevered to death. In the case of MIX10 you even can download the video-taped sessions shortly after. So: Does visiting a conference still make sense? It depends on what you expect from a conference. It should be clear to everybody that you’ll neither get exclusive information, nor receive training in a small group. What a conference does offer that sitting in front of your computer does not can be summarized as follows: Focus Being away from work and home will help you to focus on the presented information. Of course there are always the poor guys who are haunted by their work (with mails and short text messages reporting the latest showstopper problem), but in general being out of your office makes a huge difference. Inspiration With the focus comes the emotional involvement. I find it much easier to absorb information if I feel that certain vibe when sitting in a session. This still means that I have put work into reviewing the information later, but it’s a better starting point. And all the impressions collected at a (good) conference combined lead to a higher motivation – be it by the buzz (“this is gonna be sooo cool!”) or by the fear to fall behind (“man, we’ll have work on this, or else…”). People At a conference it’s pretty easy to get into contact with other people during breakfast, lunch and other breaks. This is a good opportunity to get a feel for what other development teams are doing (on a very general level of course, nobody will tell you about their secret formula) and what they are thinking about specific technologies. So MIX10 did offer focus, inspiration and people, but that would have meant nothing without valuable content. When I (being a frontend developer with a strong interest in UI/UX) planned my visit to MIX10, I made the decision to focus on the "soft" topics of design, interaction and user experience. I figured that I would be bombarded with all the technical details about Silverlight 4 anyway in the weeks and months to come. Actually, I would have liked to catch a few technical sessions, but the agenda wasn’t exactly in favor of people interested in any kind of Silverlight and UI/UX/Design topics. That’s one of my few complaints about the conference – I would have liked one more day and/or more sessions per day. Overall, the quality of the workshops and sessions was pretty high. In fact, looking back at my collection of conferences I’ve visited in the past I’d say that MIX10 ranks somewhere near the top spot. Here’s an overview of the workshops/sessions I attended (I’ll leave out the keynotes): Day 0 (Workshops on Sunday) Design Fundamentals for Developers Robby Ingebretsen is the man! Great workshop in three parts with the perfect mix of examples, well-structured definition of terminology and the right dose of humor. Robby was part of the WPF team before founding his own company so he not only has a strong interest in design (and the skillz!) but also the technical background.   Design Tools and Techniques Originally announced to be held by Arturo Toledo, the Rosso brothers from ArcheType filled in for the first two parts, and Corrina Black had a pretty general part about the Windows Phone UI. The first two thirds were a mixed bag; the two guys definitely knew what they were talking about, and the demos were great, but the talk lacked the preparation and polish of a truly great presentation. Corrina was not allowed to go into too much detail before the keynote on Monday, but the session was still very interesting as it showed how much thought went into the Windows Phone UI (and there’s always a lot to learn when people talk about their thought process). Day 1 (Monday) Designing Rich Experiences for Data-Centric Applications I wonder whether there was ever a test-run for this session, but what Ken Azuma and Yoshihiro Saito delivered in the first 15 minutes of a 30-minutes-session made me walk out. A commercial for a product (just great: a video showing a SharePoint plug-in in an all-Japanese UI) combined with the most generic blah blah one could imagine. EPIC FAIL.   Great User Experiences: Seamlessly Blending Technology & Design I switched to this session from the one above but I guess I missed the interesting part – what I did catch was what looked like a “look at the cool stuff we did” without being helpful. Or maybe I was just in a bad mood after the other session.   The Art, Technology and Science of Reading This talk by Kevin Larson was very interesting, but was more a presentation of what Microsoft is doing in research (pretty impressive) and in the end lacked a bit the helpful advice one could have hoped for.   10 Ways to Attack a Design Problem and Come Out Winning Robby Ingebretsen again, and again a great mix of theory and practice. The clean and simple, yet effective, UI of the reader app resulted in a simultaneous “wow” of Jens and me. If you’d watch only one session video, this should be it. Microsoft has to bring Robby back next year! Day 2 (Tuesday) Touch in Public: Multi-touch Interaction Design for Kiosks & Architectural Experiences Very interesting session by Jason Brush, a great inspiration with many details to look out for in the examples. Exactly what I was hoping for – and then some!   Designing Bing: Heart and Science How hard can it be to design the UI for a search engine? An input field and a list of results, that should be it, right? Well, not so fast! The talk by Paul Ray showed the many iterations to finally get it right (up to the choice of a specific blue for the links). And yes, I want an eye-tracking device to play around with!   The Elephant in the Room When Nishant Kothary presented a long list of what his session was not about, I told to myself (not having the description text present) “Am I in the wrong talk? Should I leave?”. Boy, was I wrong. A great talk about human factors in the process of designing stuff.   An Hour with Bill Buxton Having seen Bill Buxton’s presentation in the keynote, I just had to see this man again – even though I didn’t know what to expect. Being more or less unplanned and intended to be more of a conversation, the session didn’t provide a wealth of immediately useful information. Nevertheless Bill Buxton was impressive with his huge knowledge of seemingly everything. But this could/should have been a session some when in the evening and not in parallel to at least two other interesting talks. Day 3 (Wednesday) Design the Ordinary, Like the Fixie This session by DL Byron and Kevin Tamura started really well and brought across the message to keep things simple. But towards the end the talk lost some of its steam. And, as a member of the audience pointed out, they kind of ignored their own advice when they used a fancy presentation software other then PowerPoint that sometimes got in the way of showing things.   Developing Natural User Interfaces Speaking of alternative presentation software, Joshua Blake definitely had the most remarkable alternative to PowerPoint, a self-written program called NaturalShow that was controlled using multi-touch on a touch screen. Not a PowerPoint-killer, but impressive nevertheless. The (excellent) talk itself was kind of eye-opening in regard to what “multi-touch support” on various platforms (WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone) actually means.   Treat your Content Right The talk by Tiffani Jones Brown wasn’t even on my planned schedule, but somehow I ended up in that session – and it was great. And even for people who don’t necessarily have to write content for websites, some points made by Tiffani are valid in many places, notably wherever you put texts with more than a single word into your UI. Creating Effective Info Viz in Microsoft Silverlight The last session of MIX10 I attended was kind of disappointing. At first things were very promising, with Matthias Shapiro giving a brief but well-structured introduction to info graphics and interactive visualizations. Then the live-coding began and while the result was interesting, too much time was spend on wrestling to get the code working. Ending earlier than planned, the talk was a bit light on actual content, but at least it included a nice list of resources. Conclusion It could be felt all across MIX10, UIs will take a huge leap forward; in fact, there are enough examples that have already. People who both have the technical know-how and at least a basic understanding of design (“literacy” as Bill Buxton called it) are in high demand. The concept of the MIX conference and initiatives like design.toolbox shows that Microsoft understands very well that frontend developers have to acquire new knowledge besides knowing how to hack code and putting buttons on a form. There are extremely exciting times before us, with lots of opportunity for those who are eager to develop their skills, that is for sure.

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• Including Overestimates in MSF Agile Burndown Report

  After using the MSF Agile Burndown report for a few weeks in our new TFS 2010 environment, I have to say I am a huge fan.  I especially find the assignment of Work (hours) portion to be very useful in motivating the team to keep their tasks up to date every day.  Here is a view of the report that you get out of the box. However, I have one problem.  Id like the top line to have some more meaning.  Specifically, when it is changing is that an indication of scope creep, mis-estimation or a combination of the two.  So, today I decided to try to build in a view that would show overestimated time.  This would give me a more consistent top line.  My idea was to add another visual area on top of the graph whenever my originally estimated time was greater than the sum of completed and remaining.  This will effectively show me at least when the top line goes down whether it was scope change or over-estimation. Here is the final result. How did I do it?  Step 1: Add Cumulative_Original_Estimate field to the dsBurndown My approach was to follow the pattern where the completed time is included in the burndown chart and add my Overestimated hours.  First I added a field to the dsBurndown to hold the estimated time.         <Field Name="Cumulative_Original_Estimate">           <DataField><?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><Field xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xsi:type="Measure" UniqueName="[Measures].[Microsoft_VSTS_Scheduling_OriginalEstimate]" /></DataField>           <rd:TypeName>System.Int32</rd:TypeName>         </Field> Step 2: Add a column to the query SELECT {     [Measures].[DateValue],     [Measures].[Work Item Count],     [Measures].[Microsoft_VSTS_Scheduling_RemainingWork],     [Measures].[Microsoft_VSTS_Scheduling_CompletedWork],     [Measures].[Microsoft_VSTS_Scheduling_OriginalEstimate],     [Measures].[RemainingWorkLine],     [Measures].[CountLine] Step 3: Add a new Item to the QueryDefinition <Item> <ID xsi:type="Measure"> <MeasureName>Microsoft_VSTS_Scheduling_OriginalEstimate</MeasureName> <UniqueName>[Measures].[Microsoft_VSTS_Scheduling_OriginalEstimate]</UniqueName> </ID> <ItemCaption>Cumulative Original Estimate</ItemCaption> <FormattedValue>true</FormattedValue> </Item> Step 4: Add a new ChartMember to DundasChartControl1 The burndown chart is called DundasChartControl1.  I need to add a ChartMember for the estimated time. <ChartMember>   <Label>Cumulative Original Estimate</Label> </ChartMember> Step 5: Add a ChartSeries to show the Overestimated Time <ChartSeries Name="OriginalEstimate">   <Hidden>=IIF(Parameters!YAxis.Value="count",True,False)</Hidden>   <ChartDataPoints>     <ChartDataPoint>       <ChartDataPointValues>         <Y>=IIF(Parameters!YAxis.Value = "hours", IIF(SUM(Fields!Cumulative_Original_Estimate.Value)>SUM(Fields!Cumulative_Completed_Work.Value+Fields!Cumulative_Remaining_Work.Value), SUM(Fields!Cumulative_Original_Estimate.Value-(Fields!Cumulative_Completed_Work.Value+Fields!Cumulative_Remaining_Work.Value)),Nothing),Nothing)</Y>       </ChartDataPointValues>       <ChartDataLabel>         <Style>           <FontFamily>Microsoft Sans Serif</FontFamily>           <FontSize>8pt</FontSize>         </Style>       </ChartDataLabel>       <Style>         <Border>           <Color>#9bdb00</Color>           <Width>0.75pt</Width>         </Border>         <Color>#666666</Color>         <BackgroundGradientEndColor>#666666</BackgroundGradientEndColor>       </Style>       <ChartMarker>         <Style />       </ChartMarker>       <CustomProperties>         <CustomProperty>           <Name>LabelStyle</Name>           <Value>Top</Value>         </CustomProperty>       </CustomProperties>     </ChartDataPoint>   </ChartDataPoints>   <Type>Area</Type>   <Subtype>Stacked</Subtype>   <Style />   <ChartEmptyPoints>     <Style>       <Color>#00ffffff</Color>     </Style>     <ChartMarker>       <Style />     </ChartMarker>     <ChartDataLabel>       <Style />     </ChartDataLabel>   </ChartEmptyPoints>   <LegendName>Default</LegendName>   <ChartItemInLegend>     <LegendText>Overestimated Hours</LegendText>   </ChartItemInLegend>   <ChartAreaName>Default</ChartAreaName>   <ValueAxisName>Primary</ValueAxisName>   <CategoryAxisName>Primary</CategoryAxisName>   <ChartSmartLabel>     <Disabled>true</Disabled>     <MaxMovingDistance>22.5pt</MaxMovingDistance>   </ChartSmartLabel> </ChartSeries> Thats it.  I find the improved report to add some value over the out of the box version.  You can download the updated rdl for the report here.  Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• That Escalated Quickly

