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  • Roll your own free .NET technical conference

    - by Brian Schroer
    If you can’t get to a conference, let the conference come to you! There are a ton of free recorded conference presentations online… Microsoft TechEd Let’s start with the proverbial 800 pound gorilla. Recent TechEds have recorded the majority of presentations and made them available online the next day. Check out presentations from last month’s TechEd North America 2012 or last week’s TechEd Europe 2012. If you start at http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd, you can also drill down to presentations from prior years or from other regional TechEds (Australia, New Zealand, etc.) The top presentations from my “View Queue”: Damian Edwards: Microsoft ASP.NET and the Realtime Web (SignalR) Jennifer Smith: Design for Non-Designers Scott Hunter: ASP.NET Roadmap: One ASP.NET – Web Forms, MVC, Web API, and more Daniel Roth: Building HTTP Services with ASP.NET Web API Benjamin Day: Scrum Under a Waterfall NDC The Norwegian Developer Conference site has the most interesting presentations, in my opinion. You can find the videos from the June 2012 conference at that link. The 2011 and 2010 pages have a lot of presentations that are still relevant also. My View Queue Top 5: Shay Friedman: Roslyn... hmmmm... what? Hadi Hariri: Just ‘cause it’s JavaScript, doesn’t give you a license to write rubbish Paul Betts: Introduction to Rx Greg Young: How to get productive in a project in 24 hours Michael Feathers: Deep Design Lessons ØREDEV Travelling on from Norway to Sweden... I don’t know why, but the Scandinavians seem to have this conference thing figured out. ØREDEV happens each November, and you can find videos here and here. My View Queue Top 5: Marc Gravell: Web Performance Triage Robby Ingebretsen: Fonts, Form and Function: A Primer on Digital Typography Jon Skeet: Async 101 Chris Patterson: Hacking Developer Productivity Gary Short: .NET Collections Deep Dive aspConf - The Virtual ASP.NET Conference Formerly known as “mvcConf”, this one’s a little different. It’s a conference that takes place completely on the web. The next one’s happening July 17-18, and it’s not too late to register (It’s free!). Check out the recordings from February 2011 and July 2010. It’s two years old and talks about ASP.NET MVC2, but most of it is still applicable, and Jimmy Bogard’s Put Your Controllers On a Diet presentation is the most useful technical talk I have ever seen. CodeStock Videos from the 2011 edition of this Tennessee conference are available. Presentations from last month’s 2012 conference should be available soon here. I’m looking forward to watching Matt Honeycutt’s Build Your Own Application Framework with ASP.NET MVC 3. UserGroup.tv User Group.tv was founded in January of 2011 by Shawn Weisfeld, with the mission of providing User Group content online for free. You can search by date, group, speaker and category tags. My View Queue Top 5: Sergey Rathon & Ian Henehan: UI Test Automation with Selenium Rob Vettor: The Repository Pattern Latish Seghal: The .NET Ninja’s Toolbelt Amir Rajan: Get Things Done With Dynamic ASP.NET MVC Jeffrey Richter: .NET Nuggets – Houston TechFest Keynote

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  • Executable Resumes

    - by Liam McLennan
    Over the past twelve months I have been thinking a lot about executable specifications. Long considered the holy grail of agile software development, executable specifications means expressing a program’s functionality in a way that is both readable by the customer and computer verifiable in an automatic, repeatable way. With the current generation of BDD and ATDD tools executable specifications seem finally within the reach of a significant percentage of the development community. Lately, and partly as a result of my craftsmanship tour, I have decided that soon I am going to have to get a job (gasp!). As Dave Hoover describes in Apprenticeship Patters, “you … have mentors and kindred spirits that you meet with periodically, [but] when it comes to developing software, you work alone.” The time may have come where the only way for me to feel satisfied and enriched by my work is to seek out a work environment where I can work with people smarter and more knowledgeable than myself. Having been on both sides of the interview desk many times I know how difficult and unreliable the process can be. Therefore, I am proposing the idea of executable resumes. As a journeyman programmer looking for a fruitful work environment I plan to write an application that demonstrates my understanding of the state of the art. Potential employers can download, view and execute my executable resume and judge wether my aesthetic sensibility matches their own. The concept of the executable resume is based upon the following assertion: A line of code answers a thousand interview questions Asking people about their experiences and skills is not a direct way of assessing their value to your organisation. Often it simple assesses their ability to mislead an interviewer. An executable resume demonstrates: The highest quality code that the person is able to produce. That the person is sufficiently motivated to produce something of value in their own time. That the person loves their craft. The idea of publishing a program to demonstrate a developer’s skills comes from Rob Conery, who suggested that each developer should build their own blog engine since it is the public representation of their level of mastery. Rob said: Luke had to build his own lightsaber – geeks should have to build their own blogs. And that should be their resume. In honour of Rob’s inspiration I plan to build a blog engine as my executable resume. While it is true that the world does not need another blog engine it is as good a project as any, it is a well understood domain, and I have not found an existing blog engine that I like. Executable resumes fit well with the software craftsmanship metaphor. It is not difficult to imagine that under the guild system master craftsmen may have accepted journeymen based on the quality of the work they had produced in the past. We now understand that when it comes to the functionality of an application that code is the final arbiter. Why not apply the same rule to hiring?

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  • Own a KINECT for MS-XBOX before anyone does

    Following is the announced by Richik Nandi from Microsoft team. Dear Customer, We believe that our privileged customers shouldn't have to wait for good things. So, here's a special offer exclusively for you. Be one of the first in India to own and experience Kinect for XBOX 360, few days before it is even launched in stores. Introducing the new Kinect for XBOX 360®. Kinect needs no controllers. You are the controller. Kinect brings games and entertainment to life in extraordinary new ways without using a controller. The sensor recognizes your face, eyes and body movements to deliver a superb gaming experience. Easy to use and great fun, Kinect gets everyone off the couch. See a ball? Kick it. Want to join a friend in the fun? Simply jump in. Imagine controlling movies and music with the wave of a hand or the sound of your voice! Kinect is all about fun for you and your family. And the best part is Kinect works with every Xbox 360®. There are two options you can choose from: •  Kinect sensor + 4GB Xbox 360 bundle + Kinect Adventures game at Rs 22,990/-and get Dance Central game worth Rs 1999 from Redington, 20% discount voucher from Starwood on food and beverages, T-shirt from PUMA and a Kinect adventure live card absolutely free using your unique promo code : XbTXXZl2Sb •  Kinect Sensor at Rs 9,500/-and get 20% discount voucher from Starwood on food and beverages, T-shirt from PUMA and a Kinect adventure live card absolutely free using your unique promo code : lDg6o8SuYh We want you to own your Kinect before the official launch. The promotion closes by 10th November. To know more about Kinect click here. To book your Kinect PRE-ORDER now! Enter your details along with the above mentioned promo code to avail of the free gifts offer. We will have your Kinect delivered by 19th November 2010. Enjoy being the controller. Enjoy the Kinect. span.fullpost {display:none;}

