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• How to correctly partition usb flash drive and which filesystem to choose considering wear leveling?

  - by random1

  Two problems. First one: how to partition the flash drive? I shouldn't need to do this, but I'm no longer sure if my partition is properly aligned since I was forced to delete and create a new partition table after gparted complained when I tried to format the drive from FAT to ext4. The naive answer would be to say "just use default and everything is going to be alright". However if you read the following links you'll know things are not that simple: https://lwn.net/Articles/428584/ and http://linux-howto-guide.blogspot.com/2009/10/increase-usb-flash-drive-write-speed.html Then there is also the issue of cylinders, heads and sectors. Currently I get this: $sfdisk -l -uM /dev/sdd Disk /dev/sdd: 30147 cylinders, 64 heads, 32 sectors/track Warning: The partition table looks like it was made for C/H/S=*/255/63 (instead of 30147/64/32). For this listing I'll assume that geometry. Units = mebibytes of 1048576 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0 Device Boot Start End MiB #blocks Id System /dev/sdd1 1 30146 30146 30869504 83 Linux $fdisk -l /dev/sdd Disk /dev/sdd: 31.6 GB, 31611420672 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3843 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00010c28 So from my current understanding I should align partitions at 4 MiB (currently it's at 1 MiB). But I still don't know how to set the heads and sectors properly for my device. Second problem: file system. From the benchmarks I saw ext4 provides the best performance, however there is the issue of wear leveling. How can I know that my Transcend JetFlash 700's microcontroller provides for wear leveling? Or will I just be killing my drive faster? I've seen a lot of posts on the web saying don't worry the newer drives already take care of that. But I've never seen a single piece of backed evidence of that and at some point people start mixing SSD with USB flash drives technology. The safe option would be to go for ext2, however a serious of tests that I performed showed horrible performance!!! These values are from a real scenario and not some synthetic test: 42 files: 3,429,415,284 bytes copied to flash drive original fat32: 15.1 MiB/s ext4 after new partition table: 10.2 MiB/s ext2 after new partition table: 1.9 MiB/s Please read the links that I posted above before answering. I would also be interested in answers backed up with some references because a lot is said and re-said but then it lacks facts. Thank you for the help.

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• What are some of the best wireless routers for a price-conscious home power-user?

  - by Alain

  I'm extremely dissatisfied with the 'popular' choice for routers in homes and small offices. They are expensive (upwards of 60$), lack a great deal of useful configuration options, and seem to need to be restarted quite often. (Linksys comes to mind). I've been on the market for a good router lately, and slowly collecting a set of requirements I feel good routers should meet. Maximum number of TCP/IP connections. - This isn't something I see any routers advertise, but in terms of supporting torrent applications, I've been screwed by routers that support less than 20 here. From what I understand a fairly standard number is 200, but there are not so expensive routers that support thousands. Router configuration menu - Most have standard menu's that let you set up basic things like your wireless network encryption settings, uPnP, and maybe even DMZ (demilitarized zones). An absolute requirement for me, however, are routers with good enough firmware to support: Explicit Port forwarding Assigning static local ips to specific mac addresses, or at least Port forwarding by MAC address Port, IP and MAC filtering Dynamic DNS service for home users who want to set up a server but have a dynamic IP Traffic shaping (ideally) - giving priority to packets from certain machines or over certain ports. Strong wireless signal - If getting a reliable signal requires me to be so close to the router that I can connect an Ethernet cable, it's not good enough. As many Ethernet ports as possible. - Because I want to be able to switch from console gaming to PC gaming without visiting my router. So far, the best thing I've stumbled upon (in the bargain bin at staples) was a 20$ retail plus router. It was meant to be the cheapest alternative until I could find something better to purchase online, but I was actually blown away by the firmware capabilities. It supports defining reserved bandwidth for certain network traffic, dynamic DNS, reserving local IPs for specific MAC addresses, etc. At 2 am when my roommate is killing our Internet with their torrents, I can limit their bandwidth without outright blacklisting them. I have, however, met serious limitations when it comes to network traffic between local machines. It claims a 300Mbps connection, but I have trouble streaming videos from my PC to my console or other laptops wirelessly. It has a meltdown and needs to be reset once in a while (no more than a couple times a month), and it's got a 200 connection limit. There 4 Ethernet ports in the back but I'm pretty sure the first doesn't work. So some great answers to this question would be: Any metrics you use to compare routers, and requirements you have for new candidates. The best routers you've found for supporting home servers, file management systems, high volume torrent traffic, good price/feature ratio, etc. Good configuration advice (aside from 'use Ethernet whenever possible') Thanks for your feedback and experiences!

