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  • Developer Training – A Conclusive Summary- Part 5

    - by pinaldave
    Developer Training - Importance and Significance - Part 1 Developer Training – Employee Morals and Ethics – Part 2 Developer Training – Difficult Questions and Alternative Perspective - Part 3 Developer Training – Various Options for Developer Training – Part 4 Developer Training – A Conclusive Summary- Part 5 We have now reached the end of our series about developer training.  I hope you have come away thinking that training is the best way to advance in your company and that you are looking for training opportunities right now.  If you’re still not convinced here are a few things to keep in mind:  Training benefits the employer and the employee. A well trained employee is a happy employee, and a happy employee is more efficient and productive. Training an employee might be expensive, but it is less expensive than hiring a new person. Whether you are looking at him from the employee’s or the company’s point of view, there are always advantages to training. A Broader View This series is definitely written for Developer Training but it is not limited to developers only. There are IT Pro, System Admins, DBAs as well many other technology professionals; this article series is for all professionals in the world. The concepts and take away will remain common across all the platform and regardless of technology affiliation. Pass the Knowledge If I have to pick one advise which is extremely important related to training, I will pick – pass the knowledge. Once you have decided in favor of training, there is more to it than simply showing up and staying awake.  It is always a good idea to take notes – at the very least it will help you stay awake, but they will often serve as a good way to remember your training when you go back to work.  You can also use them to pass your new knowledge on to fellow employees, which can be very fun and rewarding. Right Place, Right Time and Right Training There are so many ways to get developer training.  In-person and on the job training is easy to come by and is the most usual type of training, but don’t overlook my favorite type of training: On Demand.  Being able to learn at your own pace, own place and on your own time will make training a realistic goal for almost every employee. I can think of nothing more important in life than furthering your education.  Especially when you work in a field that is constantly changing – like technology.  Whether you like it or not, training is incredibly important.  That is why I feel it is so important to receive training.  And because there are so many different training formats – live, online, through books, through people – I am certain that we all can find a way to be trained that best suits our goals and personalities. The Teacher Within If you think of anyone who is a master of the technology field or an incredibly successful developer (the obvious examples that spring to mind are Steve Jobs or Bill Gates), you will also find a teacher.  Both these individuals spent their lives developing better technology, but also educating other developers and the public about how to use these technologies and how it can change your life for the better.  I think that we all should strive to be like these wonderful teachers.  We might not be able to change the world, but we can certainly change a few lives around us. Even if we never turn into trainers ourselves , being trained as a student can be a good exercise.  We learn a lot and become better employees – and it would not be a stretch to say that this makes us better individuals, as well. Final Say I think learning and growing in your chosen field is not only a good idea, career-wise, but can be fun, too!  I for one never feel more alive than when I am learning about something I am really passionate about.  I think my job title – technology evangelist – explains how enthusiastic I am about this subject.  But please don’t think that I am thinking of this as someone who wants to train and educate others (although this is also one of my passions).  I am also a passionate student.  I enjoy learning new things and am always on the lookout for new ways to learn and new people to learn from. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Developer Training, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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

    - by Natalia Rachelson
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} A guest post by Steve Boese, Director Product Strategy, Oracle I’ll bet you reached for your iPhone or Android or BlackBerry and took a quick look at email or Facebook or last night’s text messages before you even got out of bed this morning. Come on, admit it, it’s ok, you are among friends here. See, feel better now? But seriously, the incredible growth and near-ubiquity of increasingly powerful, capable, and for many of us, essential in our daily lives mobile devices has profoundly changed the way we communicate, consume information, socialize, and more and more, conduct business and get our work done. And if you doubt that profound change has happened, just think for a moment about the last time you misplaced your iPhone.  The shivers, the cold sweats, the panic... We have all been there. And indeed your personal experiences with mobile technology echoes throughout the world - here are a few data points to consider: Market research firm IDC estimates 1.8 billion mobile phones will be shipped in 2012. A recent Pew study reports 46% of Americans own a smartphone of some kind. And finally in the USA, ownership of tablets like the iPad has doubled from 10% to 19% in the last year. So truly for the Human Resources leader, the question is no longer, ‘Should HR explore ways to exploit mobile devices and their always-on nature to better support and empower the modern workforce?’, but rather ‘How can HR best take advantage of smartphone and tablet capability to provide information, enable transactions, and enhance decision making?’. Because even though moving HCM applications to mobile devices seems inherently logical given today’s fast-moving and mobile workforces, and its promise to deliver incredible value to the organization, HR leaders also have to consider many factors before devising their Mobile HCM strategy and embarking on mobile HR technology projects. Here are just some of the important considerations for HR leaders as you build your strategies and evaluate mobile HCM solutions: Does your organization provide mobile devices to the workforce today, and if so, will the current set of deployed devices have the necessary capability and ecosystems to support your mobile HCM initiatives? Will you allow workers to use or bring their own mobile devices, (commonly abbreviated as ‘BYOD’), and if so are your IT and Security organizations in agreement and capable of supporting that strategy? Do you know which workers need access to mobile HCM applications? Often mobile HCM capability flows down in an organization, with executives and other ‘road-warrior’ types having the most immediate needs, followed by field sales staff, project managers, and even potential job candidates. But just as an organization will have to spend time understanding ‘who’ should have access to mobile HCM technology, the ‘what’ of the way the solutions should be deployed to these groups will also vary. What works and makes sense for the executive, (company-wide dashboards and analytics on an iPad), might not be as relevant for a retail store manager, (employee schedules, location-level sales and inventory data, transaction approvals, etc.). With Oracle Fusion HCM, we are taking an approach to mobile HR that encompasses not just the mobile solution needs for the various types of worker, but also incorporates the fundamental attributes of great mobile applications - the ability to support end-to-end transactions, apps that respond with lightning-fast speed, with functions that are embedded in a worker’s daily activities, and features that can be mashed-up easily with other business areas like Finance and CRM. Finally, and perhaps most importantly for the Oracle Fusion HCM team, delivering mobile experiences that truly enhance, enable, and empower the mobile workforce, and deliver on the design mantras of the best-in-class consumer applications, continues to shape and drive design decisions. Mobile is no longer the future, it is right now, and the cutting-edge HR leader of today will need to consider how mobile fits her HCM technology strategy from here on out. You can learn more about our ideas and plans for Oracle Fusion HCM mobile solutions at https://fusiontap.oracle.com/.

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  • Nerdstock 2012: A photo review of Microsoft TechEd North America 2012

    - by The Un-T Guy
    Not only could I not fathom that I would ever be attending a tech event of the magnitude of TechEd, neither could any of my co-workers.  As the least technical person in the history of Information Technology ever, I felt as though I were walking into the belly of the beast, fearing I’d not be allowed out until I could write SSIS packages, program in Visual Basic, or at least arm wrestle a DBA.  Most of my fears were unrealized.   But I made it.  I was here.  I even got to wear the Mark of the Geek neck package with schedule, eyeglass cleaners, name badge (company name obfuscated so they don’t fire me), and a pen.  The name  badge was seemingly the key element, as every vendor in the place wanted to scan it to capture name, email address, and numbers to show their bosses back home.  It also let me eat the food and drink the coffee so that’s a fair trade.   A recurring theme throughout the presentations and vendor demos was “the Cloud” and BYOD (bring your own device).  The below was a common site throughout the week, as attendees from all over the world brought their own devices and were able to (seemingly) seamlessly connect to the Worldwide Innerwebs.  Apparently proof that Microsoft and the event organizers were practicing what they were preaching.   “Cavernous” is one way to describe the downstairs facility itself.  “Freaking cavernous” might be more accurate.  Work sessions were held in classrooms on the second and third floors but the real action was happening downstairs.  Microsoft bookstore, blogger hub (shoutout to Geekswithblogs.net), The Wall (sans Pink Floyd, sadly), couches, recharging stations…   …a game zone with pool and air hockey tables, pinball machines, foosball…   …vintage video games…           …and a even giant chess board.  Looked like this guy was opening with the Kaspersky parry.   The blend of technology and fantasy even went so far as to bring childhood favorites to life.  Assuming, of course, your childhood was pre-video games (like mine) and you were stuck with electric football and Rock ‘em Sock ‘em robots:   And, lest the “combatants” become unruly or – God forbid – afternoon snacks were late, Orange County’s finest was on the scene to keep the peace.  On a high-tech mode of transport, of course.   She wasn’t the only one to think this was a swell way to transition from one concourse to the next.  Given the level of support provided by the entire Orange County Convention Center staff, I knew they had to have some secret.   Here’s one entrance to the vendor zone/”Technical Learning Center.”  Couldn’t help but think of them as the remora attached to the Whale Shark that is Microsoft…   …or perhaps planets orbiting the sun. Microsoft is just that huge and it seemed like every vendor in the industry looks forward to partnering with the tech behemoth.   Aside from the free stuff from the vendors, probably the most popular place in the house was the dining area.  Amazing spreads every day, multiple times a day.  While no attendance numbers were available at press time, literally thousands of attendees were fed, and fed well, every day.  And lest you think my post from earlier in the week exaggerated about the backpacks…   …or that I’m exaggerating about the lunch crowds.  This represents only about between 25-30% of the lunch crowd – it was all my camera could capture at once.  No one went away hungry.   The only thing missing was a a vat of Red Bull but apparently organizers went old school, with probably 100 urns of the original energy drink – coffee – all around the venue.   Of course, following lunch and afternoon sessions, some preferred the even older school method of re-energizing.  There were rumors that Microsoft was serving graham crackers and milk in this area.  But they were only rumors.   Cannot overstate the wonderful service provided by the Orange County Convention Center staff.  Coffee, soft drinks, juice, and water were available always.  Buffet meals were delicious with a wide range of healthy options available, in addition to hundreds (at least) special meal requests supported every day.  Ever tried to keep up with an estimated 9,000 hungry and thirsty IT-ers?  These folks did.  Kudos to all of the staff and many thanks!   And while I occasionally poke fun at the Whale Shark, if nothing else this experience convinced me of one thing:  Microsoft knows how to put on a professional event.  Hundreds of informative, professionally delivered sessions, covering a wide range of topics set at varying levels of expertise (some that even I was able to follow), social activities, vendor partnerships…they brought everything you could ask for to inform, educate, and inspire an entire IT industry.   So as I depart the belly of the beast, I can both take pride in the fact that I survived the week and marvel at the brilliance surrounding me.  The IT industry – or at least the segment associated with Microsoft – is in good, professional hands.  And what won’t fit in their hands can be toted in the Microsoft provided backpacks.  Win-win.   Until New Orleans…

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  • 2010 Collaboration Summit Impressions

