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• 3 Reasons You Need To Know Something About Every Technology

  - by Tim Murphy

  I make my living as a consultant and a general technologist.  I credit my success to the fact that I have never been afraid to pick up any product, language or platform needed to get the job done.  While Microsoft technologies I my mainstay, I have done work on mainframe and UNIX platforms and have worked with a wide variety of database engines.  Each one has it’s use and most times it is less expensive to find a way to communicate with an existing system than to replace it. So what are the main benefits of expending the effort to learn a new technology? New ways to solve problems Accelerate development Advise clients and get new business opportunities By new technology I mean ones that you haven’t had experience with before.  They don’t have to be the the one that just came out yesterday.  As they say, those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it.  If you can learn something from an older technology it can be just as valuable as the shiny new one.  Either way, when you add another tool to your kit you get a new view on each problem you face.  This makes it easier to create a sound solution. The next thing you can learn from working with different products and techniques is how to more efficiently develop solve problems.  Many times if you are working with a new language you will find that there are specific design patterns that are used with it in normal use.  These can usually be applied with most languages.  You just needed to be exposed to them. The last point is about helping your clients and helping yourself.  If you can get in on technologies early you will have advantage over your competition in the market.  You will also be able to honestly advise you client on why they should or should not go with a new product.  Being able to compare products and their features is always an ability that stake holders appreciate. You don’t need to learn every detail of a product.  Learn enough to function and get an idea of how to use the technology.  Keep eating those technology Wheaties and you will be ready to go the distance in any project. del.icio.us Tags: Technology,technologists,technology generalist,Software Architecture

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• Discovering Your Project

  - by Tim Murphy

  The discovery phase of any project is both exciting and critical to the project’s success.  There are several key points that you need to keep in mind as you navigate this process. The first thing you need to understand is who the players in the project are and what their motivations are for the project.  Leaving out a key stakeholder in the resulting product is one of the easiest ways to doom your project to fail.  The better the quality of the input you have at this early phase the better chance you will have of creating a well accepted deliverable. The next task you should tackle is to gather the goals for the project.  Specifically, what does the company expect to get for the money they are about to layout.  This seems like a common sense task, but you would be surprised how many teams to straight to building the system.  Even if you are following an agile methodology I believe that this is critical. Inventorying the resources that already exists gives you an idea what you are going to have to build and what you can leverage at lower risk.  This list should include documentation, servers, code repositories, databases, languages, security systems and supporting teams.  All of these are “resources” that can effect the cost and delivery schedule of your project. Finally, you need to verify what you have found and documented with the stakeholders and subject matter experts.  Documentation that has not been reviewed is actually a list of assumptions and we all know that assumptions are the mother of all screw ups. If you give the discovery phase of your project the attention that it deserves your project has a much better chance of success. I would love to hear what other people find important for this phase.  Please leave comments on this post so we can share the knowledge. del.icio.us Tags: Project discovery,documentation,business analysis,architecture

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• May 2010 Chicago Architects Group Wrap Up

  - by Tim Murphy

  Scott Seely did a wonderful job this evening of explaining how cloud services fit into our application architectures and specifically how Azure is organized.  He covered everything from Table Storage to code name Dallas (OData).  The discussion continued well beyond the end of the meeting which was attended by members of all sectors of IT and multiple platforms. Be sure to join us in the upcoming months as we cover the following topics: June – Document Generation Architecture July – Architecting a BI Installation August - MVVM – the What, Why and When Stay tuned. del.icio.us Tags: Chicago Architects Group,Azure,Cloud Computing,Dallas,Scott Seely,MVVM,Business Intelligence

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• Comb Over

  - by Tim Dexter

  Being some what follicly challenged, and to my wife's utter relief, the comb over is not something I have ever considered. The title is a tenuous reference to a formatting feature that Adobe offers in their PDF documents. The comb provides the ability to equally space a string of characters on a pre-defined form layout so that it fits neatly in the area. See the numbers above are being spaced correctly. Its not a function of the font but a property of the form field. For the first time, in a long time I had the chance to build a PDF template today to help out a colleague. I spotted the property and thought, hey, lets give it a whirl and see in Publisher supports it? Low and behold, Publisher handles the comb spacing in its PDF outputs. Exciting eh? OK, maybe not that exciting but I was very pleasantly surprise to see it working. I am reliably informed, by Leslie, BIP Evangelist and Tech Writer that, this feature was introduced from version 10.1.3.4.2 onwards. Official docs and no mention of comb overs here. Happy Combing!

