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• Proxy / Squid 2.7 / Debian Wheezy 6.7 / lots of TCP Timed-out

  - by Maroon Ibrahim

  i'm facing a lot of TCP timed-out on a busy cache server and here below my sysctl.conf configuration as well as an output of "netstat -st" Kernel 3.2.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.2.57-3 x86_64 GNU/Linux Any advice or help would be highly appreciated #################### Sysctl.conf cat /etc/sysctl.conf net.ipv4.tcp_tw_reuse = 1 net.ipv4.tcp_tw_recycle = 1 fs.file-max = 65536 net.ipv4.tcp_low_latency = 1 net.core.wmem_max = 8388608 net.core.rmem_max = 8388608 net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65000 fs.aio-max-nr = 131072 net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout = 10 net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_time = 60 net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_intvl = 10 net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_probes = 3 kernel.threads-max = 131072 kernel.msgmax = 32768 kernel.msgmni = 64 kernel.msgmnb = 65536 kernel.shmmax = 68719476736 kernel.shmall = 4294967296 net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1 net.ipv4.tcp_timestamps = 0 net.ipv4.conf.all.accept_redirects = 0 net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling = 1 net.ipv4.tcp_sack = 0 net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies = 1 net.ipv4.ip_dynaddr = 1 vm.swappiness = 0 vm.drop_caches = 3 net.ipv4.tcp_moderate_rcvbuf = 1 net.ipv4.tcp_no_metrics_save = 1 net.ipv4.tcp_ecn = 0 net.ipv4.tcp_max_orphans = 131072 net.ipv4.tcp_orphan_retries = 1 net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 0 net.ipv4.conf.default.accept_source_route = 0 net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog = 32768 net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 131072 net.ipv4.tcp_mem = 6085248 16227328 67108864 net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 4096 131072 33554432 net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 4096 174760 33554432 net.core.rmem_default = 33554432 net.core.rmem_max = 33554432 net.core.wmem_default = 33554432 net.core.wmem_max = 33554432 net.core.somaxconn = 10000 # ################ Netstat results /# netstat -st IcmpMsg: InType0: 2 InType3: 233754 InType8: 56251 InType11: 23192 OutType0: 56251 OutType3: 437 OutType8: 4 Tcp: 20680741 active connections openings 63642431 passive connection openings 1126690 failed connection attempts 2093143 connection resets received 13059 connections established 2649651696 segments received 2195445642 segments send out 183401499 segments retransmited 38299 bad segments received. 14648899 resets sent UdpLite: TcpExt: 507 SYN cookies sent 178 SYN cookies received 1376771 invalid SYN cookies received 1014577 resets received for embryonic SYN_RECV sockets 4530970 packets pruned from receive queue because of socket buffer overrun 7233 packets pruned from receive queue 688 packets dropped from out-of-order queue because of socket buffer overrun 12445 ICMP packets dropped because they were out-of-window 446 ICMP packets dropped because socket was locked 33812202 TCP sockets finished time wait in fast timer 622 TCP sockets finished time wait in slow timer 573656 packets rejects in established connections because of timestamp 133357718 delayed acks sent 23593 delayed acks further delayed because of locked socket Quick ack mode was activated 21288857 times 839 times the listen queue of a socket overflowed 839 SYNs to LISTEN sockets dropped 41 packets directly queued to recvmsg prequeue. 79166 bytes directly in process context from backlog 24 bytes directly received in process context from prequeue 2713742130 packet headers predicted 84 packets header predicted and directly queued to user 1925423249 acknowledgments not containing data payload received 877898013 predicted acknowledgments 16449673 times recovered from packet loss due to fast retransmit 17687820 times recovered from packet loss by selective acknowledgements 5047 bad SACK blocks received Detected reordering 11 times using FACK Detected reordering 1778091 times using SACK Detected reordering 97955 times using reno fast retransmit Detected reordering 280414 times using time stamp 839369 congestion windows fully recovered without slow start 4173098 congestion windows partially recovered using Hoe heuristic 305254 congestion windows recovered without slow start by DSACK 933682 congestion windows recovered without slow start after partial ack 77828 TCP data loss events TCPLostRetransmit: 5066 2618430 timeouts after reno fast retransmit 2927294 timeouts after SACK recovery 3059394 timeouts in loss state 75953830 fast retransmits 11929429 forward retransmits 51963833 retransmits in slow start 19418337 other TCP timeouts 2330398 classic Reno fast retransmits failed 2177787 SACK retransmits failed 742371590 packets collapsed in receive queue due to low socket buffer 13595689 DSACKs sent for old packets 50523 DSACKs sent for out of order packets 4658236 DSACKs received 175441 DSACKs for out of order packets received 880664 connections reset due to unexpected data 346356 connections reset due to early user close 2364841 connections aborted due to timeout TCPSACKDiscard: 1590 TCPDSACKIgnoredOld: 241849 TCPDSACKIgnoredNoUndo: 1636687 TCPSpuriousRTOs: 766073 TCPSackShifted: 74562088 TCPSackMerged: 169015212 TCPSackShiftFallback: 78391303 TCPBacklogDrop: 29 TCPReqQFullDoCookies: 507 TCPChallengeACK: 424921 TCPSYNChallenge: 170388 IpExt: InBcastPkts: 351510 InOctets: -609466797 OutOctets: -1057794685 InBcastOctets: 75631402 #

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• Do glue records in non-circular dns-lookups speed up domain resolution or not?

  - by Joe Hopfgartner

  Doing a lookup for my domain on http://www.intodns.com/ I noticed theese two messages: In Parent section: DNS Parent sent Glue The parent nameserver g.gtld-servers.net is not sending out GLUE for every nameservers listed, meaning he is sending out your nameservers host names without sending the A records of those nameservers. It's ok but you have to know that this will require an extra A lookup that can delay a little the connections to your site. This happens a lot if you have nameservers on different TLD (domain.com for example with nameserver ns.domain.org.) and in NS section: Glue for NS records INFO: GLUE was not sent when I asked your nameservers for your NS records.This is ok but you should know that in this case an extra A record lookup is required in order to get the IPs of your NS records. The nameservers without glue are: 109.230.225.96 84.201.40.52 You can fix this for example by adding A records to your nameservers for the zones listed above. I do perfectly understand that the primary objective of glue records is to resolve circular dependencies. The classic use case: my domain is example.com and I want to have the nameserver ns1.example.com. This will never work because i cannot know the ip of ns1.example.com if I don't fetch example.com and in order to do that I need to fetch it from ns1.example.com. To resolve this deadlock I add a glue record to ns1.example.com containing the ip adress of the nameserver, so this can work out. So this problem does not occour if the nameservers are in a different TLD than the domain i want to look up. But however to fetch the zone information from the nameservers I need to know their ip adress right? And in order to know that i need to fetch the zone the nameservers are in from their respective nameservers, right? (or rather my ISP needs to do that in the background) So an extra lookup that takes time? If I now have glue records, I know the IP adress right away without the need to look it up - so this should speed up the resolution of my domain, shouldnt it? However my DNS zone provider (tecserver.at) replied that this would make no sense because "we are not running ns1.ourdomain.com an ns1.ourdomain.com as authorative NS for ourdomain.com. This would be the only sense for glue records. Tecserver has a glue record because the NS for tecserver.at are ns1.tecserver.at and ns2.tecserver.at. Therefore a glue record is needed for resolution.

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• Intermittently, IIS7 requests get stuck in WindowsAuthenticationModule

  - by Richard Beier

  We're running an IIS7 server hosting several dozen websites. Several of these websites are all part of the same legacy app we've developed. These sites all run the same code and run in the same app pool. Roughly once a month over the past few months, we've found that all requests for this app pool start hanging indefinitely. When this happens, we receive an alert and we recycle the app pool. After that, the sites start working again. This only ever affects this one app pool - never any others on the same server. A couple times, before recycling the pool, I've looked at the currently-executing requests in the worker process. They all show up as executing inside the WindowsAuthenticationModule. Which is strange, because the vast majority of the application does not require authentication. There is a small admin section which uses Windows auth... but all the other requests should be anonymous. Does anyone have any idea as to what might be causing this? There are several unusual things about the way these sites are set up. As I mentioned, they all run the same code - multiple sites point at the same physical directory. The only difference is the host header bindings. I'm not sure why there isn't just one site with all the host headers, but that's how it works. In several of these sites, the same physical directory is mapped at two levels - as the root of the site and again as an application within the site. So if a user goes to http://oursite.com/index.aspx, that maps to c:\files\oursite\index.aspx. If a user goes to http://oursite.com/foo/index.aspx, that also maps to c:\files\oursite\index.aspx. I think there is code which looks at the request URL and handles the two requests differently. This is strange because the same web.config ends up being interpreted as a site config file, and also as an application config file within the site. I don't know if this might be related to the authentication problem. If we can't find the cause, we're thinking of a few workarounds we could try: Move the admin section into a separate site, and give the client a new admin URL. Run that separate site in its own app pool. Then in the web.config shared by all the other sites, remove the WindowsAuthenticationModule. That way there should be no possibility of a hang within the WindowsAuthenticationModule. Try running all these sites in the classic pipeline instead of the integrated pipeline. They were working fine on our old IIS6 server... (If we get desperate) Set up a watchdog script which monitors the sites and auto-recycles the app pool when it detects that requests are getting stuck. What do you think? Thanks for your help, Richard

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• Changing Physical Path gives blank homepage

  - by Julie

  I have two websites ASP Classic - www.company.com and www.companytesting.com. At this time of year, company.com is pointed to a folder called website2012 and companytesting.com is pointing to a folder called website2013. The contents of those two folders are almost identical, just minor changes for our season change (which I was supposed to do today - lol). Up until a couple of weeks ago, I was running Windows Server 2003. To update the "live" website, I'd make a copy of the test site folder, and rename it website2013R1, and point the test site there, then point the live site at website2012. We now have Windows Server 2008 R2 64. (I had someone migrate the websites to the new server for me.) The companytesting.com site, when I pointed it to website2013R1, worked fine. The company.com site, when I pointed it to website2013 (which worked just before, for the companytesting.com site) gives an empty page. (i.e. view source = nothing there.) There is nothing in the failed request log when this happens. I can use the Explore button/link (upper right) in IIS7.5 and see all of the files there. If I use the browse button (either in general or on the index.asp page) I get the blank page again. One weirdness about how these are set up is that companytesting.com uses a login (which I think is windows authentication - it's simply a single username and password for staff, and to keep the GoogleBots out of it). Obviously, company.com does not. But redirecting the to website2013r1 kept the login in place. (So I'm not absolutely clear whether that's attached to the folder or to the site. Hitting the company.com site after changing the path did not yield a password request.) The permissions on the folders all seem to be the same, but obviously, I'm missing something. Why isn't changing the physical path working? As is probably obvious, I'm not knowledgeable about servers. I did OK in 2003, but since it's not my main task and I'm buried right now, I have barely looked at 2008. So I may have really stupid questions when you ask me to check something.