    - by Elena Zannoni
    It's a bit late, but there you have it anyway. April 14 to 16 I attended the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in SFO. I was running two tracks, one on tracing and one on tools. You can see the tracks and the slides here: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/collaboration-summit/slides I was pretty busy both days, Thursday with a whole day tracing track, Friday with a half day toolchain track. The sessions were well attended, the rooms were full, with people spilling in the hallways. Some new things were presented, like Kernelshark, by Steve Rostedt, a GUI (yes, believe it or not, a GUI) written in GTK. It is very nice, showing a timeline for traced kernel events, and you can zoom in and filter at will. It works on the latest kernels, and it requires some new things/fixes in GTK. I don't recall exactly what version of GTK though. Dominique Toupin from Ericsson presented something about user requirements for tracing. Mostly though about who's who in the embedded world, and eclipse. Masami and Mathieu presented an update on their work. See their slides. The interesting thing to me was of course the new version of uprobes w/o underlying utrace presented by Jim Keniston. At the end of the session we had a discussion about the future of utrace. Roland wasn't there, butTom Tromey (also from RedHat) collected the feedback. Basically we are at a standstill now that utrace has been rejected yet again. There wasn't much advise that anybody could give, except jokingly, we decided that the only way in is to make it a part of perf events. There needs to be another refactoring, but most of all, this "killer app" that would be enabled because of utrace hasn't materialized yet. We think that having a good debugging story on Linux is enough of a killer app, for instance allowing multiple tracers, and not relying on SIGCHLD etc. I think this wasn't completely clear to the kernel community. Trying to achieve debugging via a gdb stub inside the kernel interfacing to utrace and that is controlled via the gdb remote protocol also lost its appeal (thankfully, since the gdb remote protocol is archaic). Somebody would have to be creative in how to submit utrace. It doesn't have to be called utrace (it was really a random choice, for lack of a letter that was not already used in front of the word "trace"). So basically, I think the ideas behind utrace are sound, and the necessity of a new interface is acknowledged. But I believe the integration/submission process with the kernel folks has to restart from scratch, clean slate. We'll see. There are many conferences and meetings coming up in the near future where things can be discussed further. On the second day, Friday, we had the tools talks. It was interesting to observe the more "kernel" oriented people's behavior towards the gcc etc community. The first talk was by Mark Mitchell, about Gcc and its new plugin architecture. After that, Paolo talked about the new C++1x standard, which will be finalized in 2011. Many features are already implemented in the libstdc++ library and gcc and usable today. We had a few minutes (really, the half day track was quite short) where Bradley Kuhn from the Software Freedom Law Center explained the GPLv3 exception for gcc (due to the new gcc plugin architecture and the availability of the intermediate results from the compilation, which is a new thing). I will not try to explain, but basically you cannot take the result of the preprocessing and then use that in your own proprietary compiler. After, we had a talk by Ian Taylor about the new Gold linker. One good thing in that area is that they are trying to make gold the new default linker (for instance Fedora will use gold as the distro linker). However gold is very different from binutils' old linker. It doesn't use a linker script, for instance. The kernel has been linked with gold many times as an exercise (the ground work was done by Kris Van Hees), but this needs to be constantly tested/monitored because the kernel linker script is very complex, and uses esoteric features (Wenji is now monitoring that each kernel RC can be built with gold). It was positive that people are now aware of gold and the need for it to be ported to more architectures. It seems that the porting is very easy, with little arch dependent code. Finally Tom Tromey presented about gdb and the archer project. Archer is a development branch of gdb mostly done by RedHat, where they are focusing on better c++ printing, c++ expression parsing, and plugins. The archer work is merged regularly in the gdb mainline. In general it was a good conference. I did miss most of the first day, because that's when I flew in. But I caught a couple of talks. Nothing earth shattering, except for Google giving each person registered a free Android phone. Yey.

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  • Why Software Sucks...and What You Can Do About It – book review

    - by DigiMortal
        How do our users see the products we are writing for them and how happy they are with our work? Are they able to get their work done without fighting with cool features and crashes or are they just switching off resistance part of their brain to survive our software? Yeah, the overall picture of software usability landscape is not very nice. Okay, it is not even nice. But, fortunately, Why Software Sucks...and What You Can Do About It by David S. Platt explains everything. Why Software Sucks… is book for software users but I consider it as a-must reading also for developers and specially for their managers whose politics often kills all usability topics as soon as they may appear. For managers usability is soft topic that can be manipulated the way it is best in current state of project. Although developers are not UI designers and usability experts they are still very often forced to deal with these topics and this is how usability problems start (of course, also designers are able to produce designs that are stupid and too hard to use for users, but this blog here is about development). I found this book to be very interesting and funny reading. It is not humor book but it explains you all so you remember later very well what you just read. It took me about three evenings to go through this book and I am still enjoying what I found and how author explains our weird young working field to end users. I suggest this book to all developers – while you are demanding your management to hire or outsource usability expert you are at least causing less pain to end users. So, go and buy this book, just like I did. And… they thanks to mr. Platt :) There is one book more I suggest you to read if you are interested in usability - Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition by Steve Krug. Editorial review from Amazon Today’s software sucks. There’s no other good way to say it. It’s unsafe, allowing criminal programs to creep through the Internet wires into our very bedrooms. It’s unreliable, crashing when we need it most, wiping out hours or days of work with no way to get it back. And it’s hard to use, requiring large amounts of head-banging to figure out the simplest operations. It’s no secret that software sucks. You know that from personal experience, whether you use computers for work or personal tasks. In this book, programming insider David Platt explains why that’s the case and, more importantly, why it doesn’t have to be that way. And he explains it in plain, jargon-free English that’s a joy to read, using real-world examples with which you’re already familiar. In the end, he suggests what you, as a typical user, without a technical background, can do about this sad state of our software—how you, as an informed consumer, don’t have to take the abuse that bad software dishes out. As you might expect from the book’s title, Dave’s expose is laced with humor—sometimes outrageous, but always dead on. You’ll laugh out loud as you recall incidents with your own software that made you cry. You’ll slap your thigh with the same hand that so often pounded your computer desk and wished it was a bad programmer’s face. But Dave hasn’t written this book just for laughs. He’s written it to give long-overdue voice to your own discovery—that software does, indeed, suck, but it shouldn’t. Table of contents Acknowledgments xiii Introduction Chapter 1: Who’re You Calling a Dummy? Where We Came From Why It Still Sucks Today Control versus Ease of Use I Don’t Care How Your Program Works A Bad Feature and a Good One Stopping the Proceedings with Idiocy Testing on Live Animals Where We Are and What You Can Do Chapter 2: Tangled in the Web Where We Came From How It Works Why It Still Sucks Today Client-Centered Design versus Server-Centered Design Where’s My Eye Opener? It’s Obvious—Not! Splash, Flash, and Animation Testing on Live Animals What You Can Do about It Chapter 3: Keep Me Safe The Way It Was Why It Sucks Today What Programmers Need to Know, but Don’t A Human Operation Budgeting for Hassles Users Are Lazy Social Engineering Last Word on Security What You Can Do Chapter 4: Who the Heck Are You? Where We Came From Why It Still Sucks Today Incompatible Requirements OK, So Now What? Chapter 5: Who’re You Looking At? Yes, They Know You Why It Sucks More Than Ever Today Users Don’t Know Where the Risks Are What They Know First Milk You with Cookies? Privacy Policy Nonsense Covering Your Tracks The Google Conundrum Solution Chapter 6: Ten Thousand Geeks, Crazed on Jolt Cola See Them in Their Native Habitat All These Geeks Who Speaks, and When, and about What Selling It The Next Generation of Geeks—Passing It On Chapter 7: Who Are These Crazy Bastards Anyway? Homo Logicus Testosterone Poisoning Control and Contentment Making Models Geeks and Jocks Jargon Brains and Constraints Seven Habits of Geeks Chapter 8: Microsoft: Can’t Live With ’Em and Can’t Live Without ’Em They Run the World Me and Them Where We Came From Why It Sucks Today Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don’t We Love to Hate Them Plus ça Change Growing-Up Pains What You Can Do about It The Last Word Chapter 9: Doing Something About It 1. Buy 2. Tell 3. Ridicule 4. Trust 5. Organize Epilogue About the Author

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  • Guest Post: Christian Finn: Is Facebook About to Become a Victim of its Own Success?

    - by Michael Snow
    12.00 Print 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}  Since we have a number of new members of the WebCenter Evangelist team - I thought it would be appropriate to close the week with the newest hire and leader of the global WebCenter Evangelists, Christian Finn, who has just joined the Red team after many years with the small technology company up in Redmond, WA. He gave an intro to himself in an earlier post this morning but his post below is a great example of how customer engagement takes on a life of its own in our global online connected and social digital ecosystem. Is Facebook About to Become a Victim of its Own Success? What if I told you that your brand could advertise so successfully, you wouldn’t have to pay for the ads? A recent campaign by Ford Motor Company for the Ford Focus featuring Doug the spokespuppet (I am not making this up) did just that—and it raises some interesting issues for marketers and social media alike in the brave new world of customer engagement that is the Social Web. Allow me to elaborate. An article in the Wall Street Journal last week—“Big Brands Like Facebook, But They Don’t Like to Pay” tells the story of Ford’s recently concluded online campaign for the 2012 Ford Focus. (Ford, by the way, under the leadership of people such as Scott Monty, has been a pioneer of effective social campaigns.) The centerpiece of the campaign was the aforementioned Doug, who appeared as a character on Facebook in videos and via chat. (If you are not familiar with Doug, you can see him in action here, and read the WSJ story here.) You may be thinking puppet ads are a sign of Internet Bubble 2.0 and want to stop now, but bear with me. The Journal reported that Ford spent about $95M on its overall Ford Focus campaign, with TV accounting for over $60M of that spend. The Internet buy for the campaign was just over $10M, which included ad buys to drive traffic to Facebook for people to meet and ‘Like’ Doug and some amount on Facebook ads, too, to promote Doug and by extension, the Ford Focus. So far, a fairly straightforward consumer marketing story in the Internet Era. Yet here’s the curious thing: once Doug reached 10,000 fans on Facebook, Ford stopped paying for Facebook ads. Doug had gone viral with people sharing his videos with one another; once critical mass was reached there was no need to buy more ads on Facebook. Doug went on to be Liked by over 43,000 people, and 61% of his fans said they would be more likely to consider buying a Focus. According to the article, Ford says Focus sales are up this year—and increasing sales is every marketer’s goal. And so in effect, Ford found its Facebook campaign so successful that it could stop paying for it, instead letting its target consumers communicate its messages for fun—and for free. Not only did they get a 3X increase in fans beyond their paid campaign, they had thousands of customers sharing their messages in video form for months. Since free advertising is the Holy Grail of marketing both old and new-- and it appears social networks have an advantage in generating that buzz—it seems reasonable to ask: what would happen to brands’ advertising strategies—and the media they use to engage customers, if this success were repeated at scale? It seems logical to conclude that, at least initially, more ad dollars would be spent with social networks like Facebook as brands attempt to replicate Ford’s success. Certainly Facebook ad revenues are on the rise—eMarketer expects Facebook’s ad revenues to quintuple by 2012 compared with 2009 levels, to nearly 2.9B. That’s bad news for TV and the already battered print media and good news for Facebook. But perhaps not so over the longer run. With TV buys, you have to keep paying to generate impressions. If Doug the spokespuppet is any guide, however, that may not be true for social media campaigns. After an initial outlay, if a social campaign takes off, the audience will generate more impressions on its own. Thus a social medium like Facebook could be the victim of its own success when it comes to ad revenue. It may be there is an inherent limiting factor in the ad spend they can capture, as exemplified by Ford’s experience with Dough and the Focus. And brands may spend much less overall on advertising, with as good or better results, than they ever have in the past. How will these trends evolve? Can brands create social campaigns that repeat Ford’s formula for the Focus with effective results? Can social networks find ways to capture more spend and overcome their potential tendency to make further spend unnecessary? And will consumers become tired and insulated from social campaigns, much as they have to traditional advertising channels? These are the questions CMOs and Facebook execs alike will be asking themselves in the brave new world of customer engagement. As always, your thoughts and comments are most welcome.