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-03-20

    - by Bob Rhubart
    SOA! SOA! SOA!; OSB 11g Recipes and Author Interviews www.oracle.com Featured this week on the OTN Architect Homepage, along with the latest articles, white papers, blogs, events, and other resources for software architects. OTN Virtual Developer Day - Java - APAC Tuesday March 27th, 2012. 9:30 am to 2:00pm IST / 12:00pm to 4.30pm SGT / 3.00pm - 7.30pm AEDT Oracle Virtualization Newsletter - March Edition www.oracle.com News, white papers, webcasts, events, blogs, and more -- all focused on Oracle Virtualization products. 7 Signs an Enterprise is getting the post-PC thing | Ron Tolido www.capgemini.com Capgemini's Ron Tolido shares "indicators for enterprises that actually understand the power of mobility and the post-PC era." Gartner: Personal Cloud Will Replace the Personal Computer as the Center of Users' Digital Lives www.gartner.com The change, says Gartner, "will require enterprises to fundamentally rethink how they deliver applications and services to users." Northeast Ohio Oracle Users Group 2 Day Seminar - May 14-15 - Cleveland, OH www.neooug.org More than 20 sessions over 4 tracks, featuring 18 speakers, including Oracle ACE Director Cary Millsap, Oracle ACE Director Rich Niemiec, and Oracle ACE Stewart Brand. Register before April 15 and save. Oracle Hardware Systems: The Extreme Performance Tour - Dates and Locations Worldwide www.oracle.com Get the inside track on Oracle's hardware strategy and product roadmap from the people who know Oracle hardware best. And be sure to meet our global experts in the Extreme Performance exhibition area. Click the link for dates and locations worldwide. Oracle's ZFS Storage Appliance Simulator | Steen Schmidt blogs.oracle.com Take a test drive. Oracle Access Manager 11g - useful links | Dmitry Nefedkin blogs.oracle.com Dmitry Nefedkin shares a list of links to useful resources for those interested in Oracle Access Manager 11g. Oracle Linux Online Forum - March 27 event.on24.com Date: Tuesday, March 27, 2012 Time: 9:30 AM PT / 12:30 PM ET Leading Innovations in Enterprise Linux hosted by Oracle Executives Edward Screven and Wim Coekaerts. Customer Presentation: How Oracle Helps Reduce Cost and Improve Performance of Database Applications at Progressive Insurance Speaker: John Dome What's New in Oracle Linux Speakers: Waseem Daher, Chris Mason, Elena Zannoni, Lenz Grimmer Get More Value from your Linux Vendor Speakers: Sergio Leunissen, Chris Mason, Monica Kumar Thought for the Day "I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked at in the right way, did not become still more complicated." —Poul Anderson

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  • Idea to develop a caching server between IIS and SQL Server

    - by John
    I work on a few high traffic websites that all share the same database and that are all heavily database driven. Our SQL server is max-ed out and, although we have already implemented many changes that have helped but the server is still working too hard. We employ some caching in our website but the type of queries we use negate using SQL dependency caching. We tried SQL replication to try and kind of load balance but that didn't prove very successful because the replication process is quite demanding on the servers too and it needed to be done frequently as it is important that data is up to date. We do use a Varnish web caching server (Linux based) to take a bit of the load off both the web and database server but as a lot of the sites are customised based on the user we can only do so much. Anyway, the reason for this question... Varnish gave me an idea for a possible application that might help in this situation. Just like Varnish sits between a web browser and the web server and caches response from the web server, I was wondering about the possibility of creating something that sits between the web server and the database server. Imagine that all SQL queries go through this SQL caching server. If it's a first time query then it will get recorded, and the result requested from the SQL server and stored locally on the cache server. If it's a repeat request within a set time then the result gets retrieved from the local copy without the query being sent to the SQL server. The caching server could also take advantage of SQL dependency caching notifications. This seems like a good idea in theory. There's still the same amount of data moving back and forward from the web server, but the SQL server is relieved of the work of processing the repeat queries. I wonder about how difficult it would be to build a service that sort of emulates requests and responses from SQL server, whether SQL server's own caching is doing enough of this already that this wouldn't be a benefit, or even if someone has done this before and I haven't found it? I would welcome any feedback or any references to any relevant projects.

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  • Oracle and Eloqua Welcome Compendium’s Content Marketing

    - by Mike Stiles
    Yesterday, Oracle announced its acquisition of Compendium, a cloud-based content marketing provider that helps companies plan, produce and deliver engaging content across multiple channels throughout their customers' lifecycle. Why? Because every part of the above paragraph speaks to where modern marketing is and where it’s headed. Customers have now been empowered, thanks to the Internet and particularly social, with access to almost limitless amounts of information about companies and products. This includes the especially influential voices of friends and objective acquaintances that have experience with the product or brand. With mobile, this info is available instantly in the palm of their hand. All of this research and influence mind you, is taking place long before a prospect will ever engage with the brand itself or one of its sales reps. So how does a brand effectively insert itself into these conversations and this flow of the customer journey? Now, more than ever, marketers must deliver relevant and engaging content across multiple channels and throughout the entire customer journey to be useful, helpful, and influential. Compendium has a data-driven content marketing platform that lines up relevant content with customer data and personas so brands can accelerate the conversion of prospects. Now think about combining that with the Oracle Eloqua Marketing Cloud, part of Oracle's comprehensive CX solution. Marketers will be able to automate content delivery across channels by aligning persona-based content with customers' digital body language. Better customer engagement, improved sales lead quality, better return on marketing investment, and higher customer loyalty. Now we’re talking. Does data-driven content marketing have an impact? Compendium customer CVENT is a SaaS company specializing in meetings management tech. They wanted to increase leads & ad performance on their blog and dramatically increase their content. They also wanted to manage the creation, workflow, promotion and distribution of that content. With Compendium, CVENT created over 9,000 content elements, and sales-ready leads grew 325%. So Oracle Eloqua helps you target audiences, know buyers, and automate multi-channel marketing campaigns. Compendium lets you plan, publish, manage and measure content across content types and channels. Now kick it up yet another notch with Oracle’s Analytics, Big Data and Social solutions, and you’re using your marketing dollars to reach the right people in the right place at the right time with the right content. And as if that weren’t enough, your customers will love you for it. @mikestiles

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  • How do you structure computer science University notes?