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• Why do my Application Compatibility Toolkit Data Collectors fail to write to my ACT Log Share?

  - by Jay Michaud

  I am trying to get the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.6 (version 5.6.7320.0) to work, but I cannot get the Data Collectors to write to the ACT Log Share. The configuration is as follows. Machine: ACT-Server Domain: mydomain.example.com OS: Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit Edition Windows Firewall configuration: File and Printer Sharing (SMB-In) is enabled for Public, Domain, and Private networks ACT Log Share: ACT Share permissions*: Group/user names Allow permissions --------------------------------------- Everyone Full Control Administrator Full Control Domain Admins Full Control Administrators Full Control ANONYMOUS LOGON Full Control Folder permissions*: Group/user name Allow permissions Apply to ------------------------------------------------- ANONYMOUS LOGON Read, write & execute This folder, subfolders, and files Domain Admins Full control This folder, subfolders, and files Everyone Read, write & execute This folder, subfolders, and files Administrators Full control This folder, subfolders, and files CREATOR OWNER Full control Subfolders and files SYSTEM Full control This folder, subfolders, and files INTERACTIVE Traverse folder / This folder, subfolders, and files execute file, List folder / read data, Read attributes, Read extended attributes, Create files / write data, Create folders / append data, Write attributes, Write extended attributes, Delete subfolders and files, Delete, Read permissions SERVICE (same as INTERACTIVE) BATCH (same as INTERACTIVE) *I am fully aware that these permissions are excessive, but that is beside the point of this question. Some of the clients running the Data Collector are domain members, but some are not. I am working under the assumption that this is a Windows file sharing permission issue or a network access policy issue, but of course, I could be wrong. It is my understanding that the Data Collector runs in the security context of the SYSTEM account, which for domain members appears on the network as MYDOMAIN\machineaccount. It is also my understanding from reading numerous pieces of documentation that setting the ANONYMOUS LOGON permissions as I have above should allow these computer accounts and non-domain-joined computers to access the share. To test connectivity, I set up the Windows XP Mode virtual machine (VM) on ACT-Server. In the VM, I opened a command prompt running as SYSTEM (using the old "at" command trick). I used this command prompt to run explorer.exe. In this Windows Explorer instance, I typed \ACT-Server\ACT into the address bar, and then I was prompted for logon credentials. The goal, though, was not to be prompted. I also used the "net use /delete" command in the command prompt window to delete connections to the ACT-Server\IPC$ share each time my connection attempt failed. I have made sure that the appropriate exceptions are Since ACT-Server is a domain member, the "Network access: Sharing and security model for local accounts" security policy is set to "Classic - local users authenticate as themselves". In spite of this, I still tried enabling the Guest account and adding permissions for it on the share to no effect. What am I missing here? How do I allow anonymous logons to a shared folder as a step toward getting my ACT Data Collectors to deposit their data correctly? Am I even on the right track, or is the issue elsewhere?

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• Server 2008 Likes to restart itself

  - by Campo

  I have a weird issue here. I notice about once a week the web server restarts itself. This would be only a minor issue if we were not planning on implementing an IP failover. I have checked the event logs. I don't see anything that indicates a reason for the restart. I need some help diagnosing the reason the server restarts. It happened last night at 5:00AM Last even in the log was 1 hour before the unexpected shutdown. Here is the Log for the shutdown event. Any help is much appreciated. I know there isn't much to go on yet. Log Name: System Source: EventLog Date: 5/5/2010 5:01:12 AM Event ID: 6008 Task Category: None Level: Error Keywords: Classic User: N/A Computer: SERVERNAME Description: The previous system shutdown at 4:56:41 AM on 5/5/2010 was unexpected. Event Xml: <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event"> <System> <Provider Name="EventLog" /> <EventID Qualifiers="32768">6008</EventID> <Level>2</Level> <Task>0</Task> <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords> <TimeCreated SystemTime="2010-05-05T09:01:12.000Z" /> <EventRecordID>346094</EventRecordID> <Channel>System</Channel> <Computer>SERVERNAME</Computer> <Security /> </System> <EventData> <Data>4:56:41 AM</Data> <Data>5/5/2010</Data> <Data> </Data> <Data> </Data> <Data>39594</Data> <Data> </Data> <Data> </Data> <Binary>DA070500030005000400380029008E03DA070500030005000800380029008E033C0000003C000000000 000000000000000000000000000000100000000000000</Binary> </EventData> </Event>

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• resolve access violation exception (0xC0000005) crashing IIS app pool

  - by Joseph

  IIS 7.5, server 2008 r2, classic asp and asp .net 2.0, 3.5 website same server, same app pool. The past 4 weeks thousands of these errors 'C0000005' are occurring. I know from IIS debug diag tool that 'C0000005' is an access violation error. Below is the top line from my debug diag report. In w3wp__PID__6656__Date__01_08_2011__Time_01_42_46AM__281__First Chance Access Violation.dmp the assembly instruction at asp!CActiveScriptEngine::GetApplication+27 in \\?\C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\asp.dll from Microsoft Corporation has caused an access violation exception (0xC0000005) when trying to read from memory location 0x00000000 on thread 29 Thread 29 - System ID 6736 Entry point 0x00000000 Create time 1/8/2011 12:46:26 AM Time spent in user mode 0 Days 00:00:00.140 Time spent in kernel mode 0 Days 00:00:00.078 Function Source asp!CActiveScriptEngine::GetApplication+27 vbscript!COleScript::GetDebugApplicationCoreNoRef+2b vbscript!COleScript::FDebuggerEnabled+30 vbscript!COleScript::SetScriptSite+cd asp!CActiveScriptEngine::Init+125 asp!CScriptManager::GetEngine+252 asp!AllocAndLoadEngines+28f asp!ExecuteGlobal+17a asp!Execute+b5 asp!CHitObj::ViperAsyncCallback+3fc asp!CViperAsyncRequest::OnCall+6a comsvcs!CSTAActivityWork::STAActivityWorkHelper+32 ole32!EnterForCallback+f4 ole32!SwitchForCallback+1a8 ole32!PerformCallback+a3 ole32!CObjectContext::InternalContextCallback+15b ole32!CObjectContext::DoCallback+1c comsvcs!CSTAActivityWork::DoWork+12f comsvcs!CSTAThread::DoWork+18 comsvcs!CSTAThread::ProcessQueueWork+37 comsvcs!CSTAThread::WorkerLoop+135 msvcrt!_endthreadex+44 msvcrt!_endthreadex+ce kernel32!BaseThreadInitThunk+e ntdll!__RtlUserThreadStart+70 ntdll!_RtlUserThreadStart+1b BELOW is the faulting module. ASP report Executing ASP requests 0 Request(s) ASP templates cached 0 Template(s) ASP template cache size 0.00 Bytes Loaded ASP applications 1 Application(s) ASP.DLL Version 7.5.7600.16620 ASP application report ASP application metabase key Physical Path Virtual Root Session Count 0 Session(s) Request Count 0 Request(s) Session Timeout 0 minutes(s) Path to Global.asa Server side script debugging enabled False Client side script debugging enabled False Out of process COM servers allowed False Session state turned on False Write buffering turned on False Application restart enabled False Parent paths enabled False ASP Script error messages will be sent to browser False ASP!CACTIVESCRIPTENGINE::GETAPPLICATION+27In w3wp__PID__6656__Date__01_08_2011__Time_01_42_46AM__281__First Chance Access Violation.dmp the assembly instruction at asp!CActiveScriptEngine::GetApplication+27 in \\?\C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\asp.dll from Microsoft Corporation has caused an access violation exception (0xC0000005) when trying to read from memory location 0x00000000 on thread 29 recent events: server was being brute forced by hackers all of Dec and probably earlier, they weren't able to gain access but did get a virus on and blasted out spam. insatlled AVG and about the 17 or 22 latest patches. after that the app pool started crashing and the server has crashed a couple times since then. I am in no mans land as I am a developer and not a sys admin but I have to assume many roles. So I'm reaching out for help. Sometimes I will see hundreds of these 'C0000005' scriptengine errors in the event log in a matter of seconds and other times just a few times an hour. I googled this line 'ASP!CACTIVESCRIPTENGINE::GETAPPLICATION' and got nothing. Its like the function don't exist or something. I have spent many hours google-ing to no avail and am now turning to the experts on the forums. Thank you for your help

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• Old CRT screen's high resolution doesn't work anymore on windows 7