  - by Jesse Taber

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2014/05/17/that-escalated-quickly.aspxI have been working remotely out of my home for over 4 years now. All of my coworkers during that time have also worked remotely. Lots of folks have written about the challenges inherent in facilitating communication on remote teams and strategies for overcoming them. A popular theme around this topic is the notion of “escalating communication”. In this context “escalating” means taking a conversation from one mode of communication to a different, higher fidelity mode of communication. Here are the five modes of communication I use at work in order of increasing fidelity: Email – This is the “lowest fidelity” mode of communication that I use. I usually only check it a few times a day (and I’m trying to check it even less frequently than that) and I only keep items in my inbox if they represent an item I need to take action on that I haven’t tracked anywhere else. Forums / Message boards – Being a developer, I’ve gotten into the habit of having other people look over my code before it becomes part of the product I’m working on. These code reviews often happen in “real time” via screen sharing, but I also always have someone else give all of the changes another look using pull requests. A pull request takes my code and lets someone else see the changes I’ve made side-by-side with the existing code so they can see if I did anything dumb. Pull requests can facilitate a conversation about the code changes in an online-forum like style. Some teams I’ve worked on also liked using tools like Trello or Google Groups to have on-going conversations about a topic or task that was being worked on. Chat & Instant Messaging  - Chat and instant messaging are the real workhorses for communication on the remote teams I’ve been a part of. I know some teams that are co-located that also use it pretty extensively for quick messages that don’t warrant walking across the office to talk with someone but reqire more immediacy than an e-mail. For the purposes of this post I think it’s important to note that the terms “chat” and “instant messaging” might insinuate that the conversation is happening in real time, but that’s not always true. Modern chat and IM applications maintain a searchable history so people can easily see what might have been discussed while they were away from their computers. Voice, Video and Screen sharing – Everyone’s got a camera and microphone on their computers now, and there are an abundance of services that will let you use them to talk to other people who have cameras and microphones on their computers. I’m including screen sharing here as well because, in my experience, these discussions typically involve one or more people showing the other participants something that’s happening on their screen. Obviously, this mode of communication is much higher-fidelity than any of the ones listed above. Scheduled meetings are typically conducted using this mode of communication. In Person – No matter how great communication tools become, there’s no substitute for meeting with someone face-to-face. However, opportunities for this kind of communcation are few and far between when you work on a remote team. When a conversation gets escalated that usually means it moves up one or more positions on this list. A lot of people advocate jumping to #4 sooner than later. Like them, I used to believe that, if it was possible, organizing a call with voice and video was automatically better than any kind of text-based communication could be. Lately, however, I’m becoming less convinced that escalating is always the right move. Working Asynchronously Last year I attended a talk at our local code camp given by Drew Miller. Drew works at GitHub and was talking about how they use GitHub internally. Many of the folks at GitHub work remotely, so communication was one of the main themes in Drew’s talk. During the talk Drew used the phrase, “asynchronous communication” to describe their use of chat and pull request comments. That phrase stuck in my head because I hadn’t heard it before but I think it perfectly describes the way in which remote teams often need to communicate. You don’t always know when your co-workers are at their computers or what hours (if any) they are working that day. In order to work this way you need to assume that the person you’re talking to might not respond right away. You can’t always afford to wait until everyone required is online and available to join a voice call, so you need to use text-based, persistent forms of communication so that people can receive and respond to messages when they are available. Going back to my list from the beginning of this post for a second, I characterize items #1-3 as being “asynchronous” modes of communication while we could call items #4 and #5 “synchronous”. When communication gets escalated it’s almost always moving from an asynchronous mode of communication to a synchronous one. Now, to the point of this post: I’ve become increasingly reluctant to escalate from asynchronous to synchronous communication for two primary reasons: 1 – You can often find a higher fidelity way to convey your message without holding a synchronous conversation 2 - Asynchronous modes of communication are (usually) persistent and searchable. You Don’t Have to Broadcast Live Let’s start with the first reason I’ve listed. A lot of times you feel like you need to escalate to synchronous communication because you’re having difficulty describing something that you’re seeing in words. You want to provide the people you’re conversing with some audio-visual aids to help them understand the point that you’re trying to make and you think that getting on Skype and sharing your screen with them is the best way to do that. Firing up a screen sharing session does work well, but you can usually accomplish the same thing in an asynchronous manner. For example, you could take a screenshot and annotate it with some text and drawings to illustrate what it is you’re seeing. If a screenshot won’t work, taking a short screen recording while your narrate over it and posting the video to your forum or chat system along with a text-based description of what’s in the recording that can be searched for later can be a great way to effectively communicate with your team asynchronously. I Said What?!? Now for the second reason I listed: most asynchronous modes of communication provide a transcript of what was said and what decisions might have been made during the conversation. There have been many occasions where I’ve used the search feature of my team’s chat application to find a conversation that happened several weeks or months ago to remember what was decided. Unfortunately, I think the benefits associated with the persistence of communicating asynchronously often get overlooked when people decide to escalate to a in-person meeting or voice/video call. I’m becoming much more reluctant to suggest a voice or video call if I suspect that it might lead to codifying some kind of design decision because everyone involved is going to hang up the call and immediately forget what was decided. I recognize that you can record and archive these types of interactions, but without being able to search them the recordings aren’t terribly useful. When and How To Escalate I don’t mean to imply that communicating via voice/video or in person is never a good idea. I probably jump on a Skype call with a co-worker at least once a day to quickly hash something out or show them a bit of code that I’m working on. Also, meeting in person periodically is really important for remote teams. There’s no way around the fact that sometimes it’s easier to jump on a call and show someone my screen so they can see what I’m seeing. So when is it right to escalate? I think the simplest way to answer that is when the communication starts to feel painful. Everyone’s tolerance for that pain is different, but I think you need to let it hurt a little bit before jumping to synchronous communication. When you do escalate from asynchronous to synchronous communication, there are a couple of things you can do to maximize the effectiveness of the communication: Takes notes – This is huge and yet I’ve found that a lot of teams don’t do this. If you’re holding a meeting with  > 2 people you should have someone taking notes. Taking notes while participating in a meeting can be difficult but there are a few strategies to deal with this challenge that probably deserve a short post of their own. After the meeting, make sure the notes are posted to a place where all concerned parties (including those that might not have attended the meeting) can review and search them. Persist decisions made ASAP – If any decisions were made during the meeting, persist those decisions to a searchable medium as soon as possible following the conversation. All the teams I’ve worked on used a web-based system for tracking the on-going work and a backlog of work to be done in the future. I always try to make sure that all of the cards/stories/tasks/whatever in these systems always reflect the latest decisions that were made as the work was being planned and executed. If held a quick call with your team lead and decided that it wasn’t worth the effort to build real-time validation into that new UI you were working on, go and codify that decision in the story associated with that work immediately after you hang up. Even better, write it up in the story while you are both still on the phone. That way when the folks from your QA team pick up the story to test a few days later they’ll know why the real-time validation isn’t there without having to invoke yet another conversation about the work. Communicating Well is Hard At this point you might be thinking that communicating asynchronously is more difficult than having a live conversation. You’re right: it is more difficult. In order to communicate effectively this way you need to very carefully think about the message that you’re trying to convey and craft it in a way that’s easy for your audience to understand. This is almost always harder than just talking through a problem in real time with someone; this is why escalating communication is such a popular idea. Why wouldn’t we want to do the thing that’s easier? Easier isn’t always better. If you and your team can get in the habit of communicating effectively in an asynchronous manner you’ll find that, over time, all of your communications get less painful because you don’t need to re-iterate previously made points over and over again. If you communicate right the first time, you often don’t need to rehash old conversations because you can go back and find the decisions that were made laid out in plain language. You’ll also find that you get better at doing things like writing useful comments in your code, creating written documentation about how the feature that you just built works, or persuading your team to do things in a certain way.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 24, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 24, 2010New Projects(SocketCoder) Full Silverlight Web Video/Voice Conference: Is an open source project to develop full Silverlight Web Video/Voice Conference System in C# .NETabc123: Prueba Archetype Programming Language: See http://dvanderboom.wordpress.comBusiness Process Automation (BPA): BPA is a project initiative to develop an ERP which will integrate with work flow of an organization. It is build on the concept that all business ...Content Rendering: Content Rendering is a .NET 3.5 string template engine. The program uses reflection, an extensibility API and a template document, which has a cust...DTA Output Renamer: The DTA Output Renamer takes recommendations from the SQL Server Database Tuning Advisor (DTA) and updates the names of the indexes/statistics to b...Flexible Editing Toolkit: The Flexible Editing Toolkit aims to enable users who have coding experience in .Net to write own editors/tools using an easy-to-use framework and ...Fluent NHibernate, MVC 2: Projeto ultra simples desenvolvido em Asp.Net MVC 2 com Fluent NHibernate. Foram utilizadas camadas baseadas no DDD. Sample project to test DDD arc...GravityGame: Proyecto del capítulo del IGDA en el Tec de Monterrey Campus Sonora Norte. El objetivo es la creación de un primer juego para conocer cuales son l...Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM: R2 of the PRM accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.Posh-Hg: Mercurial integration for Windows PowershellSuiteMap: selfSvenska till Rövarspråket: Översätter svenska till rövarspråketTV4Home: This projects extends MediaPortal TV Server with a solution for MediaCenter clients, a Web-Interface and a WHS Add-In.User Profile WebPart: Use this webpart to display SharePoint User Profile information. VolumeMasterCmd: Command line application that will set the wave volume level. Usage: VolumeMaster | VolumeMaster [0-100] Display or set the wave volume level ...wawa cloud store service: 盖茨描述了云计算和云存储之间的区别。“人们老是会搞混。云存储是把你的文件存储到其他地方，进行备份，这和云计算是不同的。这两者都很了不起，都是很好的技术。” 他表示，“云存储的效能没有折扣，因此富于理性的存储经理将会考虑使用云存储技术。” 相反，他表示云计算则会有一些问题，延迟和带宽都可能会...XNA Collision Detection: A collision library which extracts the triangles from a given model, and tests for collision using multiple methods on all existing triangles. Thi...You Private Social Network: YourPrivateNet is for all people who are unsatisfied with how social networking giants, namely facebook, are dealing with privacy and the users dat...New ReleasesArchetype Programming Language: C Sharp 4.0 Grammar in M: This is a C# 4.0 grammar that I am using to learn about parsers and the process of generating ASTs, in preparation for doing the same for the Arche...CassiniDev - Cassini 3.5/4.0 Developers Edition: CassiniDev 3.5.1.4 and 4.0.1.4 beta3: Binary release includes: .net 3.5sp1 and 4.0 builds of Gui app, Console app, Library assembly and Visual Studio development server replacements f...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.10: The current build has the following capabilities: Can create new workbooks Add worksheets Access cells using R1C1, A1, and mixed notations. A...CRM Web Service Toolkit: MSCRM4 Web Service Toolkit for JavaScript v2.0: MSCRM Web Service Toolkit for JavaScript v2.0. The release contains: CrmServiceToolkit.js (The uncompressed code) CrmServiceToolkit.min.js (The ...DBFramework: Kenly.DBFramework4.6.5.2: Kenly.DBFramework4.6.5.2eComic: eComic 2010.0.0.1: With the release of .NET 4.0 the system was upgraded. This upgrade involved starting the project over from scratch, so the installation package wil...Exchange 2010 RBAC Editor (RBAC GUI) - updated on 5/24/2010: RBAC Editor 0.9.3.1: Some bugs fixed, support added for unscopedtoplevel roles (still in progress), added logging capabilities Please use email address in About menu o...Hammock for REST: Hammock v1.0.4: v1.0.4 ChangesAdded handling for special characters in OAuth signatures (\r\n\t\b) Corrected an inconsistency in OAuth GET vs. POST when encoding...HKGolden Express: HKGoldenExpress (Build 201005231730): New features: (None) Bug fix: Fixed problem of unable to start new thread. Fixed problem of unable to show user icons due to incorrect path. ...Kurumsal Ofis Paketi: Kurumsal Ofis Paketi Sürüm 1.0: Kurumsal Ofis Paketi Sürüm 1.0MDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.15.59175: Fixed FileFactory implementation (FileFactory team doesn't give up); Fixed minor bugs.Munq: Tools for ASP.NET MVC: Munq IocContainer Version 2.0: The latest and greatest.NLog - Advanced .NET Logging: Nightly Build 2010.05.23.001: Changes since the last build:2010-05-23 00:01:19 Jarek Kowalski Made contition on <when /> required. Added unit tests. 2010-05-22 20:06:16 Jarek K...NUnit for Team Build: Version 2.0 Alpha 1: This version has experimental TFS 2010 support. I have been using it successfully with TFS 2010 for a few weeks now with no problems. It should be ...Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM: PRM Accelerator (R2) for Dynamics CRM 4.0: The Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Accelerator allows businesses to use Microsoft Dynamics CRM to distribute sales leads and centrally manag...Percussion Toolkit: Command line Note Detector 1.0: A command line tool for detecting note onsets in WAV files. Note: Currently only supports 32-bit float encoded Microsoft WAV files with a sample ...Percussion Toolkit: Reference Input Data Set (A): This release contains a set of input WAV files for testing note onset detection accuracy and effectiveness. The archive contains computer-generate...Percussion Toolkit: Rhythm Friend: Rhythm Friend is an interactive tool for practicing drum rudiments. It provides a simple metronome coupled with rhythm coach features.SharePoint List Field Manager: SharePoint List Field Manager: This is Version 2 of the SharePoint List Field Manager. First created for CorasWorks customers, we have decided to make it publically available to ...Silverlight 4.0 Popup Menu: Context Menu for Silverlight 4.0 v1.2 Beta: - Added delay on hover events for both parent and child menus. - Parent menus now close automatically when child menu is clicked. - Updated referen...Software Is Hardwork: Sw. Is Hw. Lib. 3.0.0.x+03: Sw. Is Hw. Lib. 3.0.0.x+03 UNSUPPORTED, UNTESTED ALPHA RELEASE Code may disappear. This is just a preview of code that was in progress. Code is s...The Fastcopy Helper: The Fastcopy Helper 2.0: The Fastcopy Helper 2.0 This is a new method to run for it . Fastcopy同步辅助器 方案二 这个方案二，是使用了全新的方法进行磁盘文件扫描，和比较。速度飙升到最快！同时优化了很多细节的内容，使得性能大幅度提升。User Profile WebPart: UserProfileWebPart 1.0: Inititial release.VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30523.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVolumeMasterCmd: VolumeMaster 1.0: First release.XNA Collision Detection: XNA Static Collider: Provides collision detection between a Model and BoundingSphere, or a Model and Ray. An example of how to initialize a collision object: Collidee...xxfd1r4w96: 20100523: Приложението има следната функционалност: 1. Добавяне на сайта https://online.bulbank.bg в trusted sites. 2. Инсталиране на Bulbank Root Certificat...Yet another developer blog - Examples: Asynchronous Form in ASP.NET MVC: This sample application shows how to use jQuery Validation plugin for creating an asynchronous form in ASP.NET MVC 1 with client side validation. T...Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryPHPExcelMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesASP.NETMost Active ProjectsRawrpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibrarySqlServerExtensionsGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and Silverlightpatterns & practices: Windows Azure Security GuidanceCassiniDev - Cassini 3.5/4.0 Developers EditionNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleCodeReviewBlogEngine.NET

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: The Predicate, Comparison, and Converter Generic Delegates

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. In the last three weeks, we examined the Action family of delegates (and delegates in general), the Func family of delegates, and the EventHandler family of delegates and how they can be used to support generic, reusable algorithms and classes. This week I will be completing my series on the generic delegates in the .NET Framework with a discussion of three more, somewhat less used, generic delegates: Predicate<T>, Comparison<T>, and Converter<TInput, TOutput>. These are older generic delegates that were introduced in .NET 2.0, mostly for use in the Array and List<T> classes.  Though older, it’s good to have an understanding of them and their intended purpose.  In addition, you can feel free to use them yourself, though obviously you can also use the equivalents from the Func family of delegates instead. Predicate<T> – delegate for determining matches The Predicate<T> delegate was a very early delegate developed in the .NET 2.0 Framework to determine if an item was a match for some condition in a List<T> or T[].  The methods that tend to use the Predicate<T> include: Find(), FindAll(), FindLast() Uses the Predicate<T> delegate to finds items, in a list/array of type T, that matches the given predicate. FindIndex(), FindLastIndex() Uses the Predicate<T> delegate to find the index of an item, of in a list/array of type T, that matches the given predicate. The signature of the Predicate<T> delegate (ignoring variance for the moment) is: 1: public delegate bool Predicate<T>(T obj); So, this is a delegate type that supports any method taking an item of type T and returning bool.  In addition, there is a semantic understanding that this predicate is supposed to be examining the item supplied to see if it matches a given criteria. 1: // finds first even number (2) 2: var firstEven = Array.Find(numbers, n => (n % 2) == 0); 3:  4: // finds all odd numbers (1, 3, 5, 7, 9) 5: var allEvens = Array.FindAll(numbers, n => (n % 2) == 1); 6:  7: // find index of first multiple of 5 (4) 8: var firstFiveMultiplePos = Array.FindIndex(numbers, n => (n % 5) == 0); This delegate has typically been succeeded in LINQ by the more general Func family, so that Predicate<T> and Func<T, bool> are logically identical.  Strictly speaking, though, they are different types, so a delegate reference of type Predicate<T> cannot be directly assigned to a delegate reference of type Func<T, bool>, though the same method can be assigned to both. 1: // SUCCESS: the same lambda can be assigned to either 2: Predicate<DateTime> isSameDayPred = dt => dt.Date == DateTime.Today; 3: Func<DateTime, bool> isSameDayFunc = dt => dt.Date == DateTime.Today; 4:  5: // ERROR: once they are assigned to a delegate type, they are strongly 6: // typed and cannot be directly assigned to other delegate types. 7: isSameDayPred = isSameDayFunc; When you assign a method to a delegate, all that is required is that the signature matches.  This is why the same method can be assigned to either delegate type since their signatures are the same.  However, once the method has been assigned to a delegate type, it is now a strongly-typed reference to that delegate type, and it cannot be assigned to a different delegate type (beyond the bounds of variance depending on Framework version, of course). Comparison<T> – delegate for determining order Just as the Predicate<T> generic delegate was birthed to give Array and List<T> the ability to perform type-safe matching, the Comparison<T> was birthed to give them the ability to perform type-safe ordering. The Comparison<T> is used in Array and List<T> for: Sort() A form of the Sort() method that takes a comparison delegate; this is an alternate way to custom sort a list/array from having to define custom IComparer<T> classes. The signature for the Comparison<T> delegate looks like (without variance): 1: public delegate int Comparison<T>(T lhs, T rhs); The goal of this delegate is to compare the left-hand-side to the right-hand-side and return a negative number if the lhs < rhs, zero if they are equal, and a positive number if the lhs > rhs.  Generally speaking, null is considered to be the smallest value of any reference type, so null should always be less than non-null, and two null values should be considered equal. In most sort/ordering methods, you must specify an IComparer<T> if you want to do custom sorting/ordering.  The Array and List<T> types, however, also allow for an alternative Comparison<T> delegate to be used instead, essentially, this lets you perform the custom sort without having to have the custom IComparer<T> class defined. It should be noted, however, that the LINQ OrderBy(), and ThenBy() family of methods do not support the Comparison<T> delegate (though one could easily add their own extension methods to create one, or create an IComparer() factory class that generates one from a Comparison<T>). So, given this delegate, we could use it to perform easy sorts on an Array or List<T> based on custom fields.  Say for example we have a data class called Employee with some basic employee information: 1: public sealed class Employee 2: { 3: public string Name { get; set; } 4: public int Id { get; set; } 5: public double Salary { get; set; } 6: } And say we had a List<Employee> that contained data, such as: 1: var employees = new List<Employee> 2: { 3: new Employee { Name = "John Smith", Id = 2, Salary = 37000.0 }, 4: new Employee { Name = "Jane Doe", Id = 1, Salary = 57000.0 }, 5: new Employee { Name = "John Doe", Id = 5, Salary = 60000.0 }, 6: new Employee { Name = "Jane Smith", Id = 3, Salary = 59000.0 } 7: }; Now, using the Comparison<T> delegate form of Sort() on the List<Employee>, we can sort our list many ways: 1: // sort based on employee ID 2: employees.Sort((lhs, rhs) => Comparer<int>.Default.Compare(lhs.Id, rhs.Id)); 3:  4: // sort based on employee name 5: employees.Sort((lhs, rhs) => string.Compare(lhs.Name, rhs.Name)); 6:  7: // sort based on salary, descending (note switched lhs/rhs order for descending) 8: employees.Sort((lhs, rhs) => Comparer<double>.Default.Compare(rhs.Salary, lhs.Salary)); So again, you could use this older delegate, which has a lot of logical meaning to it’s name, or use a generic delegate such as Func<T, T, int> to implement the same sort of behavior.  All this said, one of the reasons, in my opinion, that Comparison<T> isn’t used too often is that it tends to need complex lambdas, and the LINQ ability to order based on projections is much easier to use, though the Array and List<T> sorts tend to be more efficient if you want to perform in-place ordering. Converter<TInput, TOutput> – delegate to convert elements The Converter<TInput, TOutput> delegate is used by the Array and List<T> delegate to specify how to convert elements from an array/list of one type (TInput) to another type (TOutput).  It is used in an array/list for: ConvertAll() Converts all elements from a List<TInput> / TInput[] to a new List<TOutput> / TOutput[]. The delegate signature for Converter<TInput, TOutput> is very straightforward (ignoring variance): 1: public delegate TOutput Converter<TInput, TOutput>(TInput input); So, this delegate’s job is to taken an input item (of type TInput) and convert it to a return result (of type TOutput).  Again, this is logically equivalent to a newer Func delegate with a signature of Func<TInput, TOutput>.  In fact, the latter is how the LINQ conversion methods are defined. So, we could use the ConvertAll() syntax to convert a List<T> or T[] to different types, such as: 1: // get a list of just employee IDs 2: var empIds = employees.ConvertAll(emp => emp.Id); 3:  4: // get a list of all emp salaries, as int instead of double: 5: var empSalaries = employees.ConvertAll(emp => (int)emp.Salary); Note that the expressions above are logically equivalent to using LINQ’s Select() method, which gives you a lot more power: 1: // get a list of just employee IDs 2: var empIds = employees.Select(emp => emp.Id).ToList(); 3:  4: // get a list of all emp salaries, as int instead of double: 5: var empSalaries = employees.Select(emp => (int)emp.Salary).ToList(); The only difference with using LINQ is that many of the methods (including Select()) are deferred execution, which means that often times they will not perform the conversion for an item until it is requested.  This has both pros and cons in that you gain the benefit of not performing work until it is actually needed, but on the flip side if you want the results now, there is overhead in the behind-the-scenes work that support deferred execution (it’s supported by the yield return / yield break keywords in C# which define iterators that maintain current state information). In general, the new LINQ syntax is preferred, but the older Array and List<T> ConvertAll() methods are still around, as is the Converter<TInput, TOutput> delegate. Sidebar: Variance support update in .NET 4.0 Just like our descriptions of Func and Action, these three early generic delegates also support more variance in assignment as of .NET 4.0.  Their new signatures are: 1: // comparison is contravariant on type being compared 2: public delegate int Comparison<in T>(T lhs, T rhs); 3:  4: // converter is contravariant on input and covariant on output 5: public delegate TOutput Contravariant<in TInput, out TOutput>(TInput input); 6:  7: // predicate is contravariant on input 8: public delegate bool Predicate<in T>(T obj); Thus these delegates can now be assigned to delegates allowing for contravariance (going to a more derived type) or covariance (going to a less derived type) based on whether the parameters are input or output, respectively. Summary Today, we wrapped up our generic delegates discussion by looking at three lesser-used delegates: Predicate<T>, Comparison<T>, and Converter<TInput, TOutput>.  All three of these tend to be replaced by their more generic Func equivalents in LINQ, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t understand what they do or can’t use them for your own code, as they do contain semantic meanings in their names that sometimes get lost in the more generic Func name.   Tweet Technorati Tags: C#,CSharp,.NET,Little Wonders,delegates,generics,Predicate,Converter,Comparison

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• C#/.NET &ndash; Finding an Item&rsquo;s Index in IEnumerable&lt;T&gt;