    - by Sai Perchard
    I am completing a year of postgraduate study in CS next semester. I am finishing a law degree this year, and I will use this to briefly explain what I mean when I refer to the 'structure' of University notes. My preferred structure for authoring law notes: Word Two columns 0.5cm margins (top, right, bottom, middle, left) Body text (10pt, regular), 3 levels of headings (14/12/10pt, bold), 3 levels of bulleted lists Color A background for cases Color B background for legislation I find that it's crucial to have a good structure from the outset. My key advice to a law student would be to ensure styles allows cases and legislation to be easily identified from supporting text, and not to include too much detail regarding the facts of cases. More than 3 levels of headings is too deep. More than 3 levels of a bulleted list is too deep. In terms of CS, I am interested in similar advice; for example, any strategies that have been successfully employed regarding structure, and general advice regarding note taking. Has latex proved better than Word? Code would presumably need to be stylistically differentiated, and use a monospaced font - perhaps code could be written in TextMate so that it could be copied to retain syntax highlighting? (Are notes even that useful in a CS degree? I am tempted to simply use a textbook. They are crucial in law.) I understand that different people may employ varying techniques and that people will have personal preferences, however I am interested in what these different techniques are. Update Thank you for the responses so far. To clarify, I am not suggesting that the approach should be comparable to that I employ for law. I could have been clearer. The consensus so far seems to be - just learn it. Structure of notes/notes themselves are not generally relevant. This is what I was alluding to when I said I was just tempted to use a textbook. Re the comment that said textbooks are generally useless - I strongly disagree. Sure, perhaps the recommended textbook is useless. But if I'm going to learn a programming language, I will (1) identify what I believe to be the best textbook, and (2) read it. I was unsure if the combination of theory with code meant that lecture notes may be a more efficient way to study for an exam. I imagine that would depend on the subject. A subject specifically on a programming language, reading a textbook and coding would be my preferred approach. But I was unsure if, given a subject containing substantive theory that may not be covered in a single textbook, people may have preferences regarding note taking and structure.

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  • Can a Printer Print White?

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    The vast majority of the time we all print on white media: white paper, white cardstock, and other neutral white surfaces. But what about printing white? Can modern printers print white and if not, why not? Read on as we explore color theory, printer design choices, and why white is the foundation of the printing process. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. Image by Coiote O.; available as wallpaper here. The Question SuperUser reader Curious_Kid is well, curious, about printers. He writes: I was reading about different color models, when this question hit my mind. Can the CMYK color model generate white color? Printers use CMYK color mode. What will happen if I try to print a white colored image (rabbit) on a black paper with my printer? Will I get any image on the paper? Does the CMYK color model have room for white? The Answer SuperUser contributor Darth Android offers some insight into the CMYK process: You will not get anything on the paper with a basic CMYK inkjet or laser printer. The CMYK color mixing is subtractive, meaning that it requires the base that is being colored to have all colors (i.e., White) So that it can create color variation through subtraction: White - Cyan - Yellow = Green White - Yellow - Magenta = Red White - Cyan - Magenta = Blue White is represented as 0 cyan, 0 yellow, 0 magenta, and 0 black – effectively, 0 ink for a printer that simply has those four cartridges. This works great when you have white media, as “printing no ink” simply leaves the white exposed, but as you can imagine, this doesn’t work for non-white media. If you don’t have a base color to subtract from (i.e., Black), then it doesn’t matter what you subtract from it, you still have the color Black. [But], as others are pointing out, there are special printers which can operate in the CMYW color space, or otherwise have a white ink or toner. These can be used to print light colors on top of dark or otherwise non-white media. You might also find my answer to a different question about color spaces helpful or informative. Given that the majority of printer media in the world is white and printing pure white on non-white colors is a specialty process, it’s no surprise that home and (most) commercial printers alike have no provision for it. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.     

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  • How to repair an external harddrive?

    - by dodohjk
    I would like to reformat my hard disk, and if possible recover the (somewhat unimportant) contents if possible. I have a Western Digital 1TB hard drive which had a NTFS partition. I unplugged the drive without safely removing it first. At first a pop up was asking me to use a Windows OS to run the chkdsk /f command, however, in the effort to keep using a Linux OS I used the ntfsfix command on the ubuntu terminal Now, when I try to access the hard drive, it doesn't show up anymore in Nautilus. I tried reformatting it using Disk Utility, but it gives me an error message, and Gparted would hang on the "Scanning devices" step infinitely. Please comment any output that you would like to see and I will add it to my question. EDIT disk utility tells me is on /dev/sdb the command sudo fdisk -l gives dodohjk@DodosPC:~$ sudo fdisk -l [sudo] password for dodohjk: Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders, total 488397168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0006fa8c Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 4094 482344959 241170433 5 Extended /dev/sda2 482344960 488396799 3025920 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda5 4096 31461127 15728516 83 Linux /dev/sda6 31463424 52434943 10485760 83 Linux /dev/sda7 52436992 62923320 5243164+ 83 Linux /dev/sda8 62924800 482344959 209710080 83 Linux Disk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000202043392 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121600 cylinders, total 1953519616 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x6e697373 This doesn't look like a partition table Probably you selected the wrong device. Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 ? 1936269394 3772285809 918008208 4f QNX4.x 3rd part /dev/sdb2 ? 1917848077 2462285169 272218546+ 73 Unknown /dev/sdb3 ? 1818575915 2362751050 272087568 2b Unknown /dev/sdb4 ? 2844524554 2844579527 27487 61 SpeedStor Partition table entries are not in disk order I wrote something wrong here, however here the output of fsck /dev/sbd is dodohjk@DodosPC:~$ sudo fsck /dev/sdb fsck from util-linux 2.20.1 e2fsck 1.42.5 (29-Jul-2012) ext2fs_open2: Bad magic number in super-block fsck.ext2: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks... fsck.ext2: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sdb The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 <device&gt;

