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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 03, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 03, 2012Popular ReleasesLiveChat Starter Kit: LCSK v1.5.2: New features: Visitor location (City - Country) from geo-location Pass configuration via javascript for the chat box New visitor identification (no more using the IP address as visitor identification) To update from 1.5.1 Run the /src/1.5.2-sql-updates.txt SQL script to update your database tables. If you have it installed via NuGet, simply update your package and the file will be included so you can run the update script. New installation The easiest way to add LCSK to your app is by...Prime Factorization: Prime Factorization V2: Download the installation package and run it, to install prime factorization on your computer.DNN Content Localization Tools: CLTools v0.4 (Beta4): 3th Beta release for DNN 6.1 and obove Bug corrections : - Copy module work againNTemplates: NTemplates full source code and examples: This release includes the following changes: - NTemplates code. More enhacements and bug fixing. Nested scans seems to be working ok now. New event: ScanStart. Very usuful for calculating totals (see the example) - Examples. 2 new examples on nested scans. One of them very simple I did just for debugging. The other one is a report of invoices grouped by vendor, including totals calculations. Planned Roadmap: - Work on fixing performance bottlenecek: Try to compile the expression...ZXMAK2: Version 2.6.2.3: - add support for ZIP files created on UNIX system; - improve WAV support (fixed PCM24, FLOAT32; added PCM32, FLOAT64); - fix drag-n-drop on modal dialogs; - tape AutoPlay feature (thanks to Woody for algorithm).Net Code Samples: Full WCF Duplex Service Example: Full WCF Duplex Service ExampleKendo UI ASP.NET Sample Applications: Sample Applications (2012-06-01): Sample application(s) demonstrating the use of Kendo UI in ASP.NET applications.Better Explorer: Better Explorer Beta 1: Finally, the first Beta is here! There were a lot of changes, including: Translations into 10 different languages (the translations are not complete and will be updated soon) Conditional Select new tools for managing archives Folder Tools tab new search bar and Search Tab new image editing tools update function many bug fixes, stability fixes, and memory leak fixes other new features as well! Please check it out and if there are any problems, let us know. :) Also, do not forge...myManga: myManga v1.0.0.3: Will include MangaPanda as a default option. ChangeLog Updating from Previous Version: Extract contents of Release - myManga v1.0.0.3.zip to previous version's folder. Replaces: myManga.exe BakaBox.dll CoreMangaClasses.dll Manga.dll Plugins/MangaReader.manga.dll Plugins/MangaFox.manga.dll Plugins/MangaHere.manga.dll Plugins/MangaPanda.manga.dllPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 Metro (Preview 3): Player Framework for HTML/JavaScript and XAML/C# Metro Style Applications. Additional DownloadsIIS Smooth Streaming Client SDK for Windows 8 Microsoft PlayReady Client SDK for Metro Style Apps Release notes:Support for Windows 8 Release Preview (released 5/31/12) Advertising support (VAST, MAST, VPAID, & clips) Miscellaneous improvements and bug fixesMicrosoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.54: Fix for issue #18161: pretty-printing CSS @media rule throws an exception due to mismatched Indent/Unindent pair.Silverlight Toolkit: Silverlight 5 Toolkit Source - May 2012: Source code for December 2011 Silverlight 5 Toolkit release.Windows 8 Metro RSS Reader: RSS Reader release 6: Changed background and foreground colors Used VariableSizeGrid layout to wrap blog posts with images Sort items with Images first, text-only last Enabled Caching to improve navigation between framesJson.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 6: New feature - Added IgnoreDataMemberAttribute support New feature - Added GetResolvedPropertyName to DefaultContractResolver New feature - Added CheckAdditionalContent to JsonSerializer Change - Metro build now always uses late bound reflection Change - JsonTextReader no longer returns no content after consecutive underlying content read failures Fix - Fixed bad JSON in an array with error handling creating an infinite loop Fix - Fixed deserializing objects with a non-default cons...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.02.00: Major Highlights Fixed issue in the Site Settings when single quotes were being treated as escape characters Fixed issue loading the Mobile Premium Data after upgrading from CE to PE Fixed errors logged when updating folder provider settings Fixed the order of the mobile device capabilities in the Site Redirection Management UI The User Profile page was completely rebuilt. We needed User Profiles to have multiple child pages. This would allow for the most flexibility by still f...????: ????2.0.1: 1、?????。WiX Toolset: WiX v3.6 RC: WiX v3.6 RC (3.6.2928.0) provides feature complete Burn with VS11 support. For more information see Rob's blog post about the release: http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2012/5/28/WiX-v3.6-Release-Candidate-availableJavascript .NET: Javascript .NET v0.7: SetParameter() reverts to its old behaviour of allowing JavaScript code to add new properties to wrapped C# objects. The behavior added briefly in 0.6 (throws an exception) can be had via the new SetParameterOptions.RejectUnknownProperties. TerminateExecution now uses its isolate to terminate the correct context automatically. Added support for converting all C# integral types, decimal and enums to JavaScript numbers. (Previously only the common types were handled properly.) Bug fixe...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 3.0 (May 2012): Fixes: unserialize() of negative float numbers fix pcre possesive quantifiers and character class containing ()[] array deserilization when the array contains a reference to ISerializable parsing lambda function fix round() reimplemented as it is in PHP to avoid .NET rounding errors filesize bypass for FileInfo.Length bug in Mono New features: Time zones reimplemented, uses Windows/Linux databaseSharePoint Euro 2012 - UEFA European Football Predictor: havivi.euro2012.wsp (1.1): New fetures:Admin enable / disable match Hide/Show Euro 2012 SharePoint lists (3 lists) Installing SharePoint Euro 2012 PredictorSharePoint Euro 2012 Predictor has been developed as a SharePoint Sandbox solution to support SharePoint Online (Office 365) Download the solution havivi.euro2012.wsp from the download page: Downloads Upload this solution to your Site Collection via the solutions area. Click on Activate to make the web parts in the solution available for use in the Site C...New ProjectsAFS.PhonePusherConnectorVX: pusher for phone vxApache: this is the Apache project.Apple: this is the Apple project.CUARTOAZZJL: HURRA!!Designing Windows 8 Applications with C# and XAML: This project hosts the source code used in the example projects for the book, Designing Windows 8 Metro Applications with C# and XAML.Easy Internet: CyberWeb ist ein einfacher Webbrowser für PC Neulinge. Ideal für Leute, die noch keine PC-Erfahrung haben.Easy Outlook Backup: Beschreibung: Easy Outlook Backup ist ein Programm das alle Daten von Outlook sichert. Ideal für Leute, die noch keine PC-Erfahrung haben. Easy Realtime Start: Beschreibung: Easy Realtime Start ist ein Programm das einen Prozess in höchster Priorität startet. Und das ganz bequem Per drag & drop. Ideal für Leute, die aufwendige Programme starten müssen. (zB.: “Blender” Free 3D Designer)eStock: eStock ist ein Verwaltungstool für Elektroniker um Bauteile im "Lager" sowie Projekte zu verwalten. Es bietet eine Möglichkeit festzulegen, um welche Art von Bauteil es sich handelt und wo sich dieses im Lager bzw. Regal befindet. Die Projektverwaltung ermöglicht es, Bauteile einem Projekt hinzuzufügen und eine Bestellliste / Einkaufsliste von Bauteilen, die nicht mehr im Lager vorhanden sind, zu erstellen. FuTTY: FireEgl's PuTTY -- FuTTY! FuTTY is a fork of PuTTY and PuTTYTray.GeometryWorld: To Do...Google: this is the Google project.Google Advance Search: An easy way to create documents search at Google and read your emails and Much moregoogle maps viewer for dynamics crm 2011: Easy google maps viewer for dynamics CRM 2011GPS Status - (GPS tool für GPS-Dongles und Mäuse) - GPS-Empfänger: Mein Programm verbindet sich mit dem externen GPS über einen Com-Port und bietet verschiedene Tools.Harmony Text Editor: Harmony is a ridiculously simple text editor for code and poetry.Hi! Football: .Goal / Objective -> To help friends gather for enjoying watching football together. .How it works -> To basically choose your favorite team, choose one of the matches fetched for his team, our app will generate a list of popular restraunts, cafes where he can watch the chosen match, the user can select one of the generated locations around his area, and create an event inviting his friends to join him and he can also join other friends' events.Java: this is the Java project.LevelUp Serializer: LevelUp Serializer is a small and simple serialize library.It can help developer to serialize and deserialize data more convenient. Feature: - Ease of use - Supports almost all serializer, like Binary、Xml、Soap、Json、DataContract. - Support serialize to file、serialize to stream、deserialize from file、deserialize from stream. - Support Xml encryption. - Support accelerated through the XML the serialization assemble.LFormatConvert: ????Linux???????????????????????，??ffmpeg????Machine QA Manager: Machine QA Manager is intended to save and help trend results from radiation therapy equipment testing. The program will be made as generic as possible from a initial setup to enable it's use for other types of routine testing activities (for example factory equipment) but preconfigured templates for radiation therapy will be supplied for the convenience of people working in that domain.maven-asbuild-plugin: maven-asbuild-plugin incorporates the adobe flash/flex based artifacts like swc or swf into the maven methology.Midnight Peach - C# framework generator for LINQ: C# framework generator for LINQMiku???????: ????????，????????！?????????????，??????????。?????????????????！MIKU????????????，??！????????????、????。 This program used to detect music beat.You can listen to music while press button,and it can display the BPM of the song.Miku will wave to you.MyTestingStudy: my personal testing studyNameless Sprite Editor: Nameless Sprite Editor is a tool used to thoroughly edit the graphics in ALL Game Boy Advance games. [ UNDER CONSTRUCTION ]NeoModulus Business Rules Builder: A windows form application that allows non-programmers to build strict definitions of a business domain. Once the definition is complete the program will build out object oriented C# files and a .net DLL. My test business domain is the open SRD, basically Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 edition.NodeJs: this is the NodeJs projectNoSQL: this is the Nosql project.OmniKassa for NopCommerce: OmniKassa payment module plugin for nopCommerceOn-Line Therapy: testOpen School: This project is about to create an open platform for all the academic institutions, so that they can manage all of their work. Our efforts will be for every kind of institution who are currently struggling with different kind of systems in place which are not collaborating with each other. This project will provide a common platform to all these kind of systems and provide them a better solution which actually works. Oracle: this is the Oracle project.Orchard Web Services: RESTful web services to expose interaction with Orchard content management.Personal Social Network using asp.net mvc and mongodb: FirstRooster is a network platform that let user create their own social network of interest to connect and share with like minded people anywhere.peshop: E-Commerce application , separated by DAl,BLL and Presentation layersPHP: this is the PHP project.Prime Factorization: Factoring trinomials using the ac method can be made easier through the use of Prime Factorization. Prime Factorization is a program that can assist you in the factoring of numbers in Algebra, namely trinomials using the AC Method. It can also find all the factors of any number.PromedioNotas: El programa trata de promediar 3 nostas y mostrar y si pasaba de año o no por medio de un mensajeProyecto Tarea: Este proyecto esta hecho con el objetivo de aprender sobre TFSProyectotarea1: Sotfware de terminal aéreo de Guayaquil, donde se encuentran el nombre de las aerolíneas y las rutas de vuelo a nivel nacional.Python: this is the Python project.Ruby: this is the Ruby project.tedplay: tedplay is your media player of choice for playing Commodore 264 music format files similar to SIDplay. It is basically a stripped down Commodore plus/4 emulator without video output and peripherals based on the SDL build of the Commodore 264 family emulator YAPE. tedplay is released under version 2 of the GNU Generic Public License and can be built for both Windows and Unix or actually any platform that has a C++ compiler and SDL support.test1: This is a test projectwin-x264: A port of the x264-codebase into a VisualStudio-project. Compilation requires Intel-compiler and Yasm.XDA ROM Hub: Xperia 2011 line toolkit.znvicente_cuartoc: Poyecto Vicente Eduardo Zambrano Navarrete??Win7?????: ??????? *.theme ???????（??，??，??，???）。????VSB???*.msstyles??，????????，????????????????????????！????????????，?????????????。???，????????！ ?????????，?????????，????????，??????！?????????????，?????????????????，?????????，???Aero??，??????~?????????????！??，?????????theme??，?????????，??????，????，??????。 This program used to create .theme file and the relevant documents (wallpaper, pointer, ICONS, sounds, etc.). As long as you use VSB ready . msstyles files, chosen the icon wallpaper, etc, an...