  - by James Michael Hare

  Sorry for the long blogging hiatus.  First it was, of course, the holidays hustle and bustle, then my brother and his wife gave birth to their son, so I’ve been away from my blogging for two weeks. Background: Finding an item’s index in List<T> is easy… Many times in our day to day programming activities, we want to find the index of an item in a collection.  Now, if we have a List<T> and we’re looking for the item itself this is trivial: 1: // assume have a list of ints: 2: var list = new List<int> { 1, 13, 42, 64, 121, 77, 5, 99, 132 }; 3:  4: // can find the exact item using IndexOf() 5: var pos = list.IndexOf(64); This will return the position of the item if it’s found, or –1 if not.  It’s easy to see how this works for primitive types where equality is well defined.  For complex types, however, it will attempt to compare them using EqualityComparer<T>.Default which, in a nutshell, relies on the object’s Equals() method. So what if we want to search for a condition instead of equality?  That’s also easy in a List<T> with the FindIndex() method: 1: // assume have a list of ints: 2: var list = new List<int> { 1, 13, 42, 64, 121, 77, 5, 99, 132 }; 3:  4: // finds index of first even number or -1 if not found. 5: var pos = list.FindIndex(i => i % 2 == 0);   Problem: Finding an item’s index in IEnumerable<T> is not so easy... This is all well and good for lists, but what if we want to do the same thing for IEnumerable<T>?  A collection of IEnumerable<T> has no indexing, so there’s no direct method to find an item’s index.  LINQ, as powerful as it is, gives us many tools to get us this information, but not in one step.  As with almost any problem involving collections, there are several ways to accomplish the same goal.  And once again as with almost any problem involving collections, the choice of the solution somewhat depends on the situation. So let’s look at a few possible alternatives.  I’m going to express each of these as extension methods for simplicity and consistency. Solution: The TakeWhile() and Count() combo One of the things you can do is to perform a TakeWhile() on the list as long as your find condition is not true, and then do a Count() of the items it took.  The only downside to this method is that if the item is not in the list, the index will be the full Count() of items, and not –1.  So if you don’t know the size of the list beforehand, this can be confusing. 1: // a collection of extra extension methods off IEnumerable<T> 2: public static class EnumerableExtensions 3: { 4: // Finds an item in the collection, similar to List<T>.FindIndex() 5: public static int FindIndex<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Predicate<T> finder) 6: { 7: // note if item not found, result is length and not -1! 8: return list.TakeWhile(i => !finder(i)).Count(); 9: } 10: } Personally, I don’t like switching the paradigm of not found away from –1, so this is one of my least favorites.  Solution: Select with index Many people don’t realize that there is an alternative form of the LINQ Select() method that will provide you an index of the item being selected: 1: list.Select( (item,index) => do something here with the item and/or index... ) This can come in handy, but must be treated with care.  This is because the index provided is only as pertains to the result of previous operations (if any).  For example: 1: // assume have a list of ints: 2: var list = new List<int> { 1, 13, 42, 64, 121, 77, 5, 99, 132 }; 3:  4: // you'd hope this would give you the indexes of the even numbers 5: // which would be 2, 3, 8, but in reality it gives you 0, 1, 2 6: list.Where(item => item % 2 == 0).Select((item,index) => index); The reason the example gives you the collection { 0, 1, 2 } is because the where clause passes over any items that are odd, and therefore only the even items are given to the select and only they are given indexes. Conversely, we can’t select the index and then test the item in a Where() clause, because then the Where() clause would be operating on the index and not the item! So, what we have to do is to select the item and index and put them together in an anonymous type.  It looks ugly, but it works: 1: // extensions defined on IEnumerable<T> 2: public static class EnumerableExtensions 3: { 4: // finds an item in a collection, similar to List<T>.FindIndex() 5: public static int FindIndex<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Predicate<T> finder) 6: { 7: // if you don't name the anonymous properties they are the variable names 8: return list.Select((item, index) => new { item, index }) 9: .Where(p => finder(p.item)) 10: .Select(p => p.index + 1) 11: .FirstOrDefault() - 1; 12: } 13: }     So let’s look at this, because i know it’s convoluted: First Select() joins the items and their indexes into an anonymous type. Where() filters that list to only the ones matching the predicate. Second Select() picks the index of the matches and adds 1 – this is to distinguish between not found and first item. FirstOrDefault() returns the first item found from the previous clauses or default (zero) if not found. Subtract one so that not found (zero) will be –1, and first item (one) will be zero. The bad thing is, this is ugly as hell and creates anonymous objects for each item tested until it finds the match.  This concerns me a bit but we’ll defer judgment until compare the relative performances below. Solution: Convert ToList() and use FindIndex() This solution is easy enough.  We know any IEnumerable<T> can be converted to List<T> using the LINQ extension method ToList(), so we can easily convert the collection to a list and then just use the FindIndex() method baked into List<T>. 1: // a collection of extension methods for IEnumerable<T> 2: public static class EnumerableExtensions 3: { 4: // find the index of an item in the collection similar to List<T>.FindIndex() 5: public static int FindIndex<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Predicate<T> finder) 6: { 7: return list.ToList().FindIndex(finder); 8: } 9: } This solution is simplicity itself!  It is very concise and elegant and you need not worry about anyone misinterpreting what it’s trying to do (as opposed to the more convoluted LINQ methods above). But the main thing I’m concerned about here is the performance hit to allocate the List<T> in the ToList() call, but once again we’ll explore that in a second. Solution: Roll your own FindIndex() for IEnumerable<T> Of course, you can always roll your own FindIndex() method for IEnumerable<T>.  It would be a very simple for loop which scans for the item and counts as it goes.  There’s many ways to do this, but one such way might look like: 1: // extension methods for IEnumerable<T> 2: public static class EnumerableExtensions 3: { 4: // Finds an item matching a predicate in the enumeration, much like List<T>.FindIndex() 5: public static int FindIndex<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Predicate<T> finder) 6: { 7: int index = 0; 8: foreach (var item in list) 9: { 10: if (finder(item)) 11: { 12: return index; 13: } 14:  15: index++; 16: } 17:  18: return -1; 19: } 20: } Well, it’s not quite simplicity, and those less familiar with LINQ may prefer it since it doesn’t include all of the lambdas and behind the scenes iterators that come with deferred execution.  But does having this long, blown out method really gain us much in performance? Comparison of Proposed Solutions So we’ve now seen four solutions, let’s analyze their collective performance.  I took each of the four methods described above and run them over 100,000 iterations of lists of size 10, 100, 1000, and 10000 and here’s the performance results.  Then I looked for targets at the begining of the list (best case), middle of the list (the average case) and not in the list (worst case as must scan all of the list). Each of the times below is the average time in milliseconds for one execution as computer over the 100,000 iterations: Searches Matching First Item (Best Case)   10 100 1000 10000 TakeWhile 0.0003 0.0003 0.0003 0.0003 Select 0.0005 0.0005 0.0005 0.0005 ToList 0.0002 0.0003 0.0013 0.0121 Manual 0.0001 0.0001 0.0001 0.0001   Searches Matching Middle Item (Average Case)   10 100 1000 10000 TakeWhile 0.0004 0.0020 0.0191 0.1889 Select 0.0008 0.0042 0.0387 0.3802 ToList 0.0002 0.0007 0.0057 0.0562 Manual 0.0002 0.0013 0.0129 0.1255   Searches Where Not Found (Worst Case)   10 100 1000 10000 TakeWhile 0.0006 0.0039 0.0381 0.3770 Select 0.0012 0.0081 0.0758 0.7583 ToList 0.0002 0.0012 0.0100 0.0996 Manual 0.0003 0.0026 0.0253 0.2514   Notice something interesting here, you’d think the “roll your own” loop would be the most efficient, but it only wins when the item is first (or very close to it) regardless of list size.  In almost all other cases though and in particular the average case and worst case, the ToList()/FindIndex() combo wins for performance, even though it is creating some temporary memory to hold the List<T>.  If you examine the algorithm, the reason why is most likely because once it’s in a ToList() form, internally FindIndex() scans the internal array which is much more efficient to iterate over.  Thus, it takes a one time performance hit (not including any GC impact) to create the List<T> but after that the performance is much better. Summary If you’re concerned about too many throw-away objects, you can always roll your own FindIndex() method, but for sheer simplicity and overall performance, using the ToList()/FindIndex() combo performs best on nearly all list sizes in the average and worst cases.    Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Litte Wonders,BlackRabbitCoder,Software,LINQ,List

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• Critique of SEO of this HTML

  - by Tom Gullen

  I'm designing a new site which I want to be as SEO friendly as possible, fast and responsive, semantic and very accessible. A lot of these things, embarrassingly are quite new to me. Have I miss applied anything? I want the template to be perfect. Live demo: http://69.24.73.172/demos/newDemo/ HTML: <!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="UTF-8" /> <title>Welcome to Scirra.com</title> <meta name="description" content="Construct 2, the HTML5 games creator." /> <meta name="keywords" content="game maker, game builder, html5, create games, games creator" /> <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/default.css" type="text/css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" href="plugins/coin-slider/coin-slider-styles.css" type="text/css" /> </head> <body> <div class="topBar"></div> <div class="mainBox"> <header> <div class="headWrapper"> <div class="s searchWrap"> <input type="text" name="SearchBox" id="SearchBox" tabindex="1" /> <div class="s searchIco"></div> </div> <!-- Logo placeholder --> </div> <div class="menuWrapper"><nav> <ul class="mainMenu"> <li><a href="#">Home</a></li> <li><a href="#">Forum</a></li> <li><a href="#" class="mainSelected">Construct</a></li> <li><a href="#">Arcade</a></li> <li><a href="#">Manual</a></li> </ul> <ul class="underMenu"> <li><a href="#">Homepage</a></li> <li><a href="#" class="underSelected">Construct</a></li> <li><a href="#">Products</a></li> <li><a href="#">Community Forum</a></li> <li><a href="#">Contact Us</a></li> </ul> </nav></div> </header> <div class="contentWrapper"> <div class="wideCol"> <div id="coin-slider" class="slideShowWrapper"> <a href="#" target="_blank"> <img src="images/screenshot1.jpg" alt="Screenshot" /> <span> Scirra software allows you to bring your imagination to life </span> </a> <a href="#"> <img src="images/screenshot2.jpg" alt="Screenshot" /> <span> Export your creations to HTML5 pages </span> </a> <a href="#"> <img src="images/screenshot3.jpg" alt="Screenshot" /> <span> Another description of some image </span> </a> <a href="#"> <img src="images/screenshot4.jpg" alt="Screenshot" /> <span> Something motivational to tell people </span> </a> </div> <div class="newsWrapper"> <h2>Latest from Twitter</h2> <div id="twitterFeed"> <p>The news on the block is this. Something has happened some news or something. <span class="smallDate">About 6 hours ago</span></p> <p>Another thing has happened lets tell the world some news or something. Lots to think about. Lots to do.<span class="smallDate">About 6 hours ago</span></p> <p>Shocker! Santa Claus is not real. This is breaking news, we must spread it. <span class="smallDate">About 6 hours ago</span></p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="thinCol"> <h1>Main Heading</h1> <p>Some paragraph goes here. It tells you about the picture. Cool! Have you thought about downloading Construct 2? Well you can download it with the link below. This column will expand vertically.</p> <h3>Help Me!</h3> <p>This column will keep expanging and expanging. It pads stuff out to make other things look good imo.</p> <h3>Why Download?</h3> <p>As well as other features, we also have some other features. Check out our <a href="#">other features</a>. Each of our other features is really cool and there to help everyone suceed.</p> <a href="#" class="s downloadBox" title="Download Construct 2 Now"> <div class="downloadHead">Download</div> <div class="downloadSize">24.5 MB</div> </a> </div> <div class="clear"></div> <h2>This Weeks Spotlight</h2> <div class="halfColWrapper"> <img src="images/spotlight1.png" class="spotLightImg" alt="Spotlight User" /> <p>Our spotlight member this week is Pooh-Bah. He writes good stuff. Read it. <a class="moreInfoLink" href="#">Learn More</a></p> </div> <div class="halfColWrapper r"> <img src="images/spotlight2.png" class="spotLightImg" alt="Spotlight Game" /> <p>Killer Bears is a scary ass game from JimmyJones. How many bears can you escape from? <a class="moreInfoLink" href="#">Learn More</a></p> </div> <div class="clear"></div> </div> </div><div class="mainEnder"></div> <footer> <div class="footerWrapper"> <div class="footerBox"> <div class="footerItem"> <h4>Community</h4> <ul> <li><a href="#">The Blog</a></li> <li><a href="#">Community Forum</a></li> <li><a href="#">RSS Feed</a></li> <li> <a class="s footIco facebook" href="http://www.facebook.com/ScirraOfficial" target="_blank" title="Visit Scirra on Facebook"></a> <a class="s footIco twitter" href="http://twitter.com/Scirra" target="_blank" title="Follow Scirra on Twitter"></a> <a class="s footIco youtube" href="http://www.youtube.com/user/ScirraVideos" target="_blank" title="Visit Scirra on Youtube"></a> </li> </ul> </div> <div class="footerItem"> <h4>About Us</h4> <ul> <li><a href="#">Contact Information</a></li> <li><a href="#">Advertising</a></li> <li><a href="#">History</a></li> <li><a href="#">Privacy Policy</a></li> <li><a href="#">Terms and Conditions</a></li> </ul> </div> <div class="footerItem"> <h4>Want to Help?</h4> <p>You can contribute to the community <a href="#">in lots of ways</a>. We have a large active friendly community, and there are lots of ways to join in!</p> <a href="#" class="ralign"><strong>Learn More</strong></a> </div> <div class="clear"></div> </div> </div> <div class="copyright"> Copyright &copy; 2011 Scirra.com. All rights reserved. </div> </footer> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.4/jquery.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/common.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="plugins/coin-slider/coin-slider.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/homepage.js"></script> </body> </html>

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• Top 5 Developer Enabling Nuggets in MySQL 5.6

  - by Rob Young

  MySQL 5.6 is truly a better MySQL and reflects Oracle's commitment to the evolution of the most popular and widelyused open source database on the planet.  The feature-complete 5.6 release candidate was announced at MySQL Connect in late September and the production-ready, generally available ("GA") product should be available in early 2013.  While the message around 5.6 has been focused mainly on mass appeal, advanced topics like performance/scale, high availability, and self-healing replication clusters, MySQL 5.6 also provides many developer-friendly nuggets that are designed to enable those who are building the next generation of web-based and embedded applications and services. Boiling down the 5.6 feature set into a smaller set, of simple, easy to use goodies designed with developer agility in mind, these things deserve a quick look:Subquery Optimizations Using semi-JOINs and late materialization, the MySQL 5.6 Optimizer delivers greatly improved subquery performance. Specifically, the optimizer is now more efficient in handling subqueries in the FROM clause; materialization of subqueries in the FROM clause is now postponed until their contents are needed during execution. Additionally, the optimizer may add an index to derived tables during execution to speed up row retrieval. Internal tests run using the DBT-3 benchmark Query #13, shown below, demonstrate an order of magnitude improvement in execution times (from days to seconds) over previous versions. select c_name, c_custkey, o_orderkey, o_orderdate, o_totalprice, sum(l_quantity)from customer, orders, lineitemwhere o_orderkey in (                select l_orderkey                from lineitem                group by l_orderkey                having sum(l_quantity) > 313  )  and c_custkey = o_custkey  and o_orderkey = l_orderkeygroup by c_name, c_custkey, o_orderkey, o_orderdate, o_totalpriceorder by o_totalprice desc, o_orderdateLIMIT 100;What does this mean for developers?  For starters, simplified subqueries can now be coded instead of complex joins for cross table lookups: SELECT title FROM film WHERE film_id IN (SELECT film_id FROM film_actor GROUP BY film_id HAVING count(*) > 12); And even more importantly subqueries embedded in packaged applications no longer need to be re-written into joins.  This is good news for both ISVs and their customers who have access to the underlying queries and who have spent development cycles writing, testing and maintaining their own versions of re-written queries across updated versions of a packaged app.The details are in the MySQL 5.6 docs. Online DDL OperationsToday's web-based applications are designed to rapidly evolve and adapt to meet business and revenue-generationrequirements. As a result, development SLAs are now most often measured in minutes vs days or weeks. For example, when an application must quickly support new product lines or new products within existing product lines, the backend database schema must adapt in kind, and most commonly while the application remains available for normal business operations.  MySQL 5.6 supports this level of online schema flexibility and agility by providing the following new ALTER TABLE online DDL syntax additions:  CREATE INDEX DROP INDEX Change AUTO_INCREMENT value for a column ADD/DROP FOREIGN KEY Rename COLUMN Change ROW FORMAT, KEY_BLOCK_SIZE for a table Change COLUMN NULL, NOT_NULL Add, drop, reorder COLUMN Again, the details are in the MySQL 5.6 docs. Key-value access to InnoDB via Memcached APIMany of the next generation of web, cloud, social and mobile applications require fast operations against simple Key/Value pairs. At the same time, they must retain the ability to run complex queries against the same data, as well as ensure the data is protected with ACID guarantees. With the new NoSQL API for InnoDB, developers have allthe benefits of a transactional RDBMS, coupled with the performance capabilities of Key/Value store.MySQL 5.6 provides simple, key-value interaction with InnoDB data via the familiar Memcached API.  Implemented via a new Memcached daemon plug-in to mysqld, the new Memcached protocol is mapped directly to the native InnoDB API and enables developers to use existing Memcached clients to bypass the expense of query parsing and go directly to InnoDB data for lookups and transactional compliant updates.  The API makes it possible to re-use standard Memcached libraries and clients, while extending Memcached functionality by integrating a persistent, crash-safe, transactional database back-end.  The implementation is shown here:So does this option provide a performance benefit over SQL?  Internal performance benchmarks using a customized Java application and test harness show some very promising results with a 9X improvement in overall throughput for SET/INSERT operations:You can follow the InnoDB team blog for the methodology, implementation and internal test cases that generated these results here. How to get started with Memcached API to InnoDB is here. New Instrumentation in Performance SchemaThe MySQL Performance Schema was introduced in MySQL 5.5 and is designed to provide point in time metrics for key performance indicators.  MySQL 5.6 improves the Performance Schema in answer to the most common DBA and Developer problems.  New instrumentations include: Statements/Stages What are my most resource intensive queries? Where do they spend time? Table/Index I/O, Table Locks Which application tables/indexes cause the most load or contention? Users/Hosts/Accounts Which application users, hosts, accounts are consuming the most resources? Network I/O What is the network load like? How long do sessions idle? Summaries Aggregated statistics grouped by statement, thread, user, host, account or object. The MySQL 5.6 Performance Schema is now enabled by default in the my.cnf file with optimized and auto-tune settings that minimize overhead (< 5%, but mileage will vary), so using the Performance Schema ona production server to monitor the most common application use cases is less of an issue.  In addition, new atomic levels of instrumentation enable the capture of granular levels of resource consumption by users, hosts, accounts, applications, etc. for billing and chargeback purposes in cloud computing environments.The MySQL docs are an excellent resource for all that is available and that can be done with the 5.6 Performance Schema. Better Condition Handling - GET DIAGNOSTICSMySQL 5.6 enables developers to easily check for error conditions and code for exceptions by introducing the new MySQL Diagnostics Area and corresponding GET DIAGNOSTICS interface command. The Diagnostic Area can be populated via multiple options and provides 2 kinds of information:Statement - which provides affected row count and number of conditions that occurredCondition - which provides error codes and messages for all conditions that were returned by a previous operation The addressable items for each are: The new GET DIAGNOSTICS command provides a standard interface into the Diagnostics Area and can be used via the CLI or from within application code to easily retrieve and handle the results of the most recent statement execution.  An example of how it is used might be:mysql> DROP TABLE test.no_such_table; ERROR 1051 (42S02): Unknown table 'test.no_such_table' mysql> GET DIAGNOSTICS CONDITION 1 -> @p1 = RETURNED_SQLSTATE, @p2 = MESSAGE_TEXT; mysql> SELECT @p1, @p2; +-------+------------------------------------+| @p1   | @p2                                | +-------+------------------------------------+| 42S02 | Unknown table 'test.no_such_table' | +-------+------------------------------------+ Options for leveraging the MySQL Diagnotics Area and GET DIAGNOSTICS are detailed in the MySQL Docs.While the above is a summary of some of the key developer enabling 5.6 features, it is by no means exhaustive. You can dig deeper into what MySQL 5.6 has to offer by reading this developer zone article or checking out "What's New in MySQL 5.6" in the MySQL docs.BONUS ALERT!  If you are developing on Windows or are considering MySQL as an alternative to SQL Server for your next project, application or shipping product, you should check out the MySQL Installer for Windows.  The installer includes the MySQL 5.6 RC database, all drivers, Visual Studio and Excel plugins, tray monitor and development tools all a single download and GUI installer.   So what are your next steps? Register for Dec. 13 "MySQL 5.6: Building the Next Generation of Web-Based Applications and Services" live web event.  Hurry!  Seats are limited. Download the MySQL 5.6 Release Candidate (look under the Development Releases tab) Provide Feedback <link to http://bugs.mysql.com/> Join the Developer discussion on the MySQL Forums Explore all MySQL Products and Developer Tools As always, thanks for your continued support of MySQL!

