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• What to Do When Windows Won’t Boot

  - by Chris Hoffman

  You turn on your computer one day and Windows refuses to boot — what do you do? “Windows won’t boot” is a common symptom with a variety of causes, so you’ll need to perform some troubleshooting. Modern versions of Windows are better at recovering from this sort of thing. Where Windows XP might have stopped in its tracks when faced with this problem, modern versions of Windows will try to automatically run Startup Repair. First Things First Be sure to think about changes you’ve made recently — did you recently install a new hardware driver, connect a new hardware component to your computer, or open your computer’s case and do something? It’s possible the hardware driver is buggy, the new hardware is incompatible, or that you accidentally unplugged something while working inside your computer. The Computer Won’t Power On At All If your computer won’t power on at all, ensure it’s plugged into a power outlet and that the power connector isn’t loose. If it’s a desktop PC, ensure the power switch on the back of its case — on the power supply — is set to the On position. If it still won’t power on at all, it’s possible you disconnected a power cable inside its case. If you haven’t been messing around inside the case, it’s possible the power supply is dead. In this case, you’ll have to get your computer’s hardware fixed or get a new computer. Be sure to check your computer monitor — if your computer seems to power on but your screen stays black, ensure your monitor is powered on and that the cable connecting it to your computer’s case is plugged in securely at both ends. The Computer Powers On And Says No Bootable Device If your computer is powering on but you get a black screen that says something like “no bootable device” or another sort of “disk error” message, your computer can’t seem to boot from the hard drive that Windows was installed on. Enter your computer’s BIOS or UEFI firmware setup screen and check its boot order setting, ensuring that it’s set to boot from its hard drive. If the hard drive doesn’t appear in the list at all, it’s possible your hard drive has failed and can no longer be booted from. In this case, you may want to insert Windows installation or recovery media and run the Startup Repair operation. This will attempt to make Windows bootable again. For example, if something overwrote your Windows drive’s boot sector, this will repair the boot sector. If the recovery environment won’t load or doesn’t see your hard drive, you likely have a hardware problem. Be sure to check your BIOS or UEFI’s boot order first if the recovery environment won’t load. You can also attempt to manually fix Windows boot loader problems using the fixmbr and fixboot commands. Modern versions of Windows should be able to fix this problem for you with the Startup Repair wizard, so you shouldn’t actually have to run these commands yourself. Windows Freezes or Crashes During Boot If Windows seems to start booting but fails partway through, you may be facing either a software or hardware problem. If it’s a software problem, you may be able to fix it by performing a Startup Repair operation. If you can’t do this from the boot menu, insert a Windows installation disc or recovery disk and use the startup repair tool from there. If this doesn’t help at all, you may want to reinstall Windows or perform a Refresh or Reset on Windows 8. If the computer encounters errors while attempting to perform startup repair or reinstall Windows, or the reinstall process works properly and you encounter the same errors afterwards, you likely have a hardware problem. Windows Starts and Blue Screens or Freezes If Windows crashes or blue-screens on you every time it boots, you may be facing a hardware or software problem. For example, malware or a buggy driver may be loading at boot and causing the crash, or your computer’s hardware may be malfunctioning. To test this, boot your Windows computer in safe mode. In safe mode, Windows won’t load typical hardware drivers or any software that starts automatically at startup. If the computer is stable in safe mode, try uninstalling any recently installed hardware drivers, performing a system restore, and scanning for malware. If you’re lucky, one of these steps may fix your software problem and allow you to boot Windows normally. If your problem isn’t fixed, try reinstalling Windows or performing a Refresh or Reset on Windows 8. This will reset your computer back to its clean, factory-default state. If you’re still experiencing crashes, your computer likely has a hardware problem. Recover Files When Windows Won’t Boot If you have important files that will be lost and want to back them up before reinstalling Windows, you can use a Windows installer disc or Linux live media to recover the files. These run entirely from a CD, DVD, or USB drive and allow you to copy your files to another external media, such as another USB stick or an external hard drive. If you’re incapable of booting a Windows installer disc or Linux live CD, you may need to go into your BIOS or UEFI and change the boot order setting. If even this doesn’t work — or if you can boot from the devices and your computer freezes or you can’t access your hard drive — you likely have a hardware problem. You can try pulling the computer’s hard drive, inserting it into another computer, and recovering your files that way. Following these steps should fix the vast majority of Windows boot issues — at least the ones that are actually fixable. The dark cloud that always hangs over such issues is the possibility that the hard drive or another component in the computer may be failing. Image Credit: Karl-Ludwig G. Poggemann on Flickr, Tzuhsun Hsu on Flickr     

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• Generate Strongly Typed Observable Events for the Reactive Extensions for .NET (Rx)

  - by Bobby Diaz

  I must have tried reading through the various explanations and introductions to the new Reactive Extensions for .NET before the concepts finally started sinking in.  The article that gave me the ah-ha moment was over on SilverlightShow.net and titled Using Reactive Extensions in Silverlight.  The author did a good job comparing the "normal" way of handling events vs. the new "reactive" methods. Admittedly, I still have more to learn about the Rx Framework, but I wanted to put together a sample project so I could start playing with the new Observable and IObservable<T> constructs.  I decided to throw together a whiteboard application in Silverlight based on the Drawing with Rx example on the aforementioned article.  At the very least, I figured I would learn a thing or two about a new technology, but my real goal is to create a fun application that I can share with the kids since they love drawing and coloring so much! Here is the code sample that I borrowed from the article: var mouseMoveEvent = Observable.FromEvent<MouseEventArgs>(this, "MouseMove"); var mouseLeftButtonDown = Observable.FromEvent<MouseButtonEventArgs>(this, "MouseLeftButtonDown"); var mouseLeftButtonUp = Observable.FromEvent<MouseButtonEventArgs>(this, "MouseLeftButtonUp");       var draggingEvents = from pos in mouseMoveEvent                              .SkipUntil(mouseLeftButtonDown)                              .TakeUntil(mouseLeftButtonUp)                              .Let(mm => mm.Zip(mm.Skip(1), (prev, cur) =>                                  new                                  {                                      X2 = cur.EventArgs.GetPosition(this).X,                                      X1 = prev.EventArgs.GetPosition(this).X,                                      Y2 = cur.EventArgs.GetPosition(this).Y,                                      Y1 = prev.EventArgs.GetPosition(this).Y                                  })).Repeat()                          select pos;       draggingEvents.Subscribe(p =>     {         Line line = new Line();         line.Stroke = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Black);         line.StrokeEndLineCap = PenLineCap.Round;         line.StrokeLineJoin = PenLineJoin.Round;         line.StrokeThickness = 5;         line.X1 = p.X1;         line.Y1 = p.Y1;         line.X2 = p.X2;         line.Y2 = p.Y2;         this.LayoutRoot.Children.Add(line);     }); One thing that was nagging at the back of my mind was having to deal with the event names as strings, as well as the verbose syntax for the Observable.FromEvent<TEventArgs>() method.  I came up with a couple of static/helper classes to resolve both issues and also created a T4 template to auto-generate these helpers for any .NET type.  Take the following code from the above example: var mouseMoveEvent = Observable.FromEvent<MouseEventArgs>(this, "MouseMove"); var mouseLeftButtonDown = Observable.FromEvent<MouseButtonEventArgs>(this, "MouseLeftButtonDown"); var mouseLeftButtonUp = Observable.FromEvent<MouseButtonEventArgs>(this, "MouseLeftButtonUp"); Turns into this with the new static Events class: var mouseMoveEvent = Events.Mouse.Move.On(this); var mouseLeftButtonDown = Events.Mouse.LeftButtonDown.On(this); var mouseLeftButtonUp = Events.Mouse.LeftButtonUp.On(this); Or better yet, just remove the variable declarations altogether:     var draggingEvents = from pos in Events.Mouse.Move.On(this)                              .SkipUntil(Events.Mouse.LeftButtonDown.On(this))                              .TakeUntil(Events.Mouse.LeftButtonUp.On(this))                              .Let(mm => mm.Zip(mm.Skip(1), (prev, cur) =>                                  new                                  {                                      X2 = cur.EventArgs.GetPosition(this).X,                                      X1 = prev.EventArgs.GetPosition(this).X,                                      Y2 = cur.EventArgs.GetPosition(this).Y,                                      Y1 = prev.EventArgs.GetPosition(this).Y                                  })).Repeat()                          select pos; The Move, LeftButtonDown and LeftButtonUp members of the Events.Mouse class are readonly instances of the ObservableEvent<TTarget, TEventArgs> class that provide type-safe access to the events via the On() method.  Here is the code for the class: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq;   namespace System.Linq {     /// <summary>     /// Represents an event that can be managed via the <see cref="Observable"/> API.     /// </summary>     /// <typeparam name="TTarget">The type of the target.</typeparam>     /// <typeparam name="TEventArgs">The type of the event args.</typeparam>     public class ObservableEvent<TTarget, TEventArgs> where TEventArgs : EventArgs     {         /// <summary>         /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="ObservableEvent"/> class.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="eventName">Name of the event.</param>         protected ObservableEvent(String eventName)         {             EventName = eventName;         }           /// <summary>         /// Registers the specified event name.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="eventName">Name of the event.</param>         /// <returns></returns>         public static ObservableEvent<TTarget, TEventArgs> Register(String eventName)         {             return new ObservableEvent<TTarget, TEventArgs>(eventName);         }           /// <summary>         /// Creates an enumerable sequence of event values for the specified target.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="target">The target.</param>         /// <returns></returns>         public IObservable<IEvent<TEventArgs>> On(TTarget target)         {             return Observable.FromEvent<TEventArgs>(target, EventName);         }           /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets the name of the event.         /// </summary>         /// <value>The name of the event.</value>         public string EventName { get; private set; }     } } And this is how it's used:     /// <summary>     /// Categorizes <see cref="ObservableEvents"/> by class and/or functionality.     /// </summary>     public static partial class Events     {         /// <summary>         /// Implements a set of predefined <see cref="ObservableEvent"/>s         /// for the <see cref="System.Windows.System.Windows.UIElement"/> class         /// that represent mouse related events.         /// </summary>         public static partial class Mouse         {             /// <summary>Represents the MouseMove event.</summary>             public static readonly ObservableEvent<UIElement, MouseEventArgs> Move =                 ObservableEvent<UIElement, MouseEventArgs>.Register("MouseMove");               // additional members omitted...         }     } The source code contains a static Events class with prefedined members for various categories (Key, Mouse, etc.).  There is also an Events.tt template that you can customize to generate additional event categories for any .NET type.  All you should have to do is add the name of your class to the types collection near the top of the template:     types = new Dictionary<String, Type>()     {         //{ "Microsoft.Maps.MapControl.Map, Microsoft.Maps.MapControl", null }         { "System.Windows.FrameworkElement, System.Windows", null },         { "Whiteboard.MainPage, Whiteboard", null }     }; The template is also a bit rough at this point, but at least it generates code that *should* compile.  Please let me know if you run into any issues with it.  Some people have reported errors when trying to use T4 templates within a Silverlight project, but I was able to get it to work with a little black magic...  You can download the source code for this project or play around with the live demo.  Just be warned that it is at a very early stage so don't expect to find much today.  I plan on adding alot more options like pen colors and sizes, saving, printing, etc. as time permits.  HINT: hold down the ESC key to erase! Enjoy! Additional Resources Using Reactive Extensions in Silverlight DevLabs: Reactive Extensions for .NET (Rx) Rx Framework Part III - LINQ to Events - Generating GetEventName() Wrapper Methods using T4

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• Should I be wary of signing a non-disclosure agreement with someone I just met?

