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• Coloring Default Buttons - color filter only on unfocused state

  - by rlo

  I want to buttons of different colors, but I want to do so while using the default button background resource in order to preserve the onfocus and onclick states. This is because I want to use the default highlight color of the OS for my app, which is NOT always orange (HTC Sense makes it green). I found that adding a color filter to the button's background drawable works great (in this case, blue): myButton.getBackground().setColorFilter(Color.parseColor(this.getString (R.color.button_blue)), Mode.MULTIPLY); BUT, when the button is focused or clicked, it turns a nasty orange_blue because it mixes the color filter with the orange of the background drawable. I want to ONLY set this color filter for the unfocused/unclicked nine- patch drawable within the default button's statelistdrawable. I'm not sure how else to do this. I see a similar solution here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2065430/fixed-android-detecting-fo... but I have some concerns with that solution, mainly what if the OS changes the graphic of the default button? Since the normal unfocused/ unpressed graphic is now hardcoded into the app, it would break the flow. Maybe can someone comment on whether it would be good or bad practice to hardcode the default graphic into the app? What are the chances of the OS completely changing the graphic? Any help please? Thanks very much!!

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• How can i get the flash player working

  - by Selase

  Am only looking to play some flash content on my page. found this code on the web and just copied it into my codes and changed the file name. However the intellisense underlines part of the code in green and says "File 'swfobject.js' was not found" this is the code i copied below. <asp:Content ID="HeaderContent" runat="server" ContentPlaceHolderID="HeadContent"> <script type='text/javascript' src='swfobject.js'></script> <script type='text/javascript'> var s1 = new SWFObject('cmsflash.swf','player', '400', '300', '9'); s1.addParam('allowfullscreen', 'false'); s1.addParam('allowscriptaccess', 'always'); s1.addParam('flashvars', 'file=video.flv'); s1.write('preview'); </script> <style type="text/css"> and it underlines only (swfobject.js) saying file not found. the file i wish to display is named cmsflash and is in the root directory probably ~/cmsflash.swf where and what could be going wrong? the block where the flash should display is declared as follows <table class="style2" style="height: 309px; width: 76%"> <tr> <td> <p id='preview'>The player will show in this paragraph</p> </td> </tr> </table> <span class="style6"> <br /> Please Help

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• Simulate Golf Game Strategy

  - by Mitchel Sellers

  I am working on what at best could be considered a "primitive" golf game, where after a certain bit of randomness is introduced I need to play out a hole of golf. The hole is static and I am not concerned about the UI aspect as I just have to draw a line on a graphic of the hole after the ball has been hit showing where it traveled. I'm looking for input on thoughts of how to manage the "logic" side of the puzzle, below are some of my thoughts on the matter, input, suggestions, or references are greatly appreciated. Map out the hole into an array with a specific amount of precision, noting the type of surface: out of bounds, fairway, rough, green, sand, water, and most important the hole. Map out "regions" and if the ball is contained inside one of these regions setup parameters for "maximum" angle of departure. (For example the first part of the hole the shot must be between certain angles Using the current placement of the ball, and the region contained in #2, define a routine to randomly select the shooting angle, and power then move the ball, adjust the trajectory and move again. I know this isn't the "most elegant" solution, but in reality, we are looking for a quick and dirty solution, as I just have to do this a few times, set it and forget it afterward. From a languages perspective I'll be using ASP.NET and C# to get this done.

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• DynamicContent.html: Write a JavaScript in an HTML document that can change the content of an HTML e

  - by A sw A

  ShowHide.html: Write a JavaScript in an HTML document that displays an image and allows the user to toggle the image between appearing and not appearing in the document. Place your image in a (division) tag that has a style attribute. “style.visibility” can take two values: “visible” and “hidden”. The document has a button called “Toggle Image”, which calls the toggle function upon the event “onclick”. DynamicColors.html: Write a JavaScript in an HTML document that changes the background and foreground colors of the body of a document according to the user input. The document has two input texts: background color and foreground color. The colors change when the event “onchange” occurs as you type in the text input and the event handler is called. Your event handler takes two parameters: “where”, and “newColor”. To change the document color and background color you need to change the elements document.body.style.color and document.body.style.backgroundColor. Available colors are: black, silver, gray, white, maroon, red, purple, fuchsia, green, lime, olive, yellow, navy, blue, teal, and aqua. DynamicContent.html: Write a JavaScript in an HTML document that can change the content of an HTML element (a help box). The content of an element is accessed through its “value” property. The content of a help box can change depending on the placement of the mouse cursor. When the cursor is placed over a particular input field (“onmouseover” event), the help box can display advice on how the field is to be filled. When the cursor is moved away from the input field (“onmouseout” event), the help box content changes to simply indicate that assistance is available. Your messages are stored in an array of strings.

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• What is a good solution to log the deletion of a row in MySQL?

  - by hobodave

  Background I am currently logging deletion of rows from my tickets table at the application level. When a user deletes a ticket the following SQL is executed: INSERT INTO alert_log (user_id, priority, priorityName, timestamp, message) VALUES (9, 4, 'WARN', NOW(), "TICKET: David A. deleted ticket #6 from Foo"); Please do not offer schema suggestions for the alert_log table. Fields: user_id - User id of the logged in user performing the deletion priority - Always 4 priorityName - Always 'WARN' timestamp - Always NOW() message - Format: "[NAMESPACE]: [FullName] deleted ticket #[TicketId] from [CompanyName]" NAMESPACE - Always TICKET FullName - Full name of user identified by user_id above TicketId - Primary key ID of the ticket being deleted CompanyName - Ticket has a Company via tickets.company_id Situation/Questions Obviously this solution does not work if a ticket is deleted manually from the mysql command line client. However, now I need to. The issues I'm having are as follows: Should I use a PROCEDURE, FUNCTION, or TRIGGER? -- Analysis: TRIGGER - I don't think this will work because I can't pass parameters to it, and it would trigger when my application deleted the row too. PROCEDURE or FUNCTION - Not sure. Should I return the number of deleted rows? If so, that would require a FUNCTION right? How should I account for the absence of a logged in user? -- Possibilities: Using either a PROC or FUNC, require the invoker to pass in a valid user_id Require the user to pass in a string with the name Use the CURRENT_USER - meh Hard code the FullName to just be "Database Administrator" Could the name be an optional parameter? I'm rather green when it comes to sprocs. Assuming I went with the PROC/FUNC approach, is it possible to outright restrict regular DELETE calls to this table, yet still allow users to call this PROC/FUNC to do the deletion for them? Ideally the solution is usable by my application as well, so that my code is DRY.

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• Top and Left property not working! Why?

  - by MonuMan5

  I recently took up learning some css... and I am getting stuck on some very basic hurdles. I can't get the top and left properties to work on this basic page that I was creating. Below is all the code for that page... all the properties work except the top and left. <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html> <head> <style type="text/css"> #firstdiv {border: 2px solid red; position: absolute; top:15px; left:25px:} #seconddiv {border: 2px solid green; position: absolute; top:65px; left:5px:} </style> </head> <body> <div id="firstdiv">This is my first div </div> <div id="seconddiv">This is my second div</div> </body> </html> Any help on this issue would be greatly appreciated! = D

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• Need help, stuck on "How to send text message using java script to avoid post back"

  - by user287745

  this is what i have implemented, for further code, how to send this text of the text box to the server to store in variable or database without post back. it can be done by using ajax and update plane but i wold like to implement it using javascript script. <div id="CommentID" style=" width:30%; height:30%"> <asp:Button ID="Button1" runat="server" Text="Comment" OnClientClick="visibleDiv('id1'); return false;" /> <div id="id1" runat="server" style="visibility: hidden; background-color:Green; width:100%; height:100%"> <asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server" AutoCompleteType="Disabled" Rows="3" TextMode="MultiLine" Width="98%"></asp:TextBox> <asp:Button ID="Button2" runat="server" Text="Post" onclick="Button2_Click" /> <asp:Button ID="Button3" runat="server" Text="Cancel" OnClientClick="visibleDiv('id1'); return false;" /> </div> </div>

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• How to check of which user-defined type a current JSON element is during $.each()?