  - by Mixxiphoid

  One year ago I decided to switch from Windows XP to Windows 7. I had a 17" CRT monitor with a screen resolution of 1600x1200 which worked fine on Windows XP. While installing Windows 7 everything went well until Windows 7 was going to install the video card its driver. Windows 7 puts the screen to its recommended resolution and my screen became black. I waited a few minutes to be sure the installation was finished. I turned off the computer by hand and restarted the computer on a resolution of 800x640. When windows 7 was done installing I went to screen resolutions and the resolution of 1600x1200 was on the top of the list with '(recommended)' next to it. I tried putting it on 1600x1200 but again my screen went black. I installed all windows 7 updates including the video card driver from the NVidia site (NOT from Windows 7). I tried about everything to make it work on 1600x1200 but with no succes. The highest resolution I got with the crt monitor was 1280x1024. I had a TFT screen which had 1280x1024 as max resolution and had better colors, so I used that one till today. My video card is 9600GT and my power supply is beyond sufficient. I even tried to install the driver I had on XP to see if it worked, but no results. I tried classic mode on windows 7, changed the dpi, the frequentie and the monitor settings, but nothing worked. I really like a vertical resolution of 1200, but it seems today I'm bound to all those standard monitors with a resolution of 1980x1024... Can anybody explain to me what the cause is that it worked on Windows XP but not on Windows 7? And maybe a solution to the problem (I actually gave up on getting it fixed...) Thanks a lot in advance. SOLUTION I downloaded the according monitor driver and installed it. Next I rebooted my computer on low resolution (800x640) and connected the CRT monitor. When Windows 7 booted successfully I went to computer management and 'update the driver' of my monitor. I manually selected 'Generic PnP monitor' and made that one active. I want to advanced settings at 'Screen resolution' and selected the mode '1600x1200 (32-bit) 80 Hertz (95 Hertz did not work). Now I had my resolution on 1600x1200. I repeated the earlier step to select the original monitor again instead of the Generic monitor. Quite a way to solve this problem, but it worked! Thanks a lot you all.

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• Kernel-mode Authentication: 401 errors when accessing site from remote machines

  - by CJM

  I have several Classic ASP sites that use Integrated Windows Authentication and Kerberos delegation. They work OK on the live servers (recently moved to a Server 2008/IIS7 servers), but do not work fully on my development PC or my development server. The IIS on both machines were configured through an IIS web deployment tool package which was exported from an old machine; the deployment didn't work perfectly, and I had to tinker a bit to get the sites working. When accessing the apps locally on either machine, they work fine; when accessing from another machine, the user is prompted by a username/password dialog, and regardless of what you enter, ultimately it results in a 401 (Unauthorised) error. I've tried comparing the configuration of these machines against similar live servers (that all work fine), and they seem generally comparable (given that none of the live servers are yet on IIS7.5 (Windows 7/Server 2008 R2). These applications run in a common application pool which uses a special domain user as it's identity - this user has similar permissions on the live and development machines. On IIS6 platforms, to enable kerberos delegation, I needed to set up some SPNs for this user, and they are still in place (even though I don't believe they are needed any longer for IIS7+ due to kernel-mode authentication), Furthermore, this account is enabled for Kerberos delegation in Active Directory, as is each machine I am dealing with. I'm considering the possibility that the deployment might have made changes/failed to make changes to the IIS configuration thus causing this problem. Perhaps a complete rebuild (minus another web deployment attempt) would solve the problem, but I'd rather fix (thus understand) the current problem. Any ideas so far? I've just had another attempt at fixing this issue, and I've made some progress, but I don't have a complete fix...yet. I've discovered that if I access the sites via IP address (than via NetBIOS name), I get the same dialog, except that it accepts my credentials and thus the application works - not quite a fix, but a useful step. More interestingly, I discovered that if I disable Kernel-mode authentication (in IIS Manager Website Authentication Advanced Settings), the applications work perfectly. My foggy understanding is that this is effectively working in the pre-IIS7 way. A reasonable short-term solution, but consider the following explicit advice from IIS on this issue: By default, IIS enables kernel-mode authentication, which may improve authentication performance and prevent authentication problems with application pools configured to use a custom identity. As a best practice, do not disable this setting if Kerberos authentication is used in your environment and the application pool is configured to use a custom identity. Clearly, this is not the way my applications should be working. So what is the issue?

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• Routing and Remote Access Service won't start after full disk

  - by NKCSS

  The HDD of the server was out of disk space, and after a reboot, RRAS won't start anymore on my 2008 R2 server. Error Details: Log Name: System Source: RemoteAccess Date: 2/5/2012 9:39:52 PM Event ID: 20153 Task Category: None Level: Error Keywords: Classic User: N/A Computer: Windows14111.<snip> Description: The currently configured accounting provider failed to load and initialize successfully. The connection was prevented because of a policy configured on your RAS/VPN server. Specifically, the authentication method used by the server to verify your username and password may not match the authentication method configured in your connection profile. Please contact the Administrator of the RAS server and notify them of this error. Event Xml: <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event"> <System> <Provider Name="RemoteAccess" /> <EventID Qualifiers="0">20153</EventID> <Level>2</Level> <Task>0</Task> <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords> <TimeCreated SystemTime="2012-02-05T20:39:52.000Z" /> <EventRecordID>12148869</EventRecordID> <Channel>System</Channel> <Computer>Windows14111.<snip></Computer> <Security /> </System> <EventData> <Data>The connection was prevented because of a policy configured on your RAS/VPN server. Specifically, the authentication method used by the server to verify your username and password may not match the authentication method configured in your connection profile. Please contact the Administrator of the RAS server and notify them of this error.</Data> <Binary>2C030000</Binary> </EventData> </Event> I think it has something to do with a corrupt config file, but I am unsure of what to do. I Removed the RRAS role, rebooted, and re-added, but it keeps failing with the same error. Thanks in advance. [UPDATE] If i set the accounting provider from 'Windows' to '' the service starts but VPN won't work. Any ideas how this can be repaired?

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• MS DPM 2007: Testing the Recovery for a Production Domain

  - by NewToDPM

  Hi everybody! MS DPM 2007 is a new technology in my company, and so am I to the product. We have a classic Microsoft domain with two DCs, Exchange 2007 and a couple Web/MS SQL servers. I have deployed DPM one month ago on the domain, and after fixing the various issues I got with the replicas inconsistence and adapting the schedule and retention range to the server storage pool size, I can say the backup system is working correctly (no errors) as of today. However, there is one problem: we did not attempt to restore from the backups yet, which is a big no-no of course. I'm not sure about the way I should handle this, my main concern being Exchange and the System State of the DCs. From my understanding, DPM can only protect AND restore data on a server which is part of the same domain as the backup server. If I restore the System State (containing Active Directory) and the Exchange Storage Groups on a testing server, I am afraid it would completely disturb the domain functioning (for example, having two primary DCs on the domain). I am thinking about building a second DPM server on a testing separate domain which would mirror the replicas and then restore it on testing servers from this new domain. Is it the right way to handle the data recovery testing? How did you do on your domain when you first deployed DPM? I'd be grateful for any link/documentation or advice. Thank you in advance for your help! EDIT: Two options seem possible so far: i. Create another DC/Exchange server in the alternate location; ii. Create a separate domain in the alternate location and setup a trust between this domain and the production one. The option i is certainly the best but implies setting up a secondary Exchange server, with a dedicated public IP address so that if Exchange #1 dies, we can still send emails with Exchange #2. I don't know how complex this can be and would need to discuss it with my colleagues. The option ii would only fit the testing purposes. My only question regarding this is: if my production and DPM servers are part of domain A, and there is a trust between domains A and B, can I restore a domain A content to any domain B server?

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• Troubleshooting Network Speeds -- The Age Old Inquiry

  - by John K

  I'm looking for help with what I'm sure is an age old question. I've found myself in a situation of yearning to understand network throughput more clearly, but I can't seem to find information that makes it "click" We have a few servers distributed geographically, running various versions of Windows. Assuming we always use one host (a desktop) as the source, when copying data from that host to other servers across the country, we see a high variance in speed. In some cases, we can copy data at 12MB/s consistently, in others, we're seeing 0.8 MB/s. It should be noted, after testing 8 destinations, we always seem to be at either 0.6-0.8MB/s or 11-12 MB/s. In the building we're primarily concerned with, we have an OC-3 connection to our ISP. I know there are a lot of variables at play, but I guess I was hoping the experts here could help answer a few basic questions to help bolster my understanding. 1.) For older machines, running Windows XP, server 2003, etc, with a 100Mbps Ethernet card and 72 ms typical latency, does 0.8 MB/s sound at all reasonable? Or do you think that slow enough to indicate a problem? 2.) The classic "mathematical fastest speed" of "throughput = TCP window / latency," is, in our case, calculated to 0.8 MB/s (64Kb / 72 ms). My understanding is that is an upper bounds; that you would never expect to reach (due to overhead) let alone surpass that speed. In some cases though, we're seeing speeds of 12.3 MB/s. There are Steelhead accelerators scattered around the network, could those account for such a higher transfer rate? 3.) It's been suggested that the use SMB vs. SMB2 could explain the differences in speed. Indeed, as expected, packet captures show both being used depending on the OS versions in play, as we would expect. I understand what determines SMB2 being used or not, but I'm curious to know what kind of performance gain you can expect with SMB2. My problem simply seems to be a lack of experience, and more importantly, perspective, in terms of what are and are not reasonable network speeds. Could anyone help impart come context/perspective?