  - by Thomas Levine

  tl;dr: Some guy I just met says he wants me to join his company. Before he shows me what they do, he wants me to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Is this weird? I'm traveling right now. Someone who saw me coding seemed to think I was smart or something and started talking with me. He explained that he owns a software company, told me a bit about what it does and told me that he was looking for a programmer who would work for a stake in the company. He explained that the company's product is being developed rather secretly, so he couldn't tell me much. But he did tell enough about the product to convince me that he's not completely making this up, which is a decent baseline. He suggested that he show me more of what he's been working on and, after seeing that, I decide whether I want to join. Because of the secrecy behind the product, he wants me to sign a non-disclosure agreement before we talk. I'm obviously somewhat skeptical because of the random nature by which we met. In the short term, I'm wondering if I should be wary of signing such an agreement. He said it would be easier to show me the product in person rather than over the internet, and I'm leaving town tomorrow, so I'd have to figure this out by tomorrow. If I decide to talk with him, I could decide later whether I trust that it's worth spending any time on this company. The concept of being able to avoid telling a secret seems strange to me for the same reason that things like certain aspects of copyright seem strange. Should I be wary of signing a non-disclosure agreement? Is this common practice? I don't know the details of the agreement of which he was thinking, (If I end up meeting with him, I'll of course read over the agreement before I decide whether to sign it.) so I could consider alternatives according to the aspects of the agreement. Or I could just consider the case of an especially harsh agreement. This question seems vaguely related. Do we need a non-disclosure agreement (NDA)? Thanks

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• ASP.NET MVC 2 throws exception for ‘favicon.ico’

  - by nmarun

  I must be on fire or something – third blog in 2 days… awesome! Before I begin, in case you’re wondering, favicon.ico is the small image that appears to the left of your web address, once the page loads. In order to learn more about MVC or any thing for that matter, it’s better to look at the source itself. Since MVC is open source (at least some part of it is), I started looking at the source code that’s available for download. While doing so, I hit Steve Sanderson’s blog site where he explains in great detail the way to debug your app using ASP.NET MVC source code. For those who are not aware, Steve Sanderson’s book - Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework, is one of the best books to learn about MVC. Alrighty, I followed the article and I hit F5 to debug the default / unchanged MVC project. I put a breakpoint in the DefaultControllerFactory.cs, CreateController() method. To know a little more about this class and the method, read this. Sure enough, the control stopped at the breakpoint and I hit F5 again and the page rendered just fine. But then what’s this? The breakpoint was hit again, as if something else was being requested. I now hovered my mouse over the ‘controllerName’ parameter and it says – favicon.ico. This by itself was more than enough for me to raise my eye-brows, but what happened next just took the ground below my feet. Oh, oh, I’m sorry I’m just typing, no code, no image, so here are a couple of screen captures. The first one shows the request for the Home controller; I get ‘Home’ when I hover over the parameter: And here’s the one that shows the same for call for ‘favicon.ico’. So, I step through the code and when the control reaches line 91 – GetControllerInstance() method, I step in. This is when I had the ‘ground-losing’ experience. Wow, an exception is being thrown for this file and that too in RTM. For some reason MVC thinks, this as a controller and tries to run it through the MvcHandler and it hits this snag. So it seems like this will happen for any MVC 2 site and this did not happen for me in the previous version of MVC. Before I get to how to resolve it, here’s another way of reproducing this exception. Revert back all your changes that you did as mentioned in Steve’s blog above. Now, add a class to your MVC project and call it say, MyControllerFactory and let this inherit from DefaultControllerFactory class. (Read this for details on the DefaultControllerFactory class is and how it is used in a different context). Add an override for the CreateController() method and for the sake of this blog, just copy the same content from the DefaultControllerFactory class. The last step is to tell your MVC app to use the MyControllerFactory class instead of the default one. To do this, go to your Global.asax.cs file and add line 6 of the snippet below: 1: protected void Application_Start() 2: { 3: AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas(); 4:   5: RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes); 6: ControllerBuilder.Current.SetControllerFactory(new MyControllerFactory()); 7: } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Now, you’re ready to reproduce the issue. Just F5 the project and when you hit the overridden CreateController() method for the second time, this is what it looks like for me: And continuing further gives me the same exception. I believe this is something that MS should fix, as not having ‘favicon.ico’ file will be common for most of the applications. So I think the when you create an MVC project, line 6 should be added by default by Visual Studio itself: 1: public class MvcApplication : System.Web.HttpApplication 2: { 3: public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes) 4: { 5: routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}"); 6: routes.IgnoreRoute("favicon.ico"); 7:   8: routes.MapRoute( 9: "Default", // Route name 10: "{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters 11: new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults 12: ); 13: } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } There it is, that’s the solution to avoid the exception altogether. I tried this both IE8 and Firefox browsers and was able to successfully reproduce the error. Hope someone will look at this issue and find a fix. Just before I finish up, I found another ‘bug’, if you want to call it, with Visual Studio 2008. Remember how you could change what browser you want your application to run in by just right clicking on the .aspx file and choosing ‘Browse with…’? Seems like that’s missing when you’re working with an MVC project. In order to test the above bug in the other browser, I had to load a classic ASP.NET project, change the settings and then run my MVC project. Felt kinda ‘icky’, for lack of a better word.

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• The Niantic Project: Ingress by Felicia Hajra-Lee

  Despite the current fact that the augmented reality game for Android is still in beta phase, it is amazing to see that the world of literature is already taking momentum on this 'real-life' universe. After reading 'The Alignment: Ingress' by Thomas Greanias it took only a blink of the eye to go for 'The Niantic Project: Ingress' by Felicia Hajra-Lee, too. Here is the review I posted on Amazon.com: Ingress, a parallel universe to our reality, is here. There is no doubt about this anymore... The Niantic Project, originated at the CERN collider in Geneva, Switzerland, got into focus of global players. And the game is hard; fair-play is only for the fainted ones. Felicia understands to drag the audience directly into the action of the Niantic Project and its protagonists. The novella is heavily based on the investigations posted daily on the website of Ingress. She really understands how to interweave the various clues and creates an atmosphere where it sometimes feels challenging to differentiate between fiction and reality. It all starts with 'Epiphany Night' at the Niantic Labs, the high exposure of Exotic Matter (XM) and the escape of scientist Dr. Devra Bogdanovich and 'sentinel' Roland Jarvis. Of course, a new research, or should we name it technology, like the Niantic Project has to be protected and there are multiple parties on the hunt. Throughout the various chapters Felicia introduces new potential buyers from all over the globe, gives us detailed insights on the hunters and their brutal effectiveness to finish an assignment, and manages to keep the reader in high-pitched mode thanks to a couple of turn-arounds in the overall story. Personally, I have to say that I really enjoyed reading this title. Felicia's love to details is absolutely amazing, and sometimes I was really wondering whether she would be one of the assassins. But unfortunately I also have to say that I'm not a great fan of the structural organization of the (title-less) chapters. It is fascinating to follow the ventures of Devra, Farlowe and 855 but occasionally I had to go back to previous paragraphs in order to keep track of the individual plots. Overall a great title, captivating and rich in details but simply too short. Please Fecilia, gives us more to read. As an owner of an Android smartphone or tablet, you should get yourself into the world of Ingress. Check out the Play Store to install the app. Now. ;-)

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• How to check if a Webcam is broken?

  - by user84812

  I just bought an Acer Aspire 3830TG, it comes with an integrated 1.3M HD Webcam. Before buying it i tried with a bootable Lubuntu usb stick, everything worked well except for the webcam, which i thought I had to tweak. The thing is that it seems the camera should work with no problems in ubuntu. The driver is detected, I try dmesg | grep uvcvideo and the output is [ 12.226174] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device 1.3M HD WebCam (058f:b002) [ 12.245553] usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo I've also tried using different software (guvcview is black when camera output is MJPG and turns to funny colors when YU12 or YV12, cheese is always black, camorama is always with funny colors...). I should have checked that it was working properly with the default os (windows) but now it's too late for that. I even booted with a official Ubuntu Quantal distro from the usb pen, and the results are the same. so, my question is: is there any way to check that the camera is righmt or broken? So, if it's broken, at least i can go to the shop, show them that it's really broken and get an external webcam for free, or st like that. cheers. UPDATE 1 Thanks, jrp. I run sudo lsinput, and the output info about my video is the following: /dev/input/event6 bustype : BUS_USB vendor : 0x58f product : 0xb002 version : 2 name : "1.3M HD WebCam" phys : "usb-0000:00:1a.0-1.3/button" bits ev : EV_SYN EV_KEY /dev/input/event7 bustype : BUS_HOST vendor : 0x0 product : 0x6 version : 0 name : "Video Bus" phys : "LNXVIDEO/video/input0" bits ev : EV_SYN EV_KEY With this info, i'm not pretty sure about running the luvcview command. If I run luvcview -d /dev/video0 -L, the output is the following: SDL information: Video driver: x11 A window manager is available Device information: Device path: /dev/video0 { pixelformat = 'YUYV', description = 'YUV 4:2:2 (YUYV)' } { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 1/7, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 800 } Time interval between frame: 1/7, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 960 } Time interval between frame: 1/7, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 1024 } Time interval between frame: 1/7, 1/5, { pixelformat = 'MJPG', description = 'MJPEG' } { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 800 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 960 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 1024 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { pixelformat = 'RGB3', description = 'RGB3' } { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 800 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 960 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 1024 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { pixelformat = 'BGR3', description = 'BGR3' } { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 800 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 960 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 1024 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { pixelformat = 'YU12', description = 'YU12' } { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 800 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 960 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 1024 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { pixelformat = 'YV12', description = 'YV12' } { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/25, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 800 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 960 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 1024 } Time interval between frame: 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, if i run luvcview by itself, the image is funny (blue and red colors, mainly, with myself in negative state). tx