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  • On Life and TechEd&hellip;

    - by MOSSLover
    I haven’t been writing here I know.  I am very sorry, but I am just too busy trying to make my personal life just as good as my SharePoint life.  So I was at TechEd again helping with the hands on labs, but I had a very long couple of weeks.  I will have a long week again.  I started out going to my friend, Randy Walker’s, wedding and I ended up at my grandmother’s condo in Fort Lauderdale.  It was a very trying week.  I had to drive 5 1/2 hours to the wedding from St. Louis and back.  So Randy is an awesome person.  He is a great guy and he was the first person ever to nominate me for MVP.  I knew it probably wasn’t going anywhere, but it was the thought that count.  I met Randy in 2008 at Tulsa Techfest.  We had fun jamming out to Rockband.  I knew he was good people back then.  He has let me vent and I have let him vent over countless personal problems.  He has always been a great friend.  So it was a no brainer when I decided to go to his wedding no matter how much driving or stress or lack of sleep it was worth it.  I am incredibly happy for him to finally find a diamond amongst a lot of coal.  To take part in his celebration was so awesome.  I thank him again for letting me participate in this ceremony. Now after Randy’s wedding I drove 5 1/2 hours landed in St. Louis, fed a cat an asthma pill hidden in wet cat food, and slept for 4 hours.  I immediately saw my best friend who dropped me off at the airport and proceeded to TechEd.  I slept 1 hour on each flight, then ended up working a 3 hour shift at TechEd.  The rest of the week was a haze of connecting with people and sleeping very little.  I got to see my friend Tasha and her husband Casey plus a billion other people.  It was a great week and then I got a call from my grandmother.  It turns out her husband was admitted to the hospital. My grandparents on my dad's side have been divorced since the 60s, which means I never got to see them together.  I always felt like they never cliqued.  When I was a kid we would always spend half our time in Chicago at grandma’s and half our time at grandpa’s houses.  We would hang out with my grandpa’s wife Bobbi and my grandma’s husband Leo.  My cousin’s always called Leo by Pappa and my brother and I would use Leo.  My cousins lived in Chicago up until my cousin Gavi was born then they moved to Philadelphia.  I remember complaining to my dad that we never visited anywhere cool just Chicago and Kansas City.  I also remember Leo teaching me and my brother, Sam, how to climb a tree and play tennis on the back of the apartment wall.  My grandfather’s was kind of stuffy and boring, but we always enjoyed my grandmother’s.  She had games and Disney Movies and toys.  Leo always made it a ton of fun to visit.  I’m not sure a lot of people knew this fact, but when I was 16 years old I saw my grandfather on my mother’s side slowly die of congestive heart failure in a nursing home.  When I was 18 I saw my grandmother on my mother’s side slowly die of an infection over a 30 day period.  I hate hospitals and I hate nursing homes, but sometimes you have to suck in your gut and be strong.  I tried to do that this weekend and I hope I did an ok job.  I really hope things get better, but if they don’t I really appreciate everything he has given me in life.  I am a terrible tennis player and I haven’t climbed a tree in ages, but they both encouraged me when encouragement from my parents was lacking.  It was Father’s Day today and I have to at least pay tribute to Leo Morris, because he has been a good person to me all my life.  Technorati Tags: TechEd,Grandparents,Father's Day

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  • It&rsquo;s A Team Sport: PASS Board Year 2, Q3

    - by Denise McInerney
    As I type this I’m on an airplane en route to my 12th PASS Summit. It’s been a very busy 3.5 months since my last post on my work as a Board member. Nearing the end of my 2-year term I am struck by how much has happened, and yet how fast the time has gone. But I’ll save the retrospective post for next time and today focus on what happened in Q3. In the last three months we made progress on several fronts, thanks to the contributions of many volunteers and HQ staff members. They deserve our appreciation for their dedication to delivering for the membership week after week. Virtual Chapters The Virtual Chapters continue to provide many PASS members with valuable free training. Between July and September of 2013 VCs hosted over 50 webinars with a total of 4300 attendees. This quarter also saw the launch of the Security & Global Russian VCs. Both are off to a strong start and I welcome these additions to the Virtual Chapter portfolio. At the beginning of 2012 we had 14 Virtual Chapters. Today we have 22. This growth has been exciting to see. It has also created a need to have more volunteers help manage the work of the VCs year-round. We have renewed focus on having Virtual Chapter Mentors work with the VC Leaders and other volunteers. I am grateful to volunteers Julie Koesmarno, Thomas LeBlanc and Marcus Bittencourt who join original VC Mentor Steve Simon on this team. Thank you for stepping up to help. Many improvements to the VC web sites have been rolling out over the past few weeks. Our marketing and IT teams have been busy working a new look-and-feel, features and a logo for each VC. They have given the VCs a fresh, professional look consistent with the rest of the PASS branding, and all VCs now have a logo that connects to PASS and the particular focus of the chapter. 24 Hours of PASS The Summit Preview edition  of 24HOP was held on July 31 and by all accounts was a success. Our first use of the GoToWebinar platform for this event went extremely well. Thanks to our speakers, moderators and sponsors for making this event possible. Special thanks to HQ staffers Vicki Van Damme and Jane Duffy for a smoothly run event. Coming up: the 24HOP Portuguese Edition will be held November 13-14, followed December 12-13 by the Spanish Edition. Thanks to the Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking community volunteers who are organizing these events. July Board Meeting The Board met July 18-19 in Kansas City. The first order of business was the election of the Executive Committee who will take office January 1. I was elected Vice President of Marketing and will join incoming President Thomas LaRock, incoming Executive Vice President of Finance Adam Jorgensen and Immediate Past President Bill Graziano on the Exec Co. I am honored that my fellow Board members elected me to this position and look forward to serving the organization in this role. Visit to PASS HQ In late September I traveled to Vancouver for my first visit to PASS HQ, where I joined Tom LaRock and Adam Jorgensen to make plans for 2014.  Our visit was just a few weeks before PASS Summit and coincided with the Board election, and the office was humming with activity. I saw first-hand the enthusiasm and dedication of everyone there. In each interaction I observed a focus on what is best for PASS and our members. Our partners at HQ are key to the organization’s success. This week at PASS Summit is a great opportunity for all of us to remember that, and say “thanks.” Next Up PASS Summit—of course! I’ll be around all week and look forward to connecting with many of our member over meals, at the Community Zone and between sessions. In the evenings you can find me at the Welcome Reception, Exhibitor’s Reception and Community Appreciation Party. And I will be at the Board Q&A session  Friday at 12:45 p.m. Transitions The newly elected Exec Co and Board members take office January 1, and the Virtual Chapter portfolio is transitioning to a new director. I’m thrilled that Jen Stirrup will be taking over. Jen has experience as a volunteer and co-leader of the Business Intelligence Virtual Chapter and was a key contributor to the BI VCs expansion to serving our members in the EMEA region. I’ll be working closely with Jen over the next couple of months to ensure a smooth transition.

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  • Going to the Score Cards - Exceptional DBA Awards 2011

    - by Rodney
    This year marks my 4th year as a judge for the Exceptional DBA Awards, founded by Red Gate in 2008 to "recognize the essential but often overlooked contributions of DBAs, the unsung heroes of the IT community." As a professional DBA myself I have been honored to participate as a judge. It is not an easy job because there is a voluminous amount of nominees from all over the world. Each judge has to read through every word of the nominee's answers, deciding what makes each person special and stand out amongst their peers. What drives them? What single element of their submission will shine above all others? It is my hope that what I am about to divulge to you as a judge will prompt you to think about yourself or someone you know and decide that you may be the exceptional DBA who can take home the gold at this year's award ceremony in Seattle. We are more than a few weeks into the nomination process and there are quite a number of submissions already. I can not tell you how many as that would not be fair. I can say it is not 1 million or more. I can also say that it is not 100,000. But that is all I can say about that. However, I can tell you that it is enough this year that we are breaking records on the number of people who have been influenced, inspired or intrigued by the awards in the past. I remember them all like it were yesterday. fuzzy thought cloud here. It was a rainy day in Seattle (all memories for each award ceremony will start thusly) and I was in the hotel going over my notes on what I wanted to say about the winner of the 2008 Red Gate Exceptional DBA Award. The notes were on index cards that I had either bought or stolen from my wife, I do not recall, but I was nervous which was unlike me. This was, after all, a big night for the winner. Of course, we, the judges and the SQL community, had already decided the winner and now all that remained was to present the award. The room was packed. It was Casino night, sponsored by sqlservercentral.com. Money (fake), drinks (not fake) and camaraderie flowed through the room. Dan McClain won the award that year. He worked for Anheuser-Busch at the time. I promise that did not influence my decision. We presented Dan with the award. He was very proud of this achievement, rightfully so, as was the SQL community for him. I spoke with Dan throughout the conference and realized how huge this award was for him, not just personally but professionally. It was a rainy day in Seattle in 2009 and I was nervous. I was asked to speak to a group of people again as a judge for the Exceptional DBA Awards. This year, Josef Richberg would be the recipient of the award, but he would not be able to attend. We all prayed for him as he fought through an illness and congratulated him for his accomplishments as a DBA for his company. He got better and sallied forth and continued to give back to the SQL community that he saw as one big family. In 2010, and I am getting ahead of myself, he was asked to be a judge himself for the very award he had just received the year before. It was a sunny day in Seattle and I missed it, because it was in July and I was not there. It was a rainy day in Seattle and it is 2010 and Tracy Hamlin enters a submission that blows this judge away. She is managing a 50 Terabyte distributed database ("50 Gigabytes! Are you kidding me!!!", Rodney jokes.)  and loves her daily job as a DBA working with developers, mentoring them and teaching them best practices with kindness and patience. She is a people person who just happens to have 10+ years experience with RDBMS'. She wins the award and goes on to be recognized as famous at PASS. It will be a rainy day in Seattle this year when I sit amongst my old constituent judges and friends, Brad McGehee, http://www.simple-talk.com/books/sql-books/how-to-become-an-exceptional-dba,-2nd-edition/, Steve Jones, whom we all know and love at http://www.sqlservercentral.com and a young upstart to the SQL Community, this cat named Brent Ozar to announce the 2011 winner. I personally have not heard of Brent but I am told I have interviewed him for a DBA position several years ago and turned him down, http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2011/05/exceptional-dba-contest/ . I hope that did not jeopardize his future in the SQL world. I am a big hearted oaf and would feel horrible. Hopefully I will meet him at PASS and we can work this all out and I can help him get a DBA job. The rain has stopped and a new year is upon us. The stakes are high...the competition is fierce...the rewards are incredible. The entry form awaits you. http://www.exceptionaldba.com/ I very much look forward to meeting you and presenting the award to you in front of hundreds of your envious but proud peers as the new Exceptional DBA for 2011 at the PASS Summit. Here is what you could win: The Exceptional DBA of the Year receives full conference registration for the 2011 PSS Summit in Seattle, where the awards ceremony will take place, four nights' hotel accommodation, and $300 towards travel expenses. They will also be featured on Simple-Talk. Are you ready? Are you nervous?

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  • Goodby jQuery Templates, Hello JsRender

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

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  • Silverlight Cream for February 26, 2011 -- #1052

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Mark Monster, Gill Cleeren, Pencho Popadiyn, Kevin Dockx, Joost van Schaik, Jesse Liberty, John Papa, Jeremy Likness, Arik Poznanski(-2-), Page Brooks, Deborah Kurata, Mike Snow, Alfred Astort, Samuel Jack, XAMLNinja, and Shawn Wildermuth. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Asynchronous Callbacks with Rx" Jesse Liberty WP7: "Phoney Windows Phone 7 Project Now Available!" Shawn Wildermuth MVVM: "Validating our ViewModel" Mark Monster Shoutouts: Shawn Wildermuth has a video up of his FadingMessage class to show it off: Introducing Phoney's FadingMessage Class From SilverlightCream.com: Validating our ViewModel Mark Monster discusses Validation in his latest post... using INotifyDataErrorInfo and his own implementation of a ViewModel base that supports it and INPC. Getting ready for Microsoft Silverlight Exam 70-506 (Part 7) Gill Cleeren hits part 7 of his series at SilverlightShow on a great walk through Silverlight and getting ready for the exam. This is the final part and concentrates on deploying apps. Windows Phone 7–Creating Custom Keyboard Pencho Popadiyn has a post at SilverlightShow discussing problems with WP7 keyboards in his native Bulgaria, and his solution to the problem... create his own. 360 Degrees Feedback by Kevin Dockx Kevin Dockx produced a white paper for his company about an employee review solution they did in Silverlight. The white paper is available, and SilverlightShow interviewd Kevin to answer questions about the app. Extended Windows Phone 7 page for handling rotation, focused element updates and back key press Looks like Joost van Schaik has a few posts I've missed... and I'm not going to get to them all today! ... this one is about the base class he uses for WP7 apps... a bunch of utilities he uses... definitely worth a look (and a take). Asynchronous Callbacks with Rx Jesse Liberty has his 8th post in the Rx series up and this one's on Asynchronous Callbacks... if you haven't seen this before, you should definitely look into it... cool stuff, Jesse! Silverlight TV 63: Exploring National Instruments' App Using Data and Business Features John Papa has Silverlight TV number 63 up and is talking to Steve Lasker about National Instruments and their Lab View product. Great demo and discussion. Jounce Part 11: Debugging MEF Jeremy Likness's latest (number 11) in his series on his MVVM framework Jounce is out, and he's discussing how to debug MEF, which Jounce handles nicely through the logging he provides... and you can use it externally to Jounce. Get Twitter Trends on Windows Phone 7 Arik Poznanski has a couple Twitter for WP7 posts up... first is one for pulling Twitter trends from whatthetrend.com... plus the code to do it. Searching Twitter on Windows Phone 7 In his next post, Arik Poznanski shows how to search twitter from your WP7 ... again with code. Tiled Background Control in Silverlight Page Brooks shows how to get a tiled background control in Silverlight ... did you know there was one in the JetPack them? Silverlight Charting: Displaying Data Above the Column Deborah Kurata continues her charting posts with this one displaying the column value above the column. I like this... it has a clean look and all the data is available at a glance. Silverlight: Tasks on the Win7 Mobile Phone Mike Snow has a list of the WP7 tasks available and an example of using them... looks like a pretty good reference! 10 of 10 - Aesthetics and alignment matter Alfred Astort discusses aesthetics and WP7 dev... looks like it's the same as any app development, but if you're not doing it, you should be. Simon Squared – We have Multi-player: Days 4, 5 and (ahem!) 6 Samuel Jack details the completion of his multi-player game for WP7 utilizing Azure, in the hour-by-hour detail he's done the rest... plus a video of the final product! Who ate all the pies!! XAMLNinja has a very good discussion/link set of Charting posts all leading up to a portrait-only version of charting for WP7 with labels that looks looks great Phoney Windows Phone 7 Project Now Available! Shawn Wildermuth has a collection of classes he always uses with WP7 dev, and he's sharing them with all of us a "Phoney" Tools project on Codeplex... and now has a NuGet project also. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • jQuery Selector Tester and Cheat Sheet