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• October 2012 Chicago IT Architects Registration Open

  - by Tim Murphy

  This month Tom Benton will be presenting The Platform and Architecture of Windows Store apps in Windows 8.  This is a subject that was requested by attendees over the last few months.  Tom has been presenting this topic in Redmond recently and this should be a great discussion. As usual we are interested in hearing what topics that community would like to see presented.  Leave any ideas in the comments of this post.  If you have a topic you are interested in presenting please contact me through this blog. Please come and join us this month and join in the discussion. Register here. del.icio.us Tags: Chicago Information Technology Architects Group,CITAG,Windows 8,Tom Benton

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• How to fix error in pdf2djvu: "Bogus memory allocation size"

  - by Tim

  I am using pdf2djvu to convert a pdf file into a djvu file, but got this error while trying to convert either bundled or indirect multi-page djvu file: $ pdf2djvu 1.pdf -o 1.djvu 1.pdf: - page #1 -> #1 Bogus memory allocation size $ pdf2djvu 1.pdf -i 1.djvu 1.pdf: - page #1 -> #1 Bogus memory allocation size I was wondering what is wrong here and how I shall fix the problem? You can suggest another application other than pdf2djvu. To convert it to djvu My pdf file can be downloaded from here , in case that you may wonder what is special about it. Thanks and regards

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• Optical Character Recognition software recommendations?

  - by Tim

  I have seen some ebooks/papers that were apparently scanned from their paper versions but the text in the ebooks/papers can amazingly be copied out. I suppose the directly-scanned versions must have been processed by some Optical Character Recognition software. So I would like to know what are the recommended Optical Character Recognition softwares? Especially those that are either for Ubuntu or free? If those for Windows are far more superior, please let me know as well. I am particularly interested in those OCRs that can accept a scanned pdf file as input and still produce as output another pdf file that looks the same as the input one but with its text copyable. Thanks and regards! Please limit one software per answer

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• Number of Classes in a Namespace - Code Smell?

  - by Tim Claason

  I have a C# library that's used by several executables. There's only a couple namespaces in the library, and I just noticed that one of the namespaces has quite a few classes in it. I've always avoided having too many classes in a single namespace because of categorization, and because subconsciously, I think it looks "prettier" to have a deeper hierarchy of namespaces. My question is: does anyone else consider it a "code smell" when a namespace has many classes - even if the classes relate to each other? Would you put in a lot of effort to find nuances in the classes that allows for subcategorization?

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• Styling Windows Phone Silverlight Applications

  - by Tim Murphy

  If you have not developed with styles in Silverlight/XAML then it can be challenging and resources can be sparse depending on how deep you get.  One thing that you need to understand is what level you can apply styles and how much they can cascade.  What I am finding is that this doesn’t go to the level that we are used to in HTML and CSS. While styles can be defined at a page level if you want to share styles throughout your application they should be defined in the App.xaml file.  This is of course analogous to placing a style in your HTML file versus an external CSS file.  This is the type of style I will concentrate on in this post. The first thing to look it how styles associate to elements.  TargetType defines the object type that your style will apply to.  In the example below the style is targeting the TextBlock object type. <Style x:Key="TextBlockSmallGray" TargetType="TextBlock"> Next we use a Setter which allows you to apply values for specific attributes of the target object type.  The setters can be a simple value or complex.  The first example here is simply applying a color to the background property of the target. <Setter Property="Background" Value="White"/> The second setter example here is for the same property, but we are applying a the definition of a LinearGradientBrush. <Setter Property="Background"> <Setter.Value> <LinearGradientBrush> <GradientStop Offset="0" Color="Black"/> <GradientStop Offset="1" Color="White"/> </LinearGradientBrush> </Setter.Value> </Setter> The last thing I want to cover here is that you can leverage the system styles and then override or extend them.  The BasedOn attribute of the Style tag allows this sort of inheritance.  In the example below I am going to start with the PhoneTextTitleStyle and then override properties as needed. <Style x:Key="TextBlockTitle" BasedOn="{StaticResource PhoneTextTitle1Style}" TargetType="TextBlock"> So now that we have our styles defined applying it is fairly straight forward.  Add the style name as a static resource to the style property of the element in your page and off you go. <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Style="{StaticResource PageGridStyle}"> So this is one step in creating consistency in your application’s look.  In future posts I will dig a little deeper. del.icio.us Tags: windows phone 7,mobile development,windows phone 7 development,.NET,software development,design,UX