  - by Bob

  I have the following structure for a JSON file: ({condos:[{Address:'123 Fake St.', Lat:'56.645654', Lng:'23.534546'},{... another condo ...},{...}],houses:[{Address:'1 Main Ave.', Lat:'34.765766', Lng:'27.8786674'},{... another house ...}, {...}]}) So, I have a list of condos and houses in one big JSON array. I want to plot them all on my map, but I want to give condos and houses different marker icons( blue marker for condos, green marker for houses ). Problem I have is - figuring out how to distinguish between types of markers when I $.each() through them. How would I use if to check whether I'm working with a condo or a house at the moment? var markers = null; $('#map').gmap(mapOptions).bind('init', function(){ $.post('getMarkers.php', function(json){ markers = json; $.each(markers, function(type, dataMembers) { $.each(dataMembers, function(i, j){ //if house use house.png to create marker $('#map').gmap('addMarker', { 'position': new google.maps.LatLng(parseFloat(Lat), parseFloat(Lng)), 'bounds':true, 'icon':'house.png' } ); //if condo use condo.png $('#map').gmap('addMarker', { 'position': new google.maps.LatLng(parseFloat(Lat), parseFloat(Lng)), 'bounds':true, 'icon':'condo.png' } ); }); }); }); });

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• Manipulating data in sql / asp.net / c# - how?

  - by SLC

  Not sure how to word the question... Basically, so far all my SQL stuff has been stored procedures and dumped into a gridview. The odd case where I had to perform an action based on a value (such as highlighting a row green if a certain value was true) were done as the gridview was rendering in one of the overrides. Now however I have to do something far more complicated - pull three sets of data down, run a series of checks on all three and some date related checks and stuff, then populate a gridview with some of the items. In logic terms, I want to run three queries, and store the lists of results (presumably in Lists?) then run some logic, then populate the gridview. Specifically what I don't know how to do is: Best way of pulling the data, and putting it into a List or other datastructure that lets me easily run through it, and retrieve data based on column (myList.age, or more likely, myList["Age"]). One I have compared the data, I assume I create a new list that will be put into the gridview... how do I put the contents of a list INTO a gridview? How would I add other stuff such as buttons or checkboxes at the same time? Any nudge in the right direction would be appreciated! Particularly doing cool stuff with lists and sql (if there is anything cool you can do with them)

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• Return HTML from a user selection

  - by Cruinh

  I have the following, very simple html page... <html> <head> <script type="text/javascript"> function alertSelection() { var selection = window.getSelection(); var txt = selection.toString(); alert(txt); } </script> </head> <body> This is <span style="background-color:black;color:white">the</span> text. <div style="background-color:green;width:30px;height:30px;margin:30px" onmouseover="alertSelection()"> </body> </html> When I select the entire first line and mouseover the square, I get an alert with "This is the text.". How would I fix this so the the span tag or any other selected HTML isn't stripped out of the alert message?

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• More than one JPanel in a Frame / having a brackground Image and another Layer with Components on the top

  - by user1905203

  I've got a JFrame with a JPanel in which there is a JLabel with an ImageIcon(). Everything's working perfectly, problem is i now want to add another JPanel with all the other stuff like buttons and so on to the JFrame. But it still shows the background Image on top and nothing with the second JPanel. Can someone help me? Here is an extract of my code: JFrame window = new JFrame("Http Download"); /* * Background Section */ JPanel panel1 = new JPanel(); JLabel lbl1 = new JLabel(); /* * Component Section */ JPanel panel2 = new JPanel(); JLabel lbl2 = new JLabel(); /* * Dimension Section */ Dimension windowSize = new Dimension(800, 600); Dimension screen = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getScreenSize(); public HTTPDownloadGUI() { window.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE); panel1.setLayout(null); panel1.setSize(windowSize); panel1.setOpaque(false); panel2.setLayout(null); panel2.setSize(windowSize); panel2.setOpaque(false); lbl1.setSize(windowSize); lbl1.setLocation(0, 0); lbl1.setIcon(new ImageIcon(getClass().getResource("bg1.png"))); panel1.add(lbl1); lbl2.setBounds(0, 0, 100, 100); //lbl2.setIcon(new ImageIcon(getClass().getResource("bg2.png"))); lbl2.setBackground(Color.GREEN); panel2.add(lbl2); panel1.add(panel2); window.add(panel1); int X = (screen.width / 2) - (windowSize.width / 2); int Y = (screen.height / 2) - (windowSize.height / 2); window.setBounds(X,Y , windowSize.width, windowSize.height); window.setVisible(true); }

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• Canvas draw calls are rendering out of sequence

  - by Tom Murray

  I have the following code for writing draw calls to a "back buffer" canvas, then placing those in a main canvas using drawImage. This is for optimization purposes and to ensure all images get placed in sequence. Before placing the buffer canvas on top of the main one, I'm using fillRect to create a dark-blue background on the main canvas. However, the blue background is rendering after the sprites. This is unexpected, as I am making its fillRect call first. Here is my code: render: function() { this.buffer.clearRect(0,0,this.w,this.h); this.context.fillStyle = "#000044"; this.context.fillRect(0,0,this.w,this.h); for (var i in this.renderQueue) { for (var ii = 0; ii < this.renderQueue[i].length; ii++) { sprite = this.renderQueue[i][ii]; // Draw it! this.buffer.fillStyle = "green"; this.buffer.fillRect(sprite.x, sprite.y, sprite.w, sprite.h); } } this.context.drawImage(this.bufferCanvas,0,0); } This also happens when I use fillRect on the buffer canvas, instead of the main one. Changing the globalCompositeOperation between 'source-over' and 'destination-over' (for both contexts) does nothing to change this. Paradoxically, if I instead place the blue fillRect inside the nested for loops with the other draw calls, it works as expected... Thanks in advance!

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• Processing JSON data with jQuery - strange results needing alert()

  - by James

  I have this code below. I randomly ran across that it will work if I have that alert message exactly where it is. If I take it out or move it to any other spot the tabs will not appear. What exactly is that alert doing that allows the code to work and how can I make it work without the alert? If I move the each loop into the success section it does not work even with the alert. $.ajax({ type: "GET", url: "../ajax.php", data: "action=tabs", dataType: "json", success: function(data){ Projects = data; } }); alert("yes"); $.each(Projects, function(i){ /* Sequentially creating the tabs and assigning a color from the array: */ var tmp = $('<li><a href="#" class="tab green">'+Projects[i].name+'<span class="left" /><span class="right" /></a></li>'); /* Setting the page data for each hyperlink: */ tmp.find('a').data('page','../ajax.php?action=lists&projectID='+Projects[i].project_id); /* Adding the tab to the UL container: */ $('ul.tabContainer').append(tmp); }); The ajax code is retuning json with this code $query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM `projects` ORDER BY `position` ASC"); $projects = array(); // Filling the $projects array with new project objects: while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($query)){ $projects[] = $row; } echo json_encode($projects); The returning data is very small and very fast so I don't think that is the problem.

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• Why is this one div container blocking the other from floating right?