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• Cross-platform independent development

  - by Joe Wreschnig

  Some years ago, if you wrote in C and some subset of C++ and used a sufficient number of platform abstractions (via SDL or whatever), you could run on every platform an indie could get on - Linux, Windows, Mac OS of various versions, obscure stuff like BeOS, and the open consoles like the GP2X and post-death Dreamcast. If you got a contract for a closed platform at some point, you could port your game to that platform with "minimal" code changes as well. Today, indie developers must use XNA to get on the Xbox 360 (and upcoming Windows phone); must not use XNA to work anywhere else but Windows; until recently had to use Java on Android; Flash doesn't run on phones, HTML5 doesn't work on IE. Unlike e.g. DirectX vs. OpenGL or Windows vs. Unix, these are changes to the core language you write your code in and can't be papered over without, basically, writing a compiler. You can move some game logic into scripts and include an interpreter - except when you can't, because the iPhone SDK doesn't allow it, and performance suffers because no one allows JIT. So what can you do if you want a really cross-platform portable game, or even just a significant body of engine and logic code? Is this not a problem because the platforms have fundamentally diverged - it's just plain not worthwhile to try to target both an iPhone and the Xbox 360 with any shared code because such a game would be bad? (I find this very unlikely. I can easily see wanting to share a game between a Windows Mobile phone and an Android, or an Xbox 360 and an iPad.) Are interfaces so high-level now that porting time is negligible? (I might believe this for business applications, but not for games with strict performance requirements.) Is this going to become more pronounced in the future? Is the split going to be, somewhat scarily, still down vendor lines? Will we all rely on high-level middleware like Flash or Unity to get anything cross-platform done? tl;dr - Is porting a problem, is it going to be a bigger problem in the future, and if so how do we solve it?

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• Scan Your Thumb Drive for Viruses from the AutoPlay Dialog

  - by Mysticgeek

  It’s always a good idea to scan someone’s flash drive for viruses when you use it on your PC. Today we look at how to use Microsoft Security Essentials to scan thumb drives via the AutoPlay dialog. Editor Note: This technique was created by our friend Ramesh Srinivasan from the winhelponline tech blog. If you haven’t done so already, download and install Microsoft Security Essentials (link below), which has earned the How-To Geek official endorsement. Next download the mseautoplay.zip (link below). Unzip the file to view its contents. Then move the msescan.vbs script file into the Windows directory. Next double-click on the mseautoplay.reg file… Click Yes to the warning dialog window asking if you’re sure you want to add to the registry. After it’s added you’ll get a confirmation message…click OK. Now when you pop in a thumb drive, when AutoPlay comes up you will have the options to scan it with MSE first. MSE starts the scan of the thumb drive…   You can use this to scan any removable media. Here is an example of the ability to scan a DVD with MSE before opening any files. You can also go into Control Panel and set it as a default option of AutoPlay. Open Control Panel, View by Large icons, and click on AutoPlay. Notice that now when you go to change the default options for different types of media, Scanning with MSE is now included in the dropdown lists. Remove Settings If you want to remove the MSE AutoPlay Handler, Ramesh was kind enough to create an undo registry file. Double-click on undo.reg from the original MSE AutoPlay folder and click yes to the message to remove the setting.   Then you will need to go into the Windows directory and manually delete the msescan.vbs script file. This is an awesome trick which will allow you to scan your thumb drives and other removable media from the AutoPlay dialog. We tested it out on XP, Vista, and Windows 7 and it works perfectly on each one. Download mseautoplay.zip Download Microsoft Security Essentials Read Our Review of MSE Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Disable AutoPlay in Windows VistaFind Your Missing USB Drive on Windows XPDisable Autoplay of Audio CDs and USB DrivesHow To Remove Antivirus Live and Other Rogue/Fake Antivirus MalwareScan Files for Viruses Before You Download With Dr.Web TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010 Daily Motivator (Firefox)

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• SortedDictionary and SortedList

  - by Simon Cooper

  Apart from Dictionary<TKey, TValue>, there's two other dictionaries in the BCL - SortedDictionary<TKey, TValue> and SortedList<TKey, TValue>. On the face of it, these two classes do the same thing - provide an IDictionary<TKey, TValue> interface where the iterator returns the items sorted by the key. So what's the difference between them, and when should you use one rather than the other? (as in my previous post, I'll assume you have some basic algorithm & datastructure knowledge) SortedDictionary We'll first cover SortedDictionary. This is implemented as a special sort of binary tree called a red-black tree. Essentially, it's a binary tree that uses various constraints on how the nodes of the tree can be arranged to ensure the tree is always roughly balanced (for more gory algorithmical details, see the wikipedia link above). What I'm concerned about in this post is how the .NET SortedDictionary is actually implemented. In .NET 4, behind the scenes, the actual implementation of the tree is delegated to a SortedSet<KeyValuePair<TKey, TValue>>. One example tree might look like this: Each node in the above tree is stored as a separate SortedSet<T>.Node object (remember, in a SortedDictionary, T is instantiated to KeyValuePair<TKey, TValue>): class Node { public bool IsRed; public T Item; public SortedSet<T>.Node Left; public SortedSet<T>.Node Right; } The SortedSet only stores a reference to the root node; all the data in the tree is accessed by traversing the Left and Right node references until you reach the node you're looking for. Each individual node can be physically stored anywhere in memory; what's important is the relationship between the nodes. This is also why there is no constructor to SortedDictionary or SortedSet that takes an integer representing the capacity; there are no internal arrays that need to be created and resized. This may seen trivial, but it's an important distinction between SortedDictionary and SortedList that I'll cover later on. And that's pretty much it; it's a standard red-black tree. Plenty of webpages and datastructure books cover the algorithms behind the tree itself far better than I could. What's interesting is the comparions between SortedDictionary and SortedList, which I'll cover at the end. As a side point, SortedDictionary has existed in the BCL ever since .NET 2. That means that, all through .NET 2, 3, and 3.5, there has been a bona-fide sorted set class in the BCL (called TreeSet). However, it was internal, so it couldn't be used outside System.dll. Only in .NET 4 was this class exposed as SortedSet. SortedList Whereas SortedDictionary didn't use any backing arrays, SortedList does. It is implemented just as the name suggests; two arrays, one containing the keys, and one the values (I've just used random letters for the values): The items in the keys array are always guarenteed to be stored in sorted order, and the value corresponding to each key is stored in the same index as the key in the values array. In this example, the value for key item 5 is 'z', and for key item 8 is 'm'. Whenever an item is inserted or removed from the SortedList, a binary search is run on the keys array to find the correct index, then all the items in the arrays are shifted to accomodate the new or removed item. For example, if the key 3 was removed, a binary search would be run to find the array index the item was at, then everything above that index would be moved down by one: and then if the key/value pair {7, 'f'} was added, a binary search would be run on the keys to find the index to insert the new item, and everything above that index would be moved up to accomodate the new item: If another item was then added, both arrays would be resized (to a length of 10) before the new item was added to the arrays. As you can see, any insertions or removals in the middle of the list require a proportion of the array contents to be moved; an O(n) operation. However, if the insertion or removal is at the end of the array (ie the largest key), then it's only O(log n); the cost of the binary search to determine it does actually need to be added to the end (excluding the occasional O(n) cost of resizing the arrays to fit more items). As a side effect of using backing arrays, SortedList offers IList Keys and Values views that simply use the backing keys or values arrays, as well as various methods utilising the array index of stored items, which SortedDictionary does not (and cannot) offer. The Comparison So, when should you use one and not the other? Well, here's the important differences: Memory usage SortedDictionary and SortedList have got very different memory profiles. SortedDictionary... has a memory overhead of one object instance, a bool, and two references per item. On 64-bit systems, this adds up to ~40 bytes, not including the stored item and the reference to it from the Node object. stores the items in separate objects that can be spread all over the heap. This helps to keep memory fragmentation low, as the individual node objects can be allocated wherever there's a spare 60 bytes. In contrast, SortedList... has no additional overhead per item (only the reference to it in the array entries), however the backing arrays can be significantly larger than you need; every time the arrays are resized they double in size. That means that if you add 513 items to a SortedList, the backing arrays will each have a length of 1024. To conteract this, the TrimExcess method resizes the arrays back down to the actual size needed, or you can simply assign list.Capacity = list.Count. stores its items in a continuous block in memory. If the list stores thousands of items, this can cause significant problems with Large Object Heap memory fragmentation as the array resizes, which SortedDictionary doesn't have. Performance Operations on a SortedDictionary always have O(log n) performance, regardless of where in the collection you're adding or removing items. In contrast, SortedList has O(n) performance when you're altering the middle of the collection. If you're adding or removing from the end (ie the largest item), then performance is O(log n), same as SortedDictionary (in practice, it will likely be slightly faster, due to the array items all being in the same area in memory, also called locality of reference). So, when should you use one and not the other? As always with these sort of things, there are no hard-and-fast rules. But generally, if you: need to access items using their index within the collection are populating the dictionary all at once from sorted data aren't adding or removing keys once it's populated then use a SortedList. But if you: don't know how many items are going to be in the dictionary are populating the dictionary from random, unsorted data are adding & removing items randomly then use a SortedDictionary. The default (again, there's no definite rules on these sort of things!) should be to use SortedDictionary, unless there's a good reason to use SortedList, due to the bad performance of SortedList when altering the middle of the collection.