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• 2010 Chicago Code Coming In May

  - by Tim Murphy

  The Lake Count .NET User Group is putting on it’s second Chicago Code Camp on May 1st.  I would encourage everyone to come out and participate in the Chicago area .NET community.  You can register here.  Better yet come of with a presentation of your own.  I have submitted an abstract for a presentation on Office Open XML. del.icio.us Tags: Chicago Code Camp,presentations,Office Open XML,LCNUG

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• Databinding a .Net WinForms ComboBox to an Enum

  - by Tim Huffam

  This is quite simple... Define the enum eg: public enum MyEnum{ ItemOne, ItemTwo, } Within the form set the datasource of the combobox to the values of the enum eg: myCombo.DataSource = System.Enum.GetValues(typeof(MyEnum)); To have the combo auto select a value based on a bound object, set the databinding of the combo eg: class MyObject{ private MyEnum myEnumProperty; public MyEnum MyEnumProperty{get {return myEnumProperty;}} } MyObject myObj = new MyObject(); myCombo.DataBindings.Add(new Binding("SelectedIndex", myObject, "MyEnumProperty");

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• Podcast with AJI about iOS development coming from a .NET background

  - by Tim Hibbard

  I talked with Jeff and John from AJI Software the other day about developing for the iOS platform. We chatted about learning Xcode and Objective-C, provisioning devices and the app publishing process. We all have a .NET background and made lots of comparisons between the two platforms/ecosystems/fanbois. They even let me throw in a plug for Christian Radio Locator. Jeff was my first contact with the Kansas City .NET community. It was probably about 10 years ago. He pushed me to talk more (and rescued me from my first talk that bombed) and blog more. One time a group of us took a 16 hour car trip to South Carolina for a code camp and live podcasted the whole thing. Good times.Listen to the show Click here to subscribe to more AJI Reports in the future.

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• CA For A Large Intranet

  - by Tim Post

  I'm managing what has become a very large intranet (over 100 different hosts / services) and will be stepping down from my role in the near future. I want to make things easy for the next victim person who takes my place. All hosts are secured via SSL. This includes various portals, wikis, data entry systems, HR systems and other sensitive things. We're using self signed certificates which worked o.k. in the past, but are now problematic because: Browsers make it harder for users to understand exactly what is going on when a self signed certificate is encountered, much less accept them. Putting up a new host means 100 phone calls asking what "Add an exception" means What we were doing is just importing the self signed certs when we set up a new workstation. This was fine when we only had a dozen to deal with, but now its just overwhelming. Our I.T. Department has classified this as ya all's problem, all we get from them is support for switch and router configurations. Beyond the user having connectivity, everything else is up to the intranet administrators. We have a mix of Ubuntu and Windows workstations. We'd like to set up our own self signed CA root, which can sign certificates for each host that we deploy on the intranet. Client browsers would of course be told to trust our CA. My question is, would this be dangerous and would we be better off going with intermediate certificates from someone like Verisign? Either way, I still have to import the root for the intermediate CA, so I really don't see what the difference is? Other than charging us money, what would Verisign be doing that we could not, beyond protecting the root CA cert so it can't be used to make forgeries?

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• November 2012 Chicago IT Architects Group Meeting Recap

  - by Tim Murphy

  So the year is coming to an end.  A hearty few came out two days before Thanksgiving to discuss adopting agile in the enterprise.  While Norm Murrin claimed to be nervous about talking in front of a group your wouldn’t have known by his presentation.  He really made a topic that has always been hard to relate very personal.  This lead to some great discussion.  I came out of looking for ways to investigate agile further.  His presentation can be found here. This was our last meeting for the year.  We are looking forward to next year and are starting to line up some speakers and topics.  At this point we have an Azure presentation coming in February and are ironing out talks for January and March.  If your would like to join us and have topics you would like to see presented contact me through this blog.  Either leave a comment here or use the contact page.  I would love to hear from you. Have a great holiday season and we will see you next year. del.icio.us Tags: Chicago Information Technology Architects Group,CITAG,Agile,Norman Murrin

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• 3D Texture Mapping (Atlas)

  - by Tim Hatch

  This is a pretty simple question. If I was to use multiple images in a single texture for a 3D cube, how would I go about re-using each vertex (having 8 total vs 24)? With a single buffer of 8 vertices, I don't see how I'd properly reuse the UV values. Any help on that? I know it's not terribly clear, but I figured it was a simple question. The 2D method is pretty easy, the next coordinates would be the same as the first (0,0 and 0,1 respectively). However, the above 3D version has me quite befuddled.