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• Tying down a cloud by virtualizing everything and then locking VMs to real hardware as necessary

  - by tudor

  I'm looking for a cloud software solution that: Can run on both server and desktop machines; Virtualizes hardware and has the option of exposing each real machine to the cloud; Allows a VM to be "locked" to a set of real hardware capabilities and stay there until moved (e.g. a user's "real" desktop); Allows a VM to link to some types of devices elsewhere (e.g. USB/serial via ethernet); and Is geography-aware to control movement of VMs between real networks. I'm aware that this may be the holy grail of virtualization, and I've searched alot. Some solutions appear to meet some criteria but not others. Most cloud implementations appear to ignore real hardware, for example. I realise that this may be solved by using three different implementations in combination: A standard cloud server farm. A bare-metal network backup utility with PXEBoot. VNC and/or VDI. (VNC obviously would require the real hardware to be running.) This combination, however, has some serious drawbacks that I'd like to solve by treating it as one system. My explanation follows... I have a network of real servers and desktops in multiple locations. I've virtualized servers before using Virtualbox and that's worked quite well. I've even connected USB devices to VMs on servers. I would like to virtualize the desktops in all my offices to facilitate movement of desktops, remote access (e.g. VDI) and bare-metal backups. However, I know that there are problems with this. For example, some desktops have specific hardware (e.g. 3D graphics cards, USB devices, etc) that limit their mobility. Geographic constraints also limit movement in that VMs can be moved easily within offices, but transferring between offices is not always preferable. What I would like to find is a system that can virtualize everything from bare-metal easily by maintaining an abstraction layer on each client and server machine that exposes the hardware available and runs as a cloud. Then certain VMs would be "locked" to specific hardware (so that, e.g. the VM runs only on their own desktop.) This would be required for situations where speed is important (e.g. 3D graphics pass-through). In addition, abstracted low-speed devices (e.g. USB) could be piped from real hardware to a VM in the cloud. This is important since if a VM is taken down, another VM can connect to the real hardware for minimum downtime.

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• Windows Server 2008 R2 time keeps changing unexpectedly

  - by lmhost

  There is a serious problem with one of my servers time. At some random hours (5:59 localtime in the following example) it goes 1 hour back and keeps doing this again and again next times it reaches 5:59. Like this: 5:59-4:59 … 5:59- 4:59 and so on. It stays in the loop until I manually update its time. The server OS is Windows 2008 R2 Standard x64, acting as a standalone web server on the internet. time zone (UTC-05:00). system log: Information 4/13/2012 5:59:34 PM Kernel-General 1 None Information 4/13/2012 5:59:34 PM Kernel-General 1 None Information 4/13/2012 5:59:34 PM Kernel-General 1 None Information 4/13/2012 5:59:34 PM Kernel-General 1 None Information 4/13/2012 5:59:34 PM Kernel-General 1 None Information 4/13/2012 5:59:34 PM Kernel-General 1 None all of the above entries have same content: The system time has changed to ?2012?-?04?-?13T21:59:34.500000000Z from ?2012?-?04?-?13T22:59:34.500000000Z. Details XML View: - <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event"> - <System> <Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General" Guid="{A68CA8B7-004F-D7B6-A698-07E2DE0F1F5D}" /> <EventID>1</EventID> <Version>0</Version> <Level>4</Level> <Task>0</Task> <Opcode>0</Opcode> <Keywords>0x8000000000000010</Keywords> <TimeCreated SystemTime="2012-04-13T21:59:34.500000000Z" /> <EventRecordID>4060</EventRecordID> <Correlation /> <Execution ProcessID="4" ThreadID="80" /> <Channel>System</Channel> <Computer>********</Computer> <Security UserID="S-1-5-18" /> </System> - <EventData> <Data Name="NewTime">2012-04-13T21:59:34.500000000Z</Data> <Data Name="OldTime">2012-04-13T22:59:34.500000000Z</Data> </EventData> </Event> Any idea about what’s going on? Thanks