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• Windows Azure Mobile Services: New support for iOS apps, Facebook/Twitter/Google identity, Emails, SMS, Blobs, Service Bus and more

  - by ScottGu

  A few weeks ago I blogged about Windows Azure Mobile Services - a new capability in Windows Azure that makes it incredibly easy to connect your client and mobile applications to a scalable cloud backend. Earlier today we delivered a number of great improvements to Windows Azure Mobile Services.  New features include: iOS support – enabling you to connect iPhone and iPad apps to Mobile Services Facebook, Twitter, and Google authentication support with Mobile Services Blob, Table, Queue, and Service Bus support from within your Mobile Service Sending emails from your Mobile Service (in partnership with SendGrid) Sending SMS messages from your Mobile Service (in partnership with Twilio) Ability to deploy mobile services in the West US region All of these improvements are now live in production and available to start using immediately. Below are more details on them: iOS Support This week we delivered initial support for connecting iOS based devices (including iPhones and iPads) to Windows Azure Mobile Services.  Like the rest of our Windows Azure SDK, we are delivering the native iOS libraries to enable this under an open source (Apache 2.0) license on GitHub.  We’re excited to get your feedback on this new library through our forum and GitHub issues list, and we welcome contributions to the SDK. To create a new iOS app or connect an existing iOS app to your Mobile Service, simply select the “iOS” tab within the Quick Start view of a Mobile Service within the Windows Azure Portal – and then follow either the “Create a new iOS app” or “Connect to an existing iOS app” link below it: Clicking either of these links will expand and display step-by-step instructions for how to build an iOS application that connects with your Mobile Service: Read this getting started tutorial to walkthrough how you can build (in less than 5 minutes) a simple iOS “Todo List” app that stores data in Windows Azure.  Then follow the below tutorials to explore how to use the iOS client libraries to store data and authenticate users. Get Started with data in Mobile Services for iOS Get Started with authentication in Mobile Services for iOS Facebook, Twitter, and Google Authentication Support Our initial preview of Mobile Services supported the ability to authenticate users of mobile apps using Microsoft Accounts (formerly called Windows Live ID accounts).  This week we are adding the ability to also authenticate users using Facebook, Twitter, and Google credentials.  These are now supported with both Windows 8 apps as well as iOS apps (and a single app can support multiple forms of identity simultaneously – so you can offer your users a choice of how to login). The below tutorials walkthrough how to register your Mobile Service with an identity provider: How to register your app with Microsoft Account How to register your app with Facebook How to register your app with Twitter How to register your app with Google The tutorials above walkthrough how to obtain a client ID and a secret key from the identity provider. You can then click on the “Identity” tab of your Mobile Service (within the Windows Azure Portal) and save these values to enable server-side authentication with your Mobile Service: You can then write code within your client or mobile app to authenticate your users to the Mobile Service.  For example, below is the code you would write to have them login to the Mobile Service using their Facebook credentials: Windows Store App (using C#): var user = await App.MobileService                     .LoginAsync(MobileServiceAuthenticationProvider.Facebook); iOS app (using Objective C): UINavigationController *controller = [self.todoService.client     loginViewControllerWithProvider:@"facebook"     completion:^(MSUser *user, NSError *error) {        //... }]; Learn more about authenticating Mobile Services using Microsoft Account, Facebook, Twitter, and Google from these tutorials: Get started with authentication in Mobile Services for Windows Store (C#) Get started with authentication in Mobile Services for Windows Store (JavaScript) Get started with authentication in Mobile Services for iOS Using Windows Azure Blob, Tables and ServiceBus with your Mobile Services Mobile Services provide a simple but powerful way to add server logic using server scripts. These scripts are associated with the individual CRUD operations on your mobile service’s tables. Server scripts are great for data validation, custom authorization logic (e.g. does this user participate in this game session), augmenting CRUD operations, sending push notifications, and other similar scenarios.   Server scripts are written in JavaScript and are executed in a secure server-side scripting environment built using Node.js.  You can edit these scripts and save them on the server directly within the Windows Azure Portal: In this week’s release we have added the ability to work with other Windows Azure services from your Mobile Service server scripts.  This is supported using the existing “azure” module within the Windows Azure SDK for Node.js.  For example, the below code could be used in a Mobile Service script to obtain a reference to a Windows Azure Table (after which you could query it or insert data into it):     var azure = require('azure');     var tableService = azure.createTableService("<< account name >>",                                                 "<< access key >>"); Follow the tutorials on the Windows Azure Node.js dev center to learn more about working with Blob, Tables, Queues and Service Bus using the azure module. Sending emails from your Mobile Service In this week’s release we have also added the ability to easily send emails from your Mobile Service, building on our partnership with SendGrid. Whether you want to add a welcome email upon successful user registration, or make your app alert you of certain usage activities, you can do this now by sending email from Mobile Services server scripts. To get started, sign up for SendGrid account at http://sendgrid.com . Windows Azure customers receive a special offer of 25,000 free emails per month from SendGrid. To sign-up for this offer, or get more information, please visit http://www.sendgrid.com/azure.html . One you signed up, you can add the following script to your Mobile Service server scripts to send email via SendGrid service:     var sendgrid = new SendGrid('<< account name >>', '<< password >>');       sendgrid.send({         to: '<< enter email address here >>',         from: '<< enter from address here >>',         subject: 'New to-do item',         text: 'A new to-do was added: ' + item.text     }, function (success, message) {         if (!success) {             console.error(message);         }     }); Follow the Send email from Mobile Services with SendGrid tutorial to learn more. Sending SMS messages from your Mobile Service SMS is a key communication medium for mobile apps - it comes in handy if you want your app to send users a confirmation code during registration, allow your users to invite their friends to install your app or reach out to mobile users without a smartphone. Using Mobile Service server scripts and Twilio’s REST API, you can now easily send SMS messages to your app.  To get started, sign up for Twilio account. Windows Azure customers receive 1000 free text messages when using Twilio and Windows Azure together. Once signed up, you can add the following to your Mobile Service server scripts to send SMS messages:     var httpRequest = require('request');     var account_sid = "<< account SID >>";     var auth_token = "<< auth token >>";       // Create the request body     var body = "From=" + from + "&To=" + to + "&Body=" + message;       // Make the HTTP request to Twilio     httpRequest.post({         url: "https://" + account_sid + ":" + auth_token +              "@api.twilio.com/2010-04-01/Accounts/" + account_sid + "/SMS/Messages.json",         headers: { 'content-type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' },         body: body     }, function (err, resp, body) {         console.log(body);     }); I’m excited to be speaking at the TwilioCon conference this week, and will be showcasing some of the cool scenarios you can now enable with Twilio and Windows Azure Mobile Services. Mobile Services availability in West US region Our initial preview of Windows Azure Mobile Services was only supported in the US East region of Windows Azure.  As with every Windows Azure service, overtime we will extend Mobile Services to all Windows Azure regions. With this week’s preview update we’ve added support so that you can now create your Mobile Service in the West US region as well: Summary The above features are all now live in production and are available to use immediately.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using Mobile Services today. Visit the Windows Azure Mobile Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with Mobile Services. We’ll have even more new features and enhancements coming later this week – including .NET 4.5 support for Windows Azure Web Sites.  Keep an eye out on my blog for details as new features become available. 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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• jQuery CSS Property Monitoring Plug-in updated

  - by Rick Strahl

  A few weeks back I had talked about the need to watch properties of an object and be able to take action when certain values changed. The need for this arose out of wanting to build generic components that could 'attach' themselves to other objects. One example is a drop shadow - if I add a shadow behavior to an object I want the shadow to be pinned to that object so when that object moves I also want the shadow to move with it, or when the panel is hidden the shadow should hide with it - automatically without having to explicitly hook up monitoring code to the panel. For example, in my shadow plug-in I can now do something like this (where el is the element that has the shadow attached and sh is the shadow): if (!exists) // if shadow was created el.watch("left,top,width,height,display", function() { if (el.is(":visible")) $(this).shadow(opt); // redraw else sh.hide(); }, 100, "_shadowMove"); The code now monitors several properties and if any of them change the provided function is called. So when the target object is moved or hidden or resized the watcher function is called and the shadow can be redrawn or hidden in the case of visibility going away. So if you run any of the following code: $("#box") .shadow() .draggable({ handle: ".blockheader" }); // drag around the box - shadow should follow // hide the box - shadow should disappear with box setTimeout(function() { $("#box").hide(); }, 4000); // show the box - shadow should come back too setTimeout(function() { $("#box").show(); }, 8000); This can be very handy functionality when you're dealing with objects or operations that you need to track generically and there are no native events for them. For example, with a generic shadow object that attaches itself to any another element there's no way that I know of to track whether the object has been moved or hidden either via some UI operation (like dragging) or via code. While some UI operations like jQuery.ui.draggable would allow events to fire when the mouse is moved nothing of the sort exists if you modify locations in code. Even tracking the object in drag mode this is hardly generic behavior - a generic shadow implementation can't know when dragging is hooked up. So the watcher provides an alternative that basically gives an Observer like pattern that notifies you when something you're interested in changes. In the watcher hookup code (in the shadow() plugin) above  a check is made if the object is visible and if it is the shadow is redrawn. Otherwise the shadow is hidden. The first parameter is a list of CSS properties to be monitored followed by the function that is called. The function called receives this as the element that's been changed and receives two parameters: The array of watched objects with their current values, plus an index to the object that caused the change function to fire. How does it work When I wrote it about this last time I started out with a simple timer that would poll for changes at a fixed interval with setInterval(). A few folks commented that there are is a DOM API - DOMAttrmodified in Mozilla and propertychange in IE that allow notification whenever any property changes which is much more efficient and smooth than the setInterval approach I used previously. On browser that support these events (FireFox and IE basically - WebKit has the DOMAttrModified event but it doesn't appear to work) the shadow effect is instant - no 'drag behind' of the shadow. Running on a browser that doesn't support still uses setInterval() and the shadow movement is slightly delayed which looks sloppy. There are a few additional changes to this code - it also supports monitoring multiple CSS properties now so a single object can monitor a host of CSS properties rather than one object per property which is easier to work with. For display purposes position, bounds and visibility will be common properties that are to be watched. Here's what the new version looks like: $.fn.watch = function (props, func, interval, id) { /// <summary> /// Allows you to monitor changes in a specific /// CSS property of an element by polling the value. /// when the value changes a function is called. /// The function called is called in the context /// of the selected element (ie. this) /// </summary> /// <param name="prop" type="String">CSS Properties to watch sep. by commas</param> /// <param name="func" type="Function"> /// Function called when the value has changed. /// </param> /// <param name="interval" type="Number"> /// Optional interval for browsers that don't support DOMAttrModified or propertychange events. /// Determines the interval used for setInterval calls. /// </param> /// <param name="id" type="String">A unique ID that identifies this watch instance on this element</param> /// <returns type="jQuery" /> if (!interval) interval = 200; if (!id) id = "_watcher"; return this.each(function () { var _t = this; var el$ = $(this); var fnc = function () { __watcher.call(_t, id) }; var itId = null; var data = { id: id, props: props.split(","), func: func, vals: [props.split(",").length], fnc: fnc, origProps: props, interval: interval }; $.each(data.props, function (i) { data.vals[i] = el$.css(data.props[i]); }); el$.data(id, data); hookChange(el$, id, data.fnc); }); function hookChange(el$, id, fnc) { el$.each(function () { var el = $(this); if (typeof (el.get(0).onpropertychange) == "object") el.bind("propertychange." + id, fnc); else if ($.browser.mozilla) el.bind("DOMAttrModified." + id, fnc); else itId = setInterval(fnc, interval); }); } function __watcher(id) { var el$ = $(this); var w = el$.data(id); if (!w) return; var _t = this; if (!w.func) return; // must unbind or else unwanted recursion may occur el$.unwatch(id); var changed = false; var i = 0; for (i; i < w.props.length; i++) { var newVal = el$.css(w.props[i]); if (w.vals[i] != newVal) { w.vals[i] = newVal; changed = true; break; } } if (changed) w.func.call(_t, w, i); // rebind event hookChange(el$, id, w.fnc); } } $.fn.unwatch = function (id) { this.each(function () { var el = $(this); var fnc = el.data(id).fnc; try { if (typeof (this.onpropertychange) == "object") el.unbind("propertychange." + id, fnc); else if ($.browser.mozilla) el.unbind("DOMAttrModified." + id, fnc); else clearInterval(id); } // ignore if element was already unbound catch (e) { } }); return this; } There are basically two jQuery functions - watch and unwatch. jQuery.fn.watch(props,func,interval,id) Starts watching an element for changes in the properties specified. props The CSS properties that are to be watched for changes. If any of the specified properties changes the function specified in the second parameter is fired. func (watchData,index) The function fired in response to a changed property. Receives this as the element changed and object that represents the watched properties and their respective values. The first parameter is passed in this structure:    { id: itId, props: [], func: func, vals: [] }; A second parameter is the index of the changed property so data.props[i] or data.vals[i] gets the property value that has changed. interval The interval for setInterval() for those browsers that don't support property watching in the DOM. In milliseconds. id An optional id that identifies this watcher. Required only if multiple watchers might be hooked up to the same element. The default is _watcher if not specified. jQuery.fn.unwatch(id) Unhooks watching of the element by disconnecting the event handlers. id Optional watcher id that was specified in the call to watch. This value can be omitted to use the default value of _watcher. You can also grab the latest version of the  code for this plug-in as well as the shadow in the full library at: http://www.west-wind.com:8080/svn/jquery/trunk/jQueryControls/Resources/ww.jquery.js watcher has no other dependencies although it lives in this larger library. The shadow plug-in depends on watcher.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011

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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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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: Skip() and Take()

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. I’ve covered many valuable methods from System.Linq class library before, so you already know it’s packed with extension-method goodness.  Today I’d like to cover two small families I’ve neglected to mention before: Skip() and Take().  While these methods seem so simple, they are an easy way to create sub-sequences for IEnumerable<T>, much the way GetRange() creates sub-lists for List<T>. Skip() and SkipWhile() The Skip() family of methods is used to ignore items in a sequence until either a certain number are passed, or until a certain condition becomes false.  This makes the methods great for starting a sequence at a point possibly other than the first item of the original sequence.   The Skip() family of methods contains the following methods (shown below in extension method syntax): Skip(int count) Ignores the specified number of items and returns a sequence starting at the item after the last skipped item (if any).  SkipWhile(Func<T, bool> predicate) Ignores items as long as the predicate returns true and returns a sequence starting with the first item to invalidate the predicate (if any).  SkipWhile(Func<T, int, bool> predicate) Same as above, but passes not only the item itself to the predicate, but also the index of the item.  For example: 1: var list = new[] { 3.14, 2.72, 42.0, 9.9, 13.0, 101.0 }; 2:  3: // sequence contains { 2.72, 42.0, 9.9, 13.0, 101.0 } 4: var afterSecond = list.Skip(1); 5: Console.WriteLine(string.Join(", ", afterSecond)); 6:  7: // sequence contains { 42.0, 9.9, 13.0, 101.0 } 8: var afterFirstDoubleDigit = list.SkipWhile(v => v < 10.0); 9: Console.WriteLine(string.Join(", ", afterFirstDoubleDigit)); Note that the SkipWhile() stops skipping at the first item that returns false and returns from there to the rest of the sequence, even if further items in that sequence also would satisfy the predicate (otherwise, you’d probably be using Where() instead, of course). If you do use the form of SkipWhile() which also passes an index into the predicate, then you should keep in mind that this is the index of the item in the sequence you are calling SkipWhile() from, not the index in the original collection.  That is, consider the following: 1: var list = new[] { 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 }; 2:  3: // Get all items < 10, then 4: var whatAmI = list 5: .Skip(2) 6: .SkipWhile((i, x) => i > x); For this example the result above is 2.4, and not 1.2, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 as some might expect.  The key is knowing what the index is that’s passed to the predicate in SkipWhile().  In the code above, because Skip(2) skips 1.0 and 1.1, the sequence passed to SkipWhile() begins at 1.2 and thus it considers the “index” of 1.2 to be 0 and not 2.  This same logic applies when using any of the extension methods that have an overload that allows you to pass an index into the delegate, such as SkipWhile(), TakeWhile(), Select(), Where(), etc.  It should also be noted, that it’s fine to Skip() more items than exist in the sequence (an empty sequence is the result), or even to Skip(0) which results in the full sequence.  So why would it ever be useful to return Skip(0) deliberately?  One reason might be to return a List<T> as an immutable sequence.  Consider this class: 1: public class MyClass 2: { 3: private List<int> _myList = new List<int>(); 4:  5: // works on surface, but one can cast back to List<int> and mutate the original... 6: public IEnumerable<int> OneWay 7: { 8: get { return _myList; } 9: } 10:  11: // works, but still has Add() etc which throw at runtime if accidentally called 12: public ReadOnlyCollection<int> AnotherWay 13: { 14: get { return new ReadOnlyCollection<int>(_myList); } 15: } 16:  17: // immutable, can't be cast back to List<int>, doesn't have methods that throw at runtime 18: public IEnumerable<int> YetAnotherWay 19: { 20: get { return _myList.Skip(0); } 21: } 22: } This code snippet shows three (among many) ways to return an internal sequence in varying levels of immutability.  Obviously if you just try to return as IEnumerable<T> without doing anything more, there’s always the danger the caller could cast back to List<T> and mutate your internal structure.  You could also return a ReadOnlyCollection<T>, but this still has the mutating methods, they just throw at runtime when called instead of giving compiler errors.  Finally, you can return the internal list as a sequence using Skip(0) which skips no items and just runs an iterator through the list.  The result is an iterator, which cannot be cast back to List<T>.  Of course, there’s many ways to do this (including just cloning the list, etc.) but the point is it illustrates a potential use of using an explicit Skip(0). Take() and TakeWhile() The Take() and TakeWhile() methods can be though of as somewhat of the inverse of Skip() and SkipWhile().  That is, while Skip() ignores the first X items and returns the rest, Take() returns a sequence of the first X items and ignores the rest.  Since they are somewhat of an inverse of each other, it makes sense that their calling signatures are identical (beyond the method name obviously): Take(int count) Returns a sequence containing up to the specified number of items. Anything after the count is ignored. TakeWhile(Func<T, bool> predicate) Returns a sequence containing items as long as the predicate returns true.  Anything from the point the predicate returns false and beyond is ignored. TakeWhile(Func<T, int, bool> predicate) Same as above, but passes not only the item itself to the predicate, but also the index of the item. So, for example, we could do the following: 1: var list = new[] { 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 }; 2:  3: // sequence contains 1.0 and 1.1 4: var firstTwo = list.Take(2); 5:  6: // sequence contains 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 7: var underTwo = list.TakeWhile(i => i < 2.0); The same considerations for SkipWhile() with index apply to TakeWhile() with index, of course.  Using Skip() and Take() for sub-sequences A few weeks back, I talked about The List<T> Range Methods and showed how they could be used to get a sub-list of a List<T>.  This works well if you’re dealing with List<T>, or don’t mind converting to List<T>.  But if you have a simple IEnumerable<T> sequence and want to get a sub-sequence, you can also use Skip() and Take() to much the same effect: 1: var list = new List<double> { 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 }; 2:  3: // results in List<T> containing { 1.2, 2.2, 2.3 } 4: var subList = list.GetRange(2, 3); 5:  6: // results in sequence containing { 1.2, 2.2, 2.3 } 7: var subSequence = list.Skip(2).Take(3); I say “much the same effect” because there are some differences.  First of all GetRange() will throw if the starting index or the count are greater than the number of items in the list, but Skip() and Take() do not.  Also GetRange() is a method off of List<T>, thus it can use direct indexing to get to the items much more efficiently, whereas Skip() and Take() operate on sequences and may actually have to walk through the items they skip to create the resulting sequence.  So each has their pros and cons.  My general rule of thumb is if I’m already working with a List<T> I’ll use GetRange(), but for any plain IEnumerable<T> sequence I’ll tend to prefer Skip() and Take() instead. Summary The Skip() and Take() families of LINQ extension methods are handy for producing sub-sequences from any IEnumerable<T> sequence.  Skip() will ignore the specified number of items and return the rest of the sequence, whereas Take() will return the specified number of items and ignore the rest of the sequence.  Similarly, the SkipWhile() and TakeWhile() methods can be used to skip or take items, respectively, until a given predicate returns false.    Technorati Tags: C#, CSharp, .NET, LINQ, IEnumerable<T>, Skip, Take, SkipWhile, TakeWhile

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• How to resolve "dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/python-apport_2.0.1-0ubuntu9_all.deb"?