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• Ubuntu runs really slow on netbook

  - by Tim

  so I installed Ubuntu through Wubi in my netbook (Compaq Mini, 1.6 GHZ Atom, 1 GB RAM, 250 HDD, Windows 7 Starter) and decided to keep the original OS and run both... The thing is that, after I installed Ubuntu (really hyped: a couple of friends told me this OS was amazing, much faster and eaiser to use than Windows) and selecting it from the boot menu, I find that it runs really slow, sometimes freezing for a sec... For what I know, there must me be a partition in C:/ and a lot of HDD space for the Installation Size to make things faster, but I am sure I got those things right... Any help?? Also, why doesn't Wubi ask you for the DVD or bootable USB drive?? I'm just new in all this guys...

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• Windows Phone 8 Announcement

  - by Tim Murphy

  As if the Surface announcement on Monday wasn’t exciting enough, today Microsoft announce that Windows Phone 8 will be coming this fall.  That itself is great news, but the features coming were like confetti flying in all different directions.  Given this speed I couldn’t capture every feature they covered.  A summary of what I did capture is listed below starting with their eight main features. Common Core The first thing that they covered is that Windows Phone 8 will share a core OS with Windows 8.  It will also run natively on multiple cores.  They mentioned that they have run it on up to 64 cores to this point.  The phones as you might expect will at least start as dual core.  If you remember there were metrics saying that Windows Phone 7 performed operations faster on a single core than other platforms did with dual cores.  The metrics they showed here indicate that Windows Phone 8 runs faster on comparable dual core hardware than other platforms. New Screen Resolutions Screen resolution has never been an issue for me, but it has been a criticism of Windows Phone 7 in the media.  Windows Phone 8 will supports three screen resolutions: WVGA 800 x 480, WXGA 1280 x 768, and 720 1280x720.  Hopefully this makes pixel counters a little happier. MicroSD Support This was one of my pet peeves when I got my Samsung Focus. With Windows Phone 8 the operating system will support adding MicroSD cards after initial setup.  Of course this is dependent on the hardware company on implementing it, but I think we have seen that even feature phone manufacturers have not had a problem supporting this in the past. NFC NFC has been an anticipated feature for some time.  What Microsoft showed today included the fact that they didn’t just want it to be for the phone.  There is cross platform NFC functionality between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8.  The demos , while possibly a bit fanciful, showed would could be achieved even in a retail environment.  We are getting closer and closer to a Minority Report world with these technologies. Wallet Windows Phone 8 isn’t the first platform to have a wallet concept.  What they have done to differentiate themselves is to make it sot that it is not dependent on a SIM type chip like other platforms.  They have also expanded the concept beyond just banks to other types of credits such as airline miles. Nokia Mapping People have been envious of the Lumia phones having the Nokia mapping software.  Now all Windows Phone 8 devices will use NavTeq data and will have the capability to run in an offline fashion.  This is a major step forward from the Bing “touch for the next turn” maps. IT Administration The lack of features for enterprise administration and deployment was a complaint even before the Windows Phone 7 was released.  With the Windows Phone 8 release such features as Bitlocker and Secure boot will be baked into the OS. We will also have the ability to privately sign and distribute applications. Changing Start Screen Joe Belfiore made a big deal about this aspect of the new release.  Users will have more color themes available to them and the live tiles will be highly customizable. You will have the ability to resize and organize the tiles in a more dynamic way.  This allows for less important tiles or ones with less information to be made smaller.  And There Is More So what other tidbits came out of the presentation?  Later this summer the API for WP8 will be available.  There will be developer events coming to a city near you.  Another announcement of interest to developers is the ability to write applications at a native code level.  This is a boon for game developers and those who need highly efficient applications. As a topper on the cake there was mention of in app payment. On the consumer side we also found out that all updates will be available over the air.  Along with this came the fact that Microsoft will support all devices with updates for at least 18 month and you will be able to subscribe for early updates.  Update coming for Windows Phone 7.5 customers to WP7.8.  The main enhancement will be the new live tile features.  The big bonus is that the update will bypass the carriers.  I would assume though that you will be brought up to date with all previous patches that your carrier may not have released. There is so much more, but that is enough for one post.  Needless to say, EXCITING! del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone 8,WP8,Windows Phone 7,WP7,Announcements,Microsoft

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• Is there a LOGO interpreter that actually has a turtle?