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• Another Marketing Conference, part one – the best morning sessions.

  - by Roger Hart

  Yesterday I went to Another Marketing Conference. I honestly can’t tell if the title is just tipping over into smug, but in the balance of things that doesn’t matter, because it was a good conference. There was an enjoyable blend of theoretical and practical, and enough inter-disciplinary spread to keep my inner dilettante grinning from ear to ear. Sure, there was a bumpy bit in the middle, with two back-to-back sales pitches and a rather thin overview of the state of the web. But the signal:noise ratio at AMC2012 was impressively high. Here’s the first part of my write-up of the sessions. It’s a bit of a mammoth. It’s also a bit of a mash-up of what was said and what I thought about it. I’ll add links to the videos and slides from the sessions as they become available. Although it was in the morning session, I’ve not included Vanessa Northam’s session on the power of internal comms to build brand ambassadors. It’ll be in the next roundup, as this is already pushing 2.5k words. First, the important stuff. I was keeping a tally, and nobody said “synergy” or “leverage”. I did, however, hear the term “marketeers” six times. Shame on you – you know who you are. 1 – Branding in a post-digital world, Graham Hales This initially looked like being a sales presentation for Interbrand, but Graham pulled it out of the bag a few minutes in. He introduced a model for brand management that was essentially Plan >> Do >> Check >> Act, with Do and Check rolled up together, and went on to stress that this looks like on overall business management model for a reason. Brand has to be part of your overall business strategy and metrics if you’re going to care about it at all. This was the first iteration of what proved to be one of the event’s emergent themes: do it throughout the stack or don’t bother. Graham went on to remind us that brands, in so far as they are owned at all, are owned by and co-created with our customers. Advertising can offer a message to customers, but they provide the expression of a brand. This was a preface to talking about an increasingly chaotic marketplace, with increasingly hard-to-manage purchase processes. Services like Amazon reviews and TripAdvisor (four presenters would make this point) saturate customers with information, and give them a kind of vigilante power to comment on and define brands. Consequentially, they experience a number of “moments of deflection” in our sales funnels. Our control is lessened, and failure to engage can negatively-impact buying decisions increasingly poorly. The clearest example given was the failure of NatWest’s “caring bank” campaign, where staff in branches, customer support, and online presences didn’t align. A discontinuity of experience basically made the campaign worthless, and disgruntled customers talked about it loudly on social media. This in turn presented an opportunity to engage and show caring, but that wasn’t taken. What I took away was that brand (co)creation is ongoing and needs monitoring and metrics. But reciprocally, given you get what you measure, strategy and metrics must include brand if any kind of branding is to work at all. Campaigns and messages must permeate product and service design. What that doesn’t mean (and Graham didn’t say it did) is putting Marketing at the top of the pyramid, and having them bawl demands at Product Management, Support, and Development like an entitled toddler. It’s going to have to be collaborative, and session 6 on internal comms handled this really well. The main thing missing here was substantiating data, and the main question I found myself chewing on was: if we’re building brands collaboratively and in the open, what about the cultural politics of trolling? 2 – Challenging our core beliefs about human behaviour, Mark Earls This was definitely the best show of the day. It was also some of the best content. Mark talked us through nudging, behavioural economics, and some key misconceptions around decision making. Basically, people aren’t rational, they’re petty, reactive, emotional sacks of meat, and they’ll go where they’re led. Comforting stuff. Examples given were the spread of the London Riots and the “discovery” of the mountains of Kong, and the popularity of Susan Boyle, which, in turn made me think about Per Mollerup’s concept of “social wayshowing”. Mark boiled his thoughts down into four key points which I completely failed to write down word for word: People do, then think – Changing minds to change behaviour doesn’t work. Post-rationalization rules the day. See also: mere exposure effects. Spock < Kirk - Emotional/intuitive comes first, then we rationalize impulses. The non-thinking, emotive, reactive processes run much faster than the deliberative ones. People are not really rational decision makers, so  intervening with information may not be appropriate. Maximisers or satisficers? – Related to the last point. People do not consistently, rationally, maximise. When faced with an abundance of choice, they prefer to satisfice than evaluate, and will often follow social leads rather than think. Things tend to converge – Behaviour trends to a consensus normal. When faced with choices people overwhelmingly just do what they see others doing. Humans are extraordinarily good at mirroring behaviours and receiving influence. People “outsource the cognitive load” of choices to the crowd. Mark’s headline quote was probably “the real influence happens at the table next to you”. Reference examples, word of mouth, and social influence are tremendously important, and so talking about product experiences may be more important than talking about products. This reminded me of Kathy Sierra’s “creating bad-ass users” concept of designing to make people more awesome rather than products they like. If we can expose user-awesome, and make sharing easy, we can normalise the behaviours we want. If we normalize the behaviours we want, people should make and post-rationalize the buying decisions we want.  Where we need to be: “A bigger boy made me do it” Where we are: “a wizard did it and ran away” However, it’s worth bearing in mind that some purchasing decisions are personal and informed rather than social and reactive. There’s a quadrant diagram, in fact. What was really interesting, though, towards the end of the talk, was some advice for working out how social your products might be. The standard technology adoption lifecycle graph is essentially about social product diffusion. So this idea isn’t really new. Geoffrey Moore’s “chasm” idea may not strictly apply. However, his concepts of beachheads and reference segments are exactly what is required to normalize and thus enable purchase decisions (behaviour change). The final thing is that in only very few categories does a better product actually affect purchase decision. Where the choice is personal and informed, this is true. But where it’s personal and impulsive, or in any way social, “better” is trumped by popularity, endorsement, or “point of sale salience”. UX, UCD, and e-commerce know this to be true. A better (and easier) experience will always beat “more features”. Easy to use, and easy to observe being used will beat “what the user says they want”. This made me think about the astounding stickiness of rational fallacies, “common sense” and the pathological willful simplifications of the media. Rational fallacies seem like they’re basically the heuristics we use for post-rationalization. If I were profoundly grimy and cynical, I’d suggest deploying a boat-load in our messaging, to see if they’re really as sticky and appealing as they look. 4 – Changing behaviour through communication, Stephen Donajgrodzki This was a fantastic follow up to Mark’s session. Stephen basically talked us through some tactics used in public information/health comms that implement the kind of behavioural theory Mark introduced. The session was largely about how to get people to do (good) things they’re predisposed not to do, and how communication can (and can’t) make positive interventions. A couple of things stood out, in particular “implementation intentions” and how they can be linked to goals. For example, in order to get people to check and test their smoke alarms (a goal intention, rarely actualized  an information campaign will attempt to link this activity to the clocks going back or forward (a strong implementation intention, well-actualized). The talk reinforced the idea that making behaviour changes easy and visible normalizes them and makes them more likely to succeed. To do this, they have to be embodied throughout a product and service cycle. Experiential disconnects undermine the normalization. So campaigns, products, and customer interactions must be aligned. This is underscored by the second section of the presentation, which talked about interventions and pre-conditions for change. Taking the examples of drug addiction and stopping smoking, Stephen showed us a framework for attempting (and succeeding or failing in) behaviour change. He noted that when the change is something people fundamentally want to do, and that is easy, this gets a to simpler. Coordinated, easily-observed environmental pressures create preconditions for change and build motivation. (price, pub smoking ban, ad campaigns, friend quitting, declining social acceptability) A triggering even leads to a change attempt. (getting a cold and panicking about how bad the cough is) Interventions can be made to enable an attempt (NHS services, public information, nicotine patches) If it succeeds – yay. If it fails, there’s strong negative enforcement. Triggering events seem largely personal, but messaging can intervene in the creation of preconditions and in supporting decisions. Stephen talked more about systems of thinking and “bounded rationality”. The idea being that to enable change you need to break through “automatic” thinking into “reflective” thinking. Disruption and emotion are great tools for this, but that is only the start of the process. It occurs to me that a great deal of market research is focused on determining triggers rather than analysing necessary preconditions. Although they are presumably related. The final section talked about setting goals. Marketing goals are often seen as deriving directly from business goals. However, marketing may be unable to deliver on these directly where decision and behaviour-change processes are involved. In those cases, marketing and communication goals should be to create preconditions. They should also consider priming and norms. Content marketing and brand awareness are good first steps here, as brands can be heuristics in decision making for choice-saturated consumers, or those seeking education. 5 – The power of engaged communities and how to build them, Harriet Minter (the Guardian) The meat of this was that you need to let communities define and establish themselves, and be quick to react to their needs. Harriet had been in charge of building the Guardian’s community sites, and learned a lot about how they come together, stabilize  grow, and react. Crucially, they can’t be about sales or push messaging. A community is not just an audience. It’s essential to start with what this particular segment or tribe are interested in, then what they want to hear. Eventually you can consider – in light of this – what they might want to buy, but you can’t start with the product. A community won’t cohere around one you’re pushing. Her tips for community building were (again, sorry, not verbatim): Set goals Have some targets. Community building sounds vague and fluffy, but you can have (and adjust) concrete goals. Think like a start-up This is the “lean” stuff. Try things, fail quickly, respond. Don’t restrict platforms Let the audience choose them, and be aware of their differences. For example, LinkedIn is very different to Twitter. Track your stats Related to the first point. Keeping an eye on the numbers lets you respond. They should be qualified, however. If you want a community of enterprise decision makers, headcount alone may be a bad metric – have you got CIOs, or just people who want to get jobs by mingling with CIOs? Build brand advocates Do things to involve people and make them awesome, and they’ll cheer-lead for you. The last part really got my attention. Little bits of drive-by kindness go a long way. But more than that, genuinely helping people turns them into powerful advocates. Harriet gave an example of the Guardian engaging with an aspiring journalist on its Q&A forums. Through a series of serendipitous encounters he became a BBC producer, and now enthusiastically speaks up for the Guardian community sites. Cultivating many small, authentic, influential voices may have a better pay-off than schmoozing the big guys. This could be particularly important in the context of Mark and Stephen’s models of social, endorsement-led, and example-led decision making. There’s a lot here I haven’t covered, and it may be worth some follow-up on community building. Thoughts I was quite sceptical of nudge theory and behavioural economics. First off it sounds too good to be true, and second it sounds too sinister to permit. But I haven’t done the background reading. So I’m going to, and if it seems to hold real water, and if it’s possible to do it ethically (Stephen’s presentations suggests it may be) then it’s probably worth exploring. The message seemed to be: change what people do, and they’ll work out why afterwards. Moreover, the people around them will do it too. Make the things you want them to do extraordinarily easy and very, very visible. Normalize and support the decisions you want them to make, and they’ll make them. In practice this means not talking about the thing, but showing the user-awesome. Glib? Perhaps. But it feels worth considering. Also, if I ever run a marketing conference, I’m going to ban speakers from using examples from Apple. Quite apart from not being consistently generalizable, it’s becoming an irritating cliché.