  - by raz7588

  Update Manager will not update although I have over 100 updates to do I get a error message like this: installArchives() failed: Extracting templates from packages: 29%% Extracting templates from packages: 58%% Extracting templates from packages: 88%% Extracting templates from packages: 100%% Preconfiguring packages ... Extracting templates from packages: 29%% Extracting templates from packages: 58%% Extracting templates from packages: 88%% Extracting templates from packages: 100%% Preconfiguring packages ... Extracting templates from packages: 29%% Extracting templates from packages: 58%% Extracting templates from packages: 88%% Extracting templates from packages: 100%% Preconfiguring packages ... Extracting templates from packages: 29%% Extracting templates from packages: 58%% Extracting templates from packages: 88%% Extracting templates from packages: 100%% Preconfiguring packages ... (Reading database ... (Reading database ... 5%% (Reading database ... 10%% (Reading database ... 15%% (Reading database ... 20%% (Reading database ... 25%% (Reading database ... 30%% (Reading database ... 35%% (Reading database ... 40%% (Reading database ... 45%% (Reading database ... 50%% (Reading database ... 55%% (Reading database ... 60%% (Reading database ... 65%% (Reading database ... 70%% (Reading database ... 75%% (Reading database ... 80%% (Reading database ... 85%% (Reading database ... 90%% (Reading database ... 95%% (Reading database ... 100%% (Reading database ... 189751 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace python-problem-report 2.0.1-0ubuntu7 (using .../python-problem-report_2.0.1-0ubuntu9_all.deb) ... Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 33, in <module> from debpython.namespace import add_namespace_files ValueError: bad marshal data (unknown type code) dpkg: warning: subprocess old pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 dpkg - trying script from the new package instead ... Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 33, in <module> from debpython.namespace import add_namespace_files ValueError: bad marshal data (unknown type code) dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/python-problem-report_2.0.1-0ubuntu9_all.deb (--unpack): subprocess new pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pycompile", line 39, in <module> from debpython.namespace import add_namespace_files ValueError: bad marshal data (unknown type code) dpkg: error while cleaning up: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Preparing to replace python-apport 2.0.1-0ubuntu7 (using .../python-apport_2.0.1-0ubuntu9_all.deb) ... Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 33, in <module> from debpython.namespace import add_namespace_files ValueError: bad marshal data (unknown type code) dpkg: warning: subprocess old pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 dpkg - trying script from the new package instead ... Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 33, in <module> from debpython.namespace import add_namespace_files ValueError: bad marshal data (unknown type code) dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/python-apport_2.0.1-0ubuntu9_all.deb (--unpack): subprocess new pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pycompile", line 39, in <module> from debpython.namespace import add_namespace_files ValueError: bad marshal data (unknown type code) dpkg: error while cleaning up: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Preparing to replace apport 2.0.1-0ubuntu7 (using .../apport_2.0.1-0ubuntu9_all.deb) ... apport stop/waiting Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 33, in <module> from debpython.namespace import add_namespace_files ValueError: bad marshal data (unknown type code) dpkg: warning: subprocess old pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 dpkg - trying script from the new package instead ... Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 33, in <module> from debpython.namespace import add_namespace_files ValueError: bad marshal data (unknown type code) dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/apport_2.0.1-0ubuntu9_all.deb (--unpack): subprocess new pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already apport start/running Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pycompile", line 39, in <module> from debpython.namespace import add_namespace_files ValueError: bad marshal data (unknown type code) dpkg: error while cleaning up: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Preparing to replace gnome-orca 3.4.1-0ubuntu0.1 (using .../gnome-orca_3.4.2-0ubuntu0.1_all.deb) ... Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 33, in <module> from debpython.namespace import add_namespace_files ValueError: bad marshal data (unknown type code) dpkg: warning: subprocess old pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 dpkg - trying script from the new package instead ... Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 33, in <module> from debpython.namespace import add_namespace_files ValueError: bad marshal data (unknown type code) dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/gnome-orca_3.4.2-0ubuntu0.1_all.deb (--unpack): subprocess new pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pycompile", line 39, in <module> from debpython.namespace import add_namespace_files ValueError: bad marshal data (unknown type code) dpkg: error while cleaning up: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Preparing to replace python-piston-mini-client 0.7.2-0ubuntu1 (using .../python-piston-mini-client_0.7.2+bzr57-0ubuntu1_all.deb) ... Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 33, in <module> from debpython.namespace import add_namespace_files ValueError: bad marshal data (unknown type code) dpkg: warning: subprocess old pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 dpkg - trying script from the new package instead ... Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 33, in <module> from debpython.namespace import add_namespace_files ValueError: bad marshal data (unknown type code) dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/python-piston-mini-client_0.7.2+bzr57-0ubuntu1_all.deb (--unpack): subprocess new pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pycompile", line 39, in <module> from debpython.namespace import add_namespace_files ValueError: bad marshal data (unknown type code) dpkg: error while cleaning up: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Preparing to replace oneconf 0.2.8 (using .../oneconf_0.2.8.1_all.deb) ... Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 33, in <module> from debpython.namespace import add_namespace_files ValueError: bad marshal data (unknown type code) dpkg: warning: subprocess old pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 dpkg - trying script from the new package instead ... Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 33, in <module> from debpython.namespace import add_namespace_files ValueError: bad marshal data (unknown type code) dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/oneconf_0.2.8.1_all.deb (--unpack): subprocess new pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pycompile", line 39, in <module> from debpython.namespace import add_namespace_files ValueError: bad marshal data (unknown type code) dpkg: error while cleaning up: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Preparing to replace software-center 5.2.2 (using .../software-center_5.2.2.2_all.deb) ... Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 33, in <module> from debpython.namespace import add_namespace_files ValueError: bad marshal data (unknown type code) dpkg: warning: subprocess old pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 dpkg - trying script from the new package instead ... Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 33, in <module> from debpython.namespace import add_namespace_files ValueError: bad marshal data (unknown type code) dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/software-center_5.2.2.2_all.deb (--unpack): subprocess new pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pycompile", line 39, in <module> from debpython.namespace import add_namespace_files ValueError: bad marshal data (unknown type code) dpkg: error while cleaning up: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Preparing to replace libglade2-0 1:2.6.4-1ubuntu1 (using .../libglade2-0_1%%3a2.6.4-1ubuntu1.1_amd64.deb) ... Unpacking replacement libglade2-0 ... Preparing to replace libv4l-0 0.8.6-1ubuntu1 (using .../libv4l-0_0.8.6-1ubuntu2_amd64.deb) ... De-configuring libv4l-0:i386 ... Unpacking replacement libv4l-0 ... Preparing to replace libv4l-0:i386 0.8.6-1ubuntu1 (using .../libv4l-0_0.8.6-1ubuntu2_i386.deb) ... Unpacking replacement libv4l-0:i386 ... Preparing to replace libv4lconvert0:i386 0.8.6-1ubuntu1 (using .../libv4lconvert0_0.8.6-1ubuntu2_i386.deb) ... De-configuring libv4lconvert0 ... Unpacking replacement libv4lconvert0:i386 ... Preparing to replace libv4lconvert0 0.8.6-1ubuntu1 (using .../libv4lconvert0_0.8.6-1ubuntu2_amd64.deb) ... Unpacking replacement libv4lconvert0 ... Errors were encountered while processing: /var/cache/apt/archives/python-problem-report_2.0.1-0ubuntu9_all.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/python-apport_2.0.1-0ubuntu9_all.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/apport_2.0.1-0ubuntu9_all.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/gnome-orca_3.4.2-0ubuntu0.1_all.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/python-piston-mini-client_0.7.2+bzr57-0ubuntu1_all.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/oneconf_0.2.8.1_all.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/software-center_5.2.2.2_all.deb Error in function: SystemError: E:Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) Setting up libglade2-0 (1:2.6.4-1ubuntu1.1) ... dpkg: error processing gnome-orca (--configure): Package is in a very bad inconsistent state - you should reinstall it before attempting configuration. dpkg: error processing python-problem-report (--configure): Package is in a very bad inconsistent state - you should reinstall it before attempting configuration. Setting up libv4lconvert0 (0.8.6-1ubuntu2) ... Setting up libv4lconvert0:i386 (0.8.6-1ubuntu2) ... dpkg: error processing python-piston-mini-client (--configure): Package is in a very bad inconsistent state - you should reinstall it before attempting configuration. Setting up libv4l-0 (0.8.6-1ubuntu2) ... Setting up libv4l-0:i386 (0.8.6-1ubuntu2) ... dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of python-apport: python-apport depends on python-problem-report (>= 0.94); however: Package python-problem-report is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing python-apport (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of software-center: software-center depends on python-piston-mini-client (>= 0.1+bzr29); however: Package python-piston-mini-client is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing software-center (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of oneconf: oneconf depends on python-piston-mini-client (>= 0.3+bzr32-0ubuntu1); however: Package python-piston-mini-client is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing oneconf (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of apport: apport depends on python-apport (>= 2.0.1-0ubuntu7); however: Package python-apport is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing apport (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Processing triggers for libc-bin ... ldconfig deferred processing now taking place This has been going on for two weeks now and I cannot get any updates. Any help would be great.

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• Are your personal insecurities screwing up your internal communications?

  - by Lucy Boyes

  I do some internal comms as part of my job. Quite a lot of it involves talking to people about stuff. I’m spending the next couple of weeks talking to lots of people about internal comms itself, because we haven’t done a lot of audience/user feedback gathering, and it turns out that if you talk to people about how they feel and what they think, you get some pretty interesting insights (and an idea of what to do next that isn’t just based on guesswork and generalising from self). Three things keep coming up from talking to people about what we suck at  in terms of internal comms. And, as far as I can tell, they’re all examples where personal insecurity on the part of the person doing the communicating makes the experience much worse for the people on the receiving end. 1. Spending time telling people how you’re going to do something, not what you’re doing and why Imagine you’ve got to give an update to a lot of people who don’t work in your area or department but do have an interest in what you’re doing (either because they want to know because they’re curious or because they need to know because it’s going to affect their work too). You don’t want to look bad at your job. You want to make them think you’ve got it covered – ideally because you do*. And you want to reassure them that there’s lots of exciting work going on in your area to make [insert thing of choice] happen to [insert thing of choice] so that [insert group of people] will be happy. That’s great! You’re doing a good job and you want to tell people about it. This is good comms stuff right here. However, you’re slightly afraid you might secretly be stupid or lazy or incompetent. And you’re exponentially more afraid that the people you’re talking to might think you’re stupid or lazy or incompetent. Or pointless. Or not-adding-value. Or whatever the thing that’s the worst possible thing to be in your company is. So you open by mentioning all the stuff you’re going to do, spending five minutes or so making sure that everyone knows that you’re DOING lots of STUFF. And the you talk for the rest of the time about HOW you’re going to do the stuff, because that way everyone will know that you’ve thought about this really hard and done tons of planning and had lots of great ideas about process and that you’ve got this one down. That’s the stuff you’ve got to say, right? To prove you’re not fundamentally worthless as a human being? Well, maybe. But probably not. See, the people who need to know how you’re going to do the stuff are the people doing the stuff. And those are the people in your area who you’ve (hopefully-please-for-the-love-of-everything-holy) already talked to in depth about how you’re going to do the thing (because else how could they help do it?). They are the only people who need to know the how**. It’s the difference between strategy and tactics. The people outside of your bubble of stuff-doing need to know the strategy – what it is that you’re doing, why, where you’re going with it, etc. The people on the ground with you need the strategy and the tactics, because else they won’t know how to do the stuff. But the outside people don’t really need the tactics at all. Don’t bother with the how unless your audience needs it. They probably don’t. It might make you feel better about yourself, but it’s much more likely that Bob and Jane are thinking about how long this meeting has gone on for already than how personally impressive and definitely-not-an-idiot you are for knowing how you’re going to do some work. Feeling marginally better about yourself (but, let’s face it, still insecure as heck) is not worth the cost, which in this case is the alienation of your audience. 2. Talking for too long about stuff This is kinda the same problem as the previous problem, only much less specific, and I’ve more or less covered why it’s bad already. Basic motivation: to make people think you’re not an idiot. What you do: talk for a very long time about what you’re doing so as to make it sound like you know what you’re doing and lots about it. What your audience wants: the shortest meaningful update. Some of this is a kill your darlings problem – the stuff you’re doing that seems really nifty to you seems really nifty to you, and thus you want to share it with everyone to show that you’re a smart person who thinks up nifty things to do. The downside to this is that it’s mostly only interesting to you – if other people don’t need to know, they likely also don’t care. Think about how you feel when someone is talking a lot to you about a lot of stuff that they’re doing which is at best tangentially interesting and/or relevant. You’re probably not thinking that they’re really smart and clearly know what they’re doing (unless they’re talking a lot and being really engaging about it, which is not the same as talking a lot). You’re probably thinking about something totally unrelated to the thing they’re talking about. Or the fact that you’re bored. You might even – and this is the opposite of what they’re hoping to achieve by talking a lot about stuff – be thinking they’re kind of an idiot. There’s another huge advantage to paring down what you’re trying to say to the barest possible points – it clarifies your thinking. The lightning talk format, as well as other formats which limit the time and/or number of slides you have to say a thing, are really good for doing this. It’s incredibly likely that your audience in this case (the people who need to know some things about your thing but not all the things about your thing) will get everything they need to know from five minutes of you talking about it, especially if trying to condense ALL THE THINGS into a five-minute talk has helped you get clear in your own mind what you’re doing, what you’re trying to say about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. The bonus of this is that by being clear in your thoughts and in what you say, and in not taking up lots of people’s time to tell them stuff they don’t really need to know, you actually come across as much, much smarter than the person who talks for half an hour or more about things that are semi-relevant at best. 3. Waiting until you’ve got every detail sorted before announcing a big change to the people affected by it This is the worst crime on the list. It’s also human nature. Announcing uncertainty – that something important is going to happen (big reorganisation, product getting canned, etc.) but you’re not quite sure what or when or how yet – is scary. There are risks to it. Uncertainty makes people anxious. It might even paralyse them. You can’t run a business while you’re figuring out what to do if you’ve paralysed everyone with fear over what the future might bring. And you’re scared that they might think you’re not the right person to be in charge of [thing] if you don’t even know what you’re doing with it. Best not to say anything until you know exactly what’s going to happen and you can reassure them all, right? Nope. The people who are going to be affected by whatever it is that you don’t quite know all the details of yet aren’t stupid***. You wouldn’t have hired them if they were. They know something’s up because you’ve got your guilty face on and you keep pulling people into meeting rooms and looking vaguely worried. Here’s the deal: it’s a lot less stressful for everyone (including you) if you’re up front from the beginning. We took this approach during a recent company-wide reorganisation and got really positive feedback. People would much, much rather be told that something is going to happen but you’re not entirely sure what it is yet than have you wait until it’s all fixed up and then fait accompli the heck out of them. They will tell you this themselves if you ask them. And here’s why: by waiting until you know exactly what’s going on to communicate, you remove any agency that the people that the thing is going to happen to might otherwise have had. I know you’re scared that they might get scared – and that’s natural and kind of admirable – but it’s also patronising and infantilising. Ask someone whether they’d rather work on a project which has an openly uncertain future from the beginning, or one where everything’s great until it gets shut down with no forewarning, and very few people are going to tell you they’d prefer the latter. Uncertainty is humanising. It’s you admitting that you don’t have all the answers, which is great, because no one does. It allows you to be consultative – you can actually ask other people what they think and how they feel and what they’d like to do and what they think you should do, and they’ll thank you for it and feel listened to and respected as people and colleagues. Which is a really good reason to start talking to them about what’s going on as soon as you know something’s going on yourself. All of the above assumes you actually care about talking to the people who work with you and for you, and that you’d like to do the right thing by them. If that’s not the case, you can cheerfully disregard the advice here, but if it is, you might want to think about the ways above – and the inevitable countless other ways – that making internal communication about you and not about your audience could actually be doing the people you’re trying to communicate with a huge disservice. So take a deep breath and talk. For five minutes or so. About the important things. Not the other things. As soon as you possibly can. And you’ll be fine.   *Of course you do. You’re good at your job. Don’t worry. **This might not always be true, but it is most of the time. Other people who need to know the how will either be people who you’ve already identified as needing-to-know and thus part of the same set as the people in you’re area you’ve already discussed this with, or else they’ll ask you. But don’t bring this stuff up unless someone asks for it, because most of the people in the audience really don’t care and you’re wasting their time. ***I mean, they might be. But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they’re not.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 26, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 26, 2011Popular ReleasesDroid Builder: Droid Builder - 1.0.4194.38898: Support new type of patch package. Support plugin framework.Mosaic Project: Mosaic Alpha build 254: - Added horizontal scroll by mouse in fullscreen mode - Widgets now have fixed size - Reduced spacing between widgets - Widgets menu is scrollable by mouse now and not overlapping back button on small screens.Net Image Processor: v1.0: Initial release of the library containing the core architecture and two filters. To install, extract the library to somewhere sensible then reference as a file from your project in Visual Studio.Usage Agent: Usage Agent 9.0.8: Latest release. Changes include: - Fixes for Optus - Usage Delta statistic for BigPond - Eliminated the need for UAC prompt at every startupjQuery List DragSort: jQuery List DragSort 0.4.3: Fix item not dropping correctly on Chrome and jQuery 1.6KinectNUI: Jun 25 Alpha Release: Initial public version. No installer needed, just run the EXE.TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v3.3 [v1.0.5 Compatible]: I have added support for all the new items in Terraria v1.0.5. I have also added the ability to put your character in hardcore mode or take them out via a simple checkbox on the stats tab. If you come across any bugs, please let me know immediately.Media Companion: MC 3.409b-1 Weekly: This weeks release is part way through a major rewrite of the TVShow code. This means that a few TV related features & functions are not fully operational at the moment. The reason for this release is so that people can see if their particular issue has been fixed during the week. Some issues may not be able to be fully checked due to the ongoing TV code refactoring. So, I would strongly suggest that you put this version into a separate folder, copy your settings folder across & test MC that...Terraria World Viewer: Version 1.5: Update June 24th Made compatible with the new tiles found in Terraria 1.0.5Kinect Earth Move: KinectEarthMove sample code: Sample code releasedThis is a sample code for Kinect for Windows SDK beta, which was demonstrated on Channel 9 Kinect for Windows SKD beta launch event on June 17 2011. Using color image and skeleton data from Kinect and user in front of Kinect can manipulate the earth between his/her hands.NetOffice - The easiest way to use Office in .NET: NetOffice Release 0.9b: Changes: - fix critical issue 262334 (AccessViolationException while using events in a COMAddin) - remove x64 Assemblies (not necessary) Includes: - Runtime Binaries and Source Code for .NET Framework:......v2.0, v3.0, v3.5, v4.0 - Tutorials in C# and VB.Net:..............................................................COM Proxy Management, Events, etc. - Examples in C# and VB.Net:............................................................Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access - COMAddi...MiniTwitter: 1.70: MiniTwitter 1.70 ???? ?? ????? xAuth ?? OAuth ??????? 1.70 ??????????????????????????。 ???????????????? Twitter ? Web ??????????、PIN ????????????????????。??????????????????、???????????????????????????。Total Commander SkyDrive File System Plugin (.wfx): Total Commander SkyDrive File System Plugin 0.8.7b: Total Commander SkyDrive File System Plugin version 0.8.7b. Bug fixes: - BROKEN PLUGIN by upgrading SkyDriveServiceClient version 2.0.1b. Please do not forget to express your opinion of the plugin by rating it! Donate (EUR)SkyDrive .Net API Client: SkyDrive .Net API Client 2.0.1b (RELOADED): SkyDrive .Net API Client assembly has been RELOADED in version 2.0.1b as a REAL API. It supports the followings: - Creating root and sub folders - Uploading and downloading files - Renaming and deleting folders and files Bug fixes: - BROKEN API (issue 6834) Please do not forget to express your opinion of the assembly by rating it! Donate (EUR)Mini SQL Query: Mini SQL Query v1.0.0.59794: This release includes the following enhancements: Added a Most Recently Used file list Added Row counts to the query (per tab) and table view windows Added the Command Timeout option, only valid for MSSQL for now - see options If you have no idea what this thing is make sure you check out http://pksoftware.net/MiniSqlQuery/Help/MiniSqlQueryQuickStart.docx for an introduction. PK :-]HydroDesktop - CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System Desktop Application: 1.2.591 Beta Release: 1.2.591 Beta Releasepatterns & practices: Project Silk: Project Silk Community Drop 12 - June 22, 2011: Changes from previous drop: Minor code changes. New "Introduction" chapter. New "Modularity" chapter. Updated "Architecture" chapter. Updated "Server-Side Implementation" chapter. Updated "Client Data Management and Caching" chapter. Guidance Chapters Ready for Review The Word documents for the chapters are included with the source code in addition to the CHM to help you provide feedback. The PDF is provided as a separate download for your convenience. Installation Overview To ins...DropBox Linker: DropBox Linker 1.3: Added "Get links..." dialog, that provides selective public files links copying Get links link added to tray menu as the default option Fixed URL encoding .NET Framework 4.0 Client Profile requiredDotNetNuke® Community Edition: 06.00.00 Beta: Beta 1 (Build 2300) includes many important enhancements to the user experience. The control panel has been updated for easier access to the most important features and additional forms have been adapted to the new pattern. This release also includes many bug fixes that make it more stable than previous CTP releases. Beta ForumsBlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.5 RC: BlogEngine.NET Hosting - Click Here! 3 Months FREE – BlogEngine.NET Hosting – Click Here! This is a Release Candidate version for BlogEngine.NET 2.5. The most current, stable version of BlogEngine.NET is version 2.0. Find out more about the BlogEngine.NET 2.5 RC here. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. To get started, be sure to check out our installation documentation. If you are upgrading from a previous version, please take a look at ...New Projects6_6_6_w_m_s_open: jwervxsdfcfcf: cfcfChairforce hackathon project: project for hackathonDot Net Nuke Ajax Modules: This is a small collection of modules I think on once in a while which intend to improve a little dnn's user experience.Gnosis Game Engine: A simple game engine for the XNA 4.0 frame work that I am working on, mostly as a learning experience. I found that XNA game engines either require you to pay or are XNA 4.0 incompatible, and so this is my solution to that problem.KA_WindowsPhone7_Samples: Sample Code for Windows Phone 7 from http://kevinashley.comKinect MIDI Controller: This tool allows you to use a Kinect Sensor as a MIDI Controller for your Digital Audio Workbench. The tool is written in C#, and uses Microsoft Kinect SDK. Mosaic Project: Mosaic is an application that brings Metro UI to your desktop by live widgets.Movie Gate: A movie database that is also able to play the movies with your favorit media player.Musical Collective: An open-source web service that enables Musicians to collaborate on songs. Written in ASP.NET MVC (C#).NcADS-MVC: Clasificados MVCPokeTD: Ein kleines 2D Pokemon Tower-Defense Spiel. Es ist in C# und XNA geschrieben.PRO-TOKOL: PRO-TOKOL Server is a Programmable Logic Controller communication driver. The project is 100% coded in .NET Managed code. So, the dll can be included in any .NET project. The project uses the Microsoft Workflow Foundation to implement the DF1 Receiver and Transmitter logic.ShumaDaf: small project for display movies info directly from file structure using mymovies.xml. program create one simple xml file and display it!Silverlight Policy Service: The windows service act as a server and listens on TCP port 943 using IPv4 and IPv6. The socket policy included in the project allows all silverlight client applications to connect to TCP ports 4502-4506.SkinObject Module Wrapper: The SkinObject Module Wrapper is a DotNetNuke module that will allow you to add any DNN SkinObject to a page dinamically as if it was a DNN Module. Without any skin modification you can now inject new SkinObjects to you pages, configure the properties and change them on the fly.SkyNet0.3: Program that one should not be able to close.Team Zero Game One: SVN for the personal project(s) of Team Zero - Game One. We are creating a free game in HTML5 canvas using the CAKE api, found here: http://code.google.com/p/cakejs/ The game is about programming a small robot to move through a maze, sneaking past guards and other obstacles, using event-based programming. We've seen a number of games that allow you to "program" a character, and thought it would be interesting to do a different take on it. The game is still in early production, and actively ...Test-Driven Scaffolding (TDS): TDS helps developers of C# function members (methods, indexers, etc.) to quickly write drivers for code under development; these can easily be converted later to NUnit tests. TDS consists of C# code that can be pasted into a new or existing project and removed when no longer needed.Usage Agent: The Usage Agent toolset is designed to help manage your ISP data usage without having to log into your ISP usage page. It can optionally monitor your network card throughput and produce reports on usage. Developed in VB.NET.