  - by user2824289

  I know the answer is very simple, it's probably one little CSS property, but I've tried to find the solution without asking it here, no luck.. There are two div containers within a div container, and they aren't playing nice. The one is positioned to float right in the upper righthand corner of the parent div, and it won't let any other container float to the right of it. I tried display:inline and display:inline-block but no luck... Here's the code, though something tells me the answer is so easy you won't need it!: The parent div, the upper righthand corner div, and the poor div trying to float right: #um-home-section4 { width:100%; height:300px; background-color: green; } #um-title-right { float:right; width:500px; height:50px; margin-right:20px; margin-top:20px; background-color: fuchsia; } #take-me-there { float:right; margin-top:240px; margin-right:0px; height:50px; width:100px; background-color: gray; } <div id="um-home-section4"> <div id="um-title-right"></div> <div id="take-me-there"></div> </div>

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• Editing XML file content with Python.

  - by Hooloovoo

  Hi, I am trying to use Python to read in an XML file containing some parameter names and values, e.g. ... <parameter name='par1'> <value>24</value> </parameter> <parameter name='par2'> <value>Blue/Red/Green</value> </parameter> ... and then pass it a dictionary with the parameter names {'par1':'53','par2':'Yellow/Pink/Black',...} and corresponding new values to replace the old ones in the XML file. The output should then overwrite the original XML file. At the moment I am converting the XML to a python dictionary and after some element comparison and regular expression handling, writing the output again in XML format. I am not too happy with this and was wondering whether anyone can recommend a more efficient way of doing it? Thanks.

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• multiple touches: touchend event fired only when a touchmove occurs

  - by dridri

  I would like to add some multitouch features to my javascript application when it is accessed from an ios device (and maybe android later). I want to provide a shiftkey-like functionality: the user may hold a button on the screen with one finger, and while this button is pressed, the behavior for a tap action on the rest of the screen is slightly different from the classic tap. The problem i'm running into is that i do not receive any touchend event for the tapping finger unless a touchmove is fired for the first finger holding the shiftkey button. Because the screen is very sensitive, touchmove events gets easily fired and in most cases everything works fine. But when the user's finger is a bit too still, the tapping is not detected until the user moves his finger a bit. This induces a variable 'delay' between the tapping and the action that occurs on the screen (the delay may vary and last a few seconds if the user is very calm). My guess is that this delay will cause the user to tap again and thus fire the action a second time, which is something that i don't want ! You can test it here with your ipad/iphone : http://jsfiddle.net/jdeXH/8/ Try to make the body remain green for a few seconds by holding your finger very still on the cyan div while tapping on the red div. Is this behavior to be expected ? Is there some known workaround for the problem ? I would have expected the touchend event to be fired right away when the finger is removed from the screen. i tested this with iOS 5.1.1 (ipad1 and iphone4s) edit: found a similar question Multitouch touchEvents not triggered as they should on Safari Mobile

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• Issue in alternate Row color using each() method of JQuery

  - by user1323981

  I have a table as under <table > <tr> <th scope="col">EmpId</th><th scope="col">EmpName</th> </tr> <tr> <td>1</td><td>ABC</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2</td><td>DEF</td> </tr> </table> I want to set the alternate row color of only the "td" elements of the table and not "th" by using only each() function. I have tried with <style type="text/css"> tr.even { background-color: green; } tr.odd { background-color: yellow; } </style> $(document).ready(function () { $('table > tbody').each(function () { $('tr:odd', this).addClass('odd').removeClass('even'); $('tr:even', this).addClass('even').removeClass('odd'); }); }); Though this works but it accepts also "th" element. How to avoid that? Please help Thanks

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• Solaris 11 Launch Blog Carnival Roundup

  - by constant

  Solaris 11 is here! And together with the official launch activities, a lot of Oracle and non-Oracle bloggers contributed helpful and informative blog articles to help your datacenter go to eleven. Here are some notable blog postings, sorted by category for your Solaris 11 blog-reading pleasure: Getting Started/Overview A lot of people speculated that the official launch of Solaris 11 would be on 11/11 (whatever way you want to turn it), but it actually happened two days earlier. Larry Wake himself offers 11 Reasons Why Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 Isn't Being Released on 11/11/11. Then, Larry goes on with a summary: Oracle Solaris 11: The First Cloud OS gives you a short and sweet rundown of what the major new features of Solaris 11 are. Jeff Victor has his own list of What's New in Oracle Solaris 11. A popular Solaris 11 meme is to write a blog post about 11 favourite features: Jim Laurent's 11 Reasons to Love Solaris 11, Darren Moffat's 11 Favourite Solaris 11 Features, Mike Gerdt's 11 of My Favourite Things! are just three examples of "11 Favourite Things..." type blog posts, I'm sure many more will follow... More official overview content for Solaris 11 is available from the Oracle Tech Network Solaris 11 Portal. Also, check out Rick Ramsey's blog post Solaris 11 Resources for System Administrators on the OTN Blog and his secret 5 Commands That Make Solaris Administration Easier post from the OTN Garage. (Automatic) Installation and the Image Packaging System (IPS) The brand new Image Packaging System (IPS) and the Automatic Installer (IPS), together with numerous other install/packaging/boot/patching features are among the most significant improvements in Solaris 11. But before installing, you may wonder whether Solaris 11 will support your particular set of hardware devices. Again, the OTN Garage comes to the rescue with Rick Ramsey's post How to Find Out Which Devices Are Supported By Solaris 11. Included is a useful guide to all the first steps to get your Solaris 11 system up and running. Tim Foster had a whole handful of blog posts lined up for the launch, teaching you everything you need to know about IPS but didn't dare to ask: The IPS System Repository, IPS Self-assembly - Part 1: Overlays and Part 2: Multiple Packages Delivering Configuration. Watch out for more IPS posts from Tim! If installing packages or upgrading your system from the net makes you uneasy, then you're not alone: Jim Laurent will tech you how Building a Solaris 11 Repository Without Network Connection will make your life easier. Many of you have already peeked into the future by installing Solaris 11 Express. If you're now wondering whether you can upgrade or whether a fresh install is necessary, then check out Alan Hargreaves's post Upgrading Solaris 11 Express b151a with support to Solaris 11. The trick is in upgrading your pkg(1M) first. Networking One of the first things to do after installing Solaris 11 (or any operating system for that matter), is to set it up for networking. Solaris 11 comes with the brand new "Network Auto-Magic" feature which can figure out everything by itself. For those cases where you want to exercise a little more control, Solaris 11 left a few people scratching their heads. Fortunately, Tschokko wrote up this cool blog post: Solaris 11 manual IPv4 & IPv6 configuration right after the launch ceremony. Thanks, Tschokko! And Milek points out a long awaited networking feature in Solaris 11 called Solaris 11 - hostmodel, which I know for a fact that many customers have looked forward to: How to "bind" a Solaris 11 system to a specific gateway for specific IP address it is using. Steffen Weiberle teaches us how to tune the Solaris 11 networking stack the proper way: ipadm(1M). No more fiddling with ndd(1M)! Check out his tutorial on Solaris 11 Network Tunables. And if you want to get even deeper into the networking stack, there's nothing better than DTrace. Alan Maguire teaches you in: DTracing TCP Congestion Control how to probe deeply into the Solaris 11 TCP/IP stack, the TCP congestion control part in particular. Don't miss his other DTrace and TCP related blog posts! DTrace And there we are: DTrace, the king of all observability tools. Long time DTrace veteran and co-author of The DTrace book*, Brendan Gregg blogged about Solaris 11 DTrace syscall provider changes. BTW, after you install Solaris 11, check out the DTrace toolkit which is installed by default in /usr/dtrace/DTT. It is chock full of handy DTrace scripts, many of which contributed by Brendan himself! Security Another big theme in Solaris 11, and one that is crucial for the success of any operating system in the Cloud is Security. Here are some notable posts in this category: Darren Moffat starts by showing us how to completely get rid of root: Completely Disabling Root Logins on Solaris 11. With no root user, there's one major entry point less to worry about. But that's only the start. In Immutable Zones on Encrypted ZFS, Darren shows us how to double the security of your services: First by locking them into the new Immutable Zones feature, then by encrypting their data using the new ZFS encryption feature. And if you're still missing sudo from your Linux days, Darren again has a solution: Password (PAM) caching for Solaris su - "a la sudo". If you're wondering how much compute power all this encryption will cost you, you're in luck: The Solaris X86 AESNI OpenSSL Engine will make sure you'll use your Intel's embedded crypto support to its fullest. And if you own a brand new SPARC T4 machine you're even luckier: It comes with its own SPARC T4 OpenSSL Engine. Dan Anderson's posts show how there really is now excuse not to encrypt any more... Developers Solaris 11 has a lot to offer to developers as well. Ali Bahrami has a series of blog posts that cover diverse developer topics: elffile: ELF Specific File Identification Utility, Using Stub Objects and The Stub Proto: Not Just For Stub Objects Anymore to name a few. BTW, if you're a developer and want to shape the future of Solaris 11, then Vijay Tatkar has a hint for you: Oracle (Sun Systems Group) is hiring! Desktop and Graphics Yes, Solaris 11 is a 100% server OS, but it can also offer a decent desktop environment, especially if you are a developer. Alan Coopersmith starts by discussing S11 X11: ye olde window system in today's new operating system, then Calum Benson shows us around What's new on the Solaris 11 Desktop. Even accessibility is a first-class citizen in the Solaris 11 user interface. Peter Korn celebrates: Accessible Oracle Solaris 11 - released! Performance Gone are the days of "Slowaris", when Solaris was among the few OSes that "did the right thing" while others cut corners just to win benchmarks. Today, Solaris continues doing the right thing, and it delivers the right performance at the same time. Need proof? Check out Brian's BestPerf blog with continuous updates from the benchmarking lab, including Recent Benchmarks Using Oracle Solaris 11! Send Me More Solaris 11 Launch Articles! These are just a few of the more interesting blog articles that came out around the Solaris 11 launch, I'm sure there are many more! Feel free to post a comment below if you find a particularly interesting blog post that hasn't been listed so far and share your enthusiasm for Solaris 11! *Affiliate link: Buy cool stuff and support this blog at no extra cost. We both win! var flattr_uid = '26528'; var flattr_tle = 'Solaris 11 Launch Blog Carnival Roundup'; var flattr_dsc = '<strong>Solaris 11 is here!</strong>And together with the official launch activities, a lot of Oracle and non-Oracle bloggers contributed helpful and informative blog articles to help your datacenter <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_to_eleven">go to eleven</a>.Here are some notable blog postings, sorted by category for your Solaris 11 blog-reading pleasure:'; var flattr_tag = 'blogging,digest,Oracle,Solaris,solaris,solaris 11'; var flattr_cat = 'text'; var flattr_url = 'http://constantin.glez.de/blog/2011/11/solaris-11-launch-blog-carnival-roundup'; var flattr_lng = 'en_GB'