    - by SGWellens
    I've always appreciated these tools: Expresso and XPath Builder. They make designing regular expressions and XPath selectors almost fun! Did I say fun? I meant less painful. Being able to paste/load text and then interactively play with the search criteria is infinitely better than the code/compile/run/test cycle. It's faster and you get a much better feel for how the expressions work. So, I decided to make my own interactive tool to test jQuery selectors:  jQuery Selector Tester.   Here's a sneak peek: Note: There are some existing tools you may like better: http://www.woods.iki.fi/interactive-jquery-tester.html http://www.w3schools.com/jquery/trysel.asp?filename=trysel_basic&jqsel=p.intro,%23choose My tool is different: It is one page. You can save it and run it locally without a Web Server. It shows the results as a list of iterated objects instead of highlighted html. A cheat sheet is on the same page as the tester which is handy. I couldn't upload an .htm or .html file to this site so I hosted it on my personal site here: jQuery Selector Tester. Design Highlights: To make the interactive search work, I added a hidden div to the page: <!--Hidden div holds DOM elements for jQuery to search--><div id="HiddenDiv" style="display: none"></div> When ready to search, the searchable html text is copied into the hidden div…this renders the DOM tree in the hidden div: // get the html to search, insert it to the hidden divvar Html = $("#TextAreaHTML").val();$("#HiddenDiv").html(Html); When doing a search, I modify the search pattern to look only in the HiddenDiv. To do that, I put a space between the patterns.  The space is the Ancestor operator (see the Cheat Sheet): // modify search string to only search in our// hidden div and do the searchvar SearchString = "#HiddenDiv " + SearchPattern;try{    var $FoundItems = $(SearchString);}   Big Fat Stinking Faux Pas: I was about to publish this article when I made a big mistake: I tested the tool with Mozilla FireFox. It blowed up…it blowed up real good. In the past I’ve only had to target IE so this was quite a revelation. When I started to learn JavaScript, I was disgusted to see all the browser dependent code. Who wants to spend their time testing against different browsers and versions of browsers? Adding a bunch of ‘if-else’ code is a tedious and thankless task. I avoided client code as much as I could. Then jQuery came along and all was good. It was browser independent and freed us from the tedium of worrying about version N of the Acme browser. Right? Wrong! I had used outerHTML to display the selected elements. The problem is Mozilla FireFox doesn’t implement outerHTML. I replaced this: // encode the html markupvar OuterHtml = $('<div/>').text(this.outerHTML).html(); With this: // encode the html markupvar Html = $('<div>').append(this).html();var OuterHtml = $('<div/>').text(Html).html(); Another problem was that Mozilla FireFox doesn’t implement srcElement. I replaced this: var Row = e.srcElement.parentNode;  With this: var Row = e.target.parentNode; Another problem was the indexing. The browsers have different ways of indexing. I replaced this: // this cell has the search pattern  var Cell = Row.childNodes[1];   // put the pattern in the search box and search                    $("#TextSearchPattern").val(Cell.innerText);  With this: // get the correct cell and the text in the cell// place the text in the seach box and serachvar Cell = $(Row).find("TD:nth-child(2)");var CellText = Cell.text();$("#TextSearchPattern").val(CellText);   So much for the myth of browser independence. Was I overly optimistic and gullible? I don’t think so. And when I get my millions from the deposed Nigerian prince I sent money to, you’ll see that having faith is not futile. Notes: My goal was to have a single standalone file. I tried to keep the features and CSS to a minimum–adding only enough to make it useful and visually pleasing. When testing, I often thought there was a problem with the jQuery selector. Invariable it was invalid html code. If your results aren't what you expect, don't assume it's the jQuery selector pattern: The html may be invalid. To help in development and testing, I added a double-click handler to the rows in the Cheat Sheet table. If you double-click a row, the search pattern is put in the search box, a search is performed and the page is scrolled so you can see the results. I left the test html and code in the page. If you are using a CDN (non-local) version of the jQuery libraray, the designer in Visual Studio becomes extremely slow.  That's why there are two version of the library in the header and one is commented out. For reference, here is the jQuery documentation on selectors: http://api.jquery.com/category/selectors/ Here is a much more comprehensive list of CSS selectors (which jQuery uses): http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/selector.html I hope someone finds this useful. Steve WellensCodeProject

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  • Analysing and measuring the performance of a .NET application (survey results)

    - by Laila
    Back in December last year, I asked myself: could it be that .NET developers think that you need three days and a PhD to do performance profiling on their code? What if developers are shunning profilers because they perceive them as too complex to use? If so, then what method do they use to measure and analyse the performance of their .NET applications? Do they even care about performance? So, a few weeks ago, I decided to get a 1-minute survey up and running in the hopes that some good, hard data would clear the matter up once and for all. I posted the survey on Simple Talk and got help from a few people to promote it. The survey consisted of 3 simple questions: Amazingly, 533 developers took the time to respond - which means I had enough data to get representative results! So before I go any further, I would like to thank all of you who contributed, because I now have some pretty good answers to the troubling questions I was asking myself. To thank you properly, I thought I would share some of the results with you. First of all, application performance is indeed important to most of you. In fact, performance is an intrinsic part of the development cycle for a good 40% of you, which is much higher than I had anticipated, I have to admit. (I know, "Have a little faith Laila!") When asked what tool you use to measure and analyse application performance, I found that nearly half of the respondents use logging statements, a third use performance counters, and 70% of respondents use a profiler of some sort (a 3rd party performance profilers, the CLR profiler or the Visual Studio profiler). The importance attributed to logging statements did surprise me a little. I am still not sure why somebody would go to the trouble of manually instrumenting code in order to measure its performance, instead of just using a profiler. I personally find the process of annotating code, calculating times from log files, and relating it all back to your source terrifyingly laborious. Not to mention that you then need to remember to turn it all off later! Even when you have logging in place throughout all your code anyway, you still have a fair amount of potentially error-prone calculation to sift through the results; in addition, you'll only get method-level rather than line-level timings, and you won't get timings from any framework or library methods you don't have source for. To top it all, we all know that bottlenecks are rarely where you would expect them to be, so you could be wasting time looking for a performance problem in the wrong place. On the other hand, profilers do all the work for you: they automatically collect the CPU and wall-clock timings, and present the results from method timing all the way down to individual lines of code. Maybe I'm missing a trick. I would love to know about the types of scenarios where you actively prefer to use logging statements. Finally, while a third of the respondents didn't have a strong opinion about code performance profilers, those who had an opinion thought that they were mainly complex to use and time consuming. Three respondents in particular summarised this perfectly: "sometimes, they are rather complex to use, adding an additional time-sink to the process of trying to resolve the existing problem". "they are simple to use, but the results are hard to understand" "Complex to find the more advanced things, easy to find some low hanging fruit". These results confirmed my suspicions: Profilers are seen to be designed for more advanced users who can use them effectively and make sense of the results. I found yet more interesting information when I started comparing samples of "developers for whom performance is an important part of the dev cycle", with those "to whom performance is only looked at in times of crisis", and "developers to whom performance is not important, as long as the app works". See the three graphs below. Sample of developers to whom performance is an important part of the dev cycle: Sample of developers to whom performance is important only in times of crisis: Sample of developers to whom performance is not important, as long as the app works: As you can see, there is a strong correlation between the usage of a profiler and the importance attributed to performance: indeed, the more important performance is to a development team, the more likely they are to use a profiler. In addition, developers to whom performance is an important part of the dev cycle have a higher tendency to use a much wider range of methods for performance measurement and analysis. And, unsurprisingly, the less important performance is, the less varied the methods of measurement are. So all in all, to come back to my random questions: .NET developers do care about performance. Those who care the most use a wider range of performance measurement methods than those who care less. But overall, logging statements, performance counters and third party performance profilers are the performance measurement methods of choice for most developers. Finally, although most of you find code profilers complex to use, those of you who care the most about performance tend to use profilers more than those of you to whom performance is not so important.

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  • SQL Server devs–what source control system do you use, if any? (answer and maybe win free stuff)

    - by jamiet
    Recently I noticed a tweet from notable SQL Server author and community dude-at-large Steve Jones in which he asked how many SQL Server developers were putting their SQL Server source code (i.e. DDL) under source control (I’m paraphrasing because I can’t remember the exact tweet and Twitter’s search functionality is useless). The question surprised me slightly as I thought a more pertinent question would be “how many SQL Server developers are not using source control?” because I have been doing just that for many years now and I simply assumed that use of source control is a given in this day and age. Then I started thinking about it. “Perhaps I’m wrong” I pondered, “perhaps the SQL Server folks that do use source control in their day-to-day jobs are in the minority”. So, dear reader, I’m interested to know a little bit more about your use of source control. Are you putting your SQL Server code into a source control system? If so, what source control server software (e.g. TFS, Git, SVN, Mercurial, SourceSafe, Perforce) are you using? What source control client software are you using (e.g. TFS Team Explorer, Tortoise, Red Gate SQL Source Control, Red Gate SQL Connect, Git Bash, etc…)? Why did you make those particular software choices? Any interesting anecdotes to share in regard to your use of source control and SQL Server? To encourage you to contribute I have five pairs of licenses for Red Gate SQL Source Control and Red Gate SQL Connect to give away to what I consider to be the five best replies (“best” is totally subjective of course but this is my blog so my decision is final ), if you want to be considered don’t forget to leave contact details; email address, Twitter handle or similar will do. To start you off and to perhaps get the brain cells whirring, here are my answers to the questions above: Are you putting your SQL Server code into a source control system? As I think I’ve already said…yes. Always. If so, what source control server software (e.g. TFS, Git, SVN, Mercurial, SourceSafe, Perforce) are you using? I move around a lot between many clients so it changes on a fairly regular basis; my current client uses Team Foundation Server (aka TFS) and as part of a separate project is trialing the use of Team Foundation Service. I have used SVN extensively in the past which I am a fan of (I generally prefer it to TFS) and am trying to get my head around Git by using it for ObjectStorageHelper. What source control client software are you using (e.g. TFS Team Explorer, Tortoise, Red Gate SQL Source Control, Red Gate SQL Connect, Git Bash, etc…)? On my current project, Team Explorer. In the past I have used Tortoise to connect to SVN. Why did you make those particular software choices? I generally use whatever the client uses and given that I work with SQL Server I find that the majority of my clients use TFS, I guess simply because they are Microsoft development shops. Any interesting anecdotes to share in regard to your use of source control and SQL Server? Not an anecdote as such but I am going to share some frustrations about TFS. In many ways TFS is a great product because it integrates many separate functions (source control, work item tracking, build agents) into one whole and I’m firmly of the opinion that that is a good thing if for no reason other than being able to associate your check-ins with a work-item. However, like many people there are aspects to TFS source control that annoy me day-in, day-out. Chief among them has to be the fact that it uses a file’s read-only property to determine if a file should be checked-out or not and, if it determines that it should, it will happily do that check-out on your behalf without you even asking it to. I didn’t realise how ridiculous this was until I first used SVN about three years ago – with SVN you make any changes you wish and then use your source control client to determine which files have changed and thus be checked-in; the notion of “check-out” doesn’t even exist. That sounds like a small thing but you don’t realise how liberating it is until you actually start working that way. Hoping to hear some more anecdotes and opinions in the comments. Remember….free software is up for grabs! @jamiet 