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• AGENT: The World's Smartest Watch

  - by Rob Chartier

  AGENT: The World's Smartest Watch by Secret Labs + House of Horology Disclaimer: Most if not all of this content has been gleaned from the comments on the Kickstarter project page and comments section. Any discrepancies between this post and any documentation on agentwatches.com, kickstarter.com, etc.., those official sites take precedence. Overview The next generation smartwatch with brand-new technology. World-class developer tools, unparalleled battery life, Qi wireless charging. Kickstarter Page, Comments Funding period : May 21, 2013 - Jun 20, 2013 MSRP : $249 Other Urls http://www.agentwatches.com/ https://www.facebook.com/agentwatches http://twitter.com/agentwatches http://pinterest.com/agentwatches/ http://paper.li/robchartier/1371234640 Developer Story The first official launch of the preview SDK and emulator will happen on 20-Jun-2013.  All development will be done in Visual Studio 2012, using the .NET Micro Framework SDK 2.3.  The SDK will ship with the first round of the expected API for developers along with an emulator. With that said, there is no need to wait for the SDK.  You can download the tooling now and get started with Apps and Faces immediately.  The only thing that you will not be able to work with is the API; but for example, watch faces, you can start building the basic face rendering with the Bitmap graphics drawing in the .NET Micro Framework.   Does it look good? Before we dig into any more of the gory details, here are a few photos of the current available prototype models.   The watch on the tiny QI Charter   If you wander too far away from your phone, your watch will let you know with a vibration and a message, all but one button will dismiss the message.   An app showing the premium weather data!   Nice stitching on the straps, leather and silicon will be available, along with a few lengths to choose from (short, regular, long lengths). On to those gory details…. Hardware Specs Processor 120MHz ARM Cortex-M4 processor (ATSAM4SD32) with secondary AVR co-processor Flash & RAM 2MB of onboard flash and 160KB of RAM 1/4 of the onboard flash will be used by the OS The flash is permanent (non-volatile) storage. Bluetooth Bluetooth 4.0 BD/EDR + LE Bluetooth 4.0 is backwards compatible with Bluetooth 2.1, so classic Bluetooth functions (BD/EDR, SPP/AVRCP/PBAP/etc.) will work fine. Sensors 3D Accelerometer (Motion) ST LSM303DLHC Ambient Light Sensor Hardware power metering Vibration Motor (You can pulse it to create vibration patterns, not sure about the vibration strength - driven with PWM) No piezo/speaker or microphone. Other QI Wireless Charging, no NFC, no wall adapter included Custom LED Backlight No GPS in the watch. It uses the GPS in your phone. AGENT watch apps are deployed and debugged wirelessly from your PC via Bluetooth. RoHS, Pb-free Battery Expected to use a CR2430-sized rechargeable battery – replaceable (Mouser, Amazon) Estimated charging time from empty is 2 hours with provided charger 7 Days typical with Bluetooth on, 30 days with Bluetooth off (watch-face only mode) The battery should last at least 2 years, with 100s of charge cycles. Physical dimensions Roughly 38mm top-to-bottom on the front face 35mm left-to-right on the front face and around 12mm in depth 22mm strap Two ~1/16" hex screws to attach the watch pin The top watchcase material candidates are PVD stainless steel, brushed matte ceramic, and high-quality polycarbonate (TBD). The glass lens is mineral glass, Anti-glare glass lens Strap options Leather and silicon straps will be available Expected to have three sizes Display 1.28" Sharp Memory Display The display stays on 100% of the time. Dimensions: 128x128 pixels Buttons Custom "Pusher" buttons, they will not make noise like a mouse click, and are very durable. The top-left button activates the backlight; bottom-left changes apps; three buttons on the right are up/select/down and can be used for custom purposes by apps. Backup reset procedure is currently activated by holding the home/menu button and the top-right user button for about ten seconds Device Support Android 2.3 or newer iPhone 4S or newer Windows Phone 8 or newer Heart Rate monitors - Bluetooth SPP or Bluetooth LE (GATT) is what you'll want the heart monitor to support. Almost limitless Bluetooth device support! Internationalization & Localization Full UTF8 Support from the ground up. AGENT's user interface is in English. Your content (caller ID, music tracks, notifications) will be in your native language. We have a plan to cover most major character sets, with Latin characters pre-loaded on the watch. Simplified Chinese will be available Feature overview Phone lost alert Caller ID Music Control (possible volume control) Wireless Charging Timer Stopwatch Vibrating Alarm (possibly custom vibrations for caller id) A few default watch faces Airplane mode (by demand or low power) Can be turned off completely Customizable 3rd party watch faces, applications which can be loaded over bluetooth. Sample apps that maybe installed Weather Sample Apps not installed Exercise App Other Possible Skype integration over Bluetooth. They will provide an AGENT app for your smartphone (iPhone, Android, Windows Phone). You'll be able to use it to load apps onto the watch.. You will be able to cancel phone calls. With compatible phones you can also answer, end, etc. They are adopting the standard hands-free profile to provide these features and caller ID.

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• Oracle ADF Coverage at OOW

  - by Frank Nimphius

  Below is the schedule for all ADF related sessions at a glance. Note the Meet and greet session added for Wednesday Octiber 3rd from 4.30 pm to 5:30. Oracle ADF and Fusion Development General Session Mon 1 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 10:45 AM - 11:45 AM General Session: The Future of Development for Oracle Fusion—From Desktop to Mobile to Cloud Marriott Marquis - Salon 8 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM General Session: Extend Oracle Fusion Apps to Tablets/Smartphones with Oracle Mobile Technology Moscone West - 3014 1:45 PM - 2:45 PM General Session: Extend Oracle Applications to Mobile Devices with Oracle’s Mobile Technologies Moscone West - 3002/3004 4:45 PM - 5:45 PM General Session: Building Mobile Applications with Oracle Cloud Moscone West - 2002/2004 Conference Session Mon 1 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM Understanding Oracle ADF and Its Role in Oracle Fusion Moscone South - 306 1:45 PM - 2:45 PM Building Performant Oracle ADF Business Components to Meet Tomorrow’s Needs Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C3 3:15 PM - 4:15 PM End-to-End Oracle ADF Development in Eclipse Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C3 4:45 PM - 5:45 PM Classic Mistakes with Oracle Application Development Framework Marriott Marquis - Salon 7 Tues 2 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM One Size Doesn’t Fit All: Oracle ADF Architecture Fundamentals Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM Oracle Business Process Management/Oracle ADF Integration Best Practices Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C3 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM Mobile-Enable Oracle Fusion Middleware and Enterprise Applications with Oracle ADF Moscone South - 306 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM Secrets of Successful Projects with Oracle Application Development Framework Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Develop On-Device iPhone and iPad Apps Without Writing Any Objective-C Code Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM BPM, SOA, and Oracle ADF Combined: Patterns Learned from Oracle Fusion Applications Moscone West - 3003 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM The Future of Forms Is … Oracle Forms (and Friends) Moscone South - 306 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Best Practices for Integrating SOAP and REST Service into Oracle ADF Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2 Wed 3 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM Mobile Apps for Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle ADF Mobile and Oracle SOA Suite Moscone West - 3001 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM Visualize This! Best Practices for Data Visualization in Desktop and Mobile Apps Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C3 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM Set Up Your Oracle ADF Project and Development Team for Productivity: Seven Essential Tips Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM How to Migrate an Oracle Forms Application to Oracle ADF Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Oracle ADF: Lessons Learned in Real-World Implementations Moscone South - 309 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM Oracle ADF Implementations Around the Globe: Best Practices Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM Oracle Developer Cloud Services Marriott Marquis - Salon 7 4:30 PM - 5:30 PM Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF: What’s New Hilton San Francisco - Continental Ballroom 5 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Mobile Solutions for Oracle E-Business Suite Applications: Technical Insight Moscone West - 2020 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Extending Social into Enterprise Applications and Business Processes Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C3 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM The Tie That Binds: An Introduction to Oracle ADF Bindings Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2 Thur 4 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM Using Oracle ADF with Oracle E-Business Suite: The Full Integration View Moscone West - 3003 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM Deep Dive into Oracle ADF: Advanced Techniques Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2 12:45 PM - 1:45 PM Monitor, Analyze, and Troubleshoot Your Oracle ADF Application Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2 2:15 PM - 3:15 PM Oracle WebCenter Portal: Creating and Using Content Presenter Templates Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2 HOL (Hands-on Lab) Mon 1 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 10:45 AM - 11:45 AM Developing Applications for Mobile iOS and Android Devices with Oracle ADF Mobile: Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 10A 1:45 PM - 2:45 PM Build Mobile Applications for Oracle E-Business Suite Marriott Marquis - Salon 10A 3:15 PM - 4:15 PM Developing Applications for Mobile iOS and Android Devices with Oracle ADF Mobile: Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 10A 3:15 PM - 4:15 PM Introduction to Oracle ADF: Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 3/4 4:45 PM - 5:45 PM Application Lifecycle Management with Oracle JDeveloper: Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 3/4 Tues 2 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM Developing Applications for Mobile iOS and Android Devices with Oracle ADF Mobile: Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 10A 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Developing Applications for Mobile iOS and Android Devices with Oracle ADF Mobile: Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 10A Wed 3 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM Introduction to Oracle ADF: Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 3/4 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM Developing Applications for Mobile iOS and Android Devices with Oracle ADF Mobile: Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 10A 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Build Mobile Applications for Oracle E-Business Suite Marriott Marquis - Salon 10A 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM Developing Applications for Mobile iOS and Android Devices with Oracle ADF Mobile: Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 10A 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Developing Applications for Mobile iOS and Android Devices with Oracle ADF Mobile: Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 10A Thur 4 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM Developing Applications for Mobile iOS and Android Devices with Oracle ADF Mobile: Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 10A 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM Introduction to Oracle ADF: Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 3/4 12:45 PM - 1:45 PM Oracle ADF for Java EE Developers with Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse Marriott Marquis - Salon 3/4 BOF (Birds-of-a-Feather) Mon 1 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 6:15 PM - 7:00 PM How to Get Started with Oracle ADF Marriott Marquis - Club Room 7:15 PM - 8:00 PM Building Next-Generation Applications with Oracle ADF and Oracle BPM Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C3 7:15 PM - 8:00 PM The Future of Oracle Forms: Upgrade, Modernize, or Migrate? Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2 7:15 PM - 8:00 PM Oracle ADF Faces: One Site for Many Devices Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C1 - User Group Forum (Sunday Only) Sun 30 Sept, 2012 Time Title Location 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Oracle ADF Immersion: How an Oracle Forms Developer Immersed Himself in the Oracle ADF World Moscone South - 305 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM Deploy with Joy: Using Hudson to Build and Deploy Your Oracle ADF Applications Moscone South - 305 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM ADF EMG User Group: A Peek into the Oracle ADF Architecture of Oracle Fusion Applications Moscone South - 305 12:45 PM - 3:45 PM ADF EMG User Group: Oracle Fusion Middleware Live Application Development Demo Moscone South - 305 3:15 PM - 4:15 PM Mobile Development with Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF Moscone West - 2010 Demos Demo Location Developer Moscone North, Upper Lobby - N-002 Oracle ADF Mobile Development Moscone North, Upper Lobby - N-001 Oracle Eclipse Projects Hilton San Francisco, Grand Ballroom - HHJ-008 Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse Moscone South, Right - S-208 Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF Moscone South, Right - S-207 Exhibits 0 Exhibitor Location Accenture Moscone South - 1813 Moscone South - 2221 Infosys Moscone South - 1701 Moscone South - SMR-005 Innowave Technology Moscone South - 2309 ODTUG Moscone West, Level 2 Lobby - Kiosk in the User Groups Pavilion Oracle ADF Developers Meet Up Wednesday, Oct 03 Time Activity Location 4:30 PM - 5:30 PM Stop by the OTN Lounge and meet other Oracle ADF & Fusion developers as well as product managers and engineers who work on Oracle ADF, ADF Mobile and ADF Essentials. Feedback and questions welcome, or simply stop by and say ‘hi!’ and enjoy free beer. OTN Lounge