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• The Changing Face of PASS

  - by Bill Graziano

  I’m starting my sixth year on the PASS Board.  I served two years as the Program Director, two years as the Vice-President of Marketing and I’m starting my second year as the Executive Vice-President of Finance.  There’s a pretty good chance that if PASS has done something you don’t like or is doing something you don’t like, that I’m involved in one way or another. Andy Leonard asked in a comment on his blog if the Board had ever reversed itself based on community input.  He asserted that it hadn’t.  I disagree.  I’m not going to try and list all the changes we make inside portfolios based on feedback from and meetings with the community.  I’m going to focus on major governance issues since I was elected to the Board. Management Company The first big change was our management company.  Our old management company had a standard approach to running a non-profit.  It worked well when PASS was launched.  Having a ready-made structure and process to run the organization enabled the organization to grow quickly.  As time went on we were limited in some of the things we wanted to do.  The more involved you were with PASS, the more you saw these limitations.  Key volunteers were regularly providing feedback that they wanted certain changes that were difficult for us to accomplish.  The Board at that time wanted changes that were difficult or impossible to accomplish under that structure. This was not a simple change.  Imagine a $2.5 million dollar company letting all its employees go on a Friday and starting with a new staff on Monday.  We also had a very narrow window to accomplish that so that we wouldn’t affect the Summit – our only source of revenue.  We spent the year after the change rebuilding processes and putting on the Summit in Denver.  That’s a concrete example of a huge change that PASS made to better serve its members.  And it was a change that many in the community were telling us we needed to make. Financials We heard regularly from our members that they wanted our financials posted.  Today on our web site you can find audited financials going back to 2004.  We publish our budget at the start of each year.  If you ask a question about the financials on the PASS site I do my best to answer it.  I’m also trying to do a better job answering financial questions posted in other locations.  (And yes, I know I owe a few of you some blog posts.) That’s another concrete example of a change that our members asked for that the Board agreed was a good decision. Minutes When I started on the Board the meeting minutes were very limited.  The minutes from a two day Board meeting might fit on one page.  I think we did the bare minimum we were legally required to do.  Today Board meeting minutes run from 5 to 12 pages and go into incredible detail on what we talk about.  There are certain topics that are NDA but where possible we try to list the topic we discussed but that the actual discussion was under NDA.  We also publish the agenda of Board meetings ahead of time. This is another specific example where input from the community influenced the decision.  It was certainly easier to have limited minutes but I think the extra effort helps our members understand what’s going on. Board Q&A At the 2009 Summit the Board held its first public Q&A with our members.  We’d always been available individually to answer questions.  There’s a benefit to getting us all in one room and asking the really hard questions to watch us squirm.  We learn what questions we don’t have good answers for.  We get to see how many people in the crowd look interested in the various questions and answers. I don’t recall the genesis of how this came about.  I’m fairly certain there was some community pressure though. Board Votes Until last November, the Board only reported the vote totals and not how individual Board members voted.  That was one of the topics at a great lunch I had with Tim Mitchell and Kendal van Dyke at the Summit.  That was also the topic of the first question asked at the Board Q&A by Kendal.  Kendal expressed his opposition to to anonymous votes clearly and passionately and without trying to paint anyone into a corner.  Less than 24 hours later the PASS Board voted to make individual votes public unless the topic was under NDA.  That’s another area where the Board decided to change based on feedback from our members. Summit Location While this isn’t actually a governance issue it is one of the more public decisions we make that has taken some public criticism.  There is a significant portion of our members that want the Summit near them.  There is a significant portion of our members that like the Summit in Seattle.  There is a significant portion of our members that think it should move around the country.  I was one that felt strongly that there were significant, tangible benefits to our attendees to being in Seattle every year.  I’m also one that has been swayed by some very compelling arguments that we need to have at least one outside Seattle and then revisit the decision.  I can’t tell you how the Board will vote but I know the opinion of our members weighs heavily on the decision. Elections And that brings us to the grand-daddy of all governance issues.  My thesis for this blog post is that the PASS Board has implemented policy changes in response to member feedback.  It isn’t to defend or criticize our election process.  It’s just to say that is has been under going continuous change since I’ve been on the Board.  I ran for the Board in the fall of 2005.  I don’t know much about what happened before then.  I was actively volunteering for PASS for four years prior to that as a chapter leader and on the program committee.  I don’t recall any complaints about elections but that doesn’t mean they didn’t occur.  The questions from the Nominating Committee (NomCom) were trivial and the selection process rudimentary (For example, “Tell us about your accomplishments”).  I don’t even remember who I ran against or how many other people ran.  I ran for the VP of Marketing in the fall of 2007.  I don’t recall any significant changes the Board made in the election process for that election.  I think a lot of the changes in 2007 came from us asking the management company to work on the election process.  I was expecting a similar set of puff ball questions from my previous election.  Boy, was I in for a shock.  The NomCom had found a much better set of questions and really made the interview portion difficult.  The questions were much more behavioral in nature.  I’d already written about my vision for PASS and my goals.  They wanted to know how I handled adversity, how I handled criticism, how I handled conflict, how I handled troublesome volunteers, how I motivated people and how I responded to motivation. And many, many other things. They grilled me for over an hour.  I’ve done a fair bit of technical sales in my time.  I feel I speak well under pressure addressing pointed questions.  This interview intentionally put me under pressure.  In addition to wanting to know about my interpersonal skills, my work experience, my volunteer experience and my supervisory experience they wanted to see how I’d do under pressure.  They wanted to see who would respond under pressure and who wouldn’t.  It was a bit of a shock. That was the first big change I remember in the election process.  I know there were other improvements around the process but none of them stick in my mind quite like the unexpected hour-long grilling. The next big change I remember was after the 2009 elections.  Andy Warren was unhappy with the election process and wanted to make some changes.  He worked with Hannes at HQ and they came up with a better set of processes.  I think Andy moved PASS in the right direction.  Nonetheless, after the 2010 election even more people were very publicly clamoring for changes to our election process.  In August of 2010 we had a choice to make.  There were numerous bloggers criticizing the Board and our upcoming election.  The easy change would be to announce that we were changing the process in a way that would satisfy our critics.  I believe that a knee-jerk response to criticism is seldom correct. Instead the Board spent August and September and October and November listening to the community.  I visited two SQLSaturdays and asked questions of everyone I could.  I attended chapter meetings and asked questions of as many people as they’d let me.  At Summit I made it a point to introduce myself to strangers and ask them about the election.  At every breakfast I’d sit down at a table full of strangers and ask about the election.  I’m happy to say that I left most tables arguing about the election.  Most days I managed to get 2 or 3 breakfasts in. I spent less time talking to people that had already written about the election.  They were already expressing their opinion.  I wanted to talk to people that hadn’t spoken up.  I wanted to know what the silent majority thought.  The Board all attended the Q&A session where our members expressed their concerns about a variety of issues including the election. The PASS Board also chose to create the Election Review Committee.  We wanted people from the community that had been involved with PASS to look at our election process with fresh eyes while listening to what the community had to say and give us some advice on how we could improve the process.  I’m a part of this as is Andy Warren.  None of the other members are on the Board.  I’ve sat in numerous calls and interviews with this group and attended an open meeting at the Summit.  We asked anyone that wanted to discuss the election to come speak with us.  The ERC held an open meeting at the Summit and invited anyone to attend.  There are forums on the ERC web site where we’ve invited people to participate.  The ERC has reached to key people involved in recent elections.  The years that I haven’t mentioned also saw minor improvements in the election process.  Off the top of my head I don’t recall what exact changes were made each year.  Specifically since the 2010 election we’ve gone out of our way to seek input from the community about the process.  I’m not sure what more we could have done to invite feedback from the community. I think to say that we haven’t “fixed” the election process isn’t a fair criticism at this time.  We haven’t rushed any changes through the process.  If you don’t see any changes in our election process in July or August then I think it’s fair to criticize us for ignoring the community or ask for an explanation for what we’ve done. In Summary Andy’s main point was that the PASS Board hasn’t changed in response to our members wishes.  I think I’ve shown that time and time again the PASS Board has changed in response to what our members want.  There are only two outstanding issues: Summit location and elections.  The 2013 Summit location hasn’t been decided yet.  Our work on the elections is also in progress.  And at every step in the election review we’ve gone out of our way to listen to the community and incorporate their feedback on the process. I also hope I’m not encouraging everyone that wants some change in the organization to organize a “blog rush” against the Board.  We take public suggestions very seriously but we also take the time to evaluate those suggestions and learn what the rest of our members think and make a measured decision.