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  • XNA Notes 002

    - by George Clingerman
    This past week (much like every week in the XNA community) was filled with things happening and people doing cool things (and getting noticed for doing cool things!). You can definitely tell there are some Xbox LIVE Indie game developers starting to make some names for themselves. Can’t wait to name drop them at bars. Me- “Oh you played Game X? Yeah, I know the guy that made that. Pretty cool guy.” Yeah, I’ll be THAT guy.   Time Critical XNA News 30 days left to submit XBLIGs made in XNA Game Studio 3.1 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2011/01/08/30-days-left-to-submit-xna-gs-3-1-games-to-app-hub.aspx Jeromy Walsh wants you to know his XNA 4.0 Winter Workshop starting soon, go get signed up! And the forum is now LIVE on GameDev.net http://gamedevelopedia.com/ http://tinyurl.com/4gg2cfv The XNA Team Per Nick Gravelyn, Aaron Stebner’s blog post is a must read for icons on Windows Phone http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/72022/439597.aspx#439597 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astebner/archive/2010/10/01/10070507.aspx Shawn Hargreaves writes about Sprite Billboards in a 3D world http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2011/01/12/spritebatch-billboards-in-a-3d-world.aspx XNA MVPs Andy “The ZMan” Dunn wants YOU to come to the MVP Summit and run a 5K http://www.indiegameguy.com/blogs/zman/archive/2010/12/26/come-to-the-mvp-summit-and-run-a-5k-yes-you.aspx Jim Perry updates his forum signature just to make it clear that he’s not speaking for Microsoft or giving official information (LOL, thanks Jim, now if only people will take the time to read that...) XNA MVP | Please use the Forum Search and read the Forum FAQs | My posts are not official info http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/70849/439613.aspx#439613 XNA Developers Robert Boyd (@werezombie) working hard at converting his RPG engine used to make Breath of Death VII and Chtulu Saves the World to XNA 4.0. If you haven’t done the upgrade yet yourself, might be useful to read back through his tweets and recent forum posts to see the problems/solutions he’s encountered. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/71834/438099.aspx#438099 http://www.twitter.com/werezompire SpynDoctorGames is in the final phase before the release of Your Doodles are Bugged for the PC! Going to be interesting to watch as more XNA game developers explore the PC game market for their games. http://twitter.com/SpynDoctorGames/statuses/24503173217521664 http://www.spyn-doctor.de @DrMistry shares some details of his next title YoYoYo http://www.mstargames.co.uk/mistryblogmain/35-genblog/177-a-new-year-a-new-game-and-maybe-a-new-approach.html Travis Woodward (@RabidLionGames) has a blog post coming this weekend on Farseer and Mario-like platformer movement. http://twitter.com/RabidLionGames/statuses/24992762021548032 http://www.rabidlion.com/ S4G Interview with Radiangames http://n4g.com/news/679492/s4g-interview-with-radiangames XBLAratings.com interviews Steve Flores (@DragonDivide) developer of Alpha Squad http://www.xblaratings.com/developer-qaa/3621-alpha-squad-developer-interview XBox LIVE Indie Games If you haven’t been reading the roundups on IndieGames by NaviFairy on GayGamer, you’ve been missing out! http://gaygamer.net/2011/01/xbox_indie_review_roundup_1112.html Armless Octopus posts the Top 20 Games of 2010 Part 1 http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/01/10/top-20-xbox-live-indie-games-of-2010-part-1/ Armless Octopus posts the Top 20 Games of 2010 Part 2 http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/01/12/top-20-xbox-live-indie-games-of-2010-%E2%80%93-part-2/ Xbox LIVE Indie Game Reviews http://www.gamemarx.com/ Don’t forget to be following @XboxHornet . That’s a great way to snag free copies of Xbox LIVE Indie Games http://twitter.com/XboxHornet/statuses/24471103808208896 http://www.xboxhornet.com/wordpress/ Xbox LIVE Indie Game Review posts the top 20 Xbox 360 LIVE Indie Games of 2010 http://www.xbox-360-community-games-reviews.com/top-20-best-xbox-360-live-indie-games-of-2010/ VVGtv to Stream #XBLIG Again! Help out if you can. http://vvgtv.com/2011/01/07/vvgtv-to-stream-xblig-again/ Indie Gamer Magazine Issue 14 has a look at the Xbox LIVE Winter Indie Game Uprisiing http://www.indiegamemag.com/issue14/ XNA Game Development Andrew Russell announced and asked for help in his development of ExEn: XNA for iPhone, Android and Silverlight http://rockethub.com/projects/752-exen-xna-for-iphone-android-and-silverlight App Hub forums letting you down? Don’t forget about StackOverflow and the game development specific version gamedev.stackexchange http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/xna http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/xna Transmute gets an update from Aaron Foley (@slyprid) and you can now add and visually edit parallax layers to your 2D tile game. http://twitpic.com/3nudj0 http://twitter.com/slyprid/statuses/23418379574448128 http://forgottenstarstudios.com/Transmute/default.html Webcomics Weekly #75 touches on some feelings I’ve seen people try to express (myself included) when talking about game development and what types of games should be released for XBLIG http://www.pvponline.com/2011/01/05/webcomics-weekly-75-sour-oats/ Setting up a new PC for XNA development? Here’s a site that helps you quickly build a installer for all the most common applications developers use. http://ninite.com/ Fun wew thread on the XNA forums asking XBLIG/XNA developers just what their Top 10 favorite video games of all time are. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/107.aspx Christopher Hill (@Xalterax) stumbled across an entire community that does nothing but create box art. This is a great potential resource for Xbox LIVE Indie Game developers to get some awesome box art for their games. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/46582/441451.aspx#441451 http://www.vgboxart.com/browse/plat/360/ Don’t forget about the XNA Wiki, fantastic community resource (and roll up those sleeves and contribute already!) http://xnawiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

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  • Use WLST to Delete All JMS Messages From a Destination

    - by james.bayer
    I got a question today about whether WebLogic Server has any tools to delete all messages from a JMS Queue.  It just so happens that the WLS Console has this capability already.  It’s available on the screen after the “Show Messages” button is clicked on a destination’s Monitoring tab as seen in the screen shot below. The console is great for something ad-hoc, but what if I want to automate this?  Well it just so happens that the console is just a weblogic application layered on top of the JMX Management interface.  If you look at the MBean Reference, you’ll find a JMSDestinationRuntimeMBean that includes the operation deleteMessages that takes a JMS Message Selector as an argument.  If you pass an empty string, that is essentially a wild card that matches all messages. Coding a stand-alone JMX client for this is kind of lame, so let’s do something more suitable to scripting.  In addition to the console, WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) based on Jython is another way to browse and invoke MBeans, so an equivalent interactive shell session to delete messages from a destination would looks like this: D:\Oracle\fmw11gr1ps3\user_projects\domains\hotspot_domain\bin>setDomainEnv.cmd D:\Oracle\fmw11gr1ps3\user_projects\domains\hotspot_domain>java weblogic.WLST   Initializing WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) ...   Welcome to WebLogic Server Administration Scripting Shell   Type help() for help on available commands   wls:/offline> connect('weblogic','welcome1','t3://localhost:7001') Connecting to t3://localhost:7001 with userid weblogic ... Successfully connected to Admin Server 'AdminServer' that belongs to domain 'hotspot_domain'.   Warning: An insecure protocol was used to connect to the server. To ensure on-the-wire security, the SSL port or Admin port should be used instead.   wls:/hotspot_domain/serverConfig> serverRuntime() Location changed to serverRuntime tree. This is a read-only tree with ServerRuntimeMBean as the root. For more help, use help(serverRuntime)   wls:/hotspot_domain/serverRuntime> cd('JMSRuntime/AdminServer.jms/JMSServers/JMSServer-0/Destinations/SystemModule-0!Queue-0') wls:/hotspot_domain/serverRuntime/JMSRuntime/AdminServer.jms/JMSServers/JMSServer-0/Destinations/SystemModule-0!Queue-0> ls() dr-- DurableSubscribers   -r-- BytesCurrentCount 0 -r-- BytesHighCount 174620 -r-- BytesPendingCount 0 -r-- BytesReceivedCount 253548 -r-- BytesThresholdTime 0 -r-- ConsumersCurrentCount 0 -r-- ConsumersHighCount 0 -r-- ConsumersTotalCount 0 -r-- ConsumptionPaused false -r-- ConsumptionPausedState Consumption-Enabled -r-- DestinationInfo javax.management.openmbean.CompositeDataSupport(compositeType=javax.management.openmbean.CompositeType(name=DestinationInfo,items=((itemName=ApplicationName,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.String)),(itemName=ModuleName,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.String)),(itemName openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.Boolean)),(itemName=SerializedDestination,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.String)),(itemName=ServerName,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.String)),(itemName=Topic,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.Boolean)),(itemName=VersionNumber,itemType=javax.management.op ule-0!Queue-0, Queue=true, SerializedDestination=rO0ABXNyACN3ZWJsb2dpYy5qbXMuY29tbW9uLkRlc3RpbmF0aW9uSW1wbFSmyJ1qZfv8DAAAeHB3kLZBABZTeXN0ZW1Nb2R1bGUtMCFRdWV1ZS0wAAtKTVNTZXJ2ZXItMAAOU3lzdGVtTW9kdWxlLTABAANBbGwCAlb6IS6T5qL/AAAACgEAC0FkbWluU2VydmVyAC2EGgJW+iEuk+ai/wAAAAsBAAtBZG1pblNlcnZlcgAthBoAAQAQX1dMU19BZG1pblNlcnZlcng=, ServerName=JMSServer-0, Topic=false, VersionNumber=1}) -r-- DestinationType Queue -r-- DurableSubscribers null -r-- InsertionPaused false -r-- InsertionPausedState Insertion-Enabled -r-- MessagesCurrentCount 0 -r-- MessagesDeletedCurrentCount 3 -r-- MessagesHighCount 2 -r-- MessagesMovedCurrentCount 0 -r-- MessagesPendingCount 0 -r-- MessagesReceivedCount 3 -r-- MessagesThresholdTime 0 -r-- Name SystemModule-0!Queue-0 -r-- Paused false -r-- ProductionPaused false -r-- ProductionPausedState Production-Enabled -r-- State advertised_in_cluster_jndi -r-- Type JMSDestinationRuntime   -r-x closeCursor Void : String(cursorHandle) -r-x deleteMessages Integer : String(selector) -r-x getCursorEndPosition Long : String(cursorHandle) -r-x getCursorSize Long : String(cursorHandle) -r-x getCursorStartPosition Long : String(cursorHandle) -r-x getItems javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData[] : String(cursorHandle),Long(start),Integer(count) -r-x getMessage javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData : String(cursorHandle),Long(messageHandle) -r-x getMessage javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData : String(cursorHandle),String(messageID) -r-x getMessage javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData : String(messageID) -r-x getMessages String : String(selector),Integer(timeout) -r-x getMessages String : String(selector),Integer(timeout),Integer(state) -r-x getNext javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData[] : String(cursorHandle),Integer(count) -r-x getPrevious javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData[] : String(cursorHandle),Integer(count) -r-x importMessages Void : javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData[],Boolean(replaceOnly) -r-x moveMessages Integer : String(java.lang.String),javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData,Integer(java.lang.Integer) -r-x moveMessages Integer : String(selector),javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData -r-x pause Void : -r-x pauseConsumption Void : -r-x pauseInsertion Void : -r-x pauseProduction Void : -r-x preDeregister Void : -r-x resume Void : -r-x resumeConsumption Void : -r-x resumeInsertion Void : -r-x resumeProduction Void : -r-x sort Long : String(cursorHandle),Long(start),String[](fields),Boolean[](ascending)   wls:/hotspot_domain/serverRuntime/JMSRuntime/AdminServer.jms/JMSServers/JMSServer-0/Destinations/SystemModule-0!Queue-0> cmo.deleteMessages('') 2 where the domain name is “hotspot_domain”, the JMS Server name is “JMSServer-0”, the Queue name is “Queue-0” and the System Module is named “SystemModule-0”.  To invoke the operation, I use the “cmo” object, which is the “Current Management Object” that represents the currently navigated to MBean.  The 2 indicates that two messages were deleted.  Combining this WLST code with a recent post by my colleague Steve that shows you how to use an encrypted file to store the authentication credentials, you could easily turn this into a secure automated script.  If you need help with that step, a long while back I blogged about some WLST basics.  Happy scripting.