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• Interesting articles and blogs on SPARC T4

  - by mv

  Interesting articles and blogs on SPARC T4 processor   I have consolidated all the interesting information I could get on SPARC T4 processor and its hardware cryptographic capabilities.  Hope its useful. 1. Advantages of SPARC T4 processor  Most important points in this T4 announcement are : "The SPARC T4 processor was designed from the ground up for high speed security and has a cryptographic stream processing unit (SPU) integrated directly into each processor core. These accelerators support 16 industry standard security ciphers and enable high speed encryption at rates 3 to 5 times that of competing processors. By integrating encryption capabilities directly inside the instruction pipeline, the SPARC T4 processor eliminates the performance and cost barriers typically associated with secure computing and makes it possible to deliver high security levels without impacting the user experience." Data Sheet has more details on these  : "New on-chip Encryption Instruction Accelerators with direct non-privileged support for 16 industry-standard cryptographic algorithms plus random number generation in each of the eight cores: AES, Camellia, CRC32c, DES, 3DES, DH, DSA, ECC, Kasumi, MD5, RSA, SHA-1, SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512" I ran "isainfo -v" command on Solaris 11 Sparc T4-1 system. It shows the new instructions as expected  : $ isainfo -v 64-bit sparcv9 applications crc32c cbcond pause mont mpmul sha512 sha256 sha1 md5 camellia kasumi des aes ima hpc vis3 fmaf asi_blk_init vis2 vis popc 32-bit sparc applications crc32c cbcond pause mont mpmul sha512 sha256 sha1 md5 camellia kasumi des aes ima hpc vis3 fmaf asi_blk_init vis2 vis popc v8plus div32 mul32  2.  Dan Anderson's Blog have some interesting points about how these can be used : "New T4 crypto instructions include: aes_kexpand0, aes_kexpand1, aes_kexpand2,         aes_eround01, aes_eround23, aes_eround01_l, aes_eround_23_l, aes_dround01, aes_dround23, aes_dround01_l, aes_dround_23_l.       Having SPARC T4 hardware crypto instructions is all well and good, but how do we access it ?      The software is available with Solaris 11 and is used automatically if you are running Solaris a SPARC T4.  It is used internally in the kernel through kernel crypto modules.  It is available in user space through the PKCS#11 library." 3.   Dans' Blog on Where's the Crypto Libraries? Although this was written in 2009 but still is very useful  "Here's a brief tour of the major crypto libraries shown in the digraph:   The libpkcs11 library contains the PKCS#11 API (C_\*() functions, such as C_Initialize()). That in turn calls library pkcs11_softtoken or pkcs11_kernel, for userland or kernel crypto providers. The latter is used mostly for hardware-assisted cryptography (such as n2cp for Niagara2 SPARC processors), as that is performed more efficiently in kernel space with the "kCF" module (Kernel Crypto Framework). Additionally, for Solaris 10, strong crypto algorithms were split off in separate libraries, pkcs11_softtoken_extra libcryptoutil contains low-level utility functions to help implement cryptography. libsoftcrypto (OpenSolaris and Solaris Nevada only) implements several symmetric-key crypto algorithms in software, such as AES, RC4, and DES3, and the bignum library (used for RSA). libmd implements MD5, SHA, and SHA2 message digest algorithms" 4. Difference in T3 and T4 Diagram in this blog is good and self explanatory. Jeff's blog also highlights the differences  "The T4 servers have improved crypto acceleration, described at https://blogs.oracle.com/DanX/entry/sparc_t4_openssl_engine. It is "just built in" so administrators no longer have to assign crypto accelerator units to domains - it "just happens". Every physical or virtual CPU on a SPARC-T4 has full access to hardware based crypto acceleration at all times. .... For completeness sake, it's worth noting that the T4 adds more crypto algorithms, and accelerates Camelia, CRC32c, and more SHA-x." 5. About performance counters In this blog, performance counters are explained : "Note that unlike T3 and before, T4 crypto doesn't require kernel modules like ncp or n2cp, there is no visibility of crypto hardware with kstats or cryptoadm. T4 does provide hardware counters for crypto operations.  You can see these using cpustat: cpustat -c pic0=Instr_FGU_crypto 5 You can check the general crypto support of the hardware and OS with the command "isainfo -v". Since T4 crypto's implementation now allows direct userland access, there are no "crypto units" visible to cryptoadm.  " For more details refer Martin's blog as well. 6. How to turn off  SPARC T4 or Intel AES-NI crypto acceleration  I found this interesting blog from Darren about how to turn off  SPARC T4 or Intel AES-NI crypto acceleration. "One of the new Solaris 11 features of the linker/loader is the ability to have a single ELF object that has multiple different implementations of the same functions that are selected at runtime based on the capabilities of the machine.   The alternate to this is having the application coded to call getisax(2) system call and make the choice itself.  We use this functionality of the linker/loader when we build the userland libraries for the Solaris Cryptographic Framework (specifically libmd.so and libsoftcrypto.so) The Solaris linker/loader allows control of a lot of its functionality via environment variables, we can use that to control the version of the cryptographic functions we run.  To do this we simply export the LD_HWCAP environment variable with values that tell ld.so.1 to not select the HWCAP section matching certain features even if isainfo says they are present.  This will work for consumers of the Solaris Cryptographic Framework that use the Solaris PKCS#11 libraries or use libmd.so interfaces directly.  For SPARC T4 : export LD_HWCAP="-aes -des -md5 -sha256 -sha512 -mont -mpul" .. For Intel systems with AES-NI support: export LD_HWCAP="-aes"" Note that LD_HWCAP is explained in  http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23823_01/html/816-5165/ld.so.1-1.html "LD_HWCAP, LD_HWCAP_32, and LD_HWCAP_64 -  Identifies an alternative hardware capabilities value... A “-” prefix results in the capabilities that follow being removed from the alternative capabilities." 7. Whitepaper on SPARC T4 Servers—Optimized for End-to-End Data Center Computing This Whitepaper on SPARC T4 Servers—Optimized for End-to-End Data Center Computing explains more details.  It has DTrace scripts which may come in handy : "To ensure the hardware-assisted cryptographic acceleration is configured to use and working with the security scenarios, it is recommended to use the following Solaris DTrace script. #!/usr/sbin/dtrace -s pid$1:libsoftcrypto:yf*:entry, pid$target:libsoftcrypto:rsa*:entry, pid$1:libmd:yf*:entry { @[probefunc] = count(); } tick-1sec { printa(@ops); trunc(@ops); }" Note that I have slightly modified the D Script to have RSA "libsoftcrypto:rsa*:entry" as well as per recommendations from Chi-Chang Lin. 8. References http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/sparc-t4-announcement-494846.html http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc-enterprise/t-series/sparc-t4-1-ds-487858.pdf https://blogs.oracle.com/DanX/entry/sparc_t4_openssl_engine https://blogs.oracle.com/DanX/entry/where_s_the_crypto_libraries https://blogs.oracle.com/darren/entry/howto_turn_off_sparc_t4 http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23823_01/html/816-5165/ld.so.1-1.html   https://blogs.oracle.com/hardware/entry/unleash_the_power_of_cryptography https://blogs.oracle.com/cmt/entry/t4_crypto_cheat_sheet https://blogs.oracle.com/martinm/entry/t4_performance_counters_explained  https://blogs.oracle.com/jsavit/entry/no_mau_required_on_a http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc-enterprise/t-series/sparc-t4-business-wp-524472.pdf