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• Facebook Oauth Logout

  - by Derek Troy-West

  I have an application that integrates with Facebook using Oauth 2. I can authorize with FB and query their REST and Graph APIs perfectly well, but when I authorize an active browser session is created with FB. I can then log-out of my application just fine, but the session with FB persists, so if anyone else uses the browser they will see the previous users FB account (unless the previous user manually logs out of FB also). The steps I take to authorize are: Call [LINK: graph.facebook.com/oauth/authorize?client_id...] This step opens a Facebook login/connect window if the user's browser doesn't already have an active FB session. Once they log-in to facebook they redirect to my site with a code I can exchange for an oauth token. Call [LINK: graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?client_id..] with the code from (1) Now I have an Oauth Token, and the user's browser is logged into my site, and into FB. I call a bunch of APIs to do stuff: i.e. [LINK: graph.facebook.com/me?access_token=..] Lets say my user wants to log out of my site. The FB terms and conditions demand that I perform Single Sign Off, so when the user logs out of my site, they also are logged out of Facebook. There are arguments that this is a bit daft, but I'm happy to comply if there is any way of actually achieving that. I have seen suggestions that: A. I use the Javascript API to logout: FB.Connect.logout(). Well I tried using that, but it didn't work, and I'm not sure exactly how it could, as I don't use the Javascript API in any way on my site. The session isn't maintained or created by the Javascript API so I'm not sure how it's supposed to expire it either. B. Use [LINK: facebook.com/logout.php]. This was suggested by an admin in the Facebook forums some time ago. The example given related to the old way of getting FB sessions (non-oauth) so I don't think I can apply it in my case. C. Use the old REST api expireSession or revokeAuthorization. I tried both of these and while they do expire the Oauth token they don't invalidate the session that the browser is currently using so it has no effect, the user is not logged out of Facebook. I'm really at a bit of a loose end, the Facebook documentation is patchy, ambiguous and pretty poor. The support on the forums is non-existant, at the moment I can't even log in to the facebook forum, and aside from that, their own FB Connect integration doesn't even work on the forum itself. Doesn't inspire much confidence. Ta for any help you can offer. Derek ps. Had to change HTTPS to LINK, not enough karma to post links which is probably fair enough.

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• Tips / techniques for high-performance C# server sockets

  - by McKenzieG1

  I have a .NET 2.0 server that seems to be running into scaling problems, probably due to poor design of the socket-handling code, and I am looking for guidance on how I might redesign it to improve performance. Usage scenario: 50 - 150 clients, high rate (up to 100s / second) of small messages (10s of bytes each) to / from each client. Client connections are long-lived - typically hours. (The server is part of a trading system. The client messages are aggregated into groups to send to an exchange over a smaller number of 'outbound' socket connections, and acknowledgment messages are sent back to the clients as each group is processed by the exchange.) OS is Windows Server 2003, hardware is 2 x 4-core X5355. Current client socket design: A TcpListener spawns a thread to read each client socket as clients connect. The threads block on Socket.Receive, parsing incoming messages and inserting them into a set of queues for processing by the core server logic. Acknowledgment messages are sent back out over the client sockets using async Socket.BeginSend calls from the threads that talk to the exchange side. Observed problems: As the client count has grown (now 60-70), we have started to see intermittent delays of up to 100s of milliseconds while sending and receiving data to/from the clients. (We log timestamps for each acknowledgment message, and we can see occasional long gaps in the timestamp sequence for bunches of acks from the same group that normally go out in a few ms total.) Overall system CPU usage is low (< 10%), there is plenty of free RAM, and the core logic and the outbound (exchange-facing) side are performing fine, so the problem seems to be isolated to the client-facing socket code. There is ample network bandwidth between the server and clients (gigabit LAN), and we have ruled out network or hardware-layer problems. Any suggestions or pointers to useful resources would be greatly appreciated. If anyone has any diagnostic or debugging tips for figuring out exactly what is going wrong, those would be great as well. Note: I have the MSDN Magazine article Winsock: Get Closer to the Wire with High-Performance Sockets in .NET, and I have glanced at the Kodart "XF.Server" component - it looks sketchy at best.

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• Computer science undergraduate project ideas

  - by Mehrdad Afshari

  Hopefully, I'm going to finish my undergraduate studies next semester and I'm thinking about the topic of my final project. And yes, I've read the questions with duplicate title. I'm asking this from a bit different viewpoint, so it's not an exact dupe. I've spent at least half of my life coding stuff in different languages and frameworks so I'm not looking at this project as a way to learn much about coding and preparing for real world apps or such. I've done lots of those already. But since I have to do it to complete my degree, I felt I should spend my time doing something useful instead of throwing the whole thing out. I'm planning to make it an open source project or a hosted Web app (depending on the type) if I can make a high quality thing out of it, so I decided to ask StackOverflow what could make a useful project. Situation I've plenty of freedom about the topic. They also require 30-40 pages of text describing the project. I have the following points in mind (the more satisfied, the better): Something useful for software development Something that benefits the community Having academic value is great Shouldn't take more than a month of development (I know I'm lazy). Shouldn't be related to advanced theoretical stuff (soft computing, fuzzy logic, neural networks, ...). I've been a business-oriented software developer. It should be software oriented. While I love hacking microcontrollers and other fun embedded electronic things, I'm not really good at soldering and things like that. I'm leaning toward a Web application (think StackOverflow, PasteBin, NerdDinner, things like those). Technology It's probably going to be done in .NET (C#, F#) and Windows platform. If I really like the project (cool low level hacking), I might actually slip to C/C++. But really, C# is what I'm efficient at. Ideas Programming language, parsing and compiler related stuff: Designing a domain specific programming language and compiler Templating language compiled to C# or IL Database tools and related code generation stuff Web related technologies: ASP.NET MVC View engine doing something cool (don't know what exactly...) Specific-purpose, small, fast ASP.NET-based Web framework Applications: Visual Studio plugin to integrate with Bazaar (it's too much work, I think). ASP.NET based, jQuery-powered issue tracker (and possibly, project lifecycle management as a whole - poor man's TFS) Others: Something related to GPGPU Looking forward for great ideas! Unfortunately, I can't help on a currently existing project. I need to start my own to prevent further problems (as it's an undergrad project, nevertheless).

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• Why do many software projects fail today?