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  • Helping install mrcwa and solve problems with f2py in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

    - by user288160
    I am sorry if this is the wrong section but I am starting to get desperate, please someone help me... I need to install the program mrcwa-20080820 (sourceforge.net/projects/mrcwa/) because a summer project that I am involved. I need to use it together with anaconda (store.continuum.io/cshop/anaconda/), I already installed Anaconda and apparently it is working. When I type: conda --version I got the expected answer. conda 3.5.2 If I tried to import numpy or scipy with python or simple type f2py there are no errors. So far so good. But when I tried to install this program sudo python setup.py install I got these errors: running install running build sh: 1: f2py: not found cp: cannot stat ‘mrcwaf.so’: No such file or directory running build_py running install_lib running install_egg_info Removing /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/mrcwa-20080820.egg-info Writing /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/mrcwa-20080820.egg-info Obs: I am trying to use intel fortran 64-bits and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. So I was checking f2py and tried to execute the program hello world f2py -c -m hello hello.f from here: cens.ioc.ee/projects/f2py2e/index.html#usage and I had some problems too: running build running config_cc unifing config_cc, config, build_clib, build_ext, build commands --compiler options running config_fc unifing config_fc, config, build_clib, build_ext, build commands --fcompiler options running build_src build_src building extension "hello" sources f2py options: [] f2py:> /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/hellomodule.c creating /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7 Reading fortran codes... Reading file 'hello.f' (format:fix,strict) Post-processing... Block: hello Block: foo Post-processing (stage 2)... Building modules... Building module "hello"... Constructing wrapper function "foo"... foo(a) Wrote C/API module "hello" to file "/tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7 /hellomodule.c" adding '/tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/fortranobject.c' to sources. adding '/tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7' to include_dirs. copying /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/f2py/src/fortranobject.c -> /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7 copying /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/f2py/src/fortranobject.h -> /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7 build_src: building npy-pkg config files running build_ext customize UnixCCompiler customize UnixCCompiler using build_ext customize Gnu95FCompiler Could not locate executable gfortran Could not locate executable f95 customize IntelFCompiler Found executable /opt/intel/composer_xe_2013_sp1.3.174/bin/intel64/ifort customize LaheyFCompiler Could not locate executable lf95 customize PGroupFCompiler Could not locate executable pgfortran customize AbsoftFCompiler Could not locate executable f90 Could not locate executable f77 customize NAGFCompiler customize VastFCompiler customize CompaqFCompiler Could not locate executable fort customize IntelItaniumFCompiler customize IntelEM64TFCompiler customize IntelEM64TFCompiler customize IntelEM64TFCompiler using build_ext building 'hello' extension compiling C sources C compiler: gcc -pthread -fno-strict-aliasing -g -O2 -DNDEBUG -g -fwrapv -O3 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -fPIC creating /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/tmp creating /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/tmp/tmpf8P4Y3 creating /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7 compile options: '-I/tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7 -I/home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include -I/home/felipe/anaconda/include/python2.7 -c' gcc: /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/hellomodule.c In file included from /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy/ndarraytypes.h:1761:0, from /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy/ndarrayobject.h:17, from /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy/arrayobject.h:4, from /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/fortranobject.h:13, from /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/hellomodule.c:17: /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy/npy_1_7_deprecated_api.h:15:2: warning: #warning "Using deprecated NumPy API, disable it by " "#defining NPY_NO_DEPRECATED_API NPY_1_7_API_VERSION" [-Wcpp] #warning "Using deprecated NumPy API, disable it by " \ ^ gcc: /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/fortranobject.c In file included from /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy/ndarraytypes.h:1761:0, from /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy/ndarrayobject.h:17, from /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy/arrayobject.h:4, from /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/fortranobject.h:13, from /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/fortranobject.c:2: /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy/npy_1_7_deprecated_api.h:15:2: warning: #warning "Using deprecated NumPy API, disable it by " "#defining NPY_NO_DEPRECATED_API NPY_1_7_API_VERSION" [-Wcpp] #warning "Using deprecated NumPy API, disable it by " \ ^ compiling Fortran sources Fortran f77 compiler: /opt/intel/composer_xe_2013_sp1.3.174/bin/intel64/ifort -FI -fPIC -xhost -openmp -fp-model strict Fortran f90 compiler: /opt/intel/composer_xe_2013_sp1.3.174/bin/intel64/ifort -FR -fPIC -xhost -openmp -fp-model strict Fortran fix compiler: /opt/intel/composer_xe_2013_sp1.3.174/bin/intel64/ifort -FI -fPIC -xhost -openmp -fp-model strict compile options: '-I/tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7 -I/home/felipe/.local /lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include -I/home/felipe/anaconda/include/python2.7 -c' ifort:f77: hello.f /opt/intel/composer_xe_2013_sp1.3.174/bin/intel64/ifort -shared -shared -nofor_main /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/hellomodule.o /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3 /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/fortranobject.o /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/hello.o -L/home/felipe /anaconda/lib -lpython2.7 -o ./hello.so Removing build directory /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3 Please help me I am new in ubuntu and python. I really need this program, my advisor is waiting an answer. Thank you very much, Felipe Oliveira.

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  • How to install iodbc in Ubuntu 12.10

    - by Hanynowsky
    I need to install the library iodbc (depends on libodbc2) in my Quantal machine. Yet there is creepy dependency problem. This was replaced somehow by unixodbc which I don't have, installed. Here is what I get when I try to install : sudo apt-get install libiodbc2-dev Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: libiodbc2-dev : Depends: libiodbc2 (= 3.52.7-2build2) but it is not going to be installed Depends: iodbc (= 3.52.7-2build2) but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. I can tell that iodbc conflicts with odbcinst. Yet, I cannot remove it due to the following: sudo apt-get remove odbcinst Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: akonadi-backend-mysql calligra-l10n-engb kde-l10n-engb kdevelop-l10n kdevelop-php-docs-l10n kdevelop-php-l10n libakonadi-kabc4 libakonadi-notes4 libakonadiprotocolinternals1 libboost-thread1.49.0 libdmtx0a libgpgme++2 libkcalcore4 libkdgantt2 libkholidays4 libkimap4 libkldap4 libkmbox4 libkmime4 libkolabxml0 libkpgp4 libkresources4 libksieve4 libprison0 libqgpgme1 libqrencode3 libxerces-c3.1 Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them. The following packages will be REMOVED: akonadi-server k3b k3b-i18n katepart kde-runtime kdelibs-bin kdelibs5-plugins kdepim-runtime kdepim-strigi-plugins kdepimlibs-kio-plugins kdoctools kget kmag kmail kmix kmousetool ksystemlog kubuntu-debug-installer language-pack-kde-ar language-pack-kde-en libakonadi-calendar4 libakonadi-contact4 libakonadi-kcal4 libakonadi-kde4 libakonadi-kmime4 libcalendarsupport4 libincidenceeditorsng4 libk3b6 libkabc4 libkactivities-bin libkactivities6 libkalarmcal2 libkatepartinterfaces4 libkcal4 libkcalutils4 libkcddb4 libkde3support4 libkdepim4 libkdepimdbusinterfaces4 libkdewebkit5 libkemoticons4 libkfile4 libkgapi0 libkhtml5 libkio5 libkleo4 libkmanagesieve4 libkmediaplayer4 libknewstuff3-4 libknotifyconfig4 libkolab0 libkonq-common libkonq5abi1 libkontactinterface4 libkparts4 libkpimidentities4 libkpimtextedit4 libkpimutils4 libkprintutils4 libksieveui4 libktexteditor4 libktnef4 libktorrent4 libkworkspace4abi2 libkxmlrpcclient4 libmailcommon4 libmailimporter4 libmailtransport4 libmessagecomposer4 libmessagecore4 libmessagelist4 libmessageviewer4 libmicroblog4 libnepomuk4 libnepomukcore4abi1 libnepomukquery4a libnepomuksync4 libnepomukutils4 libplasma3 libsoprano4 libtemplateparser4 libvirtodbc0 nepomuk-core odbcinst odbcinst1debian2 plasma-scriptengine-javascript qapt-batch soprano-daemon virtuoso-minimal 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 89 to remove and 0 not upgraded. After this operation, 126 MB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Other info: Why do the "iodbc" and "libmyodbc" packages conflict with each other? The root problem is that I need to use a new feature introduced in the latest MySQL Workbench builds (DB Migration) which uses odbc for that matter. Here is what Mysql doc says about it : Linux The Migration Wizard uses iODBC as a driver manager for all of its ODBC connections in Linux. This may give you some troubles because most Linux distributions provide ODBC drivers compiled against unixODBC. This is another driver manager not supported by MySQL Workbench so you won’t be able to use those drivers unless you compile them against iODBC. Here’s what you should do. Make sure that you have iODBC installed. If you are using Debian, Ubuntu or another Debian based distro, type this command in your terminal: $ sudo apt-get install iodbc libiodbc2-dev libpq-dev libssl-dev For RPM based distros (RedHat, Fedora, etc.) type this command instead of the previous one: $ sudo yum install iodbc iodbc-dev libpqxx-devel openssl-devel Now we need to install the PostgreSQL ODBC drivers. Download the psqlODBC source tarball from here. Use the latest version available for download. As of this writing the latest version corresponds to the file psqlodbc-09.01.0200.tar.gz. Extract this tarball to a directory in your hard drive and open a terminal and cd into that directory. Type this in the terminal window: $ ./configure --with-iodbc --enable-pthreads $ make $ sudo make install Verify that you have the file psqlodbcw.so in the /usr/local/lib directory. This package seems to pose the problem probably: dpkg -s odbcinst1debian2 Package: odbcinst1debian2 Status: install ok installed Priority: optional Section: libs Installed-Size: 241 Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <[email protected]> Architecture: amd64 Multi-Arch: same Source: unixodbc Version: 2.2.14p2-5ubuntu4 Replaces: unixodbc (<< 2.1.1-2) Depends: libc6 (>= 2.14), libltdl7 (>= 2.4.2), odbcinst Pre-Depends: multiarch-support Breaks: libiodbc2, libmyodbc (<< 5.1.6-2), odbc-postgresql (<< 1:09.00.0310-1.1), tdsodbc (<< 0.82-8) Conflicts: odbcinst1, odbcinst1debian1 Description: Support library for accessing odbc ini files This package contains the libodbcinst library from unixodbc, a library used by ODBC drivers for reading their configuration settings from /etc/odbc.ini and ~/.odbc.ini. . Also contained in this package are the driver setup plugins, which describe the features supported by individual ODBC drivers. Homepage: http://www.unixodbc.org/ Original-Maintainer: Steve Langasek <[email protected]> I have no broken packages:

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  • Subscribable World Cup 2010 Calendar