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  • Going Inside the Store

    - by David Dorf
    Location was the first "killer-tech" for smartphones, and innovators have found several ways to use it. For retail, apps exist to find nearby stores, provide coupons, and give directions to the front door. But once you enter the store, location-finding ceases to work. That's because your location is usually found by finding GPS satellites in they sky, and the store's roof blocks the signal. But it won't take technology long to solve that problem. The first problem to solve is a lack of indoor maps. Navteq and others provide very accurate maps of the outdoors, enabling navigation for cars and pedestrians. Micello is building a business creating digital maps of indoor locations like malls, convention centers, office buildings. They have over 500 live maps, including maps of IKEA stores. They claim it took them only four hours to create a map of the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto with its 1.4 million square feet and 140 retail stores. And within stores, retailers are producing more accurate plan-o-grams. I'm always impressed watching demos of our space planning from AVT. It uses CAD software to allow you to walk the virtual store and see products on the shelves. The second problem is being able to determine location inside the store so it can be overlayed on the map. There are several goals for this endeavor. Your smartphone might direct you straight to particular products, it might summon a sales associate to your location for immediate assistance, and it might send you coupons based on the aisle you're viewing. Companies like Nearbuy, ZuluTime, and Skyhook are working to master indoor location using a combination of GPS signals, WiFi, and cell tower positioning to calculate a location. (Skyhook calls this WPS, as depicted in the chart.) Today they can usually hit 10 meters accuracy, but that number is improving all the time. When it gets inside 3 meters some the goals mentioned earlier will be in easy reach. I for one can't wait until the time my iPhone leads me directly to the sprinkler heads in Lowes and Home Depot.

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  • Infinite detail inside Perlin noise procedural mapping

    - by Dave Jellison
    I am very new to game development but I was able to scour the internet to figure out Perlin noise enough to implement a very simple 2D tile infinite procedural world. Here's the question and it's more conceptual than code-based in answer, I think. I understand the concept of "I plug in (x, y) and get back from Perlin noise p" (I'll call it p). P will always be the same value for the same (x, y) (as long as the Perlin algorithm parameters haven't changed, like altering number of octaves, et cetera). What I want to do is be able to zoom into a square and be able to generate smaller squares inside of the already generated overhead tile of terrain. Let's say I have a jungle tile for overhead terrain but I want to zoom in and maybe see a small river tile that would only be a creek and not large enough to be a full "big tile" of water in the overhead. Of course, I want the same net effect as a Perlin equation inside a Perlin equation if that makes sense? (aka. I want two people playing the game with the same settings to get the same terrain and details every time). I can conceptually wrap my head around the large tile being based on an "zoomed out" coordinate leaving enough room to drill into but this approach doesn't make sense in my head (maybe I'm wrong). I'm guessing with this approach my overhead terrain would lose all of the cohesiveness delivered by the Perlin. Imagine I calculate (0, 0) as overhead tile 1 and then to the east of that I plug in (50, 0). OK, great, I now have 49 pixels of detail I could then "drill down" into. The issue I have in my head with this approach (without attempting it) is that there's no guarantee from my Perlin noise that (0,0) would be a good neighbor to (50,0) as they could have wildly different "elevations" or p/resultant values returning from the Perlin equation when I generate the overhead map. I think I can conceive of using the Perlin noise for the overhead tile to then reuse the p value as a seed for the "detail" level of noise once I zoom in. That would ensure my detail Perlin is always the same configuration for (0,0), (1,0), etc. ad nauseam but I'm not sure if there are better approaches out there or if this is a sound approach at all.

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  • Book Review (Book 10) - The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

    - by BuckWoody
    This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for year. You can read my first book review here, and the entire list is here. The book I chose for March 2012 was: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick. I was traveling at the end of last month so I’m a bit late posting this review here. Why I chose this book: My personal belief about computing is this: All computing technology is simply re-arranging data. We take data in, we manipulate it, and we send it back out. That’s computing. I had heard from some folks about this book and it’s treatment of data. I heard that it dealt with the basics of data - and the semantics of data, information and so on. It also deals with the earliest forms of history of information, which fascinates me. It’s similar I was told, to GEB which a favorite book of mine as well, so that was a bonus. Some folks I talked to liked it, some didn’t - so I thought I would check it out. What I learned: I liked the book. It was longer than I thought - took quite a while to read, even though I tend to read quickly. This is the kind of book you take your time with. It does in fact deal with the earliest forms of human interaction and the basics of data. I learned, for instance, that the genesis of the binary communication system is based in the invention of telegraph (far-writing) codes, and that the earliest forms of communication were expensive. In fact, many ciphers were invented not to hide military secrets, but to compress information. A sort of early “lol-speak” to keep the cost of transmitting data low! I think the comparison with GEB is a bit over-reaching. GEB is far more specific, fanciful and so on. In fact, this book felt more like something fro Richard Dawkins, and tended to wander around the subject quite a bit. I imagine the author doing his research and writing each chapter as a book that followed on from the last one. This is what possibly bothered those who tended not to like it, I think. Towards the middle of the book, I think the author tended to be a bit too fragmented even for me. He began to delve into memes, biology and more - I think he might have been better off breaking that off into another work. The existentialism just seemed jarring. All in all, I liked the book. I recommend it to any technical professional, specifically ones involved with data technology in specific. And isn’t that all of us? :)

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  • Create Custom Playlists in Windows Media Player 12