  - by TomTom

  As long as there are software projects, the world is wondering why they fail so often. I would like to know if there is a list or something equivalent which shows how many software projects fail today. Would be nice if there would be a comparison over the last 20 - 30 years. You can also add your top reason why a software project fails. Mine is "Requirements are poor or not even existing." which includes also "No (real) customer / user involved". EDIT: It is nearly impossible to clearly define the term "fail". Let's say that fail means: The project was more than 10% over budget and time. In my opinion the 10% + / - is a good range for an offer / tender. EDIT: Until now (Feb 11) it seems that most posters agree that a fail of the project is basically a failure of the project management (whatever fail means). But IMHO it comes out, that most developers are not happy with this situation. Perhaps because not the manager get penalized when a project was not successful, but the lazy, incompetent developer teams? When I read the posts I can also hear-out that there is a big "gap" between the developer side and the managment side. The expectations (perhaps also the requirements) seem to be so different, that a project cannot be successful in the end (over time / budget; users are not happy; not all first-prio features implemented; too many bugs because developers were forced to implement in too short timeframes ...) I',m asking myself: How can we improve it? Or do we have the possibility to improve it? Everybody seems to be unsatisfied with the way it goes now. Can we close the gap between these two worlds? Should we (the developers) go on strike and fight for "high quality reqiurements" and "realistic / iteration based time shedules"? EDIT: Ralph Westphal and Stefan Lieser have founded a new "community" called: Clean-Code-Developer. The aim of the group is to bring more professionalism into software engineering. Independently if a developer has a degree or tons of years of experience you can be part of this movement. Clean Code Developers live principles like SOLID every day. A professional developer is the biggest reviewer of his own work. And he has an internal value system which helps him to improve and become better. Check it out on: Clean Code Developer EDIT: Our company is doing at the moment a thing called "Application Development and Maintenance Benchmarking". This is a service offered by IBM to get a feedback from someone external on your software engineering process quality etc. When we get the results, I will tell you more about it.

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• Resizing QT's QTextEdit to Match Text Height: maximumViewportSize()

  - by Aaron

  I am trying to use a QTextEdit widget inside of a form containing several QT widgets. The form itself sits inside a QScrollArea that is the central widget for a window. My intent is that any necessary scrolling will take place in the main QScrollArea (rather than inside any widgets), and any widgets inside will automatically resize their height to hold their contents. I have tried to implement the automatic resizing of height with a QTextEdit, but have run into an odd issue. I created a sub-class of QTextEdit and reimplemented sizeHint() like this: QSize OperationEditor::sizeHint() const { QSize sizehint = QTextBrowser::sizeHint(); sizehint.setHeight(this->fitted_height); return sizehint; } this-fitted_height is kept up-to-date via this slot that is wired to the QTextEdit's "contentsChanged()" signal: void OperationEditor::fitHeightToDocument() { this->document()->setTextWidth(this->viewport()->width()); QSize document_size(this->document()->size().toSize()); this->fitted_height = document_size.height(); this->updateGeometry(); } The size policy of the QTextEdit sub-class is: this->setSizePolicy(QSizePolicy::MinimumExpanding, QSizePolicy::Preferred); I took this approach after reading this post. Here is my problem: As the QTextEdit gradually resizes to fill the window, it stops getting larger and starts scrolling within the QTextEdit, no matter what height is returned from sizeHint(). If I initially have sizeHint() return some large constant number, then the QTextEdit is very big and is contained nicely within the outer QScrollArea, as one would expect. However, if sizeHint gradually adjusts the size of the QTextEdit rather than just making it really big to start, then it tops out when it fills the current window and starts scrolling instead of growing. I have traced this problem to be that, no matter what my sizeHint() returns, it will never resize the QTextEdit larger than the value returned from maximumViewportSize(), which is inherited from QAbstractScrollArea. Note that this is not the same number as viewport()-maximumSize(). I am unable to figure out how to set that value. Looking at QT's source code, maximumViewportSize() is returning "the size of the viewport as if the scroll bars had no valid scrolling range." This value is basically computed as the current size of the widget minus (2 * frameWidth + margins) plus any scrollbar widths/heights. This does not make a lot of sense to me, and it's not clear to me why that number would be used anywhere in a way that supercede's the sub-class's sizeHint() implementation. Also, it does seem odd that the single "frameWidth" integer is used in computing both the width and the height. Can anyone please shed some light on this? I suspect that my poor understanding of QT's layout engine is to blame here.

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• Mongodb performance on Windows

  - by Chris

  I've been researching nosql options available for .NET lately and MongoDB is emerging as a clear winner in terms of availability and support, so tonight I decided to give it a go. I downloaded version 1.2.4 (Windows x64 binary) from the mongodb site and ran it with the following options: C:\mongodb\bin>mkdir data C:\mongodb\bin>mongod -dbpath ./data --cpu --quiet I then loaded up the latest mongodb-csharp driver from http://github.com/samus/mongodb-csharp and immediately ran the benchmark program. Having heard about how "amazingly fast" MongoDB is, I was rather shocked at the poor benchmark performance. Starting Tests encode (small).........................................320000 00:00:00.0156250 encode (medium)........................................80000 00:00:00.0625000 encode (large).........................................1818 00:00:02.7500000 decode (small).........................................320000 00:00:00.0156250 decode (medium)........................................160000 00:00:00.0312500 decode (large).........................................2370 00:00:02.1093750 insert (small, no index)...............................2176 00:00:02.2968750 insert (medium, no index)..............................2269 00:00:02.2031250 insert (large, no index)...............................778 00:00:06.4218750 insert (small, indexed)................................2051 00:00:02.4375000 insert (medium, indexed)...............................2133 00:00:02.3437500 insert (large, indexed)................................835 00:00:05.9843750 batch insert (small, no index).........................53333 00:00:00.0937500 batch insert (medium, no index)........................26666 00:00:00.1875000 batch insert (large, no index).........................1114 00:00:04.4843750 find_one (small, no index).............................350 00:00:14.2812500 find_one (medium, no index)............................204 00:00:24.4687500 find_one (large, no index).............................135 00:00:37.0156250 find_one (small, indexed)..............................352 00:00:14.1718750 find_one (medium, indexed).............................184 00:00:27.0937500 find_one (large, indexed)..............................128 00:00:38.9062500 find (small, no index).................................516 00:00:09.6718750 find (medium, no index)................................316 00:00:15.7812500 find (large, no index).................................216 00:00:23.0468750 find (small, indexed)..................................532 00:00:09.3906250 find (medium, indexed).................................346 00:00:14.4375000 find (large, indexed)..................................212 00:00:23.5468750 find range (small, indexed)............................440 00:00:11.3593750 find range (medium, indexed)...........................294 00:00:16.9531250 find range (large, indexed)............................199 00:00:25.0625000 Press any key to continue... For starters, I can get better non-batch insert performance from SQL Server Express. What really struck me, however, was the slow performance of the find_nnnn queries. Why is retrieving data from MongoDB so slow? What am I missing? Edit: This was all on the local machine, no network latency or anything. MongoDB's CPU usage ran at about 75% the entire time the test was running. Edit 2: Also, I ran a trace on the benchmark program and confirmed that 50% of the CPU time spent was waiting for MongoDB to return data, so it's not a performance issue with the C# driver.

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• Moose and error messages, the sun and the moon [closed]

  - by xxxxxxx

  So again using Moose I write a role like this: package My::Role; use Moose::Role; use Some::Class::Consuming::My::Role; With the note that Some::Class::Consuming::My::Role consumes the role My::Role; And what do I get ? I get an error message like this: A role generator is required to generate roles at /usr/local/share/perl/5.10.0/MooseX/Role/Parameterized/Meta/Role/Parameterizable.pm line 79 MooseX::Role::Parameterized::Meta::Role::Parameterizable::generate_role('MooseX::Role::Parameterized::Meta::Role::Parameterizable=HASH...', 'consumer', 'Moose::Meta::Class=HASH(0x894e540)', 'parameters', 'HASH(0x86fc1e0)') called at /usr/local/share/perl/5.10.0/MooseX/Role/Parameterized/Meta/Role/Parameterizable.pm line 116 MooseX::Role::Parameterized::Meta::Role::Parameterizable::apply('MooseX::Role::Parameterized::Meta::Role::Parameterizable=HASH...', 'Moose::Meta::Class=HASH(0x894e540)', 'element_type', 'Tuple') called at /usr/local/lib/perl/5.10.0/Moose/Util.pm line 132 Moose::Util::_apply_all_roles('Moose::Meta::Class=HASH(0x894e540)', undef, 'Stuff', 'HASH(0x894e1d0)') called at /usr/local/lib/perl/5.10.0/Moose/Util.pm line 86 Moose::Util::apply_all_roles('Moose::Meta::Class=HASH(0x894e540)', 'Stuff', 'HASH(0x894e1d0)') called at /usr/local/lib/perl/5.10.0/Moose.pm line 57 Moose::with('Moose::Meta::Class=HASH(0x894e540)', 'Group', 'HASH(0x894e1d0)') called at /usr/local/lib/perl/5.10.0/Moose/Exporter.pm line 293 Moose::with('Group', 'HASH(0x894e1d0)') called at Some_path_on_disk line 6 require Some_other_path_on_disk called at Some_path_on_disk line 9 Group::BEGIN() called at Yet_another_path_on_disk line 0 eval {...} called at Yet_another_path_on_disk line 0 Compilation failed in require at some_path_on_disk line 9. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at some_path_on_disk line 9. What am I to make of this ? As Dijkstra would concisely describe, this looks like "just a meaningless concatenation of words"(which is exactly what it is). Would a more appropriate error message be "You cannot use a class consuming the role that you are currently defining " ? What does the error message try to convey ? Can the author make the error message meaningful ? Will he ever make it so ? maybe this can be planned for version 3.14159265358979323846 ? In actuality I get one and a half pages of error which is completely unreadable and devoid of any logic or sense of respect for the user that is using Moose (in terms of intuitive error messages) just like the one above. What's to be done in this case ? I mean I get on my screen these error messages that are sometimes completely unrelated to the problem that I'm having (which I can assess after solving the problems that probably caused them, I say probably becuase I have no idea where these error messages came from because they look like they fell from the sky as they have no relation to the actual situation). Is this: the inexplicable dramatic destiny of the Perl programmer using Moose ? someone being extremely lazy and sloppy at writing error messages ? maybe on heavy drugs ? me not understanding basic english ? Gentlemen, when writing software, please please please, take care of the poor programmer that will use it and respect him by writing relevant error messages. (Except for error messages Moose is a pretty good piece of software)