  - by Tim Post

  This is not a repeat of the now infamous "How do I move the turtle in LOGO?" Recently, I had the following conversation with my five year old daughter: Daughter: Daddy, do you write programs? Me: Yes! Daughter: Daddy, what's a program? Me: A program is a set of instructions that a computer follows. Daughter: Daddy, can I write a program too? Me: Sure! This got me scrambling to think of a very basic language that a five year old could get some satisfaction from mastering rather quickly. I'm ashamed to admit that the first thing that came to mind was this: 10 INPUT "Tell me a secret" A$ 20 PRINT "Wow really? :" A$ 30 GOTO 10 That isn't going to hold a five year old's attention for very long and it requires too much of a lecture. However, moving a turtle around and drawing neat pictures might just work. Sadly, my search for a LOGO interpreter yielded noting but ad ridden sites, flight simulators and a whole bunch of other stuff that I really don't want. I'm hoping to find a cross platform (Java / Python) LOGO interpreter (dare I call it simulator?) with the following features: Can save / replay commands (stored programs) Has an actual turtle Sound effects are a plus Have you stumbled across something like this, if so, can you provide a link? I hate to ask a 'shopping' sort of question, but it seemed much better than "Is LOGO appropriate for a five year old?"

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• unzip error "End-of-central-directory signature not found"

  - by Tim

  I try to unzip a zip file, but got an error: $ unzip COCR2_100.zip Archive: COCR2_100.zip End-of-central-directory signature not found. Either this file is not a zipfile, or it constitutes one disk of a multi-part archive. In the latter case the central directory and zipfile comment will be found on the last disk(s) of this archive. note: COCR2_100.zip may be a plain executable, not an archive unzip: cannot find zipfile directory in one of COCR2_100.zip or COCR2_100.zip.zip, and cannot find COCR2_100.zip.ZIP, period. I googled but didn't find a solution. I was wondering why it is and how I should fix it? Thanks! The zip file can be downloaded from COCR2_100. It is an application, and here is its website http://users.belgacom.net/chardic/cocr2.html. My OS is 10.10.

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• Conscience and unconscience from an AI/Robotics POV

  - by Tim Huffam

  Just pondering the workings of the human mind - from an AI/robotics point of view (either of which I know little about)..   If conscience is when you're thinking about it (processing it in realtime)... and unconscience is when you're not thinking about it (eg it's autonomous behaviour)..  would it be fair to say then, that:   - conscience is software   - unconscience is hardware   Considering that human learning is attributed to the number of neural connections made - and repetition is the key - the more the connections, the better one understands the subject - until it becomes a 'known'.   Therefore could this be likened to forming hard connections?  Eg maybe learning would progress from an MCU to FPGA's - therefore offloading realtime process to the hardware (FPGA or some such device)? t

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• March 2011 Chicago Information Technology Architects Group Meeting

  - by Tim Murphy

  How did we get to March already?  My how time flies when you are having fun.  We had a spirited discussion on Enterprise Architecture at the February meeting.  Well lets keep the fun rolling.  The hottest technology right now is anything to do with mobile computing.  We had an arm wrestling match to decide who was going to present on Mobile Architecture.  Come see the winner (actually the guy who had time to put the presentation together) on March 15th at the Chicago Information Technology Architects meeting.  You can register at the link below. Register If have a topic you would be interested in presenting at a future event please contact me through this blog. del.icio.us Tags: CITAG,Chicago Information Technology Architects Group,mobile architecture

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• How Can I Effectively Interview an Oracle Candidate?