    - by DigitalGeekery
    A playlist is a group of songs or media files that are grouped together based on a theme. Today we’ll look at how to create your own custom playlists in Windows Media Player 12. Create Custom Playlists Open Windows Media Player and switch to the Library view. Click on the Play tab at the top right to reveal the List pane.   If you currently have songs listed on the List pane, you can remove them by clicking Clear list.   To add songs to your playlist, right-click on the song title, select Add to, and then click Play list. You can also drag and drop the song title right onto the play list area. Hold down the Control [Ctrl] key while clicking to select more than one track at a time.   Changing the Playlist Order You can click and drag each item in your playlist to move it up or down.   You can also right click on the title and select Move up or Move down, or to completely remove a track from your playlist. You have the option to shuffle your list by clicking the Options list icon and selecting Shuffle list from the dropdown list. By selecting Sort list by you can sort by Title, Artist, Album, Release date, and more. Saving and naming your playlist To save your playlist, click on the Save list button. You’ll be prompted to enter a name for your playlist in the text box. Click away when you are finished. Windows Media Player will display your most recent playlists in the Navigation panel. Simply select the playlist anytime you want to listen to it.   Conclusion Custom playlists are a great way to group your music by themes such as mood, genre, activity, season, and more. If you are new to Windows Media Player 12, check out our post on managing your music in Windows Media Player. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Fixing When Windows Media Player Library Won’t Let You Add FilesShare Digital Media With Other Computers on a Home Network with Windows 7Install and Use the VLC Media Player on Ubuntu LinuxMake Windows Media Player Automatically Open in Mini Player ModeWhat are wmpnscfg.exe and wmpnetwk.exe and Why Are They Running? TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Easily Search Food Recipes With Recipe Chimp Tech Fanboys Field Guide Check these Awesome Chrome Add-ons iFixit Offers Gadget Repair Manuals Online Vista style sidebar for Windows 7 Create Nice Charts With These Web Based Tools

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  • How to deal with a boss who is extremely competitive [closed]

    - by user72101
    Okay, so I recently joined this group. My boss who I reported to, left a while ago and my colleague was made the team lead. We both now report to the same head, but she heads the team I work in. I am not sure on how to deal with various situations. I would imagine a team lead who motivates the rest of the team, and not someone who would take credit for what others do. I am the only one who works at the same geographic location. She is very smart, no doubt about it. Things get to me, for example I work on an issue and email a dev team, she would respond on top of my emails and as she is the lead, people respond to her rather than to me. If there is an email addressed with the head on it, she would get it to faster than I do, even when she knew I am looking into it. The rest of the team keeps asking me questions or help. I find it hard to say no, and I try to help them as i feel I might need their help someday as well. I slack in my own work or I could have used the time to learn things. I feel that she should be the go to person and not me. If one gets the benefits of being a lead, why not the work that goes with it? I feel I am stuck in a very unfortunate situation and am totally helpless about it. Everyday it is something or the other. I work on a project for months and finally when it is about to go live and there was a minor issue and the head started asking questions, she completely stole my thunder on a call. She would not let me speak and I have to actually cut her off to speak up. The ideal would be not to give it a thought and just do the best I can,but I feel I am capable of much more and not able to give my best because of this constant war at work. Neetu

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  • Achieving Zero Downtime Deployment

    - by MattW
    I am trying to achieve zero downtime deployments so I can deploy less during off hours and more during "slower" hours - or anytime, in theory. My current setup, somewhat simplified: Web Server A (.NET App) Web Server B (.NET App) Database Server (SQL Server) My current deployment process: "Stop" the sites on both Web Server A and B Upgrade the database schema for the version of the app being deployed Update Web Server A Update Web Server B Bring everything back online Current Problem This leads to a small amount of downtime each month - about 30 mins. I do this during off hours, so it isn't a huge problem - but it is something I'd like to get away from. Also - there is no way to really go 'back'. I don't generally make rollback DB scripts - only upgrade scripts. Leveraging The Load Balancer I'd love to be able to upgrade one Web Server at a time. Take Web Server A out of the load balancer, upgrade it, put it back online, then repeat for Web Server B. The problem is the database. Each version of my software will need to execute against a different version of the database - so I am sort of "stuck". Possible Solution A current solution I am considering is adopting the following rules: Never delete a database table. Never delete a database column. Never rename a database column. Never reorder a column. Every stored procedure must be versioned. Meaning - 'spFindAllThings' will become 'spFindAllThings_2' when it is edited. Then it becomes 'spFindAllThings_3' when edited again. Same rule applies to views. While, this seems a bit extreme - I think it solves the problem. Each version of the application will be hitting the DB in a non breaking way. The code expects certain results from the views/stored procedures - and this keeps that 'contract' valid. The problem is - it just seeps sloppy. I know I can clean up old stored procedures after the app is deployed for awhile, but it just feels dirty. Also - it depends on all of the developers following these rule, which will mostly happen, but I imagine someone will make a mistake. Finally - My Question Is this sloppy or hacky? Is anybody else doing it this way? How are other people solving this problem?

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  • How to design a scalable notification system?

    - by Trent
    I need to write a notification system manager. Here is my requirements: I need to be able to send a Notification on different platforms, which may be totally different (for exemple, I need to be able to send either an SMS or an E-mail). Sometimes the notification may be the same for all recipients for a given platform, but sometimes it may be a notification per recipients (or several) per platform. Each notification can contain platform specific payload (for exemple an MMS can contains a sound or an image). The system need to be scalable, I need to be able to send a very large amount of notification without crashing either the application or the server. It is a two step process, first a customer may type a message and choose a platform to send to, and the notification(s) should be created to be processed either real-time either later. Then the system needs to send the notification to the platform provider. For now, I end up with some though but I don't know how scalable it will be or if it is a good design. I've though of the following objects (in a pseudo language): a generic Notification object: class Notification { String $message; Payload $payload; Collection<Recipient> $recipients; } The problem with the following objects is what if I've 1.000.000 recipients ? Even if the Recipient object is very small, it'll take too much memory. I could also create one Notification per recipient, but some platform providers requires me to send it in batch, meaning I need to define one Notification with several Recipients. Each created notification could be stored in a persistent storage like a DB or Redis. Would it be a good it to aggregate this later to make sure it is scalable? On the second step, I need to process this notification. But how could I distinguish the notification to the right platform provider? Should I use an object like MMSNotification extending an abstract Notification? or something like Notification.setType('MMS')? To allow to process a lot of notification at the same time, I think a messaging queue system like RabbitMQ may be the right tool. Is it? It would allow me to queue a lot of notification and have several worker to pop notification and process them. But what if I need to batch the recipients as seen above? Then I imagine a NotificationProcessor object for which I could I add NotificationHandler each NotificationHandler would be in charge to connect the platform provider and perform notification. I can also use an EventManager to allow pluggable behavior. Any feedbacks or ideas? Thanks for giving your time. Note: I'm used to work in PHP and it is likely the language of my choice.