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• Android stream to Wowza

  - by Curtis Kiu

  I feel very confused about Android streaming to wowza. I am doing a video conference using rtmp cross-platform, but Android doesn't eat RTMP. Therefore I need to find another way to do it. Upstreaming I found a new open-source app called spydroid-ipcamera. It is using rtp, sending udp packets to computer, and opens it in vlc using the following sdp v=0 s=Unnamed m=video 5006 RTP/AVP 96 a=rtpmap:96 H264/90000 a=fmtp:96 packetization-mode=1;profile-level-id=420016;sprop-parameter-sets=Z0IAFukBQHsg,aM4BDyA=; But it can't work. Then I follow wowza tutorial and stream to it and then play again in VLC. That works! I wrote it in http://code.google.com/p/spydroid-ipcamera/issues/detail?id=2 However when I want to add audio in the packet, it fails to work. I change to code in http://code.google.com/p/spydroid-ipcamera/source/browse/trunk/src/net/mkp/spydroid/CameraStreamer.java mr.setAudioSource(MediaRecorder.AudioSource.MIC); mr.setVideoSource(MediaRecorder.VideoSource.CAMERA); mr.setOutputFormat(MediaRecorder.OutputFormat.MPEG_4); mr.setVideoFrameRate(20); mr.setVideoSize(640, 480); mr.setAudioEncoder(MediaRecorder.AudioEncoder.AAC); mr.setVideoEncoder(MediaRecorder.VideoEncoder.H264); mr.setPreviewDisplay(holder.getSurface()); Then I thought that the problem should be in sdp, but I don't know how to due with sdp. I am streaming H.264/AAC with Mp4 Second I don't understand sdp. So how can I make video conference upstreaming part using this apps. Android ----(UDP Port:5006)----> PC (SDP file) and then Wowza read the SDP file ------> VLC I think in this way the system cannot handle more than 1 client. sdp can only hold 1 port, any idea or actually it wont' work? Also Wowza need to set the stream before we stream it, so does it mean that I should not follow this way to do it? Sorry my English is poor, I hope you guys understand.

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• Bidirectional real-time sync of large file tree between two distant linux servers

  - by dlo

  By large file tree I mean about 200k files, and growing all the time. A relatively small number of files are being changed in any given hour though. By bidirectional I mean that changes may occur on either server and need to be pushed to the other, so rsync doesn't seem appropriate. By distant I mean that the servers are both in data centers, but geographically remote from each other. Currently there are only 2 servers, but that may expand over time. By real-time, it's ok for there to be a little latency between syncing, but running a cron every 1-2 minutes doesn't seem right, since a very small fraction of files may change in any given hour, let alone minute. EDIT: This is running on VPS's so I might be limited on the kinds of kernel-level stuff I can do. Also, the VPS's are not resource-rich, so I'd shy away from solutions that require lots of ram (like Gluster?). What's the best / most "accepted" approach to get this done? This seems like it would be a common need, but I haven't been able to find a generally accepted approach yet, which was surprising. (I'm seeking the safety of the masses. :) I've come across lsyncd to trigger a sync at the filesystem change level. That seems clever though not super common, and I'm a bit confused by the various lsyncd approaches. There's just using lsyncd with rsync, but it seems this could be fragile for bidirectionality since rsync doesn't have a notion of memory (eg- to know whether a deleted file on A should be deleted on B or whether it's a new file on B that should be copied to A). lipsync appears to be just a lsyncd+rsync implementation, right? Then there's using lsyncd with csync2, like this: http://www.axivo.com/community/threads/lightning-fast-synchronization-with-csync2-and-lsyncd.121/ ... I'm leaning towards this approach, but csync2 is a little quirky, though I did do a successful test of it. I'm mostly concerned that I haven't been able to find a lot of community confirmation of this method. People on here seem to like Unison a lot, but it seems that it is no longer under active development and it's not clear that it has an automatic trigger like lsyncd. I've seen Gluster mentioned, but maybe overkill for what I need? UPDATE: fyi- I ended up going with the original solution I mentioned: lsyncd+csync2. It seems to work quite well, and I like the architectural approach of having the servers be very loosely joined, so that each server can operate indefinitely on its own regardless of the link quality between them.

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• Subversion vision and roadmap

  - by gbjbaanb

  Recently C Michael Pilato of the core subversion team posted a mail to the subversion dev mailing list suggesting a vision and roadmap for the future of Subversion. Naturally, he wanted as much feedback and response as possible which is why I'm posting this here - to elicit some suggestions and contributions from you, the users of Subversion. Any comments are welcome, and I shall feedback a synopsis with a link to this question to the dev mailing list. Similarly, I've created a post on ServerFault to get feedback from the administator side of things too. So, without further ado: Vision The first thing on his "vision statement" is: Subversion has no future as a DVCS tool. Let's just get that out there. At least two very successful such tools exist already, and to squeeze another horse into that race would be a poor investment of energy and talent. There's no need to suggest distributed features for subversion. If you want a DVCS, there should be no ill-feeling if you migrate to Git, Mercurial or Bazaar. As he says, its pointless trying to make SVN like them when they already exist, especially when there are different usage patterns that SVN should be targetting. The vision for Subversion is: Subversion exists to be universally recognized and adopted as an open-source, centralized version control system characterized by its reliability as a safe haven for valuable data; the simplicity of its model and usage; and its ability to support the needs of a wide variety of users and projects, from individuals to large-scale enterprise operations. Roadmap Several ideas were suggested as being "very nice to have" and are offered as the starting point of a future roadmap. These are: Obliterate Shelve/Checkpoint Repository-dictated Configuration Rename Tracking Improved Merging Improved Tree Conflict Handling Enterprise Authentication Mechanisms Forward History Searching Log Message Templates If anyone has suggestions to add, or comments on these, the subversion community would welcome all of them. Community And lastly, there was a call for more people to become involved with Subversion development. As with most OSS projects it can be daunting to join, but there is now a push for more to be done to help. If you feel like you can contribute, please do so.

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• Visual Web Developer 2008 Express and XHTML 1.1 (not applying)

  - by Mike Valeriano

  Hello. I may be missing something since I'm not used to work with IDEs for web development, so please understand if I'm doing something stupid. I've picked a copy of Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in C# and VB to try and learn this thing quickly. I'm no HTML guru, but I know something about the DTDs and I want to either use XHTML 1.0 Strict or XHTML 1.1 while learning the ins and outs of ASP.NET. Following the book (just started actually), I'm not having any trouble understanding the concepts, since I have a C# background, but what I don't understand is how VWD goes about applying the schema you select for validation. The book explains that the drop-down list on the toolbar is enough to set this, so that's what I did: I've selected XHTML 1.1 (since there is no 1.0 strict option, what I find really odd) and then started the project. The thing is that the code generated automatically for the Default page had the XHTML 1.0 transitional DTD. Every other page added had the same DTD, even though XHTML 1.1 is still the selected schema in the drop-down list. I decided to test it out and there it was: inserting some text in the design view and then applying a bold formatting just inserted < b tags on the code. Changing color does add a span tag with added CSS though. What I want to know is: if I want strict XHTML (or 1.1) should I just code it manually? Or is there a "fix" for this problem (having a schema selected but not applied by the IDE)? Am I missing something really easy and dumb? I have no problem with coding it manually - I actually prefer doing that. The thing is that I really wanna try this WYSIWYG approach for once, since some developers swear by it. Plus I don't know yet if I'll need special tags for ASP.NET, so I think having them inserted automatically should be the best practice. I couldn't find any similar problems around (MSDN, Google, here), and as far as the book goes (up to the point I've read), this is the expected VWD behavior, which I find suspect at least. Sorry for the long text (and poor English - not my primary language). Thanks in advance for any help/tips.

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• Classic ASP vs. ASP.NET encryption options

  - by harrije

  I'm working on a web site where the new pages are ASP.NET and the legacy pages are Classic ASP. Being new to development in the Windows env, I've been studying the latest technology, i.e. .NET and I become like a deer in headlights when ever legacy issues come up regarding COM objects. Security on the website is an abomination, but I've easily encrypted the connectionStrings in the web.config file per http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/021506-1.aspx based on DPAPI machine mode. I understand this approach is not the most secure, but it's better than nothing which is what it was for the ASP.NET pages. Now, I question how to do similar encryption for the connection strings used by the Classic ASP pages. A complicating factor is that the web sited is hosted where I do not have admin permissions or even command line access, just FTP. Moreover I want to avoid managing the key. My research has found: DPAPI with COM interop. Seems like this should already be available, but the only thing I could find discussing this is CyptoUtility (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163884.aspx) which is not installed on the hosting server. There are plenty of other third party COM objects, e.g. Crypto from Dalun Software http://www.dalun.com, but these aren't on the hosted server either, and they look to me to require you to do some kind of key management. There is CAPICOM on the hosted server, but M$ has deprecated it and many report it is not the easiest to use. It is not clear to me whether I can avoid key management with CAPICOM similar to using DPAPI for ASP.NET. If anyone happens to know, please clue me in. I could write an web service in ASP.NET and have the classic ASP pages use it to get the decrypted connection strings and then store those in an application variable. I would not need to use SSL since I could use localhost and nothing would be sent over the internet. In the simpliest form I could implement what someone termed a poor man's version based on a simple XML stream, however, I really was looking to avoid any development since I find it hard to believe there is not a simple solution for Classic ASP like there is for ASP.NET. Maybe I'm missing some options... Recommendations are requested...