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• SSAS: Using fake dimension and scopes for dynamic ranges

  - by DigiMortal

  In one of my BI projects I needed to find count of objects in income range. Usual solution with range dimension was useless because range where object belongs changes in time. These ranges depend on calculation that is done over incomes measure so I had really no option to use some classic solution. Thanks to SSAS forums I got my problem solved and here is the solution. The problem – how to create dynamic ranges? I have two dimensions in SSAS cube: one for invoices related to objects rent and the other for objects. There is measure that sums invoice totals and two calculations. One of these calculations performs some computations based on object income and some other object attributes. Second calculation uses first one to define income ranges where object belongs. What I need is query that returns me how much objects there are in each group. I cannot use dimension for range because on one date object may belong to one range and two days later to another income range. By example, if object is not rented out for two days it makes no money and it’s income stays the same as before. If object is rented out after two days it makes some income and this income may move it to another income range. Solution – fake dimension and scopes Thanks to Gerhard Brueckl from pmOne I got everything work fine after some struggling with BI Studio. The original discussion he pointed out can be found from SSAS official forums thread Create a banding dimension that groups by a calculated measure. Solution was pretty simple by nature – we have to define fake dimension for our range and use scopes to assign values for object count measure. Object count measure is primitive – it just counts objects and that’s it. We will use it to find out how many objects belong to one or another range. We also need table for fake ranges and we have to fill it with ranges used in ranges calculation. After creating the table and filling it with ranges we can add fake range dimension to our cube. Let’s see now how to solve the problem step-by-step. Solving the problem Suppose you have ranges calculation defined like this: CASE WHEN [Measures].[ComplexCalc] < 0 THEN 'Below 0'WHEN [Measures].[ComplexCalc] >=0 AND  [Measures].[ComplexCalc] <=50 THEN '0 - 50'...END Let’s create now new table to our analysis database and name it as FakeIncomeRange. Here is the definition for table: CREATE TABLE [FakeIncomeRange] (     [range_id] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,     [range_name] [nvarchar](50) NOT NULL,     CONSTRAINT [pk_fake_income_range] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED      (         [range_id] ASC     ) ) Don’t forget to fill this table with range labels you are using in ranges calculation. To use ranges from table we have to add this table to our data source view and create new dimension. We cannot bind this table to other tables but we have to leave it like it is. Our dimension has two attributes: ID and Name. The next thing to create is calculation that returns objects count. This calculation is also fake because we override it’s values for all ranges later. Objects count measure can be defined as calculation like this: COUNT([Object].[Object].[Object].members) Now comes the most crucial part of our solution – defining the scopes. Based on data used in this posting we have to define scope for each of our ranges. Here is the example for first range. SCOPE([FakeIncomeRange].[Name].&[Below 0], [Measures].[ObjectCount])     This=COUNT(            FILTER(                [Object].[Object].[Object].members,                 [Measures].[ComplexCalc] < 0          )     ) END SCOPE To get these scopes defined in cube we need MDX script blocks for each line given here. Take a look at the screenshot to get better idea what I mean. This example is given from SQL Server books online to avoid conflicts with NDA. :) From previous example the lines (MDX scripts) are: Line starting with SCOPE Block for This = Line with END SCOPE And now it is time to deploy and process our cube. Although you may see examples where there are semicolons in the end of statements you don’t need them. Visual Studio BI tools generate separate command from each script block so you don’t need to worry about it.

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• Test Drive Windows 7 Online with Virtual Labs

  - by Matthew Guay

  Did you miss out on the Windows 7 public beta and want to try it out before you actually make the leap and upgrade? Maybe you want to learn how to deploy new features in a business environment. Here’s how you can test drive Windows 7 directly from your browser. Whether you manage 10,000 desktops or simply manage your own laptop, it’s usually best to test out a new OS before installing it.  If you’re upgrading from Windows XP you may find many things unfamiliar.  Microsoft has setup a special Windows 7 Test Drive website with resources to help IT professionals test and deploy Windows 7 in their workplaces.  This is a great resource to try out Windows 7 from the comfort of your browser, and look at some of the new features without even installing it. Please note that the online version is not nearly as responsive as a full standard install of Windows 7.  It also does not run the full Aero interface or desktop effects, and may refresh slowly depending on your Internet connection.  So don’t judge Windows 7’s performance based on this virtual lab, but use it as a way to learn more about Windows 7 without installing it. Getting Started To test drive Windows 7, visit Microsoft’s Windows 7 Test Drive website (link below).  You will need to run the Windows 7 Test Drive in Internet Explorer, as it requires Active X support.  We received this error when attempting to run the Test Drive in Firefox: Now, click the “Take a Test Drive” link on the bottom left of the page. This site includes several test drives to demonstrate different features of Windows 7 and its related ecosystem of products including Windows Server 2008 R2, some of which, including the XP Mode test drive, are not yet ready.  For this test, we selected the MED-V Test drive, as this includes Office 2007 and 2010 so you can test them in Windows 7 as well.  Simply select the test drive you want, and click “Try it now!”   If you haven’t run a Windows test drive before, you will be asked to install an ActiveX control.  Click the link to install. Click the yellow bar at the top of the page in Internet Explorer, and select to Install the add-on.  You may have to approve a UAC prompt to finish the install. Once this is finished, click the link on the bottom of the page to return to your test drive.  The test drive page should automatically refresh; if it doesn’t, click refresh to reload it. Now the test drive will load the components.   Once its fully loaded, click the link to launch Windows 7 in a new window. You may see a prompt warning that the server may have been impersonated.  Simply click Yes to proceed. The test lab will give you some getting started directions; click Close Window when you’re ready to try out Windows 7. Here’s the default desktop in the Windows 7 test drive.  You can use it just like a normal Windows computer, but do note that it may function slowly depending on your internet connection.   This test drive includes both Office 2007 and Office 2010 Tech Preview, so you can try out both in Windows 7 as well. You can try out the new Windows 7 applications such as the reworked Paint with the Ribbon interface from Office. Or you can even test the newest version of Media Center, though it will warn you that it may not function good with the down-scaled graphics in the test drive.   Most importantly, you can try out the new features in Windows 7, such as Jumplists and even Aero Snap.  Once again, these features will not function the quickest, but it does let you test them out. While working with the Virtual Lab, there are different tasks it walks you through. You can also download a copy of the lab manual in PDF format to help you navigate through the various objectives. The test drive system is running Microsoft Forefront Security, the enterprise security solution from which Microsoft Security Essentials has adapted components from. Conclusion These virtual labs are great for tech students, or those of you who want to get a first-hand trial of the new features. Also, if you’re not sure on how to deploy something and want to practice in a virtual environment, these labs are quite valuable.While these labs are geared toward IT professionals, it’s a good way for anyone to try out Windows 7 features from the comfort of your current computer. Test Drive Windows 7 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Mount Multiple ISO Images Using Virtual CloneDriveHow To Delete a VHD in Windows 7Keyboard Shortcuts for VMware WorkstationMount an ISO image in Windows 7 or VistaHow To Turn a Physical Computer Into A Virtual Machine with Disk2vhd 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 DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 If it were only this easy SyncToy syncs Files and Folders across Computers on a Network (or partitions on the same drive) Classic Cinema Online offers 100’s of OnDemand Movies OutSync will Sync Photos of your Friends on Facebook and Outlook Windows 7 Easter Theme YoWindoW, a real time weather screensaver

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• This Week in Geek History: Gmail Goes Public, Deep Blue Wins at Chess, and the Birth of Thomas Edison