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• Changing CSS with jQuery syntax in Silverlight using jLight

  - by Timmy Kokke

  Lately I’ve ran into situations where I had to change elements or had to request a value in the DOM from Silverlight. jLight, which was introduced in an earlier article, can help with that. jQuery offers great ways to change CSS during runtime. Silverlight can access the DOM, but it isn’t as easy as jQuery. All examples shown in this article can be looked at in this online demo. The code can be downloaded here.   Part 1: The easy stuff Selecting and changing properties is pretty straight forward. Setting the text color in all <B> </B> elements can be done using the following code:   jQuery.Select("b").Css("color", "red");   The Css() method is an extension method on jQueryObject which is return by the jQuery.Select() method. The Css() method takes to parameters. The first is the Css style property. All properties used in Css can be entered in this string. The second parameter is the value you want to give the property. In this case the property is “color” and it is changed to “red”. To specify which element you want to select you can add a :selector parameter to the Select() method as shown in the next example.   jQuery.Select("b:first").Css("font-family", "sans-serif");   The “:first” pseudo-class selector selects only the first element. This example changes the “font-family” property of the first <B></B> element to “sans-serif”. To make use of intellisense in Visual Studio I’ve added a extension methods to help with the pseudo-classes. In the example below the “font-weight” of every “Even” <LI></LI> is set to “bold”.   jQuery.Select("li".Even()).Css("font-weight", "bold");   Because the Css() extension method returns a jQueryObject it is possible to chain calls to Css(). The following example show setting the “color”, “background-color” and the “font-size” of all headers in one go.   jQuery.Select(":header").Css("color", "#12FF70") .Css("background-color", "yellow") .Css("font-size", "25px");   Part 2: More complex stuff In only a few cases you need to change only one style property. More often you want to change an entire set op style properties all in one go.  You could chain a lot of Css() methods together. A better way is to add a class to a stylesheet and define all properties in there. With the AddClass() method you can set a style class to a set of elements. This example shows how to add the “demostyle” class to all <B></B> in the document.   jQuery.Select("b").AddClass("demostyle");   Removing the class works in the same way:   jQuery.Select("b").RemoveClass("demostyle");   jLight is build for interacting with to the DOM from Silverlight using jQuery. A jQueryObjectCss object can be used to define different sets of style properties in Silverlight. The over 60 most common Css style properties are defined in the jQueryObjectCss class. A string indexer can be used to access all style properties ( CssObject1[“background-color”] equals CssObject1.BackgroundColor). In the code below, two jQueryObjectCss objects are defined and instantiated.   private jQueryObjectCss CssObject1; private jQueryObjectCss CssObject2;   public Demo2() { CssObject1 = new jQueryObjectCss { BackgroundColor = "Lime", Color="Black", FontSize = "12pt", FontFamily = "sans-serif", FontWeight = "bold", MarginLeft = 150, LineHeight = "28px", Border = "Solid 1px #880000" }; CssObject2 = new jQueryObjectCss { FontStyle = "Italic", FontSize = "48", Color = "#225522" }; InitializeComponent(); }   Now instead of chaining to set all different properties you can just pass one of the jQueryObjectCss objects to the Css() method. In this case all <LI></LI> elements are set to match this object.   jQuery.Select("li").Css(CssObject1); When using the jQueryObjectCss objects chaining is still possible. In the following example all headers are given a blue backgroundcolor and the last is set to match CssObject2.   jQuery.Select(":header").Css(new jQueryObjectCss{BackgroundColor = "Blue"}) .Eq(-1).Css(CssObject2);   Part 3: The fun stuff Having Silverlight call JavaScript and than having JavaScript to call Silverlight requires a lot of plumbing code. Everything has to be registered and strings are passed back and forth to execute the JavaScript. jLight makes this kind of stuff so easy, it becomes fun to use. In a lot of situations jQuery can call a function to decide what to do, setting a style class based on complex expressions for example. jLight can do the same, but the callback methods are defined in Silverlight. This example calls the function() method for each <LI></LI> element. The callback method has to take a jQueryObject, an integer and a string as parameters. In this case jLight differs a bit from the actual jQuery implementation. jQuery uses only the index and the className parameters. A jQueryObject is added to make it simpler to access the attributes and properties of the element. If the text of the listitem starts with a ‘D’ or an ‘M’ the class is set. Otherwise null is returned and nothing happens.   private void button1_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { jQuery.Select("li").AddClass(function); }   private string function(jQueryObject obj, int index, string className) { if (obj.Text[0] == 'D' || obj.Text[0] == 'M') return "demostyle"; return null; }   The last thing I would like to demonstrate uses even more Silverlight and less jLight, but demonstrates the power of the combination. Animating a style property using a Storyboard with easing functions. First a dependency property is defined. In this case it is a double named Intensity. By handling the changed event the color is set using jQuery.   public double Intensity { get { return (double)GetValue(IntensityProperty); } set { SetValue(IntensityProperty, value); } }   public static readonly DependencyProperty IntensityProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("Intensity", typeof(double), typeof(Demo3), new PropertyMetadata(0.0, IntensityChanged));   private static void IntensityChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e) { var i = (byte)(double)e.NewValue; jQuery.Select("span").Css("color", string.Format("#{0:X2}{0:X2}{0:X2}", i)); }   An animation has to be created. This code defines a Storyboard with one keyframe that uses a bounce ease as an easing function. The animation is set to target the Intensity dependency property defined earlier.   private Storyboard CreateAnimation(double value) { Storyboard storyboard = new Storyboard(); var da = new DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames(); var d = new EasingDoubleKeyFrame { EasingFunction = new BounceEase(), KeyTime = KeyTime.FromTimeSpan(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1.0)), Value = value }; da.KeyFrames.Add(d); Storyboard.SetTarget(da, this); Storyboard.SetTargetProperty(da, new PropertyPath(Demo3.IntensityProperty)); storyboard.Children.Add(da); return storyboard; }   Initially the Intensity is set to 128 which results in a gray color. When one of the buttons is pressed, a new animation is created an played. One to animate to black, and one to animate to white.   public Demo3() { InitializeComponent(); Intensity = 128; }   private void button2_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { CreateAnimation(255).Begin(); }   private void button3_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { CreateAnimation(0).Begin(); }   Conclusion As you can see jLight can make the life of a Silverlight developer a lot easier when accessing the DOM. Almost all jQuery functions that are defined in jLight use the same constructions as described above. I’ve tried to stay as close as possible to the real jQuery. Having JavaScript perform callbacks to Silverlight using jLight will be described in more detail in a future tutorial about AJAX or eventing.

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• Economic modelling - Resources for valuing goods

  - by Rushyo

  tl;dr: What economic/computer science books would you suggest for learning about economic valuation of goods and simulations thereof? I'm looking to create an economic model for a game based on goods created procedurally. Every natural resource and produced good would be procedurally generated, with certain goods being assigned certain uses. Fakesium might be used for the production of Weapon A and produced from Fakesium factories which use Dilithium and Widgets as reagents, where Widgets are also the product of Foo and Bar The problem is not creating the resources and their various production utlities - but getting the game's AI empires and merchants to correctly value the goods according to their scarcity, utility and production costs. I need to create a simulation of goods which allows the various game factions to assign a common value denominator (credits) to each resource, depending on how much its worth to that empire. I see the simulation being something like: "I have a high requirement for Weapon A. Since I don't have much of Fakesium, which is needed for Weapon A - I must have a high demand for Fakesium. If I can acquire Fakesium, devalue it. If not, increase its value - and also increase demand for Dilithium and Widgets too." This is very naive - because it may be much much cheaper for the empire to simply purchase Dilithium and Widgets directly rather than purchasing Fakesium, for example. Another example is two resources might allow the creation of Weapon A (Fakesium and Lieron), so we'd need to consider that. I've been scratching my head over the problem and it keeps growing. By the time the player joins the world, I'd expect enough iterations of this process to have occurred that prices would have largely normalised - and would then only trigger rarely to compensate for major changes (eg. if the player blows up the world's only Foo mine!) Could anyone suggest resources (books, largely) which outline this style of modelling, preferably in the context of simulations? Since this problem would never occur outside fantasy worlds, I figured this is probably the most likely place to find people who have encountered similar problems and I'm sure there's people who know of good places for Games Developers to start looking at less specific economic theory too. Additionally, does anyone know of any developers with blogs whose games or research applications perform similar modelling?

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• What is a better abstraction layer for D3D9 and OpenGL vertex data management?

  - by Sam Hocevar

  My rendering code has always been OpenGL. I now need to support a platform that does not have OpenGL, so I have to add an abstraction layer that wraps OpenGL and Direct3D 9. I will support Direct3D 11 later. TL;DR: the differences between OpenGL and Direct3D cause redundancy for the programmer, and the data layout feels flaky. For now, my API works a bit like this. This is how a shader is created: Shader *shader = Shader::Create( " ... GLSL vertex shader ... ", " ... GLSL pixel shader ... ", " ... HLSL vertex shader ... ", " ... HLSL pixel shader ... "); ShaderAttrib a1 = shader->GetAttribLocation("Point", VertexUsage::Position, 0); ShaderAttrib a2 = shader->GetAttribLocation("TexCoord", VertexUsage::TexCoord, 0); ShaderAttrib a3 = shader->GetAttribLocation("Data", VertexUsage::TexCoord, 1); ShaderUniform u1 = shader->GetUniformLocation("WorldMatrix"); ShaderUniform u2 = shader->GetUniformLocation("Zoom"); There is already a problem here: once a Direct3D shader is compiled, there is no way to query an input attribute by its name; apparently only the semantics stay meaningful. This is why GetAttribLocation has these extra arguments, which get hidden in ShaderAttrib. Now this is how I create a vertex declaration and two vertex buffers: VertexDeclaration *decl = VertexDeclaration::Create( VertexStream<vec3,vec2>(VertexUsage::Position, 0, VertexUsage::TexCoord, 0), VertexStream<vec4>(VertexUsage::TexCoord, 1)); VertexBuffer *vb1 = new VertexBuffer(NUM * (sizeof(vec3) + sizeof(vec2)); VertexBuffer *vb2 = new VertexBuffer(NUM * sizeof(vec4)); Another problem: the information VertexUsage::Position, 0 is totally useless to the OpenGL/GLSL backend because it does not care about semantics. Once the vertex buffers have been filled with or pointed at data, this is the rendering code: shader->Bind(); shader->SetUniform(u1, GetWorldMatrix()); shader->SetUniform(u2, blah); decl->Bind(); decl->SetStream(vb1, a1, a2); decl->SetStream(vb2, a3); decl->DrawPrimitives(VertexPrimitive::Triangle, NUM / 3); decl->Unbind(); shader->Unbind(); You see that decl is a bit more than just a D3D-like vertex declaration, it kinda takes care of rendering as well. Does this make sense at all? What would be a cleaner design? Or a good source of inspiration?