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• MVVM Light V4 preview (BL0014) release notes

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  I just pushed to Codeplex an update to the MVVM Light source code. This is an early preview containing some of the features that I want to release later under the version 4. If you find these features useful for your project, please download the source code and build the assemblies. I will appreciate greatly any issue report. This version is labeled “V4.0.0.0/BL0014”. The “BL” string is an old habit that we used in my days at Siemens Building Technologies, called a “base level”. Somehow I like this way of incrementing the “base level” independently of any other consideration (such as alpha, beta, CTP, RTM etc) and continue to use it to tag my software versions. In Microsoft parlance, you could say that this is an early CTP of MVVM Light V4. Caveat The code is unit tested, but as we all know this does not mean that there are no bugs This code has not yet been used in production. Again, your help in testing this is greatly appreciated, so please report all bugs to me! What’s new? The following features have been implemented: Misc Various “maintenance work”. All WPF assemblies (that is .NET35 and .NET4) now allow partially trusted callers. It means that you can use them in am XBAP in partial trust mode. Testing Various test updates Added Windows Phone 7 unit tests Note: For Windows Phone 7, due to an issue in the unit test framework, not all tests can be executed. I had to isolate those tests for the moment. The error was reported to Microsoft. ViewModelBase The constructor is now public to allow serialization (especially useful on the phone to tombstone the state). ViewModelBase.MessengerInstance now returns Messenger.Default unless it is set explicitly. Previously, MessengerInstance was returning null, which was complicating the code. Two new ways to raise the PropertyChanged event have been added. See below for details. Messenger Updated the IMessenger interface with all public members from the Messenger class. Previously some members were missing. A new Unregister method is now available, allowing to unregister a recipient for a given token. RelayCommand RaiseCanExecuteChanged now acts the same in Windows Presentation Foundation than in Silverlight. In previous versions, I was relying on the CommandManager to raise the CanExecuteChanged event in WPF. However, it was found to be too unreliable, and a more direct way of raising the event was found preferable. See below for details. Raising the PropertyChanged event A very much requested update is now included: the ability to raise the PropertyChanged event in a viewmodel without using “magic strings”. Personally, I don’t see strings as a major issue, thanks to two features of the MVVM Light Toolkit: In the DEBUG configuration, every time that the RaisePropertyChanged method is called, the name of the property is checked against all existing properties of the viewmodel. Should the property name be misspelled (because of a typo or refactoring), an exception is thrown, notifying the developer that something is wrong. To avoid impacting the performance, this check is only made in DEBUG configuration, but that should be enough to warn the developers in case they miss a rename. The property name is defined as a public constant in the “mvvminpc” code snippet. This allows checking the property name from another class (for example if the PropertyChanged event is handled in the view). It also allows changing the property name in one place only. However, these two safeguards didn’t satisfy some of the users, who requested another way to raise the PropertyChanged event. In V4, you can now do the following: Using lambdas private int _myProperty; public int MyProperty { get { return _myProperty; } set { if (_myProperty == value) { return; } _myProperty = value; RaisePropertyChanged(() => MyProperty); } } This raises the property changed event using a lambda expression instead of the property name. Light reflection is used to get the name. This supports Intellisense and can easily be refactored. You can also broadcast a PropertyChangedMessage using the Messenger.Default instance with: private int _myProperty; public int MyProperty { get { return _myProperty; } set { if (_myProperty == value) { return; } var oldValue = _myProperty; _myProperty = value; RaisePropertyChanged(() => MyProperty, oldValue, value, true); } } Using no arguments When the RaisePropertyChanged method is called within a setter, you can also omit the property name altogether. This will fail if executed outside of the setter however. Also, to avoid confusion, there is no way to broadcast the PropertyChangedMessage using this syntax. private int _myProperty; public int MyProperty { get { return _myProperty; } set { if (_myProperty == value) { return; } _myProperty = value; RaisePropertyChanged(); } } The old way Of course the “old” way is still supported, without broadcast: public const string MyPropertyName = "MyProperty"; private int _myProperty; public int MyProperty { get { return _myProperty; } set { if (_myProperty == value) { return; } _myProperty = value; RaisePropertyChanged(MyPropertyName); } } And with broadcast: public const string MyPropertyName = "MyProperty"; private int _myProperty; public int MyProperty { get { return _myProperty; } set { if (_myProperty == value) { return; } var oldValue = _myProperty; _myProperty = value; RaisePropertyChanged(MyPropertyName, oldValue, value, true); } } Performance considerations It is notorious that using reflection takes more time than using a string constant to get the property name. However, after measuring for all platforms, I found the differences to be very small. I will measure more and submit the results to the community for evaluation, because some of the results are actually surprising (for example, using the Messenger to broadcast a PropertyChangedMessage does not significantly increase the time taken to raise the PropertyChanged event and update the bindings). For now, I submit this code to you, and would be delighted to hear about your own results. Raising the CanExecuteChanged event manually In WPF, until now, the CanExecuteChanged event for a RelayCommand was raised automatically. Or rather, it was attempted to be raised, using a feature that is only available in WPF called the CommandManager. This class monitors the UI and when something occurs, it queries the state of the CanExecute delegate for all the commands. However, this proved unreliable for the purpose of MVVM: Since very often the value of the CanExecute delegate changes according to non-UI events (for example something changing in the viewmodel or in the model), raising the CanExecuteChanged event manually is necessary. In Silverlight, the CommandManager does not exist, so we had to raise the event manually from the start. This proved more reliable, and I now changed the WPF implementation of the RaiseCanExecuteChanged method to be the exact same in WPF than in Silverlight. For instance, if a command must be enabled when a string property is set to a value other than null or empty string, you can do: public MainViewModel() { MyTestCommand = new RelayCommand( () => DoSomething(), () => !string.IsNullOrEmpty(MyProperty)); } public const string MyPropertyName = "MyProperty"; private string _myProperty = string.Empty; public string MyProperty { get { return _myProperty; } set { if (_myProperty == value) { return; } _myProperty = value; RaisePropertyChanged(MyPropertyName); MyTestCommand.RaiseCanExecuteChanged(); } } Logo update I made a minor change to the logo: Some people found the lack of the word “light” (as in MVVM Light Toolkit) confusing. I thought it was cool, because the feather suggests the idea of lightness, however I can see the point. So I added the word “light” to the logo. Things should be quite clear now. What’s next? This is only the first of a series of releases that will bring MVVM Light to V4. In the next weeks, I will continue to add some very requested features and correct some issues in the code. I will probably continue this fashion of releasing the changes to the public as source code through Codeplex. I would be very interested to hear what you think of that, and to get feedback about the changes. Cheers, Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• Object array updates one instance repeatedly [on hold]

  - by MGN001

  I'm making a 2D shooter, and the player object holds an array of bullets that represent how many shots the player can have on screen at once. At least, this is what I'm trying for. What's happening is that each time any of the objects in the array is called, it seems to update a single object in memory. So, if I fire and then fire again, the object "starts over" from where I shot from and moves twice as fast. I've spent weeks trying to fix this and I've managed nothing. Hopefully another pair of eyes will see something I've missed. Player.cpp #include "Player.h" const int startLives = 3; const int maxHealth = 2; const float speed = 1; const int maxVelocity = 500; const int topBound = WINDOW_HEIGHT / 5 * 3; const int slowRate = 500; const int accRate = 1000; const int maxBullets = 5; const float spriteWidth = 99; const float spriteHeight = 75; const Vector2f startPosition = { (WINDOW_WIDTH / 2) - (spriteWidth / 2), (WINDOW_HEIGHT / 4 * 3) - (spriteHeight / 2) }; Bullet bullets[maxBullets]; Bullet * bulletPointers[maxBullets]; SDL_Texture * playerHealthy; SDL_Texture * playerDamaged; SDL_Texture * currentSprite; SDL_Rect * rect; Vector2f position; Vector2f velocity; int Health; int Lives; Player::Player() { rect = new SDL_Rect(); } Player::~Player() { SDL_DestroyTexture(playerHealthy); SDL_DestroyTexture(playerDamaged); SDL_DestroyTexture(currentSprite); rect = NULL; } void Player::Initialize(SDL_Renderer * renderer) { SDL_Surface * temp; temp = IMG_Load(".\\Sprites\\player.png"); if (temp == NULL) { printf("Initialization Error: %s\n", IMG_GetError()); exit(PLAYER_INITIALIZATION_ERROR); } playerHealthy = SDL_CreateTextureFromSurface(renderer, temp); temp = IMG_Load(".\\Sprites\\playerDamaged.png"); if (temp == NULL) { printf("Initialization Error: %s\n", IMG_GetError()); exit(PLAYER_INITIALIZATION_ERROR); } playerDamaged = SDL_CreateTextureFromSurface(renderer, temp); temp = IMG_Load(".\\Sprites\\laserGreen.png"); if (temp == NULL) { printf("Initialization Error: %s\n", IMG_GetError()); exit(PLAYER_INITIALIZATION_ERROR); } SDL_Texture * bullet = SDL_CreateTextureFromSurface(renderer, temp); temp = IMG_Load(".\\Sprites\\laserGreenShot.png"); if (temp == NULL) { printf("Initialization Error: %s\n", IMG_GetError()); exit(PLAYER_INITIALIZATION_ERROR); } SDL_Texture * explosion = SDL_CreateTextureFromSurface(renderer, temp); for (int i = 0; i < maxBullets; i++) { bullets[i].Initialize(renderer, bullet, explosion); bulletPointers[i] = NULL; } temp = NULL; rect->h = spriteHeight; rect->w = spriteWidth; Reset(); } void Player::Update(Input input, float deltaTime) { if (abs(velocity.x) < slowRate * deltaTime) { velocity.x = 0; } else if (velocity.x > 0) { velocity.x -= slowRate * deltaTime; } else if (velocity.x < 0) { velocity.x += slowRate * deltaTime; } if (abs(velocity.y) < slowRate * deltaTime) { velocity.y = 0; } if (velocity.y > 0) { velocity.y -= slowRate * deltaTime; } else if (velocity.y < 0) { velocity.y += slowRate * deltaTime; } if (Health <= 0) { --Lives; Spawn(); } velocity.x += UnitVector(input.InputNew.movement).x * accRate * deltaTime; velocity.y += UnitVector(input.InputNew.movement).y * accRate * deltaTime; if (Magnitude(velocity) > maxVelocity) { velocity.x = UnitVector(velocity).x * maxVelocity; velocity.y = UnitVector(velocity).y * maxVelocity; } position.x += velocity.x * deltaTime * speed; position.y += velocity.y * deltaTime * speed; if (input.InputNew.JumpLeft && !input.InputOld.JumpLeft) { position.x -= spriteWidth; } if (input.InputNew.JumpRight && !input.InputOld.JumpRight) { position.x += spriteWidth; } Boundaries(); rect->x = position.x; rect->y = position.y; if (input.InputNew.Fire && !input.InputOld.Fire) { Fire(); } for (int i = 0; i < maxBullets; ++i) { if (bulletPointers[i] != NULL) { bullets[i].Update(deltaTime); if (bullets[i].getPosition().y < -33) { bulletPointers[i] = NULL; } } } } void Player::Draw(SDL_Renderer * renderer) { for (int i = 0; i < maxBullets; ++i) { if (bulletPointers[i] != NULL) { bullets[i].Draw(renderer); } } SDL_RenderCopy(renderer, currentSprite, NULL, rect); } void Player::Spawn() { position = startPosition; Health = maxHealth; currentSprite = playerHealthy; rect->x = position.x; rect->y = position.y; } void Player::Boundaries() { if (position.x < 0) { position.x = 0; velocity.x *= -1; } else if (position.x > WINDOW_WIDTH - spriteWidth) { position.x = WINDOW_WIDTH - spriteWidth; velocity.x *= -1; } if (position.y < topBound) { position.y = topBound; velocity.y *= -1; } else if (position.y > WINDOW_HEIGHT - spriteHeight) { position.y = WINDOW_HEIGHT - spriteHeight; velocity.y *= -1; } } int Player::getLives() { return Lives; } void Player::Reset() { Lives = startLives; Spawn(); } void Player::Fire() { for (int i = 0; i < maxBullets; ++i) { if (bulletPointers[i] == NULL) { bulletPointers[i] = &bullets[i]; bullets[i].Fire(position,velocity.x/2); break; } } } Bullet.cpp #include "Bullet.h" const int speed = 500; Vector2f bulletVelocity; float ExplosionMax = 0.5f; float ExplosionTimer; const Vector2f fireOffset = { 45.5f, 10.0f }; const Vector2f explosionOffset = { 23.5f, -27.0f }; const Vector2i bulletSize = { 9, 33 }; const Vector2i explosionSize = { 56, 54 }; Vector2f bulletPosition; SDL_Texture * bulletSprite; SDL_Texture * explosionSprite; SDL_Texture * bulletCurrentSprite; SDL_Rect * bulletRect; Bullet::Bullet() { } Bullet::~Bullet() { } void Bullet::Initialize(SDL_Renderer * renderer, SDL_Texture * bullet, SDL_Texture * explosion) { bulletSprite = bullet; explosionSprite = explosion; bulletRect = new SDL_Rect(); } void Bullet::Update(float deltaTime) { bulletPosition.y -= bulletVelocity.y * deltaTime; bulletPosition.x += bulletVelocity.x * deltaTime; bulletRect->x = static_cast<int>(bulletPosition.x); bulletRect->y = static_cast<int>(bulletPosition.y); } void Bullet::Draw(SDL_Renderer * renderer) { SDL_RenderCopy(renderer, bulletCurrentSprite, NULL, bulletRect); } void Bullet::Fire(Vector2f pos, float xSpeed) { bulletPosition.x = pos.x + fireOffset.x; bulletPosition.y = pos.y + fireOffset.y; bulletVelocity.x = xSpeed; bulletVelocity.y = speed; bulletCurrentSprite = bulletSprite; bulletRect->h = bulletSize.y; bulletRect->w = bulletSize.x; bulletRect->x = static_cast<int>(bulletPosition.x); bulletRect->y = static_cast<int>(bulletPosition.y); } Vector2f Bullet::getPosition() { return bulletPosition; } void Bullet::Hit() { bulletCurrentSprite = explosionSprite; bulletVelocity = { 0.0f, 0.0f }; ExplosionTimer = ExplosionMax; bulletPosition.x += explosionOffset.x; bulletPosition.y += explosionOffset.y; bulletRect->w = explosionSize.x; bulletRect->h = explosionSize.y; }