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Every week we bring you a snapshot of the week in Geek History. This week we’re taking a peek at the public release of Gmail, the first time a computer won against a chess champion, and the birth of prolific inventor Thomas Edison. Gmail Goes Public It’s hard to believe that Gmail has only been around for seven years and that for the first three years of its life it was invite only. In 2007 Gmail dropped the invite only requirement (although they would hold onto the “beta” tag for another two years) and opened its doors for anyone to grab a username @gmail. For what seemed like an entire epoch in internet history Gmail had the slickest web-based email around with constant innovations and features rolling out from Gmail Labs. Only in the last year or so have major overhauls at competitors like Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail brought other services up to speed. Can’t stand reading a Week in Geek History entry without a random fact? Here you go: gmail.com was originally owned by the Garfield franchise and ran a service that delivered Garfield comics to your email inbox. No, we’re not kidding. Deep Blue Proves Itself a Chess Master Deep Blue was a super computer constructed by IBM with the sole purpose of winning chess matches. In 2011 with the all seeing eye of Google and the amazing computational abilities of engines like Wolfram Alpha we simply take powerful computers immersed in our daily lives for granted. The 1996 match against reigning world chest champion Garry Kasparov where in Deep Blue held its own, but ultimately lost, in a  4-2 match shook a lot of people up. What did it mean if something that was considered such an elegant and quintessentially human endeavor such as chess was so easy for a machine? A series of upgrades helped Deep Blue outright win a match against Kasparov in 1997 (seen in the photo above). After the win Deep Blue was retired and disassembled. Parts of Deep Blue are housed in the National Museum of History and the Computer History Museum. Birth of Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison was one of the most prolific inventors in history and holds an astounding 1,093 US Patents. He is responsible for outright inventing or greatly refining major innovations in the history of world culture including the phonograph, the movie camera, the carbon microphone used in nearly every telephone well into the 1980s, batteries for electric cars (a notion we’d take over a century to take seriously), voting machines, and of course his enormous contribution to electric distribution systems. Despite the role of scientist and inventor being largely unglamorous, Thomas Edison and his tumultuous relationship with fellow inventor Nikola Tesla have been fodder for everything from books, to comics, to movies, and video games. Other Notable Moments from This Week in Geek History Although we only shine the spotlight on three interesting facts a week in our Geek History column, that doesn’t mean we don’t have space to highlight a few more in passing. This week in Geek History: 1971 – Apollo 14 returns to Earth after third Lunar mission. 1974 – Birth of Robot Chicken creator Seth Green. 1986 – Death of Dune creator Frank Herbert. Goodnight Dune. 1997 – Simpsons becomes longest running animated show on television. Have an interesting bit of geek trivia to share? Shoot us an email to [email protected] with “history” in the subject line and we’ll be sure to add it to our list of trivia. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware How to Change the Default Application for Android Tasks Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images The How-To Geek Valentine’s Day Gift Guide Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines RGB? CMYK? Alpha? What Are Image Channels and What Do They Mean? Clean Up Google Calendar’s Interface in Chrome and Iron The Rise and Fall of Kramerica? [Seinfeld Video] GNOME Shell 3 Live CDs for OpenSUSE and Fedora Available for Testing Picplz Offers Special FX, Sharing, and Backup of Your Smartphone Pics BUILD! An Epic LEGO Stop Motion Film [VIDEO] The Lingering Glow of Sunset over a Winter Landscape Wallpaper

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• Multitask Like a Pro with AquaSnap

  - by Matthew Guay

  Are you tired of shuffling back and forth between windows?  Here’s a handy app that can help you keep all of your windows organized and accessible. AquaSnap is a great free utility that helps you use multiple windows at the same time easily and efficiently.  One of Windows 7’s greatest new features is Aero Snap, which lets you easily view windows side by side by simply dragging windows to side of your screen.  After using Windows 7 for the past year, Aero Snap is one of the features we really miss when using older versions of Windows. With AquaSnap, you now have all of the features of Aero Snap and more in Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and of course Windows 7.  Not only does it give you Aero Snap features, but AquaSnap also gives you more control over your windows to make you more productive. Getting Started AquaSnap is a a free download for Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and 7.  Download the small installer (link below) and install it with the default settings. AquaSnap automatically runs as soon as it is installed, and you will notice a new icon in your system tray. Now you can go ahead and put it to use.  Drag a window to any edge or corner of your desktop, and you will see an icon showing what part of the screen the window will cover. Dragging it to the side of the screen expanded the window to fill the right half of the screen, just like the default Aero Snap in Windows 7.  You can drag the window away to restore it to its former size. AquaSnap works on any corner of the screen too, so you can have 4 windows side-by-side.  We already have 3 windows snapped to the corners, and notice that we’re dragging a fourth window to the bottom right corner. You can also snap windows to the bottom and top of the screen.  Here we have Word snapped to the bottom half of the screen, and we’re dragging Chrome to the top. You can even snap internal windows in Multiple Document Interface (MDI) programs such as Excel.  Here we are snapping a workbook in Excel to the left to view 2 workbooks side-by-side.   Additionally, AquaSnap lets you keep any window always on top.  Simply shake any window, and it will turn semi-transparent and stay on top of all other windows.  Notice the transparent calculator here on top of Excel. All of AquaSnap’s features work great in Windows 2000, XP, and Vista too.  Here we are snapping IE6 to the left of the screen in XP. Here are 3 windows snapped to the sides in XP.  You can mix the snap modes, and have, for instance, two windows on the right side and one window on the left.  This is a great way to maximize productivity if you need more space in one of the windows. Even AquaShake works to keep a window transparent and on top in XP. Settings AquaSnap has a detailed settings dialog where you can tweak it to work exactly like you want.  Simply right-click on its icon in the taskbar, and select Settings. From the first screen, you can choose if you want AquaSnap to start with Windows, and if you want it to show an icon in the system tray.  If you turn off the system tray icon, you can access the AquaSnap settings from Start > All Programs > AquaSnap > Configuration (or simply search for Configuration in Vista or Windows 7). The second tab in settings lets you choose what you want each snapping region to do.  You can also choose two other presets, including AeroSnap (which works just like the default Aero Snap in Windows 7) and AquaSnap simple (which only snaps at the edges of the screen, not the corners). The third tab lets you increase or decrease the opacity of pinned windows when using AquaShake, and also lets you increase or decrease the shaking sensitivity.  Additionally, if you prefer the standard AeroShake functionality, which minimizes all other open windows when you shake a window, you can choose that too. The fourth tab lets you activate an optional feature, AquaGlass.  If you activate this, it will make windows turn transparent when you drag them across the screen.   Finally, the last tab lets you change the color and opacity of the preview rectangle, or simply turn it off. Or, if you want to temporarily turn AquaSnap off, simply right-click on its icon and select Off.  In Windows 7, turning off AquaSnap will restore your standard Windows Aero Snap functionality, and in other version of Windows it will stop letting you snap windows at all.  You can then repeat the steps and select On when you want to use AquaSnap again. Conclusion AquaSnap is a handy tool to make you more productive at your computer.  With a wide variety of useful features, there’s something here for everyone.  Download AquaSnap Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to Get Virtual Desktops on Windows XP 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 DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Out of band Security Update for Internet Explorer 7 Cool Looking Screensavers for Windows SyncToy syncs Files and Folders across Computers on a Network (or partitions on the same drive) If it were only this easy Classic Cinema Online offers 100’s of OnDemand Movies OutSync will Sync Photos of your Friends on Facebook and Outlook

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• Play Your Favorite DOS Games in XP, Vista, and Windows 7

  - by Matthew Guay

  Want to take a trip down memory lane with old school DOS games?  D-Fend Reloaded makes it easy for you to play your favorite DOS games directly on XP, Vista, and Windows 7. D-Fend Reloaded is a great frontend for DOSBox, the popular DOS emulator.  It lets you install and run many DOS games and applications directly from its interface without ever touching a DOS prompt.  It works great on XP, Vista, and Windows 7 32 & 64-bit versions.   Getting Started Download D-Fend Reloaded (link below), and install with the default settings.  You don’t need to install DOSBox, as D-Fend Reloaded will automatically install all the components you need to run DOS games on Windows. D-Fend Reloaded can also be installed as a portable application, so you can run it from a flash drive on any Windows computer by selecting User defined installation. Then select Portable mode installation. Once D-Fend Reloaded is installed, you can go ahead and open the program. Then simply click “Accept all settings” to apply the default settings.   D-Fend is now ready to run all of your favorite DOS games. Installing DOS Games and Applications: To install a DOS game or application, simply drag-and-drop a zip file of the app into D-Fend Reloaded’s window.  D-Fend Reloaded will automatically extract the program… Then will ask you to name the application and choose where to store it — by default it uses the name of the DOS app. Now you’ll see a new entry for the app you just installed.  Simply double-click to run it.   D-Fend will remind you that you can switch out of fullscreen mode by pressing Alt+Enter, and can also close the DOS application by pressing Ctrl+F9.  Press Ok to run the program. Here we’re running Ms. PacPC, a remake of the classic game Ms. Pac-Man, in full-screen mode.  All features work automatically, including sound, and you never have to setup anything from DOS command line — it just works. Here it’s in windowed mode running on Windows 7. Please note that your color scheme may change to Windows Basic while running DOS applications. You can run DOS application just as easily.  Here’s Word 5.5 running in in DOSBox through D-Fend Reloaded… Game Packs: Want to quickly install many old DOS freeware and trial games?  D-Fend Reloaded offers several game packs that let you install dozens of DOS games with only four clicks…just download and run the game pack installer of your choice (link below). Now you’ve got a selection of DOS games to choose from. Here’s a group of poor lemmings walking around … in Windows 7. Conclusion D-Fend Reloaded gives you a great way to run your favorite DOS games and applications directly from XP, Vista, and Windows 7.  Give it a try, and relive your DOS days from the comfort of your Windows desktop. What were some of your favorite DOS games and applications? Leave a comment and let us know. Links Download D-Fend Reloaded Download DOS game packs for D-Fend Reloaded Download Ms. Pac-PC Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Friday Fun: Get Your Mario OnFriday Fun: Go Retro with PacmanThursday’s Pre-Holiday Lazy Links RoundupFriday Fun: Five More Time Wasting Online GamesFriday Fun: Holiday Themed Games 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional The Growth of Citibank Quickly Switch between Tabs in IE Windows Media Player 12: Tweak Video & Sound with Playback Enhancements Own a cell phone, or does a cell phone own you? Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier

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• How to I fix software center after installing the Linux Mint MATE desktop?