    - by jamiet
    I bang on quite a lot on this blog about ways in which data can get published over the web and one of the most interesting ways, in my opinion, of publishing data in a structured manner that is well understood is to use the iCalendar specification. There isn’t much information in the world that doesn’t have some concept of “when” so iCalendar is a great way of distributing that information. You have probably used iCalendar at some point without even knowing about it. All files with a .ics suffix are iCalendar format files and that is why you can happily import them into Outlook, Hotmail Calendar, Google Calendar etc… where they can be parsed and have the semantic data (when, where and who) extracted from them. Importing of iCalendar format data is really only half the trick though; in my opinion the real value of iCalendar-formatted calendar is the ability to subscribe to them. Subscribing has a simple benefit over importing but that single benefit is of massive importance: a subscriber to an iCalendar calendar can periodically check to see if any updates have been made and, if they have, automatically update the local copy. The real benefit to the user is the productivity gain – a single update to an iCalendar means that all subscribers are automatically made aware of the change and there is zero effort on the part of the subscriber; as my former colleague Howard van Rooijen is fond of saying, “work smarter not harder” – nowhere is this edict more ably demonstrated than subscribing versus importing of calendars. If you want to read some more thoughts about iCalendar then go and read my past blog post Calendar syndication - My big hope for 2009's breakthrough technology or better still go and seek out Jon Udell who speaks very authoritatively on the issue of iCalendar. With this subject of iCalendar on my mind I was interested to discover (via Steve Clayton’s blog post Download the world cup fixtures) that the BBC had made a .ics file available containing all of the matches in the upcoming World Cup. As you can probably guess this was a file that was made available so that it could be imported into your calendar of choice. It had one obvious downside though, right now nobody knows who is going to be playing in the knock-out stages so the calendar looks like this: with no teams being named after 25th June. How much more useful would this calendar have been if the BBC had made it possible to subscribe to the calendar instead, thus the calendar could be updated with the teams for the knock out stages when they are known and every subscriber would have a permanently up-to-date record of all the fixtures in their calendar. Better still, the calendar could be updated with match results as well or perhaps even post a match report from the BBC sport pages; when calendars are made subscribable a sea of opportunity opens up for distribution of information. So with that in mind I have decided to go one better than the BBC. I have imported their .ics into a brand new Hotmail calendar and made it publicly available at the following URLs: HTML http://cid-dc1ed121af0476be.calendar.live.com/calendar/World+Cup+2010/index.html iCalendar webcal://cid-dc1ed121af0476be.calendar.live.com/calendar/World+Cup+2010/calendar.ics The link you’re really interested in is the second one - click on that and it should open up in your calendar software of choice. Or, if you want to view it in an online calendar such as Hotmail Calendar or Google Calendar, copy and paste that URL into the appropriate place. Some people have told me they’re having trouble with the iCalendar link in which case hit the HTML link and then click “View ICS” at the resultant web page: I shall endeavour to keep the calendar updated throughout the World Cup and even if I don’t you’re no worse off than if you had imported the BBC’s .ics file so why not give it a try? If I do keep it up to date then you will have a permanent record of the 2010 World Cup available in your calendar. Forever. If you have your calendar synced to your smartphone then you’ll be carrying match reports around with you without you having to do a single thing. Surely that’s worth a quick click isn’t it?   If you have any thoughts let me have them in the comments below. Thanks for reading. @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • In the Mobile and Tablet World, How Much is Too Much?

    - by andrewbrust
    The week of April 26th was a huge one in the world of mobile and tablet devices,  There were so many individual developments, announcements and solidifications of strategy, it’s almost impossible to believe they occurred in the same month, let alone the same week. Things started with Apple and Gizmodo having a Law and Order moment over the latter’s procurement of what appears to be the former’s 4th gen iPhone prototype.  We found out on the 26th that Gizmodo blogger Jason Chen’s apartment was raided by police and, honestly, that was a bit much. But Apple didn’t stop there.  They also published Steve Job’s critique of Adobe Flash and his explanation of Cupertino’s embargo of Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads.  If you ask me, this too, was a bit much. Apple finished up the week by releasing the 3G version of its iPad product to the US market. I like (iLike?) my WiFi iPad.  The idea of getting a version of it that required a second 3G service monthly subscription, is, well, a bit  much. Microsoft was in the news too.  It killed a project it hadn’t even acknowledged the existence of: the Courier tablet.  That’s a bit much too.  If a tree falls in the woods, and Microsoft says they can’t hear it anyway, could they really have chopped it down? Maybe Microsoft Research should have licensed some of Courier’s technology from other parts of Microsoft.  Then maybe they could have kept the product alive.  Ask HTC: they’re going to be licensing technology from Microsoft because Redmond insists that Google’s Android operating system infringes on certain of their patents.  And since HTC now builds a number of handsets on Android, instead of being beholden, as they once were, to Windows Mobile, that means they can keep making their products.  Why does HTC have to pay the royalties, and not Google?  Maybe Microsoft decided that going after GOOG would have been a bit much, even for them. The agreement came not a moment to soon: HTC released their “Droid Incredible” (that name’s a bit much), an Android 2.1 handset with amazing hardware and HTC’s own Sense UI, on April 30th (this past Friday). This phone is very well-reviewed.  Maybe that’s why Google basically decided to beg off introducing a version of its Nexus One phone (also manufactured by HTC) on the Verizon Wireless network.  Google backing down?  That’s incredible, if not also a bit much. And that brings us to HP.  Which this week announced its acquisition of Palm and its webOS mobile phone touch-oriented operating system.  HP also killed its own Slate initiative.  Apparently HP realized that Windows 7, even with a proprietary HP touch UI added on top, is no match for the iPad.  I’m guessing they think webOS might work a bit better,  And I’m wondering if HP even wants to use webOS for phone handsets, beyond the Pre and Pixi.  Using it just for slate devices would be a bit extreme, but maybe not too much. Honestly, this was not Microsoft’s best week.  It killed a project and a close partner did likewise.  Then that same partner bought a competing OS product, while another partner released their new product that uses yet another competing OS platform. What did Microsoft actually produce this past week? An update to its Windows Phone 7 developer tools that actually works with the version of Visual Studio 2010 released on April 12th, and the version of Silverlight released three days later. That took three weeks to get synced up, and that’s a bit much too. But at least it happened. Windows Phone 7 is Microsoft’s best hope for a comeback in the SmartPhone market and to offer a credible touch-based tablet device.  This week, two of Microsoft’s slate initiatives died, and its only mobile phone victory was around its competitor’s operating system.  I hope the new platform gets Redmond out of the PC ghetto and into the classes of device that get people really excited today.  If it can’t, that would be a bit much; probably too much.  And, as the signs at the Lonestar Cafe in NYC used to say, too much ain’t enough.

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  • Open World Day 3

    - by Antony Reynolds
    A Day in the Life of an Oracle OpenWorld Attendee Part IV My third day was exhibition day for me!  I took the opportunity to wander around the JavaOne and OpenWorld exhibitions to see what might be useful for me when selling WebLogic, Coherence & SOA Suite.  I found a number of interesting vendors and thought I would share what I found here.  These are not necessarily endorsements, but observations on companies that I thought had interesting looking products that fill a need I have seen at customers. Highly Available EBS Upgrades A few years ago I worked with a customer that was a port authority.  They wanted to tie E-Business Suite into their operations to provide faster processing of cargo and passengers.  However they only had a 2 hour downtime window to perform upgrades.  This was not a problem for core database and middleware technology, this could accommodate those upgrade timescales easily.  It was a problem for EBS however so I intrigued to find Rapid E-Suite Inc offering an 11i to 12i upgrade service that claims to require no outage.  This could be a real boon to EBS customers like my port friends that need to upgrade without disruption to their business. Mobile on WebLogic I have come across a number of customers who want a comprehensive mobile solution, connected and disconnected operation and so forth.  ADF only addresses part of these requirements currently so I was excited to discover mFrontiers Inc offering an apparently comprehensive solution that should integrate easily with Oracle SOA Suite to mobile enable a SOA infrastructure.  The ability to operate without a network is important for many applications, particularly in industries that require their engineers to enter buildings to perform maintenance or repairs, because network access is not always available – many of my colleagues don’t have mobile access from their homes because they live in the middle of nowhere – and disconnected support is crucial in these situations. Sharepoint Connector for WebCenter Content Obviously Sharepoint is an evil pernicious intrusion into a companies IT estate but it is widely deployed and many people like it but also would like to take advantage of Oracle products such as WebCenter Content.  So I was encouraged to see that Fishbowl Solutions have created a connector for Sharepoint that allows it to bring in content from WebCenter, it looks like a valuable way to maintain the Sharepoint interface end users are used to but extend the range of content by pulling stuff (technical term for content) from WebCenter.   Load Balancing The Enterprise Deployment Guides are Oracles bible on building highly available FMW environments, and each of them requires a front end load balancer.  I have been asked to help configure F5 Load Balancers on a number of occasions over my time at Oracle and each time I come back to it I find more useful features have been added to the BigIP line of load balancers that F5 sell, many of their documents are tailored to FMW.  I like F5, they provide (relatively) easy to use products that do what they say on the side of the box.  They may not have all the bells and whistles of some of their more expensive competitors but they do the job and do it well!  Besides which I like their logo! Other Stuff I saw lots of other interesting products and services, such as a lightweight monitoring tool for Coherence, Forms migration services, JCAPS migration services and lots of cool freebies to take home to the children! A Quiet Night Wednesday night was the partner appreciation event and I had decided to go back to the hotel and have an early night.  I decided to attend the last session of the day – a Maven/Hudson/WebLogic tutorial.  I got the wrong hotel for the session and snuck in 20 minutes late at the back and starting working on the hands on workshop.  One of my co-attendees raised his hand for help and as the presenter came over to help he suddenly stopped and yelled – “Is that Antony”!  It was my old friend Steve Button who used to be based in Redwood Shores but is now a WebLogic guru PM in Australia.  It was good to catch up with him.  As he yelled out a guy with really bad posture turned around to see who he was talking to, this turned out to be my friend Simon Haslan, Oracle ACE from the UK.  After the tutorial Simon and I retired to the coffee shop to catch up and share stories.  2 and half hours later we decided it was time to retire, so much for an early night but great to renew old friendships and find out what real customers are worrying about.

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  • Stand-Up Desk 2012 Update

    - by BuckWoody
    One of the more popular topics here on my technical blog doesn't have to do with technology, per-se - it's about the choice I made to go to a stand-up desk work environment. If you're interested in the history of those, check here: Stand-Up Desk Part One Stand-Up Desk Part Two I have made some changes and I was asked to post those here.Yes, I'm still standing - I think the experiment has worked well, so I'm continuing to work this way. I've become so used to it that I notice when I sit for a long time. If I'm flying, or driving a long way, or have long meetings, I take breaks to stand up and move around. That being said, I don't stand as much as I did. I started out by standing the entire day - which did not end well. As you can read in my second post, I found that sitting down for a few minutes each hour worked out much better. And over time I would say that I now stand about 70-80% of the day, depending on the day. Some days I don't even notice I'm standing, so I don't sit as often. Other days I find that I really tire quickly - so I sit more often. But in both cases, I stand more than I sit. In the first post you can read about how I used a simple coffee-table from Ikea to elevate my desktop to the right height. I then adjusted the height where I stand by using a small plastic square and some carpet. Over time I found this did not work as well as I'd like. The primary reason is that the front of these are at the same depth - so my knees would hit the desk or table when I sat down. Also, the desk was at a certain height, and I had to adjust, rather than the other way around.  Also, I like a lot of surface area on top of a desk - almost more of a table. Routing cables and wiring was a pain, and of course moving it was out of the question.   So I've changed what I use. I found a perfect solution for what I was looking for - industrial wire shelving: I bought one, built only half of it (for the right height I wanted) and arranged the shelves the way I wanted. I then got a 5'x4' piece of wood from Lowes, and mounted it to where the top was balanced, but had an over-hang  I could get my knees under easily.My wife sewed a piece of fake-leather for the top. This arrangement provides the following benefits: Very strong Rolls easily, wheels can lock to prevent rolling Long, wide shelves Wire-frame allows me to route any kind of wiring and other things all over the desk I plugged in my UPS and ran it's longer power-cable to the wall outlet. I then ran the router's LAN connection along that wire, and covered both with a large insulation sleeve. I then plugged in everything to the UPS, and routed all the wiring. I can now roll the desk almost anywhere in the room so that I can record, look out the window, get closer to or farther away from the door and more. I put a few boxes on the shelves as "drawers" and tidied that part up. Even my printer fits on a shelf. Laser-dog not included - some assembly required In the second post you can read about the bar-stool I purchased from Target for the desk. I cheaped-out on this one, and it proved to be a bad choice. Because I had to raise it so high, and was constantly sitting on it and then standing up, the gas-cylinder in it just gave out. So it became a very short stool that I ended up getting rid of. In the end, this one from Ikea proved to be a better choice: And so this arrangement is working out perfectly. I'm finding myself VERY productive this way. I hope these posts help you if you decide to try working at a stand-up desk. Although I was skeptical at first, I've found it to be a very healthy, easy way to code, design and especially present over a web-cam. It's natural to stand to speak when you're presenting, and it feels more energetic than sitting down to talk to others.