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• Say goodbye to System.Reflection.Emit (any dynamic proxy generation) in WinRT

  - by mbrit

  tl;dr - Forget any form of dynamic code emitting in Metro-style. It's not going to happen.Over the past week or so I've been trying to get Moq (the popular open source TDD mocking framework) to work on WinRT. Irritatingly, the day before Release Preview was released it was actually working on Consumer Preview. However in Release Preview (RP) the System.Reflection.Emit namespace is gone. Forget any form of dynamic code generation and/or MSIL injection.This kills off any project based on the popular Castle Project Dynamic Proxy component, of which Moq is one example. You can at this point in time not perform any form of mocking using dynamic injection in your Metro-style unit testing endeavours.So let me take you through my journey on this, so that other's don't have to...The headline fact is that you cannot load any assembly that you create at runtime. WinRT supports one Assembly.Load method, and that takes the name of an assembly. That has to be placed within the deployment folder of your app. You cannot give it a filename, or stream. The methods are there, but private. Try to invoke them using Reflection and you'll be met with a caspol exception.You can, in theory, use Rotor to replace SRE. It's all there, but again, you can't load anything you create.You can't write to your deployment folder from within your Metro-style app. But, can you use another service on the machine to move a file that you create into the deployment folder and load it? Not really.The networking stack in Metro-style is intentionally "damaged" to prevent socket communication from Metro-style to any end-point on the local machine. (It just times out.) This militates against an approach where your Metro-style app can signal a properly installed service on the machine to create proxies on its behalf. If you wanted to do this, you'd have to route the calls through a C&C server somewhere. The reason why Microsoft has done this is obvious - taking out SRE know means they don't have to do it in an emergency later. The collateral damage in removing SRE is that you can't do mocking in test mode, but you also can't do any form of injection in production mode. There are plenty of reasons why enterprise apps might want to do this last point particularly. At CP, the assumption was that their inspection tools would prevent SRE being used as a malware vector - it now seems they are less confident about that. (For clarity, the risk here is in allowing a nefarious program to download instructions from a C&C server and make up executable code on the fly to run, getting around the marketplace restrictions.)So, two things:- System.Reflection.Emit is gone in Metro-style/WinRT. Get over it - dynamic, on-the-fly code generation is not going to to happen.- I've more or less got a version of Moq working in Metro-style. This is based on the idea of "baking" the dynamic proxies before you use them. You can find more information here: https://github.com/mbrit/moqrt

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• Setting useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy At Runtime

  - by Reed

  Version 4.0 of the .NET Framework included a new CLR which is almost entirely backwards compatible with the 2.0 version of the CLR.  However, by default, mixed-mode assemblies targeting .NET 3.5sp1 and earlier will fail to load in a .NET 4 application.  Fixing this requires setting useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy in your app.Config for the application.  While there are many good reasons for this decision, there are times when this is extremely frustrating, especially when writing a library.  As such, there are (rare) times when it would be beneficial to set this in code, at runtime, as well as verify that it’s running correctly prior to receiving a FileLoadException. Typically, loading a pre-.NET 4 mixed mode assembly is handled simply by changing your app.Config file, and including the relevant attribute in the startup element: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <configuration> <startup useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy="true"> <supportedRuntime version="v4.0"/> </startup> </configuration> .csharpcode { background-color: #ffffff; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; color: black; font-size: small } .csharpcode pre { background-color: #ffffff; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; color: black; font-size: small } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000 } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080 } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0 } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633 } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00 } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000 } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000 } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; margin: 0em; width: 100% } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060 } This causes your application to run correctly, and load the older, mixed-mode assembly without issues. For full details on what’s happening here and why, I recommend reading Mark Miller’s detailed explanation of this attribute and the reasoning behind it. Before I show any code, let me say: I strongly recommend using the official approach of using app.config to set this policy. That being said, there are (rare) times when, for one reason or another, changing the application configuration file is less than ideal. While this is the supported approach to handling this issue, the CLR Hosting API includes a means of setting this programmatically via the ICLRRuntimeInfo interface.  Normally, this is used if you’re hosting the CLR in a native application in order to set this, at runtime, prior to loading the assemblies.  However, the F# Samples include a nice trick showing how to load this API and bind this policy, at runtime.  This was required in order to host the Managed DirectX API, which is built against an older version of the CLR. This is fairly easy to port to C#.  Instead of a direct port, I also added a little addition – by trapping the COM exception received if unable to bind (which will occur if the 2.0 CLR is already bound), I also allow a runtime check of whether this property was setup properly: public static class RuntimePolicyHelper { public static bool LegacyV2RuntimeEnabledSuccessfully { get; private set; } static RuntimePolicyHelper() { ICLRRuntimeInfo clrRuntimeInfo = (ICLRRuntimeInfo)RuntimeEnvironment.GetRuntimeInterfaceAsObject( Guid.Empty, typeof(ICLRRuntimeInfo).GUID); try { clrRuntimeInfo.BindAsLegacyV2Runtime(); LegacyV2RuntimeEnabledSuccessfully = true; } catch (COMException) { // This occurs with an HRESULT meaning // "A different runtime was already bound to the legacy CLR version 2 activation policy." LegacyV2RuntimeEnabledSuccessfully = false; } } [ComImport] [InterfaceType(ComInterfaceType.InterfaceIsIUnknown)] [Guid("BD39D1D2-BA2F-486A-89B0-B4B0CB466891")] private interface ICLRRuntimeInfo { void xGetVersionString(); void xGetRuntimeDirectory(); void xIsLoaded(); void xIsLoadable(); void xLoadErrorString(); void xLoadLibrary(); void xGetProcAddress(); void xGetInterface(); void xSetDefaultStartupFlags(); void xGetDefaultStartupFlags(); [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.InternalCall, MethodCodeType = MethodCodeType.Runtime)] void BindAsLegacyV2Runtime(); } } Using this, it’s possible to not only set this at runtime, but also verify, prior to loading your mixed mode assembly, whether this will succeed. In my case, this was quite useful – I am working on a library purely for internal use which uses a numerical package that is supplied with both a completely managed as well as a native solver.  The native solver uses a CLR 2 mixed-mode assembly, but is dramatically faster than the pure managed approach.  By checking RuntimePolicyHelper.LegacyV2RuntimeEnabledSuccessfully at runtime, I can decide whether to enable the native solver, and only do so if I successfully bound this policy. There are some tricks required here – To enable this sort of fallback behavior, you must make these checks in a type that doesn’t cause the mixed mode assembly to be loaded.  In my case, this forced me to encapsulate the library I was using entirely in a separate class, perform the check, then pass through the required calls to that class.  Otherwise, the library will load before the hosting process gets enabled, which in turn will fail. This code will also, of course, try to enable the runtime policy before the first time you use this class – which typically means just before the first time you check the boolean value.  As a result, checking this early on in the application is more likely to allow it to work. Finally, if you’re using a library, this has to be called prior to the 2.0 CLR loading.  This will cause it to fail if you try to use it to enable this policy in a plugin for most third party applications that don’t have their app.config setup properly, as they will likely have already loaded the 2.0 runtime. As an example, take a simple audio player.  The code below shows how this can be used to properly, at runtime, only use the “native” API if this will succeed, and fallback (or raise a nicer exception) if this will fail: public class AudioPlayer { private IAudioEngine audioEngine; public AudioPlayer() { if (RuntimePolicyHelper.LegacyV2RuntimeEnabledSuccessfully) { // This will load a CLR 2 mixed mode assembly this.audioEngine = new AudioEngineNative(); } else { this.audioEngine = new AudioEngineManaged(); } } public void Play(string filename) { this.audioEngine.Play(filename); } } Now – the warning: This approach works, but I would be very hesitant to use it in public facing production code, especially for anything other than initializing your own application.  While this should work in a library, using it has a very nasty side effect: you change the runtime policy of the executing application in a way that is very hidden and non-obvious.

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• SQL University: What and why of database refactoring

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  This is a post for a great idea called SQL University started by Jorge Segarra also famously known as SqlChicken on Twitter. It’s a collection of blog posts on different database related topics contributed by several smart people all over the world. So this week is mine and we’ll be talking about database testing and refactoring. In 3 posts we’ll cover: SQLU part 1 - What and why of database testing SQLU part 2 - What and why of database refactoring SQLU part 3 - Tools of the trade This is a second part of the series and in it we’ll take a look at what database refactoring is and why do it. Why refactor a database To know why refactor we first have to know what refactoring actually is. Code refactoring is a process where we change module internals in a way that does not change that module’s input/output behavior. For successful refactoring there is one crucial thing we absolutely must have: Tests. Automated unit tests are the only guarantee we have that we haven’t broken the input/output behavior before refactoring. If you haven’t go back ad read my post on the matter. Then start writing them. Next thing you need is a code module. Those are views, UDFs and stored procedures. By having direct table access we can kiss fast and sweet refactoring good bye. One more point to have a database abstraction layer. And no, ORM’s don’t fall into that category. But also know that refactoring is NOT adding new functionality to your code. Many have fallen into this trap. Don’t be one of them and resist the lure of the dark side. And it’s a strong lure. We developers in general love to add new stuff to our code, but hate fixing our own mistakes or changing existing code for no apparent reason. To be a good refactorer one needs discipline and focus. Now we know that refactoring is all about changing inner workings of existing code. This can be due to performance optimizations, changing internal code workflows or some other reason. This is a typical black box scenario to the outside world. If we upgrade the car engine it still has to drive on the road (preferably faster) and not fly (no matter how cool that would be). Also be aware that white box tests will break when we refactor. What to refactor in a database Refactoring databases doesn’t happen that often but when it does it can include a lot of stuff. Let us look at a few common cases. Adding or removing database schema objects Adding, removing or changing table columns in any way, adding constraints, keys, etc… All of these can be counted as internal changes not visible to the data consumer. But each of these carries a potential input/output behavior change. Dropping a column can result in views not working anymore or stored procedure logic crashing. Adding a unique constraint shows duplicated data that shouldn’t exist. Foreign keys break a truncate table command executed from an application that runs once a month. All these scenarios are very real and can happen. With the proper database abstraction layer fully covered with black box tests we can make sure something like that does not happen (hopefully at all). Changing physical structures Physical structures include heaps, indexes and partitions. We can pretty much add or remove those without changing the data returned by the database. But the performance can be affected. So here we use our performance tests. We do have them, right? Just by adding a single index we can achieve orders of magnitude performance improvement. Won’t that make users happy? But what if that index causes our write operations to crawl to a stop. again we have to test this. There are a lot of things to think about and have tests for. Without tests we can’t do successful refactoring! Fixing bad code We all have some bad code in our systems. We usually refer to that code as code smell as they violate good coding practices. Examples of such code smells are SQL injection, use of SELECT *, scalar UDFs or cursors, etc… Each of those is huge code smell and can result in major code changes. Take SELECT * from example. If we remove a column from a table the client using that SELECT * statement won’t have a clue about that until it runs. Then it will gracefully crash and burn. Not to mention the widely unknown SELECT * view refresh problem that Tomas LaRock (@SQLRockstar on Twitter) and Colin Stasiuk (@BenchmarkIT on Twitter) talk about in detail. Go read about it, it’s informative. Refactoring this includes replacing the * with column names and most likely change to application using the database. Breaking apart huge stored procedures Have you ever seen seen a stored procedure that was 2000 lines long? I have. It’s not pretty. It hurts the eyes and sucks the will to live the next 10 minutes. They are a maintenance nightmare and turn into things no one dares to touch. I’m willing to bet that 100% of time they don’t have a single test on them. Large stored procedures (and functions) are a clear sign that they contain business logic. General opinion on good database coding practices says that business logic has no business in the database. That’s the applications part. Refactoring such behemoths requires writing lots of edge case tests for the stored procedure input/output behavior and then start to refactor it. First we split the logic inside into smaller parts like new stored procedures and UDFs. Those then get called from the master stored procedure. Once we’ve successfully modularized the database code it’s best to transfer that logic into the applications consuming it. This only leaves the stored procedure with common data manipulation logic. Of course this isn’t always possible so having a plethora of performance and behavior unit tests is absolutely necessary to confirm we’ve actually improved the codebase in some way.   Refactoring is not a popular chore amongst developers or managers. The former don’t like fixing old code, the latter can’t see the financial benefit. Remember how we talked about being lousy at estimating future costs in the previous post? But there comes a time when it must be done. Hopefully I’ve given you some ideas how to get started. In the last post of the series we’ll take a look at the tools to use and an example of testing and refactoring.