  - by tinuz

  I installed the MATE desktop using this manual but now i can't open my Ubuntu Software Center and can't open the settings from the update manager. I removed mate desktop but it doesn't fix the problem, i also reinstalled the software center, software-properties-gtk and software-properties-common using: sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get --purge --reinstall install software-center software-properties-common software-properties-gtk. But when using this line i get the following error: Reading package lists... Done Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 3 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 0 B/735 kB of archives. After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used. (Reading database ... 304824 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace software-center 5.0.2 (using .../software-center_5.0.2_all.deb) ... Unpacking replacement software-center ... Preparing to replace software-properties-common 0.81.13.1 (using .../software-properties-common_0.81.13.1_all.deb) ... Unpacking replacement software-properties-common ... Preparing to replace software-properties-gtk 0.81.13.1 (using .../software-properties-gtk_0.81.13.1_all.deb) ... Unpacking replacement software-properties-gtk ... Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ... Processing triggers for gnome-menus ... Processing triggers for bamfdaemon ... Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf.index... Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Processing triggers for shared-mime-info ... Unknown media type in type 'all/all' Unknown media type in type 'all/allfiles' Unknown media type in type 'uri/mms' Unknown media type in type 'uri/mmst' Unknown media type in type 'uri/mmsu' Unknown media type in type 'uri/pnm' Unknown media type in type 'uri/rtspt' Unknown media type in type 'uri/rtspu' Unknown media type in type 'interface/x-winamp-skin' Setting up software-center (5.0.2) ... Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/sbin/update-software-center", line 38, in <module> from softwarecenter.db.update import rebuild_database File "/usr/share/software-center/softwarecenter/db/update.py", line 59, in <module> from softwarecenter.db.database import parse_axi_values_file File "/usr/share/software-center/softwarecenter/db/database.py", line 26, in <module> from softwarecenter.db.application import Application File "/usr/share/software-center/softwarecenter/db/application.py", line 25, in <module> from softwarecenter.backend.channel import is_channel_available File "/usr/share/software-center/softwarecenter/backend/channel.py", line 25, in <module> from softwarecenter.distro import get_distro File "/usr/share/software-center/softwarecenter/distro/__init__.py", line 165, in <module> distro_instance=_get_distro() File "/usr/share/software-center/softwarecenter/distro/__init__.py", line 148, in _get_distro module = __import__(distro_id, globals(), locals(), [], -1) ImportError: No module named LinuxMint Setting up software-properties-common (0.81.13.1) ... Setting up software-properties-gtk (0.81.13.1) ... $ Is there a way to fix this problem without having to reinstall Ubuntu 11.10?? thanks in advance tinuz

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• How to remove the Mint stuff from my system after installing MATE desktop using MINT repository

  - by tinuz

  I installed the MATE desktop using this manual http://www.unixmen.com/linux-tutorials/linux-distributions/linux-distributions4-ubuntu/1975-install-linuxmint12-extensions-mate-a-mgse-in-ubuntu-1110- but now i can't open my Ubuntu Software Center and can't open the settings from the update manager. I removed mate desktop but it doesn't fix the problem, i also reinstalled the software center, software-properties-gtk and software-properties-common using: sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get --purge --reinstall install software-center software-properties-common software-properties-gtk. But when using this line i get the following error: Reading package lists... Done Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 3 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 0 B/735 kB of archives. After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used. (Reading database ... 304824 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace software-center 5.0.2 (using .../software-center_5.0.2_all.deb) ... Unpacking replacement software-center ... Preparing to replace software-properties-common 0.81.13.1 (using .../software-properties-common_0.81.13.1_all.deb) ... Unpacking replacement software-properties-common ... Preparing to replace software-properties-gtk 0.81.13.1 (using .../software-properties-gtk_0.81.13.1_all.deb) ... Unpacking replacement software-properties-gtk ... Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ... Processing triggers for gnome-menus ... Processing triggers for bamfdaemon ... Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf.index... Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Processing triggers for shared-mime-info ... Unknown media type in type 'all/all' Unknown media type in type 'all/allfiles' Unknown media type in type 'uri/mms' Unknown media type in type 'uri/mmst' Unknown media type in type 'uri/mmsu' Unknown media type in type 'uri/pnm' Unknown media type in type 'uri/rtspt' Unknown media type in type 'uri/rtspu' Unknown media type in type 'interface/x-winamp-skin' Setting up software-center (5.0.2) ... Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/sbin/update-software-center", line 38, in <module> from softwarecenter.db.update import rebuild_database File "/usr/share/software-center/softwarecenter/db/update.py", line 59, in <module> from softwarecenter.db.database import parse_axi_values_file File "/usr/share/software-center/softwarecenter/db/database.py", line 26, in <module> from softwarecenter.db.application import Application File "/usr/share/software-center/softwarecenter/db/application.py", line 25, in <module> from softwarecenter.backend.channel import is_channel_available File "/usr/share/software-center/softwarecenter/backend/channel.py", line 25, in <module> from softwarecenter.distro import get_distro File "/usr/share/software-center/softwarecenter/distro/__init__.py", line 165, in <module> distro_instance=_get_distro() File "/usr/share/software-center/softwarecenter/distro/__init__.py", line 148, in _get_distro module = __import__(distro_id, globals(), locals(), [], -1) ImportError: No module named LinuxMint Setting up software-properties-common (0.81.13.1) ... Setting up software-properties-gtk (0.81.13.1) ... $ Is there a way to fix this problem without having to reinstall Ubuntu 11.10?? thanks in advance tinuz

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• Sort Your Emails by Conversation in Outlook 2010

  - by Matthew Guay

  Do you prefer the way Gmail sorts your emails by conversation?  Here’s how you can use this handy feature in Outlook 2010 too. One exciting new feature in Outlook 2010 is the ability to sort and link your emails by conversation.  This makes it easier to know what has been discussed in emails, and helps you keep your inbox more tidy.  Some users don’t like their emails linked into conversations, and in the final release of Outlook 2010 it is turned off by default.  Since this is a new feature, new users may overlook it and never know it’s available.  Here’s how you can enable conversation view and keep your email conversations accessible and streamlined. Activate Conversation View By default, your inbox in Outlook 2010 will look much like it always has in Outlook…a list of individual emails. To view your emails by conversation, select the View tab and check the Show as Conversations box on the top left. Alternately, click on the Arrange By tab above your emails, and select Show as Conversations. Outlook will ask if you want to activate conversation view in only this folder or all folders.  Choose All folders to view all emails in Outlook in conversations. Outlook will now resort your inbox, linking emails in the same conversation together.  Individual emails that don’t belong to a conversation will look the same as before, while conversations will have a white triangle carrot on the top left of the message title.  Select the message to read the latest email in the conversation. Or, click the triangle to see all of the messages in the conversation.  Now you can select and read any one of them. Most email programs and services include the previous email in the body of an email when you reply.  Outlook 2010 can recognize these previous messages as well.  You can navigate between older and newer messages from popup Next and Previous buttons that appear when you hover over the older email’s header.  This works both in the standard Outlook preview pane and when you open an email in its own window.   Edit Conversation View Settings Back in the Outlook View tab, you can tweak your conversation view to work the way you want.  You can choose to have Outlook Always Expand Conversations, Show Senders Above the Subject, and to Use Classic Indented View.  By default, Outlook will show messages from other folders in the conversation, which is generally helpful; however, if you don’t like this, you can uncheck it here.  All of these settings will stay the same across all of your Outlook accounts. If you choose Indented View, it will show the title on the top and then an indented message entry underneath showing the name of the sender. The Show Senders Above the Subject view makes it more obvious who the email is from and who else is active in the conversation.  This is especially useful if you usually only email certain people about certain topics, making the subject lines less relevant. Or, if you decide you don’t care for conversation view, you can turn it off by unchecking the box in the View tab as above. Conclusion Although it may take new users some time to get used to, conversation view can be very helpful in keeping your inbox organized and letting important emails stay together.  If you’re a Gmail user syncing your email account with Outlook, you may find this useful as it makes Outlook 2010 work more like Gmail, even when offline. If you’d like to sync your Gmail account with Outlook 2010, check out our articles on syncing it with POP3 and IMAP. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Automatically Move Daily Emails to Specific Folders in OutlookQuickly Clean Your Inbox in Outlook 2003/2007Find Emails With Attachments with Outlook 2007’s Instant SearchAdd Your Gmail Account to Outlook 2010 using POPSchedule Auto Send & Receive in Microsoft Outlook 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 The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox)

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• Off The Beaten Path—Three Things Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful For