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• XP Pro product keys

  - by Bill

  I have a very serious problem. After my XP Home OS was trashed by rogue software - a trial of a thing named TuneUp - I did a clean install, including HDD reformat of Windows XP Pro from a purchased OEM disk. This was Service Pack 2, subsequently upgraded to SP3. I had conclusively mislaid the product key. I had to access data on the machine VERY urgently and I did not then know that under some circumstances Microsoft might agree to provide a replacement. I found what I now know must have been a pirate key on the Net which enabled installation but NOT activation. This of course left me functional but 30 days before meltdown - about 20 days left as I write this. Various retailers want around £100 for retail with matching product key. - this would be paying twice over just to continue use on the same computer. I have neither need nor intention of installing XP Pro on any other computer. I have tried a number of applications claiming to deal with this problem but none of them work. A Belarc profile shows that the pirate key has replaced the original one on the system. I have now found two keys, one of which might be the original, but neither work. I am about to upgrade the HDD and it looks like I will just be passing the problem on when I install XP. I have retrieved a key from the disk, but it is seemingly one Microsoft use in production and does not work. It is 76487-OEM-0015242-71798. The keys I have, one of which which might or might not be the original, are CD87T-HFP4G-V7X7H-8VY68-W7D7M and FC8GV-8Y7G7-XKD7P-Y47XF-P829W (or P819W - I believe it to be the latter, but the box will not accept it). The pirate key which has enabled this install and which is now stored on the system but will not activate is QQHHK-T4DKG-74KG7-BQB9G-W47KG. In these circumstances is it likely that Microsoft would issue a replacement? Is there any other solution? I am not trying to defraud anyone, just to keep on using the product I legitimately bought. Bill

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• Disk IO causing high load on Xen/CentOS guest

  - by Peter Lindqvist

  I'm having serious issues with a xen based server, this is on the guest partition. It's a paravirtualized CentOS 5.5. The following numbers are taken from top while copying a large file over the network. If i copy the file another time the speed decreases in relation to load average. So the second time it's half the speed of the first time. It needs some time to cool off after this. Load average slowly decreases until it's once again usable. ls / takes about 30 seconds. top - 13:26:44 up 13 days, 21:44, 2 users, load average: 7.03, 5.08, 3.15 Tasks: 134 total, 2 running, 132 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 0.0%us, 0.1%sy, 0.0%ni, 25.3%id, 74.5%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.1%st Mem: 1048752k total, 1041460k used, 7292k free, 3116k buffers Swap: 2129912k total, 40k used, 2129872k free, 904740k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 1506 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.3 0.0 0:03.94 cifsd 1 root 15 0 2172 644 556 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.08 init Meanwhile the host is ~0.5 load avg and steady over time. ~50% wait Server hardware is dual xeon, 3gb ram, 170gb scsi 320 10k rpm, and shouldn't have any problems with copying files over the network. disk = [ "tap:aio:/vm/dev01.img,xvda,w" ] I also get these in the log INFO: task syslogd:1350 blocked for more than 120 seconds. "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message. syslogd D 00062E4F 2208 1350 1 1353 1312 (NOTLB) c0ef0ed0 00000286 6e71a411 00062e4f c0ef0f18 00000009 c0f20000 6e738bfd 00062e4f 0001e7ec c0f2010c c181a724 c1abd200 00000000 ffffffff c0ef0ecc c041a180 00000000 c0ef0ed8 c03d6a50 00000000 00000000 c03d6a00 00000000 Call Trace: [<c041a180>] __wake_up+0x2a/0x3d [<ee06a1ea>] log_wait_commit+0x80/0xc7 [jbd] [<c043128b>] autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x2d [<ee065661>] journal_stop+0x195/0x1ba [jbd] [<c0490a32>] __writeback_single_inode+0x1a3/0x2af [<c04568ea>] do_writepages+0x2b/0x32 [<c045239b>] __filemap_fdatawrite_range+0x66/0x72 [<c04910ce>] sync_inode+0x19/0x24 [<ee09b007>] ext3_sync_file+0xaf/0xc4 [ext3] [<c047426f>] do_fsync+0x41/0x83 [<c04742ce>] __do_fsync+0x1d/0x2b [<c0405413>] syscall_call+0x7/0xb ======================= I have tried disabling irqbalanced as suggested here but it does not seem to make any difference.

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• IIS/ASP.NET performance incident - Perfmon Current Annonymous Users going through roof but Requests/sec low