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• Is ASP.NET MVC completely (and exclusively) based on conventions?

  - by Mike Valeriano

  --TL;DR Is there a "Hello World!" ASP.NET MVC tutorial out there that doesn't rely on conventions and "stock" projects? Is it even possible to take advantage of the technology without reusing the default file structure, and start from a single "hello_world.asp" file or something (like in PHP)? Am I completely mistaken and I should be looking somewhere else, maybe this? I'm interested in the MVC framework, not Web Forms --Background I've played a bit with PHP in the past, just for fun, and now I'm back to it since web development became relevant for me once again. I'm no professional, but I try to gain as much knowledge and control over the technology I'm working with as possible. I'm using Visual Studio 2012 for C# - my "desktop" language of choice - and since I got the Professional Edition from Dreamspark, the Web Development Tools are available, including ASP.NET MVC 4. I won't touch Web Forms, but the MVC Framework got my attention because the MVC pattern is something I can really relate to, since it provides the control I want but... not quite. Learning PHP was easy - and right form the start I could just create a "hello_world.php" file and just do something like this for immediate results: <!-- file: hello_world.php --> <?php> echo "Hello World!"; <?> But I couldn't find a single ASP.NET (MVC) tutorial out there (I'll be sure to buy one of the upcoming MVC 4 books, only a month away or so) that would start like that. They all start with a sample project, building up knowledge from the basics and heavily using conventions as they go along. Which is fine, I suppose, but it's now the best way for me to learn things. Even the "Empty" project template for a new ASP.NET MVC 4 Application in VS2012 is not empty at all: several files and folders are created for you - much like a new C# desktop application project, but with C# I can in fact start from scratch, creating the project structure myself. It is not the case with PHP: I can choose from a plethora of different MVC frameworks I can just create my own framework I can just skip frameworks altogether, and toss random PHP along with my HTML on a single file and make it work I understand the framework needs to establish some rules, but what if I just want to create a single page website with some C# logic behind it? Do I really need to create a whole bloat of files and folders for the sake of convention? Also, please understand that I haven't gotten far on any of those tutorials mainly because of this reason, but, if that's the only way to do it, I'll go for it using one of the books I've mentioned before. This is my first contact with ASP.NET but from the few comparisons I've read, I believe I should stay the hell away from Web Forms. Thank you. (Please forgive the broken English - it is not my primary language.)

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-05-31

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Eclipse DemoCamp - June 2012 - Redwood Shores, CA wiki.eclipse.org Oracle HQ 10 Twin Dolphin Dr. Redwood Shores, CA Presentations: The evolution of Java persistence, Doug Clarke, EclipseLink Project Lead, Oracle Eclipse Project Sapphire, Konstantin Komissarchik, Sapphire Project Lead, Oracle Developing Rich ADF Applications with Java EE, Greg Stachnick, Oracle Leveraging OSGi In The Enterprise, Kamal Muralidharan, Lead Engineer, eBay NVIDIA Nsight Eclipse Edition, Goodwin (Tech lead - Visual tools), Eugene Ostroukhov (Senior engineer – Visual tools)   BI Architecture Master Class for Partners - Oracle Architecture Unplugged blogs.oracle.com June 21, 2012 This workshop will be highly interactive and is aimed at Oracle OPN member partners who are IT Architects and BI+W specialists. This will be a highly interactive session and does not involve slide presentations or product feature details, it addresses IT-Architectural issues and considerations for the IT-Architect Community. 2012 Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards - Win a FREE Pass to Oracle OpenWorld 2012 in SF www.oracle.com Share your use of Oracle Fusion Middleware solutions and how they help your organization drive business innovation. You just might win a free pass to Oracle Openworld 2012 in San Francisco. Deadline for submissions in July 17, 2012. IT professionals: Very much the time to change our approach | Andy Mulholland www.capgemini.com This final post by retiring Capgemini CTO blogger Andy Mulholland is a must-read for anyone in IT. 10 Great WebCenter Sites Resources (FatWire) | John Brunswick www.johnbrunswick.com John Brunswick shares "some good resources that span the WebCenter Sites and FatWire brands, to get a consolidated list of helpful destinations for ongoing education." Cloning a WebCenter Portal Managed Server | Maiko Rocha blogs.oracle.com WebCenter and ADF A-Team blogger Maiko Rocha shows how to easily add a new managed server to a single-node domain to make it a cluster. Sorting and Filtering By Model-Based LOV Display Value | Steven Davelaar blogs.oracle.com How-to by WebCenter and ADF A-Team blogger Steven Davelaar. Designing and Developing Cross-Cutting Features | Stephen Rylander www.infoq.com Architects are often tasked with a business feature that must span systems. This article by will provide strategies to handle the change and guide your thinking about separating system boundaries and what that means for your technical design. Thought for the Day "A committee is a group of people who individually can do nothing, but who, as a group, can meet and decide that nothing can be done." — Fred Allen (5/31/1894 – 3/17/1956) Source: Brainy Quote

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• Mixing It Up with BluesMix

  - by Oracle OpenWorld Blog Team

  By Karen Shamban At home base in London prior to making a swing on the US west coast later this month, BluesMix took a few minutes to answer some musical questions. Q: What are the top three things people should know about your music? A: We focus on original material and blend funk with blues. We're big on songwriting but also performance, groove, and feel of the music. It's music you can dance to! We're from London, England and have been labeled 'one of the UK's leading blues/funk bands'. Oh - that's four things! :) Q: Do you prefer smaller, intimate venues or larger, louder ones? A: Actually both, for different reasons. We play many intimate club shows in London at prestigious venues such as the 100 Club. There's lots of musical history with these types of clubs where the likes of the Rolling Stones used to play week-in week-out in the '60s. Usually these shows generally have a fantastic atmosphere, with a close connection to the audience, who are packed close to the stage. They often turn up surprises too…for example, we've had artists such as Amy Winehouse and Mick Abrahams in the crowd enjoying the show and then asking to come onstage and play with the band. Lots of fun! The larger venues are great too, in a different way. We've played to 3,000-person+ crowds and the atmosphere with so many people enjoying the show is a real buzz. It's also nice to play outdoor venues, especially in places with nice weather like California! Q: What's new and different in the music you are playing today, versus a year or two ago? A: Well, we released a new album earlier this year. It's called Flat Nine; it's on the Proper Records label. Whilst our music has always been a blend of blues and vintage funk, this album in particular has evolved our funk side even further. We've received some really great reviews from the music press in the UK and had generous comparisons to the likes of The Meters, Dr. John, The Average White Band, Howlin' Wolf. The album has generated lots of interest, which is fantastic. We're playing to regular sellout shows in the UK and are also opening for some legends of the funk music scene, such as The New Mastersounds. BluesMix are headlining the Oracle OpenWorld Welcome Reception in Yerba Buena Gardens on Sunday, September 30 and are playing at the Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival at Slim's on Tuesday, October 2. More on the music: Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival BluesMix  >>

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• Three Global Telecoms Soar With Siebel

  - by michael.seback

  Deutsche Telekom Group Selects Oracle's Siebel CRM to Underpin Next-Generation CRM Strategy The Deutsche Telekom Group (DTAG), one of the world's leading telecommunications companies, and a customer of Oracle since 2001, has invested in Oracle's Siebel CRM as the standard platform for its Next Generation CRM strategy; a move to lower the cost of managing its 120 million customers across its European businesses. Oracle's Siebel CRM is planned to be deployed in Germany and all of the company's European business within five years. "...Our Next-Generation strategy is a significant move to lower our operating costs and enhance customer service for all our European customers. Not only is Oracle underpinning this strategy, but is also shaping the way our company operates and sells to customers. We look forward to working with Oracle over the coming years as the technology is extended across Europe," said Dr. Steffen Roehn, CIO Deutsche Telekom AG... "The telecommunications industry is currently undergoing some major changes. As a result, companies like Deutsche Telekom are needing to be more intelligent about the way they use technology, particularly when it comes to customer service. Deutsche Telekom is a great example of how organisations can use CRM to not just improve services, but also drive more commercial opportunities through the ability to offer highly tailored offers, while the customer is engaged online or on the phone," said Steve Fearon, vice president CRM, EMEA Read more. Telecom Argentina S.A. Accelerates Time-to-Market for New Communications Products and Services Telecom Argentina S.A. offers basic telephone, urban landline, and national and international long-distance services...."With Oracle's Siebel CRM and Oracle Communication Billing and Revenue Management, we started a technological transformation that allows us to satisfy our critical business needs, such as improving customer service and quickly launching new phone and internet products and services." - Saba Gooley, Chief Information Officer, Wire Line and Internet Services, Telecom Argentina S.A.Read more. Türk Telekom Develops Benefits-Driven CRM Roadmap Türk Telekom Group provides integrated telecommunication services from public switched telephone network (PSTN) and global systems for mobile communications technology (GSM). to broadband internet...."Oracle Insight provided us with a structured deployment approach that makes sense for our business. It quantified the benefits of the CRM solution allowing us to engage with the relevant business owners; essential for a successful transformation program." - Paul Taylor, VP Commercial Transformation, Türk Telekom Read more.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-08-28