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• CUDA linking error - Visual Express 2008 - nvcc fatal due to (null) configuration file

  - by Josh

  Hi, I've been searching extensively for a possible solution to my error for the past 2 weeks. I have successfully installed the Cuda 64-bit compiler (tools) and SDK as well as the 64-bit version of Visual Studio Express 2008 and Windows 7 SDK with Framework 3.5. I'm using windows XP 64-bit. I have confirmed that VSE is able to compile in 64-bit as I have all of the 64-bit options available to me using the steps on the following website: (since Visual Express does not inherently include the 64-bit packages) http://jenshuebel.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/visual-c-2008-express-edition-and-64-bit-targets/ I have confirmed the 64-bit compile ability since the "x64" is available from the pull-down menu under "Tools-Options-VC++ Directories" and compiling in 64-bit does not result in the entire project being "skipped". I have included all the needed directories for 64-bit cuda tools, 64 SDK and Visual Express (\VC\bin\amd64). Here's the error message I receive when trying to compile in 64-bit: 1>------ Build started: Project: New, Configuration: Release x64 ------ 1>Compiling with CUDA Build Rule... 1>"C:\CUDA\bin64\nvcc.exe" -arch sm_10 -ccbin "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\bin" -Xcompiler "/EHsc /W3 /nologo /O2 /Zi /MT " -maxrregcount=32 --compile -o "x64\Release\template.cu.obj" "c:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\NVIDIA Corporation\NVIDIA GPU Computing SDK\C\src\CUDA_Walkthrough_DeviceKernels\template.cu" 1>nvcc fatal : Visual Studio configuration file '(null)' could not be found for installation at 'C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0/VC/bin/../..' 1>Linking... 1>LINK : fatal error LNK1181: cannot open input file '.\x64\Release\template.cu.obj' 1>Build log was saved at "file://c:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\New\New\x64\Release\BuildLog.htm" 1>New - 1 error(s), 0 warning(s) ========== Build: 0 succeeded, 1 failed, 0 up-to-date, 0 skipped ========== Here's the simple code I'm trying to compile/run in 64-bit: #include <stdlib.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <string.h> #include <math.h> #include <cuda.h> void mypause () { printf ( "Press [Enter] to continue . . ." ); fflush ( stdout ); getchar(); } __global__ void VecAdd1_Kernel(float* A, float* B, float* C, int N) { int i = blockDim.x*blockIdx.x+threadIdx.x; if (i<N) C[i] = A[i] + B[i]; //result should be a 16x1 array of 250s } __global__ void VecAdd2_Kernel(float* B, float* C, int N) { int i = blockDim.x*blockIdx.x+threadIdx.x; if (i<N) C[i] = C[i] + B[i]; //result should be a 16x1 array of 400s } int main() { int N = 16; float A[16];float B[16]; size_t size = N*sizeof(float); for(int i=0; i<N; i++) { A[i] = 100.0; B[i] = 150.0; } // Allocate input vectors h_A and h_B in host memory float* h_A = (float*)malloc(size); float* h_B = (float*)malloc(size); float* h_C = (float*)malloc(size); //Initialize Input Vectors memset(h_A,0,size);memset(h_B,0,size); h_A = A;h_B = B; printf("SUM = %f\n",A[1]+B[1]); //simple check for initialization //Allocate vectors in device memory float* d_A; cudaMalloc((void**)&d_A,size); float* d_B; cudaMalloc((void**)&d_B,size); float* d_C; cudaMalloc((void**)&d_C,size); //Copy vectors from host memory to device memory cudaMemcpy(d_A,h_A,size,cudaMemcpyHostToDevice); cudaMemcpy(d_B,h_B,size,cudaMemcpyHostToDevice); //Invoke kernel int threadsPerBlock = 256; int blocksPerGrid = (N+threadsPerBlock-1)/threadsPerBlock; VecAdd1(blocksPerGrid, threadsPerBlock,d_A,d_B,d_C,N); VecAdd2(blocksPerGrid, threadsPerBlock,d_B,d_C,N); //Copy results from device memory to host memory //h_C contains the result in host memory cudaMemcpy(h_C,d_C,size,cudaMemcpyDeviceToHost); for(int i=0; i<N; i++) //output result from the kernel "VecAdd" { printf("%f ", h_C[i] ); printf("\n"); } printf("\n"); cudaFree(d_A); cudaFree(d_B); cudaFree(d_C); free(h_A); free(h_B); free(h_C); mypause(); return 0; }

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• Using Image Source with big images in WPF

  - by xyzzer

  I am working on an application that allows users to manipulate multiple images by using ItemsControl. I started running some tests and found that the app has problems displaying some big images - ie. it did not work with the high resolution (21600x10800), 20MB images from http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/BlueMarble/BlueMarble_monthlies.php, though it displays the 6200x6200, 60MB Hubble telescope image from http://zebu.uoregon.edu/hudf/hudf.jpg just fine. The original solution just specified an Image control with a Source property pointing at a file on a disk (through a binding). With the Blue Marble file - the image would just not show up. Now this could be just a bug hidden somewhere deep in the funky MVVM + XAML implementation - the visual tree displayed by Snoop goes like: Window/Border/AdornerDecorator/ContentPresenter/Grid/Canvas/UserControl/Border/ContentPresenter/Grid/Grid/Grid/Grid/Border/Grid/ContentPresenter/UserControl/UserControl/Border/ContentPresenter/Grid/Grid/Grid/Grid/Viewbox/ContainerVisual/UserControl/Border/ContentPresenter/Grid/Grid/ItemsControl/Border/ItemsPresenter/Canvas/ContentPresenter/Grid/Grid/ContentPresenter/Image... Now debug this! WPF can be crazy like that... Anyway, it turned out that if I create a simple WPF application - the images load just fine. I tried finding out the root cause, but I don't want to spend weeks on it. I figured the right thing to do might be to use a converter to scale the images down - this is what I have done: ImagePath = @"F:\Astronomical\world.200402.3x21600x10800.jpg"; TargetWidth = 2800; TargetHeight = 1866; and <Image> <Image.Source> <MultiBinding Converter="{StaticResource imageResizingConverter}"> <MultiBinding.Bindings> <Binding Path="ImagePath"/> <Binding RelativeSource="{RelativeSource Self}" /> <Binding Path="TargetWidth"/> <Binding Path="TargetHeight"/> </MultiBinding.Bindings> </MultiBinding> </Image.Source> </Image> and public class ImageResizingConverter : MarkupExtension, IMultiValueConverter { public Image TargetImage { get; set; } public string SourcePath { get; set; } public int DecodeWidth { get; set; } public int DecodeHeight { get; set; } public object Convert(object[] values, Type targetType, object parameter, CultureInfo culture) { this.SourcePath = values[0].ToString(); this.TargetImage = (Image)values[1]; this.DecodeWidth = (int)values[2]; this.DecodeHeight = (int)values[3]; return DecodeImage(); } private BitmapImage DecodeImage() { BitmapImage bi = new BitmapImage(); bi.BeginInit(); bi.DecodePixelWidth = (int)DecodeWidth; bi.DecodePixelHeight = (int)DecodeHeight; bi.UriSource = new Uri(SourcePath); bi.EndInit(); return bi; } public object[] ConvertBack(object value, Type[] targetTypes, object parameter, CultureInfo culture) { throw new Exception("The method or operation is not implemented."); } public override object ProvideValue(IServiceProvider serviceProvider) { return this; } } Now this works fine, except for one "little" problem. When you just specify a file path in Image.Source - the application actually uses less memory and works faster than if you use BitmapImage.DecodePixelWidth. Plus with Image.Source if you have multiple Image controls that point to the same image - they only use as much memory as if only one image was loaded. With the BitmapImage.DecodePixelWidth solution - each additional Image control uses more memory and each of them uses more than when just specifying Image.Source. Perhaps WPF somehow caches these images in compressed form while if you specify the decoded dimensions - it feels like you get an uncompressed image in memory, plus it takes 6 times the time (perhaps without it the scaling is done on the GPU?), plus it feels like the original high resolution image also gets loaded and takes up space. If I just scale the image down, save it to a temporary file and then use Image.Source to point at the file - it will probably work, but it will be pretty slow and it will require handling cleanup of the temporary file. If I could detect an image that does not get loaded properly - maybe I could only scale it down if I need to, but Image.ImageFailed never gets triggered. Maybe it has something to do with the video memory and this app just using more of it with the deep visual tree, opacity masks etc. Actual question: How can I load big images as quickly as Image.Source option does it, without using more memory for additional copies and additional memory for the scaled down image if I only need them at a certain resolution lower than original? Also, I don't want to keep them in memory if no Image control is using them anymore.

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• What does a Software Developer actually do?

  - by chobo2

  Hi I am graduating from my Computer Science degree in a few weeks from now!! I started to look for my first job. For the last couple years I gotten really into web programming(Asp.net). My first choice would be to get a junior asp.net MVC developer but I don't any companies in my area use MVC yet or if they do they are not hiring. So my second choice would be a junior asp.net Webforms developer. My other choices after that would be forms applications, mobile applications using .Net and C#. As you can see I am looking for something with .Net. I spent the last couple years doing .Net projects for school, on my free time and love the Language and it would pain me right now to switch to something like php. So now I found a posting in my area for an Entry Software Developer. I like the fact that they are using .net and that it is entry job(I never worked in this industry and never had more then like a tutoring job so I want to for like intermediate jobs). Posting Are you looking for an exciting challenge within a dynamic, people-oriented culture where you can launch your technical career? Company Name Inc. is a technology consulting company, located in Canada, that designs, develops, and delivers real-time interactive applications accessed via the Internet as well as back-end tools to support these applications. Company Name provides a combination of out-of-the-box and customized solutions to an expanding list of partners and customers. POSITION SUMMARY As a member of our team, the successful candidate will be responsible for helping us increase the quality and stability of our software systems by working jointly and directly with both the Software Development teams and the QA Team. The primary mission of this role will be to substantially enhance our test automation suite. The incumbent will design and program automated tests (unit, integration, system, stress and load) in Visual Studio using C# and will develop sound processes that help us identify and resolve defects as early as possible. The successful incumbent will help us improve and enhance system functionality, reliability, performance and scalability. This role is specifically designed for an eager, bright, new graduate who is looking for a stepping stone into a software engineering role. We promote from within and invite new graduates to apply for this important position - which may lead to new opportunities. We also offer a generous professional development plan to help you on your way. You will be a key part of a team of experts that is responsible for improving the quality of our software by: • Designing, writing, and executing test plans and programmatic tests in Visual Studio using C# and NUnit for functional testing of our code, new features, regression, and performance test procedures. • Working with the engineers to design and build the stress and load testing framework which emulates tens and even hundreds of thousands of concurrent users via a distributed network interfacing with our Load Testing Lab. • Interfacing with both the Development Team and the QA Team to ensure risks are identified and managed. • Mentoring and leading the QA Team in programmatic test automation technologies and tools. MUST HAVE SKILLS / QUALIFICATIONS: • Diploma or higher Degree in Computer Science, or equivalent formal training. • Fundamental C# programming skills. • Knowledge of Internet technologies and Microsoft Windows platforms. • Knowledge of PC hardware. • Excellent communication skills (both oral and written). • Self-starter who takes initiative, requires minimal supervision, can handle multiple simultaneous tasks. • Detail-oriented, able to concentrate, and work quickly. • Proven diagnostic, analytical, and problem solving skills. NICE TO HAVE SKILLS: • Exposure to Visual Studio Team System or Visual Studio Test Edition. • Exposure in C# using NUnit. • Exposure to NUnit, HTTPUnit, and other automation tool suites. • Exposure to Performance/Stress/Load Testing. • Good understanding of relational databases (MS SQL Server). • Familiar with video and online multi-player games. As part of our team you will have the opportunity to work with a supportive team of experts, drive your own success, and ride the wave as we continually expand our team of experts. If you are interested in this opportunity, please send your resume to [email protected] with “Entry Level Software Developer” in the subject line. So that is the posting. To me it sounds like it is QA job. I don't have anything against QA jobs but alot of them seems to be your just clicking buttons and running scripts. Is this what a typical software developer does? Like I am so on the fence to apply for this job. On one side I am not sure how much programming I would be doing. Like I want to be at least half the time programming otherwise my skills will never improve since I will never be programming in teams and stuff. At the same time I have no experience in the industry so on the other side I am thinking just go for it and then maybe a year later try to get a full programming job(provided that I got the job). Yet if I am not programming in that job then that experience will not help me for the next job I find as I will be back a square one.

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• Drupal Migration Problem

  - by Gok Demir

  After migrating my Drupal (6.16) installation from shared hosting to Linode VPS (Ubunto 10.04 32 bit). Whenever I click a URL it shows only the homepage. I put ?q=user at the end of the URL to login as an admin. When I logged in it is the same. I couldn't navigate to any URL. It shows only homepage. I forgot to clean Drupal cache before migration. Is it because of this? I couldn't navigate to Administer Site configuration Performance to clean cache, nothing works. By the way .htaccess Rewrite on enabled as shown below. apache2 apache2-doc apache2-utils libapache2-mod-php5 php5 php-pear php5-xcache php5-suhosin php5-mysql packages are installed. What can I do? # # Apache/PHP/Drupal settings: # # Protect files and directories from prying eyes. <FilesMatch "\.(engine|inc|info|install|make|module|profile|test|po|sh|.*sql|theme|tpl(\.php)?|xtmpl|svn-base)$|^(code-style\.pl|Entries.*|Repository|Root|Tag|Template|all-wcprops|entries|format)$"> Order allow,deny </FilesMatch> # Don't show directory listings for URLs which map to a directory. Options -Indexes # Follow symbolic links in this directory. Options +FollowSymLinks # Make Drupal handle any 404 errors. ErrorDocument 404 /index.php # Force simple error message for requests for non-existent favicon.ico. <Files favicon.ico> # There is no end quote below, for compatibility with Apache 1.3. ErrorDocument 404 "The requested file favicon.ico was not found. </Files> # Set the default handler. DirectoryIndex index.php # Override PHP settings. More in sites/default/settings.php # but the following cannot be changed at runtime. # PHP 4, Apache 1. <IfModule mod_php4.c> php_value magic_quotes_gpc 0 php_value register_globals 0 php_value session.auto_start 0 php_value mbstring.http_input pass php_value mbstring.http_output pass php_value mbstring.encoding_translation 0 </IfModule> # PHP 4, Apache 2. <IfModule sapi_apache2.c> php_value magic_quotes_gpc 0 php_value register_globals 0 php_value session.auto_start 0 php_value mbstring.http_input pass php_value mbstring.http_output pass php_value mbstring.encoding_translation 0 </IfModule> # PHP 5, Apache 1 and 2. <IfModule mod_php5.c> php_value magic_quotes_gpc 0 php_value register_globals 0 php_value session.auto_start 0 php_value mbstring.http_input pass php_value mbstring.http_output pass php_value mbstring.encoding_translation 0 </IfModule> # Requires mod_expires to be enabled. <IfModule mod_expires.c> # Enable expirations. ExpiresActive On # Cache all files for 2 weeks after access (A). ExpiresDefault A1209600 <FilesMatch \.php$> # Do not allow PHP scripts to be cached unless they explicitly send cache # headers themselves. Otherwise all scripts would have to overwrite the # headers set by mod_expires if they want another caching behavior. This may # fail if an error occurs early in the bootstrap process, and it may cause # problems if a non-Drupal PHP file is installed in a subdirectory. ExpiresActive Off </FilesMatch> </IfModule> # Various rewrite rules. <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine on # If your site can be accessed both with and without the 'www.' prefix, you # can use one of the following settings to redirect users to your preferred # URL, either WITH or WITHOUT the 'www.' prefix. Choose ONLY one option: # # To redirect all users to access the site WITH the 'www.' prefix, # (http://example.com/... will be redirected to http://www.example.com/...) # adapt and uncomment the following: # RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com$ [NC] # RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301] # # To redirect all users to access the site WITHOUT the 'www.' prefix, # (http://www.example.com/... will be redirected to http://example.com/...) # uncomment and adapt the following: # RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com$ [NC] # RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [L,R=301] # Modify the RewriteBase if you are using Drupal in a subdirectory or in a # VirtualDocumentRoot and the rewrite rules are not working properly. # For example if your site is at http://example.com/drupal uncomment and # modify the following line: # RewriteBase /drupal # # If your site is running in a VirtualDocumentRoot at http://example.com/, # uncomment the following line: # RewriteBase / # Rewrite URLs of the form 'x' to the form 'index.php?q=x'. RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/favicon.ico RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA] </IfModule>