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• Using commit monitors as a form of code review

  - by Jeff Dege

  I'm working in a small company - four developers, working on a variety of projects. We've been looking at what we can do as cost-effective methods of process improvement, and an idea came up. Given what we do, we often have single developers working on parts of a system, independently of the other developers. This can have a number of negative affects: A developer might not be fully aware of the context in which a change is being implemented, and make the change in a way that will meet the current customer's needs, but will break functionality that other customers depend on. A developer might make a change that breaks the current architectural design, introducing a dependency that will cause problems in future development. Other developers might not be aware of how the system has changed, in areas that they have not worked on. We've talked about doing code reviews, as a way of dealing with these issues. But we've not had much success when we tried. It takes a lot of time to prepare a change for a code review, and it takes everybody out of production while the review is being performed. And the benefits of any review we've tried has been minimal. We're using Subversion (with TortioseSVN) as our VCS. I've been looking at the SubVersion CommitMonitor tool, and wondering whether it might work as a sort of poor-man's code review. It lists every commit made on the repository, allowing someone to see the changes that have been made, the log messages made for that change, the files that were included in the change, and the specific lines in each file that were changed. Rather than scheduling a meeting, trying to get everybody together to review every change, we could just have every developer review every other developer's commits, at whatever time was convenient. This would keep every developer abreast of what changes were being made elsewhere in the system, and would have every change reviewed for customer conflicts and design consistency, at a fairly low cost. If someone saw a problem with the code that was being checked in, he could discuss it with the developer who did the commit, or more likely, schedule a meeting to discuss how the new feature could be implemented in a way that would not impact other users or screw up the architecture. Anyone else doing anything like this, using commit monitors for such a purpose?

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• HTTP request, strange socket behavoir

  - by hoodoos

  I expirience strange behavior when doing HTTP requests through sockets, here the request: POST https://test.com:443/service/XMLSelect HTTP/1.1 Content-Length: 10926 Host: test.com User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 1.0.3705) Authorization: Basic XXX SOAPAction: http://test.com/SubmitXml Later on there goes body of my request with given content length. After that I recive something like: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1 Content-Type: text/xml;charset=utf-8 Transfer-Encoding: chunked Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2010 06:13:52 GMT So everything seem to be fine here. I read all contents from network stream and successfuly recieve response. But my socket which I'm doing polling on switches it's modes like that: write ( i write headers and request here ) read ( after headers sent i begin to recieve response ) write ( STRANGE BEHAVIOUR HERE. WHY? here i send nothing really ) read ( here it switches to read back again ) last two steps can repeat several times. So I want to ask what leads for socket's mode change? And in this case it's not a big problem, but when I use gzip compression in my request ( no idea how it's related ) and ask server to send gzipped response to me like this: POST https://test.com:443/service/XMLSelect HTTP/1.1 Content-Length: 1076 Accept-Encoding: gzip Content-Encoding: gzip Host: test.com User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 1.0.3705) Authorization: Basic XXX SOAPAction: http://test.com/SubmitXml I recieve response like that: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1 Content-Encoding: gzip Content-Type: text/xml;charset=utf-8 Transfer-Encoding: chunked Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2010 07:26:33 GMT 2000 ? I recieve a chunk size and GZIP header, it's all okay. And here's what is happening with my poor little socket meanwhile: write ( i write headers and request here ) read ( after headers sent i begin to recieve response ) write ( STRANGE BEHAVIOUR HERE. And it finally sits here forever waiting for me to send something! But if i refer to HTTP I don't have to send anything more! ) What can it be related to? What it wants me to send? Is it remote web server's problem or do I miss something? PS All actual service references and login/passwords replaced with fake ones :)

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• Doctrine CodeIgniter MySQL CRUD errors

  - by 01010011

  Hi, I am using CI + Doctrine + MySQL and I am getting the following CRUD errors: (1) When trying to create a new record in the database with this code: $book_title = 'The Peloponnesian War'; $b = new Book(); $b-title = $book_title; $b-price = 10.50; $b-save(); I get this error: Fatal error: Uncaught exeption 'Doctrine_Connection_Mysql_Exception' with message 'SQLSTATE[42S22]: Column not found: 1054 Unknown column 'title' in 'field list' in ... (2) When trying to fetch a record from the database and display on my view page with this code: $book_title = 'The Peloponnesian War'; $title = $book_title; $search_results = Doctrine::getTable('Book')-findOneByTitle($title); echo $search_results-title; (in view file) I get this error: Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Doctrine_Connection_Mysql_Exception' with message 'SQLSTATE[45S22]: Column not found: 1054 Unknown column 'b.id' in 'field list" in ... And finally, when I try to update a record as follows: $book_title = 'The Peloponnesian War'; $title = $book_title; $u = Doctrine::getTable('Book')-find($title); $u-title = $title; $u-save(); I get a similar error: Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Doctrine_Connection_Mysql_Exception' with message 'SQLSTATE[42S22]: Column not found: 1054 Unknown column 'b.id' in 'field list''in ... Here is my Doctrine_Record model: class Book extends Doctrine_Record{ public function setTableDefinition() { $this->hasColumn('book_id'); $this->hasColumn('isbn10','varchar',20); $this->hasColumn('isbn13','varchar',20); $this->hasColumn('title','varchar',100); $this->hasColumn('edition','varchar',20); $this->hasColumn('author_f_name','varchar',20); $this->hasColumn('author_m_name','varchar',20); $this->hasColumn('author_l_name','varchar',20); $this->hasColumn('cond','enum',null, array('values' => array('as new','very good','good','fair','poor'))); $this->hasColumn('price','decimal',8, array('scale' =>2)); $this->hasColumn('genre','varchar',20); } public function setUp() { $this->setTableName('Book'); //$this->actAs('Timestampable'); } Any assistance will be really appreciated. Thanks in advance.

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• Non-linear regression models in PostgreSQL using R

  - by Dave Jarvis

  Background I have climate data (temperature, precipitation, snow depth) for all of Canada between 1900 and 2009. I have written a basic website and the simplest page allows users to choose category and city. They then get back a very simple report (without the parameters and calculations section): The primary purpose of the web application is to provide a simple user interface so that the general public can explore the data in meaningful ways. (A list of numbers is not meaningful to the general public, nor is a website that provides too many inputs.) The secondary purpose of the application is to provide climatologists and other scientists with deeper ways to view the data. (Using too many inputs, of course.) Tool Set The database is PostgreSQL with R (mostly) installed. The reports are written using iReport and generated using JasperReports. Poor Model Choice Currently, a linear regression model is applied against annual averages of daily data. The linear regression model is calculated within a PostgreSQL function as follows: SELECT regr_slope( amount, year_taken ), regr_intercept( amount, year_taken ), corr( amount, year_taken ) FROM temp_regression INTO STRICT slope, intercept, correlation; The results are returned to JasperReports using: SELECT year_taken, amount, year_taken * slope + intercept, slope, intercept, correlation, total_measurements INTO result; JasperReports calls into PostgreSQL using the following parameterized analysis function: SELECT year_taken, amount, measurements, regression_line, slope, intercept, correlation, total_measurements, execute_time FROM climate.analysis( $P{CityId}, $P{Elevation1}, $P{Elevation2}, $P{Radius}, $P{CategoryId}, $P{Year1}, $P{Year2} ) ORDER BY year_taken This is not an optimal solution because it gives the false impression that the climate is changing at a slow, but steady rate. Questions Using functions that take two parameters (e.g., year [X] and amount [Y]), such as PostgreSQL's regr_slope: What is a better regression model to apply? What CPAN-R packages provide such models? (Installable, ideally, using apt-get.) How can the R functions be called within a PostgreSQL function? If no such functions exist: What parameters should I try to obtain for functions that will produce the desired fit? How would you recommend showing the best fit curve? Keep in mind that this is a web app for use by the general public. If the only way to analyse the data is from an R shell, then the purpose has been defeated. (I know this is not the case for most R functions I have looked at so far.) Thank you!

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• Scared of Calculus - Required to pass Differential Calculus as part of my Computer science major

  - by ke3pup

  Hi guys I'm finishing my Computer science degree in university but my fear of maths (lack of background knowledge) made me to leave all my maths units til' the very end which is now. i either take them on and pass or have to give up. I've passed all my programming units easily but knowing my poor maths skills won't do i've been staying clear of the maths units. I have to pass Differential Calculus and Linear Algebra first. With a help of book named "Linear Algebra: A Modern Introduction" i'm finding myself on track and i think i can pass the Linear Algebra unit. But with differential calculus i can't find a book to help me. They're either too advanced or just too simple for what i have to learn. The things i'm required to know for this units are: Set notation, the real number line, Complex numbers in cartesian form. Complex plane, modulus. Complex numbers in polar form. De Moivre’s Theorem. Complex powers and nth roots. Definition of ei? and ez for z complex. Applications to trigonometry. Revision of domain and range of a function Working in R3. Curves and surfaces. Functions of 2 variables. Level curves.Partial derivatives and tangent planes. The derivative as a difference quotient. Geometric significance of the derivative. Discussion of limit. Higher order partial derivatives. Limits of f(x,y). Continuity. Maxima and minima of f(x,y). The chain rule. Implicit differentiation. Directional derivatives and the gradient. Limit laws, l’Hoˆpital’s rule, composition law. Definition of sinh and cosh and their inverses. Taylor polynomials. The remainder term. Taylor series. Is there a book to help me get on track with the above? Being a student i can't buy too many books hence why i'm looking for a book that covers topics I need to know. The University library has a fairly limited collection which i took as loan but didn't find useful as it was too complex.