  - by Laurence

  Setup: ASP.NET 4.0 website on IIS 6.0 on Win 2003 64 bit, 8xCPUs, 16GB memory, separate SQL 2005 DB server. Had a serious slowdown today with any otherwise fairly well performing ASP.NET site. For a period of a couple of hours all page requests were taking a very long time to be served - e.g. 30-60s compared to usual 2s. The w3wp.exe's CPU and memory usage on the webserver was not much higher than normal. The application pool was not in the middle of recycling (and it hadn't recycled for several hours). Bottlenecks in the database were ruled out - no blocks occurring and query results were being returned quickly. I couldn't make any sense of it and set up the following Perfmon counters: Current Anonymous Users (for site in question) Get requests/sec (ditto) Requests/sec for the ASP.NET application running the site Get requests/sec was averaging 100-150. Requests/sec for ASP.NET was averaging 5-10. However Current Anonymous Users was around 200. And then as I was watching, the Current Anonymous Users began to climb steeply going up to about 500 within a few minutes. All this time Get requests/sec & Requests/sec for ASP.NET was if anything going down. I did a whole load of things (in a panic!) to try to get the site working, like shutting it down, recycling the app pool, and adding another worker process to the pool. I also extended the expiration time for content (in IIS under HTTP Headers) in an attempt to lower the number of requests for static files (there are a lot of images on the site). The site is now back to normal, and the counters are fairly steady and reading (added Current Connections counter): Current Anonymous Users : average 30 Get requests/sec : average 100 Requests/sec for ASP.NET : 5 Current Connections : average 300 I have also observed an inverse relationship between Get requests/sec & Current Anonymous Users. Usually both are fairly steady but there will be short periods when Get requests/sec will go down dramatically and Current Anonymous Users will go up in a perfect mirror image. Then they will flip back to their usual levels. So, my questions are: Thinking of the original performance issue - if w3wp.exe CPU, memory usage were normal and there was no DB bottleneck, what could explain page requests taking 20 times longer to be served than usual? What other counters should I be looking at if this happens again? What explains the inverse relationship between Get requests/sec & Current Anonymous Users? What could explain Current Anonymous Users going from 200 to 500 within a few minutes? Many thanks for any insight into this.

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• Do RAID controllers commonly have SATA drive brand compatibility issues?

  - by Jeff Atwood

  We've struggled with the RAID controller in our database server, a Lenovo ThinkServer RD120. It is a rebranded Adaptec that Lenovo / IBM dubs the ServeRAID 8k. We have patched this ServeRAID 8k up to the very latest and greatest: RAID bios version RAID backplane bios version Windows Server 2008 driver This RAID controller has had multiple critical BIOS updates even in the short 4 month time we've owned it, and the change history is just.. well, scary. We've tried both write-back and write-through strategies on the logical RAID drives. We still get intermittent I/O errors under heavy disk activity. They are not common, but serious when they happen, as they cause SQL Server 2008 I/O timeouts and sometimes failure of SQL connection pools. We were at the end of our rope troubleshooting this problem. Short of hardcore stuff like replacing the entire server, or replacing the RAID hardware, we were getting desperate. When I first got the server, I had a problem where drive bay #6 wasn't recognized. Switching out hard drives to a different brand, strangely, fixed this -- and updating the RAID BIOS (for the first of many times) fixed it permanently, so I was able to use the original "incompatible" drive in bay 6. On a hunch, I began to assume that the Western Digital SATA hard drives I chose were somehow incompatible with the ServeRAID 8k controller. Buying 6 new hard drives was one of the cheaper options on the table, so I went for 6 Hitachi (aka IBM, aka Lenovo) hard drives under the theory that an IBM/Lenovo RAID controller is more likely to work with the drives it's typically sold with. Looks like that hunch paid off -- we've been through three of our heaviest load days (mon,tue,wed) without a single I/O error of any kind. Prior to this we regularly had at least one I/O "event" in this time frame. It sure looks like switching brands of hard drive has fixed our intermittent RAID I/O problems! While I understand that IBM/Lenovo probably tests their RAID controller exclusively with their own brand of hard drives, I'm disturbed that a RAID controller would have such subtle I/O problems with particular brands of hard drives. So my question is, is this sort of SATA drive incompatibility common with RAID controllers? Are there some brands of drives that work better than others, or are "validated" against particular RAID controller? I had sort of assumed that all commodity SATA hard drives were alike and would work reasonably well in any given RAID controller (of sufficient quality).

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• Intel RST accidentally selected wrong drive as system drive -- how to fix?

  - by Sean Killeen

  Question / TL;DR If Intel RST has marked a drive other than my RAID set as the system drive, how can I get it so that the RAID set is now seen as the system drive, and catch it up to my drive now? What Happened NOTE: Some perhaps unwise decisions are ahead. This is as best as I can recall the order of things. I had a 2x1TB RAID1 config. I bought the drives around the same time, and they started to die around the same time. I replaced 1st drive with a 2 TB drive before the other one's SMART errors got more serious. I waited for the RAID to replicate, then replaced the 2nd drive with a manufacturer's replacement. I got a second manufacturer's drive replacement and used it as a spare