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• Forensic Analysis of the OOM-Killer

  - by Oddthinking

  Ubuntu's Out-Of-Memory Killer wreaked havoc on my server, quietly assassinating my applications, sendmail, apache and others. I've managed to learn what the OOM Killer is, and about its "badness" rules. While my machine is small, my applications are even smaller, and typically only half of my physical memory is in use, let alone swap-space, so I was surprised. I am trying to work out the culprit, but I don't know how to read the OOM-Killer logs. Can anyone please point me to a tutorial on how to read the data in the logs (what are ve, free and gen?), or help me parse these logs? Apr 20 20:03:27 EL135 kernel: kill_signal(13516.0): selecting to kill, queued 0, seq 1, exc 2326 0 goal 2326 0... Apr 20 20:03:27 EL135 kernel: kill_signal(13516.0): task ebb0c6f0, thg d33a1b00, sig 1 Apr 20 20:03:27 EL135 kernel: kill_signal(13516.0): selected 1, signalled 1, queued 1, seq 1, exc 2326 0 red 61795 745 Apr 20 20:03:27 EL135 kernel: kill_signal(13516.0): selecting to kill, queued 0, seq 2, exc 122 0 goal 383 0... Apr 20 20:03:27 EL135 kernel: kill_signal(13516.0): task ebb0c6f0, thg d33a1b00, sig 1 Apr 20 20:03:27 EL135 kernel: kill_signal(13516.0): selected 1, signalled 1, queued 1, seq 2, exc 383 0 red 61795 745 Apr 20 20:03:27 EL135 kernel: kill_signal(13516.0): task ebb0c6f0, thg d33a1b00, sig 2 Apr 20 20:03:27 EL135 kernel: OOM killed process watchdog (pid=14490, ve=13516) exited, free=43104 gen=24501. Apr 20 20:03:27 EL135 kernel: OOM killed process tail (pid=4457, ve=13516) exited, free=43104 gen=24502. Apr 20 20:03:27 EL135 kernel: OOM killed process ntpd (pid=10816, ve=13516) exited, free=43104 gen=24503. Apr 20 20:03:27 EL135 kernel: OOM killed process tail (pid=27401, ve=13516) exited, free=43104 gen=24504. Apr 20 20:03:27 EL135 kernel: OOM killed process tail (pid=29009, ve=13516) exited, free=43104 gen=24505. Apr 20 20:03:27 EL135 kernel: OOM killed process apache2 (pid=10557, ve=13516) exited, free=49552 gen=24506. Apr 20 20:03:27 EL135 kernel: OOM killed process apache2 (pid=24983, ve=13516) exited, free=53117 gen=24507. Apr 20 20:03:27 EL135 kernel: OOM killed process apache2 (pid=29129, ve=13516) exited, free=68493 gen=24508. Apr 20 20:03:27 EL135 kernel: OOM killed process sendmail-mta (pid=941, ve=13516) exited, free=68803 gen=24509. Apr 20 20:03:27 EL135 kernel: OOM killed process tail (pid=12418, ve=13516) exited, free=69330 gen=24510. Apr 20 20:03:27 EL135 kernel: OOM killed process python (pid=22953, ve=13516) exited, free=72275 gen=24511. Apr 20 20:03:27 EL135 kernel: OOM killed process apache2 (pid=6624, ve=13516) exited, free=76398 gen=24512. Apr 20 20:03:27 EL135 kernel: OOM killed process python (pid=23317, ve=13516) exited, free=94285 gen=24513. Apr 20 20:03:27 EL135 kernel: OOM killed process tail (pid=29030, ve=13516) exited, free=95339 gen=24514. Apr 20 20:03:28 EL135 kernel: OOM killed process apache2 (pid=20583, ve=13516) exited, free=101663 gen=24515. Apr 20 20:03:28 EL135 kernel: OOM killed process logger (pid=12894, ve=13516) exited, free=101694 gen=24516. Apr 20 20:03:28 EL135 kernel: OOM killed process bash (pid=21119, ve=13516) exited, free=101849 gen=24517. Apr 20 20:03:28 EL135 kernel: OOM killed process atd (pid=991, ve=13516) exited, free=101880 gen=24518. Apr 20 20:03:28 EL135 kernel: OOM killed process apache2 (pid=14649, ve=13516) exited, free=102748 gen=24519. Apr 20 20:03:28 EL135 kernel: OOM killed process grep (pid=21375, ve=13516) exited, free=132167 gen=24520. Apr 20 20:03:57 EL135 kernel: kill_signal(13516.0): selecting to kill, queued 0, seq 4, exc 4215 0 goal 4826 0... Apr 20 20:03:57 EL135 kernel: kill_signal(13516.0): task ede29370, thg df98b880, sig 1 Apr 20 20:03:57 EL135 kernel: kill_signal(13516.0): selected 1, signalled 1, queued 1, seq 4, exc 4826 0 red 189481 331 Apr 20 20:03:57 EL135 kernel: kill_signal(13516.0): task ede29370, thg df98b880, sig 2 Apr 20 20:04:53 EL135 kernel: kill_signal(13516.0): selecting to kill, queued 0, seq 5, exc 3564 0 goal 3564 0... Apr 20 20:04:53 EL135 kernel: kill_signal(13516.0): task c6c90110, thg cdb1a100, sig 1 Apr 20 20:04:53 EL135 kernel: kill_signal(13516.0): selected 1, signalled 1, queued 1, seq 5, exc 3564 0 red 189481 331 Apr 20 20:04:53 EL135 kernel: kill_signal(13516.0): task c6c90110, thg cdb1a100, sig 2 Apr 20 20:07:14 EL135 kernel: kill_signal(13516.0): selecting to kill, queued 0, seq 6, exc 8071 0 goal 8071 0... Apr 20 20:07:14 EL135 kernel: kill_signal(13516.0): task d7294050, thg c03f42c0, sig 1 Apr 20 20:07:14 EL135 kernel: kill_signal(13516.0): selected 1, signalled 1, queued 1, seq 6, exc 8071 0 red 189481 331 Apr 20 20:07:14 EL135 kernel: kill_signal(13516.0): task d7294050, thg c03f42c0, sig 2 Watchdog is a watchdog task, that was idle; nothing in the logs to suggest it had done anything for days. Its job is to restart one of the applications if it dies, so a bit ironic that it is the first to get killed. Tail was monitoring a few logs files. Unlikely to be consuming memory madly. The apache web-server only serves pages to a little old lady who only uses it to get to church on Sundays a couple of developers who were in bed asleep, and hadn't visited a page on the site for a few weeks. The only traffic it might have had is from the port-scanners; all the content is password-protected and not linked from anywhere, so no spiders are interested. Python is running two separate custom applications. Nothing in the logs to suggest they weren't humming along as normal. One of them was a relatively recent implementation, which makes suspect #1. It doesn't have any data-structures of any significance, and normally uses only about 8% of the total physical RAW. It hasn't misbehaved since. The grep is suspect #2, and the one I want to be guilty, because it was a once-off command. The command (which piped the output of a grep -r to another grep) had been started at least 30 minutes earlier, and the fact it was still running is suspicious. However, I wouldn't have thought grep would ever use a significant amount of memory. It took a while for the OOM killer to get to it, which suggests it wasn't going mad, but the OOM killer stopped once it was killed, suggesting it may have been a memory-hog that finally satisfied the OOM killer's blood-lust.

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• CentOS Client - Unable to Establish iSCSI connection with multiple interfaces on the initiator

  - by slashdot

  So after upgrading to CentOS 6.2, I am seemingly no longer able to login into my iSCSI targets. I have multiple interfaces on different subnets on the system, and I first thought that it had to do with the fact that I may not be binding correct interfaces, which seems to be the case when looking at netstat, as this is clearly wrong: [root]? netstat -na|grep .90 tcp 0 1 10.10.100.60:42354 10.10.8.90:3260 SYN_SENT tcp 0 1 10.10.100.60:40777 10.10.9.90:3260 SYN_SENT I then went ahead and disabled all but one interface, and so as a result netstat appears to be correct, but the issue with login remains. I am positive that the target never sees a packet, because I see nothing by SYN_SENT. I know the problem is on my client, because the target is servicing multiple systems, none of which are CentOS 6.2. At this point I am pretty confident that some things changed between CentOS 6.0/6.1 and 6.2. So, if anyone have any thoughts, or ran into this, I would very much like to hear your thoughts. [root]? iscsiadm --mode node --targetname iqn.2011-12.dom.homer:01:lab-centos-servers-00001 --portal 10.10.8.90:3260,2 --interface=sw-iscsi-0 --login Logging in to [iface: sw-iscsi-0, target: iqn.2011-12.dom.homer:01:lab-centos-servers-00001, portal: 10.10.8.90,3260] (multiple) iscsiadm: Could not login to [iface: sw-iscsi-0, target: iqn.2011-12.dom.homer:01:lab-centos-servers-00001, portal: 10.10.8.90,3260]. iscsiadm: initiator reported error (8 - connection timed out) iscsiadm: Could not log into all portals [root]? netstat -rn Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags MSS Window irtt Iface 10.10.8.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth2.7 10.10.9.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth3.7 10.10.100.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.252.0 U 0 0 0 eth0 169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth0 169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth1 169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth2 169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth3 169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth2.7 169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth3.7 0.0.0.0 10.10.100.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0 Output of ip addr show for the two interfaces involved: [root]? for i in 2.7 3.7; do ip addr show eth$i; done 6: eth2.7@eth2: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP link/ether 00:0c:29:94:5b:8d brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff inet 10.10.8.60/24 brd 10.10.8.255 scope global eth2.7 inet6 fe80::20c:29ff:fe94:5b8d/64 scope link valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever 7: eth3.7@eth3: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP link/ether 00:0c:29:94:5b:97 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff inet 10.10.9.60/24 brd 10.10.9.255 scope global eth3.7 inet6 fe80::20c:29ff:fe94:5b97/64 scope link valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever Update 01/06/2012: This issue is getting even more interesting by the day it seems. I went a few weeks back and grabbed a snapshot of this system from before upgrading to 6.2. I spun up a new system from the snapshot, and reconfigured interface info and host keys, as well as iSCSI initiator and iscsi interface info to match new MACs. Changed nothing else. Then, I attempted to connect to my targets, and no issues at all. I cannot say that this was unexpected. I then went ahead and compared sysctl settings from both systems and there were differences after the upgrade, but nothing seemingly relevant to iSCSI or IP that could contribute to this. I also noticed that by default now two sessions per connection were enabled after the upgrade, but I changed it back to 1 session in /etc/iscsi/iscsid.conf. On the problematic system we can see that source interface is seemingly wrong, but even when I disable the 10.10.100 interface, problems persist. So, while this may be relevant, I could not validate it for certain. Needless to say, further research is necessary. Something is clearly different between releases. Working system is on 6.1, and non-working is 6.2. ::Working System:: tcp 0 0 10.10.8.210:39566 10.10.8.90:3260 ESTABLISHED tcp 0 0 10.10.9.210:46518 10.10.9.90:3260 ESTABLISHED [root]? ip route show 10.10.8.0/24 dev eth2.6 proto kernel scope link src 10.10.8.210 10.10.9.0/24 dev eth3.7 proto kernel scope link src 10.10.9.210 10.10.100.0/22 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 10.10.100.210 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth0 scope link metric 1002 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth2.6 scope link metric 1006 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth3.7 scope link metric 1007 default via 10.10.100.1 dev eth0 ::Non-working System:: tcp 0 1 10.10.100.60:44737 10.10.9.90:3260 SYN_SENT tcp 0 1 10.10.100.60:55479 10.10.8.90:3260 SYN_SENT [root]? ip route show 10.10.8.0/24 dev eth2.6 proto kernel scope link src 10.10.8.60 10.10.9.0/24 dev eth3.7 proto kernel scope link src 10.10.9.60 10.10.100.0/22 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 10.10.100.60 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth0 scope link metric 1002 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth2.6 scope link metric 1006 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth3.7 scope link metric 1007 default via 10.10.100.1 dev eth0 And the result is still same: [root]? iscsiadm: Could not login to [iface: sw-iscsi-0, target: iqn.2011-12.dom.homer:01:lab-centos-servers-00001, portal: 10.10.8.90,3260]. iscsiadm: initiator reported error (8 - connection timed out) iscsiadm: Could not login to [iface: sw-iscsi-1, target: iqn.2011-12.dom.homer:02:lab-centos-servers-00001, portal: 10.10.9.90,3260]. iscsiadm: initiator reported error (8 - connection timed out) iscsiadm: Could not log into all portals Update 01/08/2012: I believe I have been able to figure out the answer to my issue. It is quite obscure and I doubt this will happen to anyone else any time soon. It turns out that setting iface.iscsi_ifacename and iface.hwaddress in the interfaces configuration file is not legal. When one manually adds an iscsi target, such as below, all settings from the interface config file are copied into the node config file, that gets created by the below command. Result is parameters iface.iscsi_ifacename and iface.hwaddress together in the same config file. These parameters are seemingly mutually exclusive, which does not exactly make sense, or there is perhaps an oversight in the codepath. Perhaps I will investigate further. # iscsiadm -m node --op new -T iqn.2011-12.dom.homer:01:lab-centos-servers-00001 -p 10.10.8.90,3260,2 -I sw-iscsi-0 # iscsiadm -m node --op new -T iqn.2011-12.dom.homer:02:lab-centos-servers-00001 -p 10.10.9.90,3260,2 -I sw-iscsi-1 Notice, below I commented out iface.hwaddress and iface.ipaddress, after which I re-added targets, with same command as above. All works just fine. [root]? cat * # BEGIN RECORD 2.0-872.33.el6 iface.iscsi_ifacename = sw-iscsi-0 iface.net_ifacename = eth2.6 #iface.hwaddress = XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX #iface.ipaddress = 10.10.8.60 iface.transport_name = tcp iface.vlan_id = 6 iface.vlan_priority = 0 iface.iface_num = 0 iface.mtu = 0 iface.port = 0 # END RECORD # BEGIN RECORD 2.0-872.33.el6 iface.iscsi_ifacename = sw-iscsi-1 iface.net_ifacename = eth3.7 #iface.hwaddress = XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX #iface.ipaddress = 10.10.9.60 iface.transport_name = tcp iface.vlan_id = 7 iface.vlan_priority = 0 iface.iface_num = 0 iface.mtu = 0 iface.port = 0 # END RECORD Again, chances of this happening to someone else are slim to none, so likely waste of time typing this up. But, if someone does encounter this issue, I hope this post will help.

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• Error 324 (net::ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE): Unknown error.

  - by Kp

  I get the following error in Chrome every time I try to run my script on a Linux server: Error 324 (net::ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE): Unknown error. In Firefox it just shows a blank white page. Whenever I run it on my local test server (IIS on Windows 7) it runs exactly the way it should with no errors. I am pretty sure that it is a problem with the imap_open function. error_reporting(E_ALL); echo "test"; // enter gmail username below e.g.-- $m_username = "yourusername"; $m_username = "username"; // enter gmail password below e.g.-- $m_password = "yourpword"; $m_password = "password"; // Enter the mail server to connect to $server = '{imap.gmail.com:993/imap/ssl/novalidate-cert}INBOX'; // enter the number of unread messages you want to display from mailbox or //enter 0 to display all unread messages e.g.-- $m_acs = 0; $m_acs = 10; // How far back in time do you want to search for unread messages - one month = 0 , two weeks = 1, one week = 2, three days = 3, // one day = 4, six hours = 5 or one hour = 6 e.g.-- $m_t = 6; $m_t = 2; //-----------Nothing More to edit below //open mailbox $m_mail = imap_open ($server, $m_username . "@gmail.com", $m_password) // or throw an error or die("ERROR: " . imap_last_error()); // unix time gone by $m_gunixtp = array(2592000, 1209600, 604800, 259200, 86400, 21600, 3600); // Date to start search $m_gdmy = date('d-M-Y', time() - $m_gunixtp[$m_t]); //search mailbox for unread messages since $m_t date $m_search=imap_search ($m_mail, 'ALL'); // Order results starting from newest message rsort($m_search); //if m_acs 0 then limit results if($m_acs 0){ array_splice($m_search, $m_acs); } $read = $_GET[read]; if ($read) { function get_mime_type(&$structure) { $primary_mime_type = array("TEXT", "MULTIPART","MESSAGE", "APPLICATION", "AUDIO","IMAGE", "VIDEO", "OTHER"); if($structure-subtype) { return $primary_mime_type[(int) $structure-type] . '/' .$structure-subtype; } return "TEXT/PLAIN"; } function get_part($stream, $msg_number, $mime_type, $structure = false,$part_number = false) { if(!$structure) { $structure = imap_fetchstructure($stream, $msg_number); } if($structure) { if($mime_type == get_mime_type($structure)) { if(!$part_number) { $part_number = "1"; } $text = imap_fetchbody($stream, $msg_number, $part_number); if($structure->encoding == 3) { return imap_base64($text); } else if($structure->encoding == 4) { return imap_qprint($text); } else { return $text; } } if($structure->type == 1) /* multipart */ { while(list($index, $sub_structure) = each($structure->parts)) { if($part_number) { $prefix = $part_number . '.'; } $data = get_part($stream, $msg_number, $mime_type, $sub_structure,$prefix . ($index + 1)); if($data) { return $data; } } // END OF WHILE } // END OF MULTIPART } // END OF STRUTURE return false; } // END OF FUNCTION // GET TEXT BODY $dataTxt = get_part($m_mail, $read, "TEXT/PLAIN"); // GET HTML BODY $dataHtml = get_part($m_mail, $read, "TEXT/HTML"); if ($dataHtml != "") { $msgBody = $dataHtml; $mailformat = "html"; } else { $msgBody = ereg_replace("\n","",$dataTxt); $mailformat = "text"; } if ($mailformat == "text") { echo "<html><head><title>Messagebody</title></head><body bgcolor=\"white\">$msgBody</body></html>"; } else { echo $msgBody; // It contains all HTML HEADER tags so we don't have to make them. } exit; } //loop it foreach ($m_search as $what_ever) { //get imap header info for obj thang $obj_thang = imap_headerinfo($m_mail, $what_ever); //get body info for obj thang $obj_thangs = imap_body($m_mail, $what_ever); //Then spit it out below.........if you dont swallow echo "Message ID# " . $what_ever . " Date: " . date("F j, Y, g:i a", $obj_thang-udate) . " From: " . $obj_thang-fromaddress . " To: " . $obj_thang-toaddress . " Subject: " . $obj_thang-Subject . " "; } echo "" . $m_empty . ""; //close mailbox imap_close($m_mail); ?

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