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• Time Tracking on an Agile Team

  - by Stephen.Walther

  What’s the best way to handle time-tracking on an Agile team? Your gut reaction to this question might be to resist any type of time-tracking at all. After all, one of the principles of the Agile Manifesto is “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools”.  Forcing the developers on your team to track the amount of time that they devote to completing stories or tasks might seem like useless bureaucratic red tape: an impediment to getting real work done. I completely understand this reaction. I’ve been required to use time-tracking software in the past to account for each hour of my workday. It made me feel like Fred Flintstone punching in at the quarry mine and not like a professional. Why You Really Do Need Time-Tracking There are, however, legitimate reasons to track time spent on stories even when you are a member of an Agile team.  First, if you are working with an outside client, you might need to track the number of hours spent on different stories for the purposes of billing. There might be no way to avoid time-tracking if you want to get paid. Second, the Product Owner needs to know when the work on a story has gone over the original time estimated for the story. The Product Owner is concerned with Return On Investment. If the team has gone massively overtime on a story, then the Product Owner has a legitimate reason to halt work on the story and reconsider the story’s business value. Finally, you might want to track how much time your team spends on different types of stories or tasks. For example, if your team is spending 75% of their time doing testing then you might need to bring in more testers. Or, if 10% of your team’s time is expended performing a software build at the end of each iteration then it is time to consider better ways of automating the build process. Time-Tracking in SonicAgile For these reasons, we added time-tracking as a feature to SonicAgile which is our free Agile Project Management tool. We were heavily influenced by Jeff Sutherland (one of the founders of Scrum) in the way that we implemented time-tracking (see his article http://scrum.jeffsutherland.com/2007/03/time-tracking-is-anti-scrum-what-do-you.html). In SonicAgile, time-tracking is disabled by default. If you want to use this feature then the project owner must enable time-tracking in Project Settings. You can choose to estimate using either days or hours. If you are estimating at the level of stories then it makes more sense to choose days. Otherwise, if you are estimating at the level of tasks then it makes more sense to use hours. After you enable time-tracking then you can assign three estimates to a story: Original Estimate – This is the estimate that you enter when you first create a story. You don’t change this estimate. Time Spent – This is the amount of time that you have already devoted to the story. You update the time spent on each story during your daily standup meeting. Time Left – This is the amount of time remaining to complete the story. Again, you update the time left during your daily standup meeting. So when you first create a story, you enter an original estimate that becomes the time left. During each daily standup meeting, you update the time spent and time left for each story on the Kanban. If you had perfect predicative power, then the original estimate would always be the same as the sum of the time spent and the time left. For example, if you predict that a story will take 5 days to complete then on day 3, the story should have 3 days spent and 2 days left. Unfortunately, never in the history of mankind has anyone accurately predicted the exact amount of time that it takes to complete a story. For this reason, SonicAgile does not update the time spent and time left automatically. Each day, during the daily standup, your team should update the time spent and time left for each story. For example, the following table shows the history of the time estimates for a story that was originally estimated to take 3 days but, eventually, takes 5 days to complete: Day Original Estimate Time Spent Time Left Day 1 3 days 0 days 3 days Day 2 3 days 1 day 2 days Day 3 3 days 2 days 2 days Day 4 3 days 3 days 2 days Day 5 3 days 4 days 0 days In the table above, everything goes as predicted until you reach day 3. On day 3, the team realizes that the work will require an additional two days. The situation does not improve on day 4. All of the sudden, on day 5, all of the remaining work gets done. Real work often follows this pattern. There are long periods when nothing gets done punctuated by occasional and unpredictable bursts of progress. We designed SonicAgile to make it as easy as possible to track the time spent and time left on a story. Detecting when a Story Goes Over the Original Estimate Sometimes, stories take much longer than originally estimated. There’s a surprise. For example, you discover that a new software component is incompatible with existing software components. Or, you discover that you have to go through a month-long certification process to finish a story. In those cases, the Product Owner has a legitimate reason to halt work on a story and re-evaluate the business value of the story. For example, the Product Owner discovers that a story will require weeks to implement instead of days, then the story might not be worth the expense. SonicAgile displays a warning on both the Backlog and the Kanban when the time spent on a story goes over the original estimate. An icon of a clock is displayed. Time-Tracking and Tasks Another optional feature of SonicAgile is tasks. If you enable Tasks in Project Settings then you can break stories into one or more tasks. You can perform time-tracking at the level of a story or at the level of a task. If you don’t break a story into tasks then you can enter the time left and time spent for the story. As soon as you break a story into tasks, then you can no longer enter the time left and time spent at the level of the story. Instead, the time left and time spent for a story is rolled up from its tasks. On the Kanban, you can see how the time left and time spent for each task gets rolled up into each story. The progress bar for the story is rolled up from the progress bars for each task. The original estimate is never rolled up – even when you break a story into tasks. A story’s original estimate is entered separately from the original estimates of each of the story’s tasks. Summary Not every Agile team can avoid time-tracking. You might be forced to track time to get paid, to detect when you are spending too much time on a particular story, or to track the amount of time that you are devoting to different types of tasks. We designed time-tracking in SonicAgile to require the least amount of work to track the information that you need. Time-tracking is an optional feature. If you enable time-tracking then you can track the original estimate, time left, and time spent for each story and task. You can use time-tracking with SonicAgile for free. Register at http://SonicAgile.com.