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  • Finance: Friends, not foes!

    - by red@work
    After reading Phil's blog post about his experiences of working on reception, I thought I would let everyone in on one of the other customer facing roles at Red Gate... When you think of a Credit Control team, most might imagine money-hungry (and often impolite) people, who will do nothing short of hunting people down until they pay up. Well, as with so many things, not at Red Gate! Here we do things a little bit differently.   Since joining the Licensing, Invoicing and Credit Control team at Red Gate (affectionately nicknamed LICC!), I have found it fantastic to work with people who know that often the best way to get what you want is by being friendly, reasonable and as helpful as possible. The best bit about this is that, because everyone is in a good mood, we have a great working atmosphere! We are definitely a very happy team. We laugh a lot, even when dealing with the serious matter of playing table football after lunch. The most obvious part of my job is bringing in money. There are few things quite as satisfying as receiving a big payment or one that you've been chasing for a long time. That being said, it's just as nice to encounter the companies that surprise you with a payment bang on time after little or no chasing. It's always a pleasure to find these people who are generous and easy to work with, and so they always make me smile, too. As I'm in one of the few customer facing roles here, I get to experience firsthand just how much Red Gate customers love our software and are equally impressed with our customer service. We regularly get replies from people thanking us for our help in resolving a problem or just to simply say that they think we're great. Or, as is often the case, that we 'rock and are awesome'! When those are the kinds of emails you have to deal with for most of the day, I would challenge anyone to be unhappy! The best thing about my work is that, much like Phil and his counterparts on reception, I get to talk to people from all over the world, and experience their unique (and occasionally unusual) personality traits. I deal predominantly with customers in the US, so I'll be speaking to someone from a high flying multi-national in New York one minute, and then the next phone call will be to a small office on the outskirts of Alabama. This level of customer involvement has led to a lot of interesting anecdotes and plenty of in-jokes to keep us amused! Obviously there are customers who are infuriating, like those who simply tell us that they will pay "one day", and that we should stop chasing them. Then there are the people who say that they ordered the tools because they really like them, but they just can't afford to actually pay for them at the moment. Thankfully these situations are relatively few and far between, and for every one customer that makes you want to scream, there are far, far more that make you smile!

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  • Exciting product releases (and one disappointing thing) with Mix10

    - by Jeff
    Sadly, I'm not at Mix this year, for the first time in a few years. It's a little harder to go if you work for Microsoft, oddly enough. And then there's this little guy next to me, who at ten days old really needs his daddy to be around! But oh, the excitement of what Microsoft has in store! It's great to finally see all of these major releases coming together for Microsoft developer products. There is a great deal of excitement among people internally no matter where you work, because there is so much cool stuff in the pipe. In case you live under a rock...Visual Studio 2010 - Great to see all of the positive feedback on the Twitter and what not. I've been using it on one of my home products for awhile, and I really like it. The newer nightly builds of ReSharper also seem to be gaining speed in quality as well. I like the new debugging features, and the text readability is not imagined. Love it.Silverlight 4 - I've been running a couple of minor SL3 apps on my personal sites for awhile now, and I'm thrilled with the platform. With a couple of key concepts down, .NET folk like you and me can do some stellar things with this, and if you're a Mac nerd (like me), it's all kinds of awesome to be able to build stuff for it without the agony of Objective-C and X Code.Windows Phone 7 Series - A few weeks ago you got to see the shiny new UI that went beyond the icon grid, and now you've got the developer story as well. That I can adapt my existing Silverlight apps with minimal effort to work on the phone is pretty powerful. Millions of .NET devs just because phone developers, using the tools they already know. How great is that?ASP.NET MVC2 - The final bits shipped last week, and there was much rejoicing. I love this framework because of the testability and the real ability to get to the true mechanics of HTTP. The other cool thing is the speed at which the framework has evolved. v2 in less than a year is pretty "un-Microsoft" in a lot of eyes.The video of keynotes and sessions is starting to appear on the Mix site, but for reasons I can't understand, they're WMV downloads. For real? Not that helpful for Mac folk. Why wouldn't they be using a Silverlight player?In any case, the thing that continues to motivate me is that getting what you imagine on to the Internet gets easier every year. This is not a new revelation for me. I've only been at Microsoft for four months, but I've felt this way for years. I'm thrilled to be a part of it.

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  • Visual Studio 2010 plus Help Index : have your cake and eat it too

    - by Adrian Hara
    Although the team's intentions might have been good, the new help system in Visual Studio 2010  is a huge step backwards (more like a cannonball-shot-kind-of-leap really) from the one we all know (and love?) in Visual Studio 2008 and 2005 (and heck, even VS6). Its biggest problem, from my point of view, is the total and complete lack of the Help Index feature: you know...the thing where you just go and type in what you're looking for and it filters down the list of results automatically. For me this was the number one productivity feature in the "old" help system, allowing me to find stuff very quickly. Number two is that it's entirely web based and runs, by default, in the browser. So imagine, when you press F1, a new tab opens in your default browser pointing to the help entry. While this is wrong in many ways, it's also extremely annoying, cleaning up tabs in the browser becomes a chore which represents a serious productivity hit. These and many other problems were discussed extensively (and rather vocally) on connect but it seems MS seemed to ignore it and opt to release the new help system anyway, with the promise that more features will be added in a later release. Again, it kind of amazes me that they chose to ship a product with LESS features that the previous one and, what's worse, missing KEY features, just so it's "standards based" and "extensible". To be honest, I couldn't care less about the help system's implementation, I just want it to be usable and I would've thought that by now the software community and especially MS would've learned this lesson. In the end, what kind of saddens me is that MS regards these basic features as ones for the "power help user". I mean, come on! I mean a) it's not like my aunt's using Visual Studio 2010 and she represents the regular user, b) all software developers are, by definition, power users and c) it's a freakin help, not rocket science! As you can tell, I'm pretty pissed. Even more so because I really feel that the VS2010 & co. release really is a great one, with a lot of effort going into the various platforms and frameworks, most (if not all) of them being really REALLY good products. And then they go and screw up the help! How lame is that?!   Anyway, it's not all gloom-and-doom. Luckily there is a desktop app which presents a UI over the new help system that's very close to what was there in VS2008, by Robert Chandler (to which I hereby declare eternal gratitude). It still has some minor issues but I'll take it over the browser version of the help any day. It's free, pretty quick (on my machine ;)) and nicely usable. So, if you hate the new help system (passionately) like I do, download H3Viewer now.