  - by Christine Randle

  By: Jim Lein, Senior Director, Oracle Accelerate Last Sunday I went on a walkabout.  That’s when I just step out the door of my Colorado home and hike through the mountains for hours with no predetermined destination. I favor “social trails”, the unmapped routes pioneered by both animal and human explorers.  These tracks  are usually more challenging than established, marked routes and you can’t be 100% sure of where you’re going to end up. But I’ve found the rewards to be much greater. For awhile, I pondered on how—depending upon your perspective—the current economic situation worldwide could be viewed as either a classic “the glass is half empty” or a “the glass is half full” scenario. Midsize companies buy Oracle to grow and so I’m continually amazed and fascinated by the success stories our customers relate to me.  Oracle’s successful midsize companies are growing via innovation, agility, and opportunity. For them, the glass isn’t half full—it’s overflowing. Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful for: Innovation The sun angling through the pine trees reminded me of a conversation with a European customer a year ago May.  You might not recognize the name but, chances are, your local evening weather report relies on this company’s weather observation, monitoring and measurement products.  For decades, the company was recognized in its industry for product innovation, but its recent rapid growth comes from tailoring end to end product and service solutions based on the needs of distinctly different customer groups across industrial, public sector, and defense sectors.  Hours after that phone call I was walking my dog in a local park and came upon a small white plastic box sprouting short antennas and dangling by a nylon cord from a tree branch.  I cut it down. The name of that customer’s company was stamped on the housing. “It’s a radiosonde from a high altitude weather balloon,” he told me the next day. “Keep it as a souvenir.”  It sits on my fireplace mantle and elicits many questions from guests. Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful for: Agility In July, I had another interesting discussion with the CFO of an Asia-Pacific company which owns and operates a large portfolio of leisure assets. They are best known for their epic outdoor theme parks. However, their primary growth today is coming from a chain of indoor amusement centers in the USA where billiards, bowling, and laser tag take the place of roller coasters, kiddy rides, and wave pools. With mountains and rivers right out my front door, I’m not much for theme parks, but I’ll take a spirited game of laser tag any day.  This company has grown dramatically since first implementing Oracle ERP more than a decade ago. Their profitable expansion into a completely foreign market is derived from the ability to replicate proven and efficient best business practices across diverse operating environments.  They recently went live on Oracle’s Fusion HCM and Taleo. Their CFO explained to me how, with thousands of employees in three countries, Fusion HCM and Taleo would enable them to remain incredibly agile by acting on trends linking individual employee performance to their management, establishing and maintaining those best practices. Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful for: Opportunity I have three GPS apps on my iPhone. I use them mainly to keep track of my stats—distance, time, and vertical gain. However, every once in awhile I need to find the most efficient route back home before dark from my current location (notice I didn’t use the word “lost”). In August I listened in on an interview with the CFO of another European company that designs and delivers telematics solutions—the integrated use of telecommunications and informatics—for managing the mobile workforce. These solutions enable customers to achieve evolutionary step-changes in their performance and service delivery. Forgive the overused metaphor, but this is route optimization on steroids.  The company’s executive team saw an opportunity in this emerging market and went “all in”. Consequently, they are being rewarded with tremendous growth results and market domination by providing the ability for their clients to collect and analyze performance information related to fuel consumption, service workforce safety, and asset productivity. This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for health, family, friends, and a career with an innovative company that helps companies leverage top tier software to drive and manage growth. And I’m thankful to have learned the lesson that good things happen when you get off the beaten path—both when hiking and when forging new routes through a complex world economy. Halfway through my walkabout on Sunday, after scrambling up a long stretch of scree-covered hill, I crested a ridge with an obstructed view of 14,265 ft Mt Evans just a few miles to the west.  There, nowhere near a house or a trail, someone had placed a wooden lounge chair. Its wood was worn and faded but it was sturdy. I had lunch and a cold drink in my pack. Opportunity knocked and I seized it. Happy Thanksgiving.  

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• I Didn&rsquo;t Get You Anything&hellip;

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Nearly every day this blog features a  list posts and articles written by members of the OTN architect community. But with Christmas just days away, I thought a break in that routine was in order. After all, if the holidays aren’t excuse enough for an off-topic post, then the terrorists have won. Rather than buy gifts for everyone -- which, given the readership of this blog and my budget could amount to a cash outlay of upwards of $15.00 – I thought I’d share a bit of holiday humor. I wrote the following essay back in the mid-90s, for a “print” publication that used “paper” as a content delivery system.  That was then. I’m older now, my kids are older, but my feelings toward the holidays haven’t changed… It’s New, It’s Improved, It’s Christmas! The holidays are a time of rituals. Some of these, like the shopping, the music, the decorations, and the food, are comforting in their predictability. Other rituals, like the shopping, the  music, the decorations, and the food, can leave you curled into the fetal position in some dark corner, whimpering. How you react to these various rituals depends a lot on your general disposition and credit card balance. I, for one, love Christmas. But there is one Christmas ritual that really tangles my tinsel: the seasonal editorializing about how our modern celebration of the holidays pales in comparison to that of Christmas past. It's not that the old notions of how to celebrate the holidays aren't all cozy and romantic--you can't watch marathon broadcasts of "It's A Wonderful White Christmas Carol On Thirty-Fourth Street Story" without a nostalgic teardrop or two falling onto your plate of Christmas nachos. It's just that the loudest cheerleaders for "old-fashioned" holiday celebrations overlook the fact that way-back-when those people didn't have the option of doing it any other way. Dashing through the snow in a one-horse open sleigh? No thanks. When Christmas morning rolls around, I'm going to be mighty grateful that the family is going to hop into a nice warm Toyota for the ride over to grandma's place. I figure a horse-drawn sleigh is big fun for maybe fifteen minutes. After that you’re going to want Old Dobbin to haul ass back to someplace warm where the egg nog is spiked and the family can gather in the flickering glow of a giant TV and contemplate the true meaning of football. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire? Sorry, no fireplace. We've got a furnace for heat, and stuffing nuts in there voids the warranty. Any of the roasting we do these days is in the microwave, and I'm pretty sure that if you put chestnuts in the microwave they would become little yuletide hand grenades. Although, if you've got a snoot full of Yule grog, watching chestnuts explode in your microwave might be a real holiday hoot. Some people may see microwave ovens as a symptom of creeping non-traditional holiday-ism. But I'll bet you that if there were microwave ovens around in Charles Dickens' day, the Cratchits wouldn't have had to entertain an uncharacteristically giddy Scrooge for six or seven hours while the goose cooked. Holiday entertaining is, in fact, the one area that even the most severe critic of modern practices would have to admit has not changed since Tim was Tiny. A good holiday celebration, then as now, involves lots of food, free-flowing drink, and a gathering of friends and family, some of whom you are about as happy to see as a subpoena. Just as the Cratchit's Christmas was spent with a man who, for all they knew, had suffered some kind of head trauma, so the modern holiday gathering includes relatives or acquaintances who, because they watch too many talk shows, and/or have poor personal hygiene, and/or fail to maintain scheduled medication, you would normally avoid like a plate of frosted botulism. But in the season of good will towards men, you smile warmly at the mystery uncle wandering around half-crocked with a clump of mistletoe dangling from the bill of his N.R.A. cap. Dickens' story wouldn't have become the holiday classic it has if, having spotted on their doorstep an insanely grinning, raw poultry-bearing, fresh-off-a-rough-night Scrooge, the Cratchits had pulled their shades and pretended not to be home. Which is probably what I would have done. Instead, knowing full well his reputation as a career grouch, they welcomed him into their home, and we have a touching story that teaches a valuable lesson about how the Christmas spirit can get the boss to pump up the payroll. Despite what the critics might say, our modern Christmas isn't all that different from those of long ago. Sure, the technology has changed, but that just means a bigger, brighter, louder Christmas, with lasers and holograms and stuff. It's our modern celebration of a season that even the least spiritual among us recognizes as a time of hope that the nutcases of the world will wake up and realize that peace on earth is a win/win proposition for everybody. If Christmas has changed, it's for the better. We should continue making Christmas bigger and louder and shinier until everybody gets it.  *** Happy Holidays, everyone!   del.icio.us Tags: holiday,humor Technorati Tags: holiday,humor

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• Error while installing emacs23 from Software Center

  - by vrcmr

  Trying to install emacs in Software Center Ubuntu 12.04 got this error. installArchives() failed: Selecting previously unselected package emacs23. (Reading database ... (Reading database ... 5% (Reading database ... 10% (Reading database ... 15% (Reading database ... 20% (Reading database ... 25% (Reading database ... 30% (Reading database ... 35% (Reading database ... 40% (Reading database ... 45% (Reading database ... 50% (Reading database ... 55% (Reading database ... 60% (Reading database ... 65% (Reading database ... 70% (Reading database ... 75% (Reading database ... 80% (Reading database ... 85% (Reading database ... 90% (Reading database ... 95% (Reading database ... 100% (Reading database ... 182385 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking emacs23 (from .../emacs23_23.3+1-1ubuntu9_i386.deb) ... Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ... Processing triggers for bamfdaemon ... Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf.index... Processing triggers for gnome-menus ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Setting up emacs23 (23.3+1-1ubuntu9) ... update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/emacs23-x to provide /usr/bin/emacs (emacs) in auto mode. emacs-install emacs23 install/dictionaries-common: Byte-compiling for emacsen flavour emacs23 Warning: Lisp directory `/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp' does not exist. Warning: Lisp directory `/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp' does not exist. Warning: Lisp directory `/usr/share/emacs/23.3/leim' does not exist. Warning: Lisp directory `/usr/share/emacs/23.3/lisp' does not exist. Warning: Lisp directory `/usr/share/emacs/23.3/leim' does not exist. Error: charsets directory (/usr/share/emacs/23.3/etc/charsets) does not exist. Emacs will not function correctly without the character map files. Please check your installation! Warning: Could not find simple.el nor simple.elc Cannot open load file: bytecomp emacs-install: /usr/lib/emacsen-common/packages/install/dictionaries-common emacs23 failed at /usr/lib/emacsen-common/emacs-install line 28, <TSORT> line 3. dpkg: error processing emacs23 (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 255 No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Errors were encountered while processing: emacs23 Error in function: Setting up emacs23 (23.3+1-1ubuntu9) ... emacs-install emacs23 install/dictionaries-common: Byte-compiling for emacsen flavour emacs23 Warning: Lisp directory `/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp' does not exist. Warning: Lisp directory `/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp' does not exist. Warning: Lisp directory `/usr/share/emacs/23.3/leim' does not exist. Warning: Lisp directory `/usr/share/emacs/23.3/lisp' does not exist. Warning: Lisp directory `/usr/share/emacs/23.3/leim' does not exist. Error: charsets directory (/usr/share/emacs/23.3/etc/charsets) does not exist. Emacs will not function correctly without the character map files. Please check your installation! Warning: Could not find simple.el nor simple.elc Cannot open load file: bytecomp emacs-install: /usr/lib/emacsen-common/packages/install/dictionaries-common emacs23 failed at /usr/lib/emacsen-common/emacs-install line 28, <TSORT> line 3. dpkg: error processing emacs23 (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 255

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