  - by Bob Rhubart

  You may be tempted by IaaS, but you should PaaS on that or your database cloud journey will be a short one "The better option [to IaaS] is to rationalize the deployment stack so that VMs are needed only for exceptional cases," says B. R. Clouse. "By settling on a standard operating system and patch level, you create an infrastructure that potentially all of your databases can share. Now, the building block will be database instances or possibly schemas within databases. These components are the platforms on which you will deploy workloads, hence this is known as Platform as a Service (PaaS)." 'Shadow IT' can be the cloud's best friend | David Linthicum "I do not advocate that IT give up control and allow business units to adopt any old technology they want," says Infoworld cloud computing blogger David Linthicum. "However, IT needs to face reality: For the past three decades or so, corporate IT has been slow on the uptake around the use of productive new technologies." Do you agree? 9 ways cloud will impact IT employment | ZDNet ZDNet blogger Joe McKendrick condenses information from a recent report on how cloud computing will impact IT jobs. Number one on the list: New categories of jobs arising from cloud computing, which include "private cloud developers and administrators, departmental liaisons, integration specialists, cloud architects, and compliance specialists." Yeah, that's right, cloud architects. For more on cloud architects, including what you need to up your game to thrive in the cloud, check out "The Role of the Cloud Architect" on the OTN ArchBeat Podcast. Decisions, Decisions: The art, science, and politics of technology selection "When the time comes for a solution architect to make the final decision about the technologies, standards, and other elements that are to be incorporated into a particular project, what factors weigh most heavily on that decision? It comes as no surprise that among the architects I contacted, business needs top the list." Managing Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud with Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center Anand Akela's byline is on this post, but "Dr. Jürgen Fleischer, Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center Engineering" appears at the end of the post, so it's anybody's guess as to who wrote this thing. But the content includes a complete listing of the Exalogic 2.0.1 Tea Break Snippets series written by a member of the Exalogic team who goes by the name "The Old Toxophilist." So maybe the best thing to do here is ignore the names and focus on the very useful conent. Boost your infrastructure with Coherence into the Cloud | Nino Guarnacci Nino Guarnacci describes a use case that involved managing a variety of data caches that process complex queries and parallel computational operations, in order to maintain the caches in a consistent state on different server instances. Thought for the Day "No one hates software more than software developers." — Jeff Atwood Source: SoftwareQuotes

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• How to set Grub to automatically load Xen kernel

  - by Cerin

  How do you configure Grub to automatically use the Xen kernel under Ubuntu 11.10? No matter what I do, it loads the first menuentry. The only way I can get it to load Xen is to manually select the kernel, which I can't do if I have to reboot the server remotely, or there's a power failure and the machine automatically boots up when power's restored, etc. It's driving me nuts. In my /boot/grub/grub.cfg, the Xen kernel is at index 4 (i.e. it's the 5th menuentry). So I've tried: Setting GRUB_DEFAULT=4, and running sudo update-grub Setting GRUB_DEFAULT=saved and GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT=true, and running sudo update-grub Setting GRUB_DEFAULT="Ubuntu GNU/Linux, with Xen 4.1-amd64 and Linux 3.0.0-16-server", and running sudo update-grub None of these work. It continues to load the first menuentry, which is "Ubuntu, with Linux 3.0.0-16-server". Below is my current /boot/grub/grub.cfg. What am I doing wrong? # # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE # # It is automatically generated by grub-mkconfig using templates # from /etc/grub.d and settings from /etc/default/grub # ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/00_header ### if [ -s $prefix/grubenv ]; then set have_grubenv=true load_env fi set default="Ubuntu GNU/Linux, with Xen 4.1-amd64 and Linux 3.0.0-16-server" if [ "${prev_saved_entry}" ]; then set saved_entry="${prev_saved_entry}" save_env saved_entry set prev_saved_entry= save_env prev_saved_entry set boot_once=true fi function savedefault { if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then saved_entry="${chosen}" save_env saved_entry fi } function recordfail { set recordfail=1 if [ -n "${have_grubenv}" ]; then if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then save_env recordfail; fi; fi } function load_video { insmod vbe insmod vga insmod video_bochs insmod video_cirrus } insmod raid insmod mdraid1x insmod part_msdos insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(mduuid/be73165bc31d6f5cd00d05036c7b964f)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root d72bad3f-9ed7-44b9-b3d1-d7af9f62a8ac if loadfont /usr/share/grub/unicode.pf2 ; then set gfxmode=auto load_video insmod gfxterm insmod raid insmod mdraid1x insmod part_msdos insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(mduuid/be73165bc31d6f5cd00d05036c7b964f)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root d72bad3f-9ed7-44b9-b3d1-d7af9f62a8ac set locale_dir=($root)/boot/grub/locale set lang=en_US insmod gettext fi terminal_output gfxterm if [ "${recordfail}" = 1 ]; then set timeout=-1 else set timeout=2 fi ### END /etc/grub.d/00_header ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ### set menu_color_normal=white/black set menu_color_highlight=black/light-gray if background_color 44,0,30; then clear fi ### END /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ### if [ ${recordfail} != 1 ]; then if [ -e ${prefix}/gfxblacklist.txt ]; then if hwmatch ${prefix}/gfxblacklist.txt 3; then if [ ${match} = 0 ]; then set linux_gfx_mode=keep else set linux_gfx_mode=text fi else set linux_gfx_mode=text fi else set linux_gfx_mode=keep fi else set linux_gfx_mode=text fi export linux_gfx_mode if [ "$linux_gfx_mode" != "text" ]; then load_video; fi menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 3.0.0-16-server' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail set gfxpayload=$linux_gfx_mode insmod gzio insmod raid insmod mdraid1x insmod part_msdos insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(mduuid/be73165bc31d6f5cd00d05036c7b964f)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root d72bad3f-9ed7-44b9-b3d1-d7af9f62a8ac linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-16-server root=UUID=d72bad3f-9ed7-44b9-b3d1-d7af9f62a8ac ro initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-16-server } menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 3.0.0-16-server (recovery mode)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail insmod gzio insmod raid insmod mdraid1x insmod part_msdos insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(mduuid/be73165bc31d6f5cd00d05036c7b964f)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root d72bad3f-9ed7-44b9-b3d1-d7af9f62a8ac echo 'Loading Linux 3.0.0-16-server ...' linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-16-server root=UUID=d72bad3f-9ed7-44b9-b3d1-d7af9f62a8ac ro recovery nomodeset echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...' initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-16-server } submenu "Previous Linux versions" { menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 3.0.0-12-server' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail set gfxpayload=$linux_gfx_mode insmod gzio insmod raid insmod mdraid1x insmod part_msdos insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(mduuid/be73165bc31d6f5cd00d05036c7b964f)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root d72bad3f-9ed7-44b9-b3d1-d7af9f62a8ac linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-12-server root=UUID=d72bad3f-9ed7-44b9-b3d1-d7af9f62a8ac ro initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-12-server } menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 3.0.0-12-server (recovery mode)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail insmod gzio insmod raid insmod mdraid1x insmod part_msdos insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(mduuid/be73165bc31d6f5cd00d05036c7b964f)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root d72bad3f-9ed7-44b9-b3d1-d7af9f62a8ac echo 'Loading Linux 3.0.0-12-server ...' linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-12-server root=UUID=d72bad3f-9ed7-44b9-b3d1-d7af9f62a8ac ro recovery nomodeset echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...' initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-12-server } } ### END /etc/grub.d/10_linux ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ### submenu "Xen 4.1-amd64" { menuentry 'Ubuntu GNU/Linux, with Xen 4.1-amd64 and Linux 3.0.0-16-server' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os --class xen { insmod raid insmod mdraid1x insmod part_msdos insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(mduuid/be73165bc31d6f5cd00d05036c7b964f)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root d72bad3f-9ed7-44b9-b3d1-d7af9f62a8ac echo 'Loading Xen 4.1-amd64 ...' multiboot /boot/xen-4.1-amd64.gz placeholder echo 'Loading Linux 3.0.0-16-server ...' module /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-16-server placeholder root=UUID=d72bad3f-9ed7-44b9-b3d1-d7af9f62a8ac ro echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...' module /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-16-server } menuentry 'Ubuntu GNU/Linux, with Xen 4.1-amd64 and Linux 3.0.0-16-server (recovery mode)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os --class xen { insmod raid insmod mdraid1x insmod part_msdos insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(mduuid/be73165bc31d6f5cd00d05036c7b964f)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root d72bad3f-9ed7-44b9-b3d1-d7af9f62a8ac echo 'Loading Xen 4.1-amd64 ...' multiboot /boot/xen-4.1-amd64.gz placeholder echo 'Loading Linux 3.0.0-16-server ...' module /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-16-server placeholder root=UUID=d72bad3f-9ed7-44b9-b3d1-d7af9f62a8ac ro single echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...' module /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-16-server } menuentry 'Ubuntu GNU/Linux, with Xen 4.1-amd64 and Linux 3.0.0-12-server' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os --class xen { insmod raid insmod mdraid1x insmod part_msdos insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(mduuid/be73165bc31d6f5cd00d05036c7b964f)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root d72bad3f-9ed7-44b9-b3d1-d7af9f62a8ac echo 'Loading Xen 4.1-amd64 ...' multiboot /boot/xen-4.1-amd64.gz placeholder echo 'Loading Linux 3.0.0-12-server ...' module /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-12-server placeholder root=UUID=d72bad3f-9ed7-44b9-b3d1-d7af9f62a8ac ro echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...' module /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-12-server } menuentry 'Ubuntu GNU/Linux, with Xen 4.1-amd64 and Linux 3.0.0-12-server (recovery mode)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os --class xen { insmod raid insmod mdraid1x insmod part_msdos insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(mduuid/be73165bc31d6f5cd00d05036c7b964f)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root d72bad3f-9ed7-44b9-b3d1-d7af9f62a8ac echo 'Loading Xen 4.1-amd64 ...' multiboot /boot/xen-4.1-amd64.gz placeholder echo 'Loading Linux 3.0.0-12-server ...' module /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-12-server placeholder root=UUID=d72bad3f-9ed7-44b9-b3d1-d7af9f62a8ac ro single echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...' module /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-12-server } } ### END /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ### menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+)" { insmod raid insmod mdraid1x insmod part_msdos insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(mduuid/be73165bc31d6f5cd00d05036c7b964f)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root d72bad3f-9ed7-44b9-b3d1-d7af9f62a8ac linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin } menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+, serial console 115200)" { insmod raid insmod mdraid1x insmod part_msdos insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(mduuid/be73165bc31d6f5cd00d05036c7b964f)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root d72bad3f-9ed7-44b9-b3d1-d7af9f62a8ac linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin console=ttyS0,115200n8 } ### END /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ### ### END /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/40_custom ### # This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries. Simply type the # menu entries you want to add after this comment. Be careful not to change # the 'exec tail' line above. ### END /etc/grub.d/40_custom ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/41_custom ### if [ -f $prefix/custom.cfg ]; then source $prefix/custom.cfg; fi ### END /etc/grub.d/41_custom ###

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• RIM's current BB7 developer toolset is a joke