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  • Please help me give this principle a name

    - by Brent Arias
    As a designer, I like providing interfaces that cater to a power/simplicity balance. For example, I think the LINQ designers followed that principle because they offered both dot-notation and query-notation. The first is more powerful, but the second is easier to read and follow. If you disagree with my assessment of LINQ, please try to see my point anyway; LINQ was just an example, my post is not about LINQ. I call this principle "dial-able power". But I'd like to know what other people call it. Certainly some will say "KISS" is the common term. But I see KISS as a superset, or a "consumerism" practice. Using LINQ as my example again, in my view, a team of programmers who always try to use query notation over dot-notation are practicing KISS. Thus the LINQ designers practiced "dial-able power", whereas the LINQ consumers practice KISS. The two make beautiful music together. I'll give another example. Imagine a C# logging tool that has two signatures allowing two uses: void Write(string message); void Write(Func<string> messageCallback); The purpose of the two signatures is to fulfill these needs: //Every-day "simple" usage, nothing special. myLogger.Write("Something Happened" + error.ToString() ); //This is performance critical, do not call ToString() if logging is //disabled. myLogger.Write( () => { "Something Happened" + error.ToString() }); Having these overloads represents "dial-able power," because the consumer has the choice of a simple interface or a powerful interface. A KISS-loving consumer will use the simpler signature most of the time, and will allow the "busy" looking signature when the power is needed. This also helps self-documentation, because usage of the powerful signature tells the reader that the code is performance critical. If the logger had only the powerful signature, then there would be no "dial-able power." So this comes full-circle. I'm happy to keep my own "dial-able power" coinage if none yet exists, but I can't help think I'm missing an obvious designation for this practice. p.s. Another example that is related, but is not the same as "dial-able power", is Scott Meyer's principle "make interfaces easy to use correctly, and hard to use incorrectly."

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  • How valuable are you to your organization?

    - by Lance Shaw
    I don't know about you but I find it easy to get bogged down with the daily list of tasks and deliverables.  We all have lots to do and it all seems to be due tomorrow.  If you are reading this blog, than your to-do list is almost certainly filled with tasks related to the management, processing and publishing of information.  As we get mired in the daily routine of making sure that the content management needs of the organizations are met, we can easily lose sight of the value that we bring.  After all, if information and content is the lifeblood of our organizations, then surely maintaining the healthy flow of that information has real value.  But how can you measure that value and bring it forward on your résumé or your list of achievements in time for your next performance review? The AIIM organization has spent a lot of time recently researching the value of certification for "information professionals".  When it comes to enterprise content management (ECM) there are many areas of specialization including records management, content archivist, digital asset manager, content librarian and more.  Specialization can clearly drive up your value but it can also lock you into a narrow niche area of focus.  AIIM has found that what companies also need is someone that can apply their knowledge of how information is managed within the operational scope of the business in order to drive real, measurable strategic value.  When you can showcase the value of a broader, business-wide mindset to your management, you have more opportunity to make professional progress and drive real growth where it counts, your paycheck.   We here on the Oracle WebCenter team partnered with AIIM on the research they performed around the value of an information professional certification program. In a webinar this week, Doug Miles of AIIM and I will be talking about the results of that recent survey and what it is going to mean in the future to be recognized as a "Certified Information Professional" (CIP).  Oracle sponsored this research to help individuals and companies understand the value of enterprise content management and what it means across the entire organization. I hope you will join us. If any of us were stopped in the street and were asked about it, I bet most of us would think of ourselves as an "Information Professional".  Now we have a way to actually prove it!  There's only one downside that I can see...  you will have to get your business cards updated to include the "CIP" acronym after your name.  I think you will agree that is a price worth paying!

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  • BizTalk 2009 - The Community ODBC Adapter: Schema Generation with Input Parameters

    - by Stuart Brierley
    As previsouly noted in my post on Schema Generation using the Community ODBC Adapter, I ran into a problem when trying to generate a schema to represent a MySQL stored procedure that had input parameters.  After a bit of investigation and a few deadends I managed to figure out a way around this issue - detailed below are both the problem and solution in case you ever run into this yourself. The Problem Imagine a stored procedure that is coded as follows in MySQL: StuTest(in DStr varchar(80)) BEGIN   Declare GRNID int;   Select grn_id into GRNID from grn_header where distribution_number = DStr;   Select GRNID; END This is quite a simple stored procedure but can be used to illustrate the issue with parameters quite niceley. When generating the schema using the Add Generated Items wizard, I tried selecting "Stored Procedure" and then in the Statement Information window typing the stored procedure name: StuTest Pressing generate then gives the following error: "Incorrect Number of arguments for Procedure StuTest; expected 1, got 0" If you attempt to supply a value for the parameter you end up with a schema that will only ever supply the parameter value that you specify.  For example supplying StuTest('123') will always call the procedure with a parameter value of 123. The Solution   I tried contacting Two Connect about this, but their experience of testing the adapter with MySQL was limited. After looking through the code for the ODBC adapter myself and trying a few things out, I was eventually able to use the ODBC adapter to call a test stored procedure using a two way send port. In the generate schema wizard instead of selecting Stored Procedure I had to choose SQL Script instead, detailing the following script: Call StuTest(@InputParameter) By default this would create a request schema with an attribute called InputParameter, with a SQL type of NVarChar(1).  In most cases this is not going to be correct for the stored procedure being called. To change the type from the default that is applied you need to select the "Override default query processing" check box when specifying the script in the wizard.  This then opens the BizTalk ODBC Override window which lets you change the properties of the parameters and also test out the query script.  Once I had done this I was then able to generate the correct schema, which included an attribute representing the parameter.  By deploying the schema assembly I was then able to try the ODBC adapter out on a two way send port. When supplied with an appropriate message instance (for the generated request schema) this send port successfully returned the expected response.