  - by Tim Medora

  First, I browsed through SO for matching questions and didn't find one, but please point me in the right direction if this exact question has already been asked. I work with and around programmers of various skill levels on various platforms. I would consider my skills to be strong in terms of relational database design, query development, and basic performance tuning and administration. I'm mid-level when it comes to database theory. My team is looking to me to ensure that we have the best talent on staff, in this case, an engineer experienced in Oracle administration. To me, a well-rounded database administrator, regardless of platform, should also be competent in developing against the database so that is also a requirement. However my database skills are centralized around SQL Server 200x with experience in a few other products like SAP MaxDB, Access, and FoxPro. How can I thoroughly assess the skills of an Oracle engineer? I can ask high-level database theory questions and talk about routine tasks that are common across platforms, but I want to dig deep enough that I can be confident in the people I hire. Normally, I would alternate very specific questions that have a right/wrong answer with architectural questions that might have several valid answers. Does anyone have an interview template, specific questions, or any other knowledge that they can share? Even knowing the meaningful Oracle-related certifications would be a help. Thank you. EDIT: All the answers have been very helpful so far and I have given upvotes to everyone. I'm surprised that there are already 3 close votes on this question as "off topic". To be clear, I am specifically asking how a MS SQL Server engineer (like myself) can effectively interview a person with different but symbiotic skills. The question has already received specific, technical answers which have improved my own database design and programming skills. If this is more appropriate as a community wiki, please convert it.

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• Dealing with three Windows partitions in dual boot installation

  - by Tim

  For dual-boot installation of Ubuntu after Windows. Quoted from ubuntuguide If a Windows boot partition exists as a second NTFS partition, it should be left alone. If there is a Windows recovery partition also installed, it can also be left alone as long as there are only two NTFS partitions total on the hard drive (i.e. there is no NTFS boot partition as well). If there are a total of 3 NTFS partitions on the hard drive, then the third Windows NTFS partition (the recovery partition) should be removed after creating Recovery CDs from it (see here). In the last case where Windows has three partitions, I was wondering why it says the recovery partition shall be removed? Is it possible to keep the three and create another extended partition with several logical partitions for installing Ubuntu and dual-booting the two OSes? I plan to dual-boot install Ubuntu 10.04 with existing Windows 7. Following is the layout of the current partitions of my hard drive viewed from Windows 7: So must I remove the Lenovo_Recovery (Q:) partition for the same reason you give for the first question? Thanks and regards!

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• How can I remove duplicate icons for "launched" java programs in the launcher?

  - by Tim

  When launching java programs (like IntelliJ IDEA and Crashplan) in Natty's Unity launcher, duplicate icons are shown (see image). For IntelliJ I created the .desktop file, for Crashplan the .desktop file is supplied with the application. Is there something that can be changed in the .desktop files (or somewhere else) that can prevent this from occurring? I couldn't find a bug report for unity itself but programs like Gnome-Do/Docky have bug reports and had to make internal changes to their applications to prevent this. In this image the 1st icon is the one created from the .desktop file and the second icon is after launching it. Second icon disappears when closing the application. Custom IntelliJ .desktop file #!/usr/bin/env xdg-open [Desktop Entry] Version=1.0 Type=Application Terminal=false Icon[en_US]=/opt/idea/bin/idea128.png Name[en_US]=IntelliJ IDEA Exec=/opt/idea/bin/idea.sh Name=IntelliJ IDEA Icon=/opt/idea/bin/idea128.png StartupNotify=true Crashplan provide .desktop file [Desktop Entry] Version=1.0 Encoding=UTF-8 Name=CrashPlan Categories=; Comment=CrashPlan Desktop UI Comment[en_CA]=CrashPlan Desktop UI Exec=/usr/local/crashplan/bin/CrashPlanDesktop Icon=/usr/local/crashplan/skin/icon_app_64x64.png Hidden=false Terminal=false Type=Application GenericName[en_CA]=

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• Handling SMS/email convergence: how does a good business app do it?

  - by Tim Cooper

  I'm writing a school administration software package, but it strikes me that many developers will face this same issue: when communicating with users, should you use email or SMS or both, and should you treat them as fundamentally equivalent channels such that any message can get sent using any media, (with long and short forms of the message template obviously) or should different business functions be specifically tailored to each of the 3? This question got kicked off "StackOverflow" for being overly general, so I'm hoping it's not too general for this site - the answers will no doubt be subjective but "you don't need to write a whole book to answer the question". I'm particularly interested in people who have direct experience of having written comparable business applications. Sub-questions: Do I treat SMS as "moderately secure" and email as less secure? (I'm thinking about booking tokens for parent/teacher nights, permission slips for excursions, absence explanation notes - so high security is not a requirement for us, although medium security is) Is it annoying for users to receive the same message on multiple channels? Should we have a unified framework that reports on delivery or lack thereof of emails and SMS's?

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