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• XBRL US Conference Highlights

  - by john.orourke(at)oracle.com

  Back in early November I had an opportunity to attend the XBRL US National Conference in Philadelphia.  At the event, XBRL US announced that Oracle had joined the initiative, so I had a chance to participate in a press conference and attend a number of sessions.  Oracle joined XBRL US so we can stay ahead of the standard and leverage it in our products, and to help drive awareness with customers and improve adoption of XBRL. There were roughly 250 attendees at the event, about half of which were vendors and consultants and the rest financial reporting staff from corporate filers.  Event sponsors included Ernst & Young, SWIFT and Fujitsu.  There were also a number of XBRL technology and service providers exhibiting at the conference.  On Monday Nov. 8th, the XBRL US Steering Committee meetings and Annual Members meeting and reception were held.  At the Annual Members meeting the big news was that current XBRL US President, Mark Bolgiano, is moving to a new position at Howard Hughes Medical Center.  Campbell Pryde, who had led the Taxonomy Development for XBRL US, is taking over as XBRL US President. Other items that were highlighted at the members meeting included: The US GAAP XBRL taxonomy is being used by over 1500 SEC filers and has now been handed over to the FASB to maintain and enhance 16 filer training events were held in 2010 XBRL Global Magazine was launched Corporate Actions proposal was submitted to the SEC with SWIFT in May XBRL Labs for iPhone, XBRL US Consistency Suite launched ISO 2022 Corporate Actions Alignment with XBRL achieved The XBRL Credit Rating taxonomy was accepted Tuesday Nov. 9th included Keynotes, General Sessions, Innovation Workshop for Governments and Securities Professionals, and an Opening Reception.  General sessions included: Lessons Learned from the SEC's rollout of XBRL.  More than 18,000 errors were identified in reviews of filings between June 2009 and September 2010.  Most of these related to negative values being used where they shouldn't have.  Also, the SEC feels there are too many taxonomy extensions being created - mostly in the Cash Flow Statements.  They emphasize using existing elements in the US GAAP taxonomy and advise filers not to  create extensions to improve the visual formatting of XBRL filings. Investors and XBRL - Setting the Standard for Data Quality.  In this panel discussion, the key learning was that CFA's, academics and the financial community are not using XBRL as expected.  The issues raised include the  accuracy and completeness of filings, number of taxonomy extensions, and limited number of tools available to help analyze XBRL data.  Another big issue that was raised is the lack of historic results in XBRL - most analysts need 10 quarters of historic data.  On the positive side, XBRL has the potential to eliminate re-keying of data and errors here and can improve analytic capabilities for financial analysts once more historic data is available and more companies are providing detailed tagging of their filings. A US Roadmap for XBRL Financial Reporting.  This was a panel discussion featuring Jeff Neumann(SEC), Campbell Pryde(XBRL US), and Louis Matherne(FASB).  Key points included the fact that XBRL is currently used by 1500 companies, with 8000 more companies coming in 2011.  XBRL for Mutual Fund Reporting will start in 2011 for 8000 funds, and a Credit Rating Taxonomy has now been submitted for review.  The XBRL tagging/filing process is improving each quarter - more education is helping here.  The FASB is looking at extensions to date, and potential additions to US GAAP taxonomy, while the SEC is evaluating filings for accuracy, consistency in tagging, and tools for analyzing data.  The big news is that the FASB 2011 US GAAP Taxonomy has been completed and reviewed by SEC.  The 2011 US GAAP Taxonomy supports new FASB accounting standards issued since 2009, has new taxonomy elements for certain industries (i.e airlines) and the elimination of 500 concepts.  (meaning they can't be used going forward but are still supported for historical comparison)  The 2011 US GAAP Taxonomy will be available for usage with Q2 2011 SEC filings.  More information about this can be found on the FASB web site.  http://www.fasb.org/home Accounting Firms and XBRL.  This session covered the Role of Audit Firms, which includes awareness and education, validation of XBRL filings, and in-house transition planning.  The main advice provided was that organizations should document XBRL mapping process, perform peer comparisons, and risk assessments on a regular basis. Wednesday Nov. 10th included more Keynotes, General Sessions on Corporate Actions, and XBRL Essentials Workshop Training for corporate filers.  The XBRL Essentials Training included: Getting Started Once you Have the Basics Detailed Footnote Tagging and Handling Tables Quality Control and Trust in the XBRL Process Bringing XBRL In-House:  What are the Options, What should you consider? The US GAAP Financial Reporting Taxonomy - Overview of the 2011 release The XBRL Essentials Training was well-attended with about 80 people.  This included a good overview of the SEC's XBRL mandate, limited liability issue, tagging levels, recommended planning process, internal vs. outsourced approach, and how to manage service providers.  I learned a lot from the session on detailed tagging.  This is the requirement that kicks in during a company's second year of XBRL filing with the SEC and applies to financial statements, footnotes and disclosures (it does not apply to MD&A, executive communications and other information).  The review of the Linkbase model, or dimensional table structure, was very interesting and can be complex to understand.  The key takeaway here is that using dimensional tables in XBRL filings can help limit the number of taxonomy extensions that are required.  The slides from this session are posted on the XBRL US web site. (http://xbrl.us/events/Pages/archive.aspx) For me, the main summary points and takeaways from the XBRL US conference are: XBRL for financial reporting has turned the corner and gone mainstream - with 1500 companies currently using it and 8000 more coming in 2011 The expected value is not being achieved by filers or consumers of XBRL data - this will improve when more companies are filing in XBRL, more history is available, and more software tools are available for analysis (hmm, sounds like an opportunity for Oracle) XBRL is becoming the global standard for all business communications beyond just the financials - i.e. adoption for mutual funds, corporate actions and others planned for the future If you would like to learn more about XBRL and the various training programs, services and software tools that are available check out the XBRL US web site and even better - become a member.  Here's a link:  http://xbrl.us/Pages/default.aspx

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• The Faces in the Crowdsourcing