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  • Desktop Fun: Happy New Year Icon and Font Packs

    - by Asian Angel
    With the Christmas holiday so near, New Year’s Eve and Day will not be far behind. To help you prepare those New Year’s Eve and Day celebrations we have put together a nice collection of fonts for party invitations, fliers, decorations, and more. We also have icon goodness to make your desktop all bright and shiny for the new year. Sneak Preview This is the New Year’s desktop that we put together using the Birthday Icon Set shown below. Note: The original unmodified version of this wallpaper can be found here. An up close look at the icons that we used… The Icon Packs Note: To customize the icon setup on your Windows 7 & Vista systems see our article here. Using Windows XP? We have you covered here. New Year Celebration Icon Set *.ico format only Download New Year Party Icon *.ico, .png, and .icns format Note: This icon is available for download in single file format (based on format type and/or image size). Download Celebration *.ico format only Download Birthday *.ico, .png, and .icns format Special Note: While not an official New Year’s set of icons, it will still work nicely for a New Year’s or celebration desktop setup. Download The Font Packs Note: To manage the fonts on your Windows 7, Vista, & XP systems see our article here. Cocktail Bubbly Download Fontdinerdotcom Sparkly Download Confetti Download KR Happy New Year 2002 Note: For those who are curious about this font’s shape, it is a cork popping out of a champagne bottle. Download NewYearBats *includes 52 individual characters Note: This group represents A – Z in all capital letters. Note: This group represents A – Z in all lower case letters. Download LCR Party Dings *includes 26 individual characters (A – Z), not case sensitive Special Note: This font is an all-purpose type that covers a variety of party/celebration types from New Year’s to birthdays. Download For more great ways to customize your computer be certain to look through our Desktop Fun section. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor Track Weather Conditions with the Weather Underground Web App for Chrome These 8-Bit Mario Wood Magnets Put Video Games on Your Fridge Christmas Themes 4 Pack for Chrome and Iron Browser Enjoy the First Total Lunar Eclipse in 372 Years This Evening Gmail’s Free Calling Extended Through 2011 Voice Search Brings Android-Style Voice Search to Google Chrome

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  • Ubuntu boots to terminal on start up

    - by Jules
    For a long time I've been unable to get updates due to a "repositories not found" error. Yesterday someone fixed this for me but after installing 94 days worth of updates my system wanted to restart. It looks like it is booting normally but then it opens a terminal and asks for my login and password. I had tried Ctrl+ Alt +F7 and startx to no avail. Here is everything that appears on screen when I turn the computer on. Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS box-o-doom tty1 box-o-doom login:julian password: last login: Sun Jul 8 10:28:02 BST tty1 Linux box-o-doom 2.6.32-41-generic-pae #91-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jun 13 12:00:09 UTC 20 12 i686 GNU/Linux Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS Welcome to Ubuntu! *Documentation: http://help.ubuntu.com julian@box-o-doom:~$_ i then tried dmesg which produced hundreds of lines all very similar to the first line reproduced here [ 9.453119] type=1505 audit1341742405.022:10): operation="profile_replace" pid=743 name="/usr/lib/connman/scripts/dhclient-script" follwed by this at the end [ 9.475880] alloc irq_desc for 27 on node-1 [ 9.475883] alloc kstat_irqs on node-1 [ 9.475890]forcedeth 0000:00:07.0: irq27 for MSI/MSI-X [ 9.760031] hda_code:ALC662 rev1: BIOS auto-probing. [ 10.048095] input:HDA Digital PCBeep as /devices/pci 0000:00:05.o/inp ut/input6 [ 10.862278] ppdev: user-space parallel port driver [ 20.268018] eth0: no IPv6 routers present julian@box-o-doom:~$_ results of startx lots of text scrolls off the screen and i have no way of reading it. but everything i can see is reproduced below current version of pixman: 0.16.4 Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org to make sure that you have the latest version Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) defult setting, (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational. (WW) Warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown. (==) log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: SUn Jul 8 12:02:23 2012 (==) using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf" (==)using config directory: "/usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.d" FATAL: Module nvidia not found. (EE) NVIDIA: Failed to load the NVIDIA kernal module please check your (EE) NVIDIA: systems kernal log for aditional error messages. (EE) Failed to load module "nvidia" (module specific error, 0) (EE) No drivers available. Fatal server error: no screens found please consult the X.org foundation support at http://wiki.x.org for help please also check the log files at "/var/log/X.org.0.log" for aditional informati on ddxSigGiveUp: Closing log giving up xinit: No such file or directory (errno 2): unable to connect to X server xinit: No suck process (errno 3): server error julian@box-o-doom:~$_

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  • GPL vs plugin interfaces not designed with a specific application in mind

    - by Kristóf Marussy
    I am not seeking or in need of legal advice, but an interesting though experiment came to my mind. Imagine the following situtation (I cannot really think about a concrete example and I am unsure if a real manifestation even exists): there is a free (libre) api A licensed under some permissive license or even LGPL. Non-free application B implements this api in order host plugins, but there are other free software doing the same thing. Moreover, there is plugin C acting as a plugin under api A. It links to library D, that is under GPL, so C is also under GPL. Plugins using A are loaded into hosts via a dlopen-like mechanism and use complex data structure for host-plugin communication. Neither B nor C distribute any files that may be required for A to function properly (like headers containing the structure definitions of A or dynamic libraries containing helper functions for A written by the authors of A), but such things may exist. Now some user installs application B and plugin C on his machine, along with anything that may be required for api A to function properly. Then he proceeds and loads C into B and creates some intellectual property with B which is not a piece of software. Did a GPL violation happend at some point, and if so, who violated GPL and why? The authors of C violate D's license by making C possible to be used in non-free host B? This is a possibility because they can't give and exception of GPL (like one described in http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLPluginsInNF or http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingOverControlledInterface) due to D's license terms. The authors of B violate C's and D's license by making C possible to be loaded in B? This is a possibility because http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#NFUseGPLPlugins disallows the mechanisms A uses for communitation between the free and non-free modules. The authors of A, because the api may be used (and in this case, was used) for communication between GPL'd and non-free software. This would be extremely absurd. The user, because at the moment of loading B into C, he made a derived work of C. I think this is impossible, because he does not distribute it. But would the situation change is he decided to release a configuration file of B which makes B load C as a plugin? Nobody, because A counts as a 'system library', and both B and C directly interact only with A, not eachother. In a sane world, this would happen... A concrete example of A could be some kind of audio (think LADSPA) or image processing api. However, I could find no such interface (that is free software, generic and is also implemented by commercial tools). A real-world example could also be quite enlightening.

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