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  • How to Tell If Your Computer is Overheating and What to Do About It

    - by Chris Hoffman
    Heat is a computer’s enemy. Computers are designed with heat dispersion and ventilation in mind so they don’t overheat. If too much heat builds up, your computer may become unstable or suddenly shut down. The CPU and graphics card produce much more heat when running demanding applications. If there’s a problem with your computer’s cooling system, an excess of heat could even physically damage its components. Is Your Computer Overheating? When using a typical computer in a typical way, you shouldn’t have to worry about overheating at all. However, if you’re encountering system instability issues like abrupt shut downs, blue screens, and freezes — especially while doing something demanding like playing PC games or encoding video — your computer may be overheating. This can happen for several reasons. Your computer’s case may be full of dust, a fan may have failed, something may be blocking your computer’s vents, or you may have a compact laptop that was never designed to run at maximum performance for hours on end. Monitoring Your Computer’s Temperature First, bear in mind that different CPUs and GPUs (graphics cards) have different optimal temperature ranges. Before getting too worried about a temperature, be sure to check your computer’s documentation — or its CPU or graphics card specifications — and ensure you know the temperature ranges your hardware can handle. You can monitor your computer’s temperatures in a variety of different ways. First, you may have a way to monitor temperature that is already built into your system. You can often view temperature values in your computer’s BIOS or UEFI settings screen. This allows you to quickly see your computer’s temperature if Windows freezes or blue screens on you — just boot the computer, enter the BIOS or UEFI screen, and check the temperatures displayed there. Note that not all BIOSes or UEFI screens will display this information, but it is very common. There are also programs that will display your computer’s temperature. Such programs just read the sensors inside your computer and show you the temperature value they report, so there are a wide variety of tools you can use for this, from the simple Speccy system information utility to an advanced tool like SpeedFan. HWMonitor also offer this feature, displaying a wide variety of sensor information. Be sure to look at your CPU and graphics card temperatures. You can also find other temperatures, such as the temperature of your hard drive, but these components will generally only overheat if it becomes extremely hot in the computer’s case. They shouldn’t generate too much heat on their own. If you think your computer may be overheating, don’t just glance as these sensors once and ignore them. Do something demanding with your computer, such as running a CPU burn-in test with Prime 95, playing a PC game, or running a graphical benchmark. Monitor the computer’s temperature while you do this, even checking a few hours later — does any component overheat after you push it hard for a while? Preventing Your Computer From Overheating If your computer is overheating, here are some things you can do about it: Dust Out Your Computer’s Case: Dust accumulates in desktop PC cases and even laptops over time, clogging fans and blocking air flow. This dust can cause ventilation problems, trapping heat and preventing your PC from cooling itself properly. Be sure to clean your computer’s case occasionally to prevent dust build-up. Unfortunately, it’s often more difficult to dust out overheating laptops. Ensure Proper Ventilation: Put the computer in a location where it can properly ventilate itself. If it’s a desktop, don’t push the case up against a wall so that the computer’s vents become blocked or leave it near a radiator or heating vent. If it’s a laptop, be careful to not block its air vents, particularly when doing something demanding. For example, putting a laptop down on a mattress, allowing it to sink in, and leaving it there can lead to overheating — especially if the laptop is doing something demanding and generating heat it can’t get rid of. Check if Fans Are Running: If you’re not sure why your computer started overheating, open its case and check that all the fans are running. It’s possible that a CPU, graphics card, or case fan failed or became unplugged, reducing air flow. Tune Up Heat Sinks: If your CPU is overheating, its heat sink may not be seated correctly or its thermal paste may be old. You may need to remove the heat sink and re-apply new thermal paste before reseating the heat sink properly. This tip applies more to tweakers, overclockers, and people who build their own PCs, especially if they may have made a mistake when originally applying the thermal paste. This is often much more difficult when it comes to laptops, which generally aren’t designed to be user-serviceable. That can lead to trouble if the laptop becomes filled with dust and needs to be cleaned out, especially if the laptop was never designed to be opened by users at all. Consult our guide to diagnosing and fixing an overheating laptop for help with cooling down a hot laptop. Overheating is a definite danger when overclocking your CPU or graphics card. Overclocking will cause your components to run hotter, and the additional heat will cause problems unless you can properly cool your components. If you’ve overclocked your hardware and it has started to overheat — well, throttle back the overclock! Image Credit: Vinni Malek on Flickr     

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  • I, Android

    - by andrewbrust
    I’m just back from the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES).  I go to CES to get a sense of what Microsoft is doing in the consumer space, and how people are reacting to it.  When I first went to CES 2 years ago, Steve Ballmer announced the beta of Windows 7 at his keynote address, and the crowd went wild.  When I went again last year, everyone was hoping for a Windows tablet announcement at the Ballmer keynote.  Although they didn’t get one (unless you count the unreleased HP Slate running Windows 7), people continued to show anticipation around Project Natal (which became Xbox 360 Kinect) and around Windows Phone 7.  On the show floor last year, there were machines everywhere running Windows 7, including lots of netbooks.  Microsoft had a serious influence at the show both years. But this year, one brand, one product, one operating system evidenced itself over and over again: Android.  Whether in the multitude of tablet devices that were shown across the show, or the burgeoning number of smartphones shown (including all four forthcoming 4G-LTE handsets at Verizon Wireless’ booth) or the Google TV set top box from Logitech and the embedded implementation in new Sony TV models, Android was was there. There was excitement in the ubiquity of Android 2.2 (Froyo) and the emergence of Android 2.3 (Gingerbread).  There was anticipation around the tablet-optimized Android 3.0 (Honeycomb).  There were highly customized skins.  There was even an official CES Android app for navigating the exhibit halls and planning events.  Android was so ubiquitous, in fact, that it became surprising to find a device that was running anything else.  It was as if Android had become the de facto Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM) operating system. Motorola’s booth was nothing less than an Android showcase.  And it was large, and it was packed.  Clearly Moto’s fortunes have improved dramatically in the last year and change.  The fact that the company morphed from being a core Windows Mobile OEM to an Android poster child seems non-coincidental to their improved fortunes. Even erstwhile WinMo OEMs who now do produce Windows Phone 7 devices were not pushing them.  Perhaps I missed them, but I couldn’t find WP7 handsets at Samsung’s booth, nor at LG’s.  And since the only carrier exhibiting at the show was Verizon Wireless, which doesn’t yet have WP7 devices, this left Microsoft’s booth as the only place to see the phones. Why is Android so popular with consumer electronics manufacturers in Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan?  Yes, it’s free, but there’s more to it than that.  Android seems to have succeeded as an OEM OS because it’s directed at OEMs who are permitted to personalize it and extend it, and it provides enough base usability and touch-friendliness that OEMs want it.  In the process, it has become a de facto standard (which makes OEMs want it even more), and has done so in a remarkably short time: the OS was launched on a single phone in the US just 2 1/4 years ago. Despite its success and popularity, Apple’s iOS would never be used by OEMs, because it’s not meant to be embedded and customized, but rather to provide a fully finished experience.  Ironically, Windows Phone 7 is likewise disqualified from such embedded use.  Windows Mobile (6.x and earlier) may have been a candidate had it not atrophied so much in its final 5 years of life. What can Microsoft do?  It could start by developing a true touch-centric OS for tablets, whether that be within Windows 8, or derived from Windows Phone 7.  It would then need to deconstruct that finished product into components, via a new or altered version of Windows Embedded or Windows Embedded Compact.  And if Microsoft went that far, it would only make sense to work with its OEMs and mobile carriers to make certain they showcase their products using the OS at CES, and other consumer electronics venues, prominently. Mostly though, Microsoft would need to decide if it were really committed to putting sustained time, effort and money into a commodity product, especially given the far greater financial return that it now derives from its core Windows and Office franchises. Microsoft would need to see an OEM OS for what it is: a loss leader that helps build brand and platform momentum for up-level products.  Is that enough to make the investment worthwhile?  One thing is certain: if that question is not acknowledged and answered honestly, then any investment will be squandered.

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  • Your Next IT Job

    - by BuckWoody
    Some data professionals have worked (and plan to work) in the same place for a long time. In organizations large and small, the turnover rate just isn’t that high. This has not been my experience. About every 3-5 years I’ve changed either roles or companies. That might be due to the IT environment or my personality (or a mix of the two), but the point is that I’ve had many roles and worked for many companies large and small throughout my 27+ years in IT. At one point this might have been a detriment – a prospective employer looks at the resume and says “it seems you’ve moved around quite a bit.” But I haven’t found that to be the case all the time –in fact, in some cases the variety of jobs I’ve held has been an asset because I’ve seen what works (and doesn’t) in other environments, which can save time and money. So if you’re in the first camp – great! Stay where you are, and continue doing the work you love. but if you’re in the second, then this post might be useful. If you are planning on making a change, or perhaps you’ve hit a wall at your current location, you might start looking around for a better paying job – and there’s nothing wrong with that. We all try to make our lives better, and for some that involves more money. Money, however, isn’t always the primary motivator. I’ve gone to another job that doesn’t have as many benefits or has the same salary as the current job I’m working to gain more experience, get a better work/life balance and so on. It’s a mix of factors that only you know about. So I thought I would lay out a few advantages and disadvantages in the shops I’ve worked at. This post isn’t aimed at a single employer, but represents a mix of what I’ve experienced, and of course the opinions here are my own. You will most certainly have a different take – if so, please post a response! I also won’t mention a specific industry – I’ve worked everywhere from medical firms, legal offices, retail, billing centers, manufacturing, government, even to NASA. I’m focusing here mostly on size and composition. And I’m making some very broad generalizations here – I am fully aware that a small company might have great benefits and a large company might allow a lot of role flexibility.  your mileage may vary – and again, post those comments! Small Company To me a “small company” means around 100 people or less – sometimes a lot less. These can be really fun, frustrating places to to work. Advantages: a great deal of flexibility, a wide range of roles (often at the same time), a large degree of responsibility, immediate feedback, close relationships with co-workers, work directly with your customer. Disadvantages: Too much responsibility, little work/life balance, immature political structure, few (if any) benefits. If the business is family-owned, they can easily violate work/life boundaries. Medium Size company In my experience the next size company I would work for involves from a few hundred people to around five thousand. Advantages: Good mobility – fairly easy to get promoted, acceptable benefits, more defined responsibilities, better work/life balance, balanced load for expertise, but still the organizational structure is fairly simple to understand. Disadvantages: Pay is not always highest, rapid changes in structure as the organization grows, transient workforce. You may not be given the opportunity to work with another technology if someone already “owns” it. Politics are painful at this level as people try to learn how to do it. Large Company When you get into the tens of thousands of folks employed around the world, you’re in a large company. Advantages: Lots of room to move around – sometimes you can work (as I have) multiple jobs through the years and yet stay at the same company, building time for benefits, very defined roles, trained managers (yes, I know some of them are still awful – trust me – I DO know that), higher-end benefits, long careers possible, discounts at retailers and other “soft” benefits, prestige. For some, a higher level of politics (done professionally) is a good thing. Disadvantages: You could become another faceless name in the crowd, might not allow a great deal of flexibility,  large organizational changes might take away any control you have of your career. I’ve also seen large layoffs happen, and good people get let go while “dead weight” is retained. For some, a higher level of politics is distasteful. So what are your experiences? Share with the group! Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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