  - by mbrit

  tl;dr - RIM's current developer toolset is not fit for purpose.Background to this is that I'm currently working on a PhoneGap/Cordova project for a client that has to run on BlackBerry. The tooling is so ridiculous to use that even though I had a gentle dig at them in a Guardian piece it's worth having a more full-on attack.At the moment, RIM's pitch is that apps are built for the current BBOS7 devices using WebWorks. This is an HTML-based toolset. Essentially a browser is spun up in a native app container and your app is powered by JavaScript. Specific JavaScript libraries exist that thunk down to native capabilities no the device. I happen to use PhoneCap/Cordova in combination with this.The tooling is non-existent. I'm using TextMate, Ant, and Terminal to develop the app. There's no "console.log" output, and no debugging. The only way to instrument the app is to put "alert" calls in your code.Apart from the fact that that's *not* fine in 2012, how about this… every time you deploy a new app to the device, the device has to reboot. This process takes six minutes on a relatively modern BlackBerry device. How about this as well - in order to get a file into the package it has to be signed. My small app over here has 100 different files (75 or so generated). Signing doesn't happen locally, it happens on RIM's servers in Waterloo. Thus whenever you deploy the app you have this utility have to call RIM's servers 100 times. More to the point, sometimes during the day these servers have "micro-downtime" moments where they're unreachable for five or ten minutes, normally two or three times a day. Oh yes, you'll also get an email sent to you per signing on success or failure. 100 inbound emails, per deployment.(I started this post at the beginning of one of these cycles, by the way. That's how long it takes to build and deploy *once*. By the way, the change I made didn't work.)To clarify:* Change the script,* Build it using Ant,* Ant will spin up a Java app that talks to RIM's servers to sign it.* Receive 100 emails, assuming the server is up.* App deployed - takes about 30 seconds.* BlackBerry device restarts - takes about six minutes.* Find and open the app. Go through security prompts.* Test the app, with no "console.log" output and no debugger."Why not use the simulator?" I hear you ask. Well, apart from the fact that the simulator refused to reach any network service over HTTPS that I happen to own? (Some people suggest changing DNS settings for this known issue.) Admittedly, the simulator does show you console.log, but you still have the "six minute" restart issue on the simulator.Developers will understand this problem. Breaking concentration for six-plus minutes every time you want to deploy an app turns developing into a nightmare. Combining that with no worthy debugging tools turns the toolset into a joke.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-10-11

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Whiteboards, not red carpets. OTN Architect Day Los Angeles. Oct 25. Free event. Yes, it's TinselTown, but the stars at this event are experts in the use of Oracle technologies in today's architectures. This free event includes a full slate of technical sessions and peer interaction covering cloud computing, SOA, and engineered systems—and lunch is on us. Register now. Thursday October 25, 2012, 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Sofitel Los Angeles, 8555 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90048 JDeveloper extensions where? | Peter Paul van de Beek "Where does the downloaded stuff go after you installed JDeveloper extensions, like SOA Composite Editor, Oracle BPM Studio, or AIA Service Constructor?" Peter Paul van de Beek has the answer. Using Apache Derby Database with WebLogic (the express way) | Frank Munz Another technical how-to video from Dr. Frank Munz. Compensation Hello World | Ronald van Luttikhuizen Oracle ACE Director Ronald van Luttikhuizen's post addresses several question that came up during the "Effective Fault Handling in SOA Suite 11g" session that he and fellow Oracle ACE Guido Schmutz presented at Oracle OpenWorld. Oracle Fusion Middleware Security: OAM and OIM 11g Academies Looking for technical how-to content covering Oracle Access Manager and Oracle Identity Manager? The people behind the Oracle Middleware Security blog have indexed relevant blog posts into what they call "Academies." "These indexes," the blog explains, "contain the articles we've written that we believe provide long lasting guidance on OAM and OIM. Posts covered in these series include articles on key aspects of OAM and OIM 11g, best practice architectural guidance, integrations, and customizations." Maximum Availability Whitepaper for IDM 11gR2 | Oracle Fusion Middleware Security The Oracle Fusion Middelware A-Team shares an overview of and a link to a new white paper: "Identity Management 11.1.2 Enterprise Deployment Blueprint." Thought for the Day "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are sure and the intelligent are full of doubt." — Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872 – February 2, 1970) Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• Cancelling Route Navigation in AngularJS Controllers

  - by dwahlin

  If you’re new to AngularJS check out my AngularJS in 60-ish Minutes video tutorial or download the free eBook. Also check out The AngularJS Magazine for up-to-date information on using AngularJS to build Single Page Applications (SPAs). Routing provides a nice way to associate views with controllers in AngularJS using a minimal amount of code. While a user is normally able to navigate directly to a specific route, there may be times when a user triggers a route change before they’ve finalized an important action such as saving data. In these types of situations you may want to cancel the route navigation and ask the user if they’d like to finish what they were doing so that their data isn’t lost. In this post I’ll talk about a technique that can be used to accomplish this type of routing task.   The $locationChangeStart Event When route navigation occurs in an AngularJS application a few events are raised. One is named $locationChangeStart and the other is named $routeChangeStart (there are other events as well). At the current time (version 1.2) the $routeChangeStart doesn’t provide a way to cancel route navigation, however, the $locationChangeStart event can be used to cancel navigation. If you dig into the AngularJS core script you’ll find the following code that shows how the $locationChangeStart event is raised as the $browser object’s onUrlChange() function is invoked:   $browser.onUrlChange(function (newUrl) { if ($location.absUrl() != newUrl) { if ($rootScope.$broadcast('$locationChangeStart', newUrl, $location.absUrl()).defaultPrevented) { $browser.url($location.absUrl()); return; } $rootScope.$evalAsync(function () { var oldUrl = $location.absUrl(); $location.$$parse(newUrl); afterLocationChange(oldUrl); }); if (!$rootScope.$$phase) $rootScope.$digest(); } }); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } The key part of the code is the call to $broadcast. This call broadcasts the $locationChangeStart event to all child scopes so that they can be notified before a location change is made. To handle the $locationChangeStart event you can use the $rootScope.on() function. For this example I’ve added a call to $on() into a function that is called immediately after the controller is invoked:   function init() { //initialize data here.. //Make sure they're warned if they made a change but didn't save it //Call to $on returns a "deregistration" function that can be called to //remove the listener (see routeChange() for an example of using it) onRouteChangeOff = $rootScope.$on('$locationChangeStart', routeChange); } This code listens for the $locationChangeStart event and calls routeChange() when it occurs. The value returned from calling $on is a “deregistration” function that can be called to detach from the event. In this case the deregistration function is named onRouteChangeOff (it’s accessible throughout the controller). You’ll see how the onRouteChangeOff function is used in just a moment.   Cancelling Route Navigation The routeChange() callback triggered by the $locationChangeStart event displays a modal dialog similar to the following to prompt the user:     Here’s the code for routeChange(): function routeChange(event, newUrl) { //Navigate to newUrl if the form isn't dirty if (!$scope.editForm.$dirty) return; var modalOptions = { closeButtonText: 'Cancel', actionButtonText: 'Ignore Changes', headerText: 'Unsaved Changes', bodyText: 'You have unsaved changes. Leave the page?' }; modalService.showModal({}, modalOptions).then(function (result) { if (result === 'ok') { onRouteChangeOff(); //Stop listening for location changes $location.path(newUrl); //Go to page they're interested in } }); //prevent navigation by default since we'll handle it //once the user selects a dialog option event.preventDefault(); return; } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Looking at the parameters of routeChange() you can see that it accepts an event object and the new route that the user is trying to navigate to. The event object is used to prevent navigation since we need to prompt the user before leaving the current view. Notice the call to event.preventDefault() at the end of the function. The modal dialog is shown by calling modalService.showModal() (see my previous post for more information about the custom modalService that acts as a wrapper around Angular UI Bootstrap’s $modal service). If the user selects “Ignore Changes” then their changes will be discarded and the application will navigate to the route they intended to go to originally. This is done by first detaching from the $locationChangeStart event by calling onRouteChangeOff() (recall that this is the function returned from the call to $on()) so that we don’t get stuck in a never ending cycle where the dialog continues to display when they click the “Ignore Changes” button. A call is then made to $location.path(newUrl) to handle navigating to the target view. If the user cancels the operation they’ll stay on the current view. Conclusion The key to canceling routes is understanding how to work with the $locationChangeStart event and cancelling it so that route navigation doesn’t occur. I’m hoping that in the future the same type of task can be done using the $routeChangeStart event but for now this code gets the job done. You can see this code in action in the Customer Manager application available on Github (specifically the customerEdit view). Learn more about the application here.

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• Emaroo 1.4.0 Released

  - by WeigeltRo

  Emaroo is a free utility for browsing most recently used (MRU) lists of various applications. Quickly open files, jump to their folder in Windows Explorer, copy their path - all with just a few keystrokes or mouse clicks. tl;dr: Emaroo 1.4.0 is out, go download it on www.roland-weigelt.de/emaroo   Why Emaroo? Let me give you a few examples. Let’s assume you have pinned Emaroo to the first spot on the task bar so you can start it by hitting Win+1. To start one of the most recently used Visual Studio solutions you type Win+1, [maybe arrow key down a few times], Enter This means that you can start the most recent solution simply by Win+1, Enter What else? If you want to open an Explorer window at the file location of the solution, you type Ctrl+E instead of Enter.   If you know that the solution contains “foo” in its name, you can type “foo” to filter the list. Because this is not a general purpose search like e.g. the Search charm, but instead operates only on the MRU list of a single application, you usually have to type only a few characters until you can press Enter or Ctrl+E.   Ctrl+C copies the file path of the selected MRU item, Ctrl+Shift+C copies the directory If you have several versions of Visual Studio installed, the context menu lets you open a solution in a higher version.   Using the context menu, you can open a Visual Studio solution in Blend. So far I have only mentioned Visual Studio, but Emaroo knows about other applications, too. It remembers the last application you used, you can change between applications with the left/right arrow or accelerator keys. Press F1 or click the Emaroo icon (the tab to the right) for a quick reference. Which applications does Emaroo know about? Emaroo knows the MRU lists of Visual Studio 2008/2010/2012/2013 Expression Blend 4, Blend for Visual Studio 2012, Blend for Visual Studio 2013 Microsoft Word 2007/2010/2013 Microsoft Excel 2007/2010/2013 Microsoft PowerPoint 2007/2010/2013 Photoshop CS6 IrfanView (most recently used directories) Windows Explorer (directories most recently typed into the address bar) Applications that are not installed aren’t shown, of course. Where can I download it? On the Emaroo website: www.roland-weigelt.de/emaroo Have fun!

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