  - by Applications User Experience

  By Jeff Sauro, Principal Usability Engineer, Oracle Imagine having access to a global workforce of hundreds of thousands of people who can perform tasks or provide feedback on a design quickly and almost immediately. Distributing simple tasks not easily done by computers to the masses is called "crowdsourcing" and until recently was an interesting concept, but due to practical constraints wasn't used often. Enter Amazon.com. For five years, Amazon has hosted a service called Mechanical Turk, which provides an easy interface to the crowds. The service has almost half a million registered, global users performing a quarter of a million human intelligence tasks (HITs). HITs are submitted by individuals and companies in the U.S. and pay from $.01 for simple tasks (such as determining if a picture is offensive) to several dollars (for tasks like transcribing audio). What do we know about the people who toil away in this digital crowd? Can we rely on the work done in this anonymous marketplace? A rendering of the actual Mechanical Turk (from Wikipedia) Knowing who is behind Amazon's Mechanical Turk is fitting, considering the history of the actual Mechanical Turk. In the late 1800's, a mechanical chess-playing machine awed crowds as it beat master chess players in what was thought to be a mechanical miracle. It turned out that the creator, Wolfgang von Kempelen, had a small person (also a chess master) hiding inside the machine operating the arms to provide the illusion of automation. The field of human computer interaction (HCI) is quite familiar with gathering user input and incorporating it into all stages of the design process. It makes sense then that Mechanical Turk was a popular discussion topic at the recent Computer Human Interaction usability conference sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery in Atlanta. It is already being used as a source for input on Web sites (for example, Feedbackarmy.com) and behavioral research studies. Two papers shed some light on the faces in this crowd. One paper tells us about the shifting demographics from mostly stay-at-home moms to young men in India. The second paper discusses the reliability and quality of work from the workers. Just who exactly would spend time doing tasks for pennies? In "Who are the crowdworkers?" University of California researchers Ross, Silberman, Zaldivar and Tomlinson conducted a survey of Mechanical Turk worker demographics and compared it to a similar survey done two years before. The initial survey reported workers consisting largely of young, well-educated women living in the U.S. with annual household incomes above $40,000. The more recent survey reveals a shift in demographics largely driven by an influx of workers from India. Indian workers went from 5% to over 30% of the crowd, and this block is largely male (two-thirds) with a higher average education than U.S. workers, and 64% report an annual income of less than $10,000 (keeping in mind $1 has a lot more purchasing power in India). This shifting demographic certainly has implications as language and culture can play critical roles in the outcome of HITs. Of course, the demographic data came from paying Turkers $.10 to fill out a survey, so there is some question about both a self-selection bias (characteristics which cause Turks to take this survey may be unrepresentative of the larger population), not to mention whether we can really trust the data we get from the crowd. Crowds can perform tasks or provide feedback on a design quickly and almost immediately for usability testing. (Photo attributed to victoriapeckham Flikr While having immediate access to a global workforce is nice, one major problem with Mechanical Turk is the incentive structure. Individuals and companies that deploy HITs want quality responses for a low price. Workers, on the other hand, want to complete the task and get paid as quickly as possible, so that they can get on to the next task. Since many HITs on Mechanical Turk are surveys, how valid and reliable are these results? How do we know whether workers are just rushing through the multiple-choice responses haphazardly answering? In "Are your participants gaming the system?" researchers at Carnegie Mellon (Downs, Holbrook, Sheng and Cranor) set up an experiment to find out what percentage of their workers were just in it for the money. The authors set up a 30-minute HIT (one of the more lengthy ones for Mechanical Turk) and offered a very high $4 to those who qualified and $.20 to those who did not. As part of the HIT, workers were asked to read an email and respond to two questions that determined whether workers were likely rushing through the HIT and not answering conscientiously. One question was simple and took little effort, while the second question required a bit more work to find the answer. Workers were led to believe other factors than these two questions were the qualifying aspect of the HIT. Of the 2000 participants, roughly 1200 (or 61%) answered both questions correctly. Eighty-eight percent answered the easy question correctly, and 64% answered the difficult question correctly. In other words, about 12% of the crowd were gaming the system, not paying enough attention to the question or making careless errors. Up to about 40% won't put in more than a modest effort to get paid for a HIT. Young men and those that considered themselves in the financial industry tended to be the most likely to try to game the system. There wasn't a breakdown by country, but given the demographic information from the first article, we could infer that many of these young men come from India, which makes language and other cultural differences a factor. These articles raise questions about the role of crowdsourcing as a means for getting quick user input at low cost. While compensating users for their time is nothing new, the incentive structure and anonymity of Mechanical Turk raises some interesting questions. How complex of a task can we ask of the crowd, and how much should these workers be paid? Can we rely on the information we get from these professional users, and if so, how can we best incorporate it into designing more usable products? Traditional usability testing will still play a central role in enterprise software. Crowdsourcing doesn't replace testing; instead, it makes certain parts of gathering user feedback easier. One can turn to the crowd for simple tasks that don't require specialized skills and get a lot of data fast. As more studies are conducted on Mechanical Turk, I suspect we will see crowdsourcing playing an increasing role in human computer interaction and enterprise computing. References: Downs, J. S., Holbrook, M. B., Sheng, S., and Cranor, L. F. 2010. Are your participants gaming the system?: screening mechanical turk workers. In Proceedings of the 28th international Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010). CHI '10. ACM, New York, NY, 2399-2402. Link: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753326.1753688 Ross, J., Irani, L., Silberman, M. S., Zaldivar, A., and Tomlinson, B. 2010. Who are the crowdworkers?: shifting demographics in mechanical turk. In Proceedings of the 28th of the international Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010). CHI EA '10. ACM, New York, NY, 2863-2872. Link: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753846.1753873

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, August 11, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, August 11, 2014Popular ReleasesSpace Engineers Server Manager: SESM V1.15: V1.15 - Updated Quartz library - Correct a bug in the new mod managment - Added a warning if you have backup enabled on a server but no static map configuredAspose for Apache POI: Missing Features of Apache POI SS - v 1.2: Release contain the Missing Features in Apache POI SS SDK in comparison with Aspose.Cells What's New ? Following Examples: Create Pivot Charts Detect Merged Cells Sort Data Printing Workbooks Feedback and Suggestions Many more examples are available at Aspose Docs. Raise your queries and suggest more examples via Aspose Forums or via this social coding site.AngularGo (SPA Project Template): AngularGo.VS2013.vsix: First ReleaseTouchmote: Touchmote 1.0 beta 13: Changes Less GPU usage Works together with other Xbox 360 controls Bug fixesPublic Key Infrastructure PowerShell module: PowerShell PKI Module v3.0: Important: I would like to hear more about what you are thinking about the project? I appreciate that you like it (2000 downloads over past 6 months), but may be you have to say something? What do you dislike in the module? Maybe you would love to see some new functionality? Tell, what you think! Installation guide:Use default installation path to install this module for current user only. To install this module for all users — enable "Install for all users" check-box in installation UI ...Modern UI for WPF: Modern UI 1.0.6: The ModernUI assembly including a demo app demonstrating the various features of Modern UI for WPF. BREAKING CHANGE LinkGroup.GroupName renamed to GroupKey NEW FEATURES Improved rendering on high DPI screens, including support for per-monitor DPI awareness available in Windows 8.1 (see also Per-monitor DPI awareness) New ModernProgressRing control with 8 builtin styles New LinkCommands.NavigateLink routed command New Visual Studio project templates 'Modern UI WPF App' and 'Modern UI W...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.74.0: Multiple thread safe improvements including AdjustToContents XLHelper XLColor_Static IntergerExtensions.ToStringLookup Exception now thrown when saving a workbook with no sheets, instead of creating a corrupt workbook Fix for hyperlinks with non-ASCII Characters Added basic workbook protection Fix for error thrown, when a spreadsheet contained comments and images Fix to Trim function Fix Invalid operation Exception thrown when the formula functions MAX, MIN, and AVG referenc...SEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.042.019 Release 1: Added RadioAntenna broadcast name to ship name detail. Added two additional columns for Asteroid material generation for Asteroid Fields. Added Mass and Block number columns to main display. Added Ellipsis to some columns on main display to reduce name confusion. Added correct SE version number in file when saving. Re-added in reattaching Motor when drag/dropping or importing ships (KeenSH have added RotorEntityId back in after removing it months ago). Added option to export and r...jQuery List DragSort: jQuery List DragSort 0.5.2: Fixed scrollContainer removing deprecated use of $.browser so should now work with latest version of jQuery. Added the ability to return false in dragEnd to revert sort order Project changes Added nuget package for dragsort https://www.nuget.org/packages/dragsort Converted repository from SVN to MercurialBraintree Client Library: Braintree 2.32.0: Allow credit card verification options to be passed outside of the nonce for PaymentMethod.create Allow billingaddress parameters and billingaddress_id to be passed outside of the nonce for PaymentMethod.create Add Subscriptions to paypal accounts Add PaymentMethod.update Add failonduplicatepaymentmethod option to PaymentMethod.create Add support for dispute webhooksThe Mario Kart 8 App: V1.0.2.1: First Codeplex release. WINDOWS INSTALLER ONLYAspose Java for Docx4j: Aspose.Words vs Docx4j - v 1.0: Release contain the Code Comparison for Features in Docx4j SDK and Aspose.Words What's New ?Following Examples: Accessing Document Properties Add Bookmarks Convert to Formats Delete Bookmarks Working with Comments Feedback and Suggestions Many more examples are available at Aspose Docs. Raise your queries and suggest more examples via Aspose Forums or via this social coding site.File System Security PowerShell Module: NTFSSecurity 2.4.1: Add-Access and Remove-Access now take multiple accoutsYourSqlDba: YourSqlDba 5.2.1.: This version improves alert message that comes a while after you install the script. First it says to get it from YourSqlDba.CodePlex.com If you don't want to update now, just-rerun the script from your installed version. To get actual version running just execute install.PrintVersionInfo. . You can go to source code / history and click on change set 72957 to see changes in the script.Manipulator: Manipulator: manipulatorXNB filetype plugin for Paint.NET: Paint.NET XNB plugin v0.4.0.0: CHANGELOG Reverted old incomplete changes. Updated library for compatibility with Paint .NET 4. Updated project to NET 4.5. Updated version to 0.4.0.0. INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS Extract the ZIP file to your Paint.NET\FileTypes folder.EdiFabric: Release 4.1: Changed MessageContextWix# (WixSharp) - managed interface for WiX: Release 1.0.0.0: Release 1.0.0.0 Custom UI Custom MSI Dialog Custom CLR Dialog External UIMath.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v3.2.0: Linear Algebra: Vector.Map2 (map2 in F#), storage-optimized Linear Algebra: fix RemoveColumn/Row early index bound check (was not strict enough) Statistics: Entropy ~Jeff Mastry Interpolation: use Array.BinarySearch instead of local implementation ~Candy Chiu Resources: fix a corrupted exception message string Portable Build: support .Net 4.0 as well by using profile 328 instead of 344. .Net 3.5: F# extensions now support .Net 3.5 as well .Net 3.5: NuGet package now contains pro...babelua: 1.6.5.1: V1.6.5.1 - 2014.8.7New feature: Formatting code; Stability improvement: fix a bug that pop up error "System.Net.WebResponse EndGetResponse";New ProjectsDouDou: a little project.Dynamic MVC: Dynamically generate views from your model objects for a data centric MVC application.EasyDb - Simple Data Access: EasyDb is a simple library for data access that allows you to write less code.ExpressToAbroad: just go!!!!!Full Silverlight Web Video/Voice Conferencing: The Goal of this project is to provide complete Open Source (Voice/Video Chatting Client/Server) Modules Using SilverlightGaia: Gaia is an app for Windows plataform, Gaia is like Siri and Google Now or Betty but Gaia use only text commands.pxctest: pxctestSTACS: Career Management System for MIT by Team "STACS"StrongWorld: StrongWorld.WebSuiteXevas Tools: Xevas is a professional coders group of 'Nimbuzz'. We make all tools for worldwide users of nimbuzz at free of cost.????????: ????????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ????????????????: ????????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ????????????????: ????????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ????????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ????????????????: ????????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ????????????????: ?????????

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• iSCSI timeouts under high load

  - by Antonio

  I have two servers connected via Gigabit Ethernet. One is iSCSI target, the second one is initiator. When I run mkfs.ext4 at initiator, after a while disk IO slows down critically. In the target host I can see the following in syslog: Sep 14 09:40:03 sh11 tgtd: abort_task_set(1139) found 119668c 0 Sep 14 09:40:03 sh11 tgtd: abort_cmd(1115) found 119668c 6 Sep 14 09:40:03 sh11 tgtd: abort_task_set(1139) found 119668d 0 Sep 14 09:40:03 sh11 tgtd: abort_cmd(1115) found 119668d 6 Sep 14 09:40:03 sh11 tgtd: abort_task_set(1139) found 119668e 0 Sep 14 09:40:03 sh11 tgtd: abort_cmd(1115) found 119668e 6 Sep 14 09:40:03 sh11 tgtd: abort_task_set(1139) found 1196696 0 Sep 14 09:40:03 sh11 tgtd: abort_cmd(1115) found 1196696 6 Sep 14 09:40:03 sh11 tgtd: abort_task_set(1139) found 119669e 0 Sep 14 09:40:03 sh11 tgtd: abort_cmd(1115) found 119669e 6 Sep 14 09:40:04 sh11 tgtd: abort_task_set(1139) found 119669f 0 Sep 14 09:40:04 sh11 tgtd: abort_cmd(1115) found 119669f 6 And load average grows to 12 or even more: # uptime 12:37:00 up 23 days, 13:25, 1 user, load average: 12.00, 7.00, 4.00 CentOS 6.3 tgtd 1.0.24 Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz 1Gb RAM 2Tb WD Cavlar Green SATA 2.0 #lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE/PE DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface (rev 02) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE/PE Host-to-AGP Bridge (rev 02) 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02) 00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02) 00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02) 00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 82) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL (ICH4/ICH4-L) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02) 00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DB (ICH4) IDE Controller (rev 02) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 02) 00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RV200 QW [Radeon 7500] 02:01.0 Ethernet controller: D-Link System Inc DGE-530T Gigabit Ethernet Adapter (rev 11) (rev 11) 02:02.0 RAID bus controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6421 IDE/SATA Controller (rev 50) 02:03.0 RAID bus controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6421 IDE/SATA Controller (rev 50) 02:04.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3114 [SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 02) 02:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB PRO/100 VE (CNR) Ethernet Controller (rev 82) Is there a way to tune target host to avoid these timeouts?

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• IRP_MJ_WRITE latency up to 15 seconds

  - by racitup

  We have written an application that performs small (22kB) writes to multiple files at once (one thread performing asynchronous queued writes to multiple locations on behalf of other threads) on the same local volume (RAID1). 99.9% of the writes are low-latency but occasionally (maybe every minute or two) we get one or two huge latency writes (I have seen 10 seconds and above) without any real explanation. Platform: Win2003 Server with NTFS. Monitoring: Sysinternals Process Monitor (see link below) and our own application logging. We have tried multiple things to try and solve this that have been gleaned from a few websites, e.g.: Making the first part of file names unique to aid 8.3 name generation Writing files to multiple directories Changing Intel Disk Write Caching Windows File/Printer Sharing Minimize memory used Balance Maximize data throughput for file sharing Maximize data throughput for network applications System-Advanced-Performance-Advanced NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate - use fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1 disable 8.3 name generation - use "fsutil behavior set disable8dot3 1" + restart Enable a large size file system cache Disable paging of the kernel code IO Page Lock Limit Turn Off (or On) the Indexing Service But nothing seems to make much difference. There's a whole host of things we haven't tried yet but we wondered if anyone had come across the same problem, a reason and a solution (programmatic or not)? We can reproduce the problem using IOMeter and a simple setup: Start IOMeter and remove all but the first worker thread in 'Topology' using the disconnect button. Select the Worker thread and put a cross in the box next to the disk you want to use in the Disk Targets tab and put '2000000' in Maximum Disk Size (NOTE: must have at least 1GB free space; sector size is 512 bytes) Next create a new access specification and add it to the worker thread: Transfer Request Size = 22kB 100% Sequential Percent of Access Spec = 100% Percent Read/Write = 100% Write Change Results Display Update Frequency to 5 seconds, Test Setup Run Time to 20 seconds and both 'Number of Workers to Spawn Automatically' settings to zero. Select the Worker Thread in the Topology panel and hit the Duplicate Worker button 59 times to create 60 threads with identical settings. Hit the 'Go' button (green flag) and monitor the Results tab. The 'Maximum I/O Response Time (ms)' always hits at least 3500 on our machine. Our machine isn't exactly slow (Xeon 8 core rack server with 4GB and onboard RAID). I'd be interested to see what other people get. We have a feeling it might be something to do with the NTFS filesystem (ours is currently 75% full of fragmented files) and we are going to try a few things around this principle. But it is also related to disk performance since we don't see it on a RAMDisk and it's not as severe on a RAID10 array. Any help is much appreciated. Richard Right-click and select 'Open Link in New Tab': ProcMon Result

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