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• Fuzzy Regex, Text Processing, Lexical Analysis?

  - by justinzane

  I'm not quite sure what terminology to search for, so my title is funky... Here is the workflow I've got: Semi-structured documents are scanned to file. The files are OCR'd to text. The text is parsed into Python objects The objects are serialized (to SQL, JSON, whatever) for use. The documents are structures like this: HEADER blah blah, Page ### blah Garbage text... 1. Question Text... continued until now. A. Choice text... adsadsf. B. Another Choice... 2. Another Question... I need to extract the questions and choices. The problem is that, because the text is OCR output, there are occasional strange substitutions like '2' - 'Z' which makes ordinary regular expressions useless. I've tried the Levenshtein module and it helps, but it requires prior knowledge of what edit distance is to be expected. I don't know whether I'm looking to create a parser? a lexer? something else? This has lead me down all kinds of interesting but nonrelevant paths. Guidance would be greatly appreciated. Oh, also, the text is generally from specific technical domains, so general spelling tools are not so helpful. Regarding the structure of the documents, there is no clear visual pattern -- like line breaks or indentation -- with the exception of the fact that "questions" usually begin a line. Crap on the document can cause characters to appear before the actual beginning of the line, which means that something along the lines of r'^[0-9]+' does not reliably work. Though the "questions" always begin with an int, a period and a space; the OCR can substitute other characters or skip characters. This is not so much a problem with Tesseract or Cunieform, rather with the poor quality of the paper documents. # Note: for the project in question, it was decided that having a human prep the OCR'd text was better that spending the time coding a solution. I'd still love good pointers, however.

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• What is the best python module skeleton code?

  - by user213060

  == Subjective Question Warning == Looking for well supported opinions or supporting evidence. Let us assume that skeleton code can be good. If you disagree with the very concept of module skeleton code then fine, but please refrain from repeating that opinion here. Many python IDE's will start you with a template like: print 'hello world' That's not enough... So here's my skeleton code to get this question started: My Module Skeleton, Short Version: #!/usr/bin/env python """ Module Docstring """ # ## Code goes here. # def test(): """Testing Docstring""" pass if __name__=='__main__': test() and, My Module Skeleton, Long Version: #!/usr/bin/env python # -*- coding: ascii -*- """ Module Docstring Docstrings: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/ """ __author__ = 'Joe Author ([email protected])' __copyright__ = 'Copyright (c) 2009-2010 Joe Author' __license__ = 'New-style BSD' __vcs_id__ = '$Id$' __version__ = '1.2.3' #Versioning: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0386/ # ## Code goes here. # def test(): """ Testing Docstring""" pass if __name__=='__main__': test() Notes: """ ===MODULE TYPE=== Since the vast majority of my modules are "library" types, I have constructed this example skeleton as such. For modules that act as the main entry for running the full application, you would make changes such as running a main() function instead of the test() function in __main__. ===VERSIONING=== The following practice, specified in PEP8, no longer makes sense: __version__ = '$Revision: 1.2.3 $' for two reasons: (1) Distributed version control systems make it neccessary to include more than just a revision number. E.g. author name and revision number. (2) It's a revision number not a version number. Instead, the __vcs_id__ variable is being adopted. This expands to, for example: __vcs_id__ = '$Id: example.py,v 1.1.1.1 2001/07/21 22:14:04 goodger Exp $' ===VCS DATE=== Likewise, the date variable has been removed: __date__ = '$Date: 2009/01/02 20:19:18 $' ===CHARACTER ENCODING=== If the coding is explicitly specified, then it should be set to the default setting of ascii. This can be modified if necessary (rarely in practice). Defaulting to utf-8 can cause anomalies with editors that have poor unicode support. """ There are a lot of PEPs that put forward coding style recommendations. Am I missing any important best practices? What is the best python module skeleton code? Update Show me any kind of "best" that you prefer. Tell us what metrics you used to qualify "best".

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• Calculations in a table of data

  - by Christian W

  I have a table of data with survey results, and I want to do certain calculations on this data. The datastructure is somewhat like this: ____________________________________________________________________________________ | group |individual | key | key | key | | | |subkey|subkey|subkey|subkey|subkey|subkey|subkey|subkey|subkey| | | |q|q|q |q |q |q|q|q |q|q|q |q |q |q|q|q |q|q|q |q |q |q|q|q | |-------|-----------|-|-|--|--|---|-|-|--|-|-|--|--|---|-|-|--|-|-|--|--|---|-|-|--| | 1 | 0001 |1|7|5 |1 |3 |1|4|1 |1|7|5 |1 |3 |1|4|1 |1|7|5 |1 |3 |1|4|1 | | 1 | 0002 |1|7|5 |1 |3 |1|4|1 |1|7|5 |1 |3 |1|4|1 |1|7|5 |1 |3 |1|4|1 | | 1 | 0003 |1|7|5 |1 |3 |1|4|1 |1|7|5 |1 |3 |1|4|1 |1|7|5 |1 |3 |1|4|1 | | 2 | 0004 |1|7|5 |1 |3 |1|4|1 |1|7|5 |1 |3 |1|4|1 |1|7|5 |1 |3 |1|4|1 | | 2 | 0005 |1|7|5 |1 |3 |1|4|1 |1|7|5 |1 |3 |1|4|1 |1|7|5 |1 |3 |1|4|1 | | 3 | 0006 |1|7|5 |1 |3 |1|4|1 |1|7|5 |1 |3 |1|4|1 |1|7|5 |1 |3 |1|4|1 | | 4 | 0007 |1|7|5 |1 |3 |1|4|1 |1|7|5 |1 |3 |1|4|1 |1|7|5 |1 |3 |1|4|1 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Excuse my poor ascii skills... So, every individual belongs to a group, and has answered some questions. These questions are always grouped in keys and subkeys. Is there any simple method to calculate averages, deviations and similar based on the groupings. Something like public float getAverage(int key, int individual); float avg = getAverage(5,7); I think what I'm asking is what would be the best way to structure the data in C# to make it as easy as possible to work with? I have started making classes for every entity, but I got confused somewhere and something stopped working. So before I continue along this path, I was wondering if there are any other, better, ways of doing this? (Every individual can also have describing variables, like agegroup and such, but that's not important for the base functionality.) Our current solution does all calculations inline in the queries when requesting the data from the database. This works, but it's slow and the number of queries equals questions * individuals + keys * individuals, which could be alot if individual queries. Any suggestions?

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• How effective are technical test(s) and is it necessary?

  - by The Elite Gentleman

  Hi everyone, I recently took a Java technical test (for a company who wanted are looking for senior java developers) and, funny enough, I only realised the technical terms of what I've been doing all along after I've written the test. I'm not too IT jargon when it comes to development but I can pretty much code and create solutions unaware that I'm using design pattern (or the specifics of that design pattern) or technology. I learned things such as JMS, Frameworks, etc. while programming at home and having to google stuff online to problems I have. Others e.g. IoC, Surrogates in Databases, etc., I have used extensively without knowing that it had a name for it. Do you think that these technical test are effective and why? What interesting questions did you find that boggled your brains out while the clock kept ticking? Seeing that IT is vastly evolving at a rapid rate, do we have to constantly be updated with new terms that comes out? Some questions I was asked : What object oriented principle is violated by this architectural mechanism for dot notation? Is indexing tables effective for range query or point query search? What is ThreadLocal and what is it used for? Method overloading vs Method overriding. What is the difference between the 2? What is dynamic binding? Now, imagine my poor head trying to understand these jargons (considering I use it almost everyday) PS The question was not a programming question, where you have a problem and write code to solve it. Rather, a thinking type question and you write answers (against the clock). Update I clearly didn't come out clearly as I should have. There are those that are technically "book smart" but with very little hands-on experience and vice versa. So, the question (in connection to what I've asked) is that are these technical test seeking "book smart" people or people with lots of hands-on experience (some who are not that well clued up with too much book-smart jargons). How effective is it then, for companies to look for developers if most of the questions are too terminology-centric? (if that's the correct term, :))

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• Core-Data + AFNetworking + UI Updating (Responsiveness)

  - by Mustafa

  Here's the scenario: I'm writing a DownloadManager, that allows the user to download, pause, cancel, download all, and pause all. The DownloadManager is a singleton, and uses AFNetworking to download files. It has it's own private managed object context, so that user can freely use other parts of the application (by adding, editing, deleting) core-data objects. I have a core-data entity DownloadInfo that stores the download information i.e. fileURL, fileSize, bytesRead, etc. The DownloadManager updates the download progress in DownloadInfo (one for each file). I have a DownloadManagerViewController which uses NSFetchedResultsController to show the download status to the user. This download view controller is using the main managed object context. Now let's say that I have 20 files in the download queue. And let's say that only 3 concurrent downloads are allowed. The download manager should download the file, and show the download progress. Problem: The DownloadInfo objects are being updated by the DownloadManager at a very high rate. The DownloadManagerViewController (responsible for showing the download progress) is updating the list using NSFetchedResultsControllerDelegate methods. The result is that a lot is happening in the main queue and application has very poor responsiveness. How can I fix this? How can I make the application responsive, while showing the download progress? I don't know how else to communicate that the download status between DownloadManager and DownloadManagerViewController. Is there another/ a better way to do this? I don't want to use main managed object context in my DownloadManager, for reasons mentioned above. Note, that the DownloadManager is using AFNetworking which is handling the requests asynchronously, but eventually the DownloadInfo objects are updated in the main thread (as a result of the callback methods). Maybe there's a way to handle the downloads and status update operations in a background thread? but how? How will I communicate between the main thread and the background thread i.e. how will I tell the background thread to queue another file for download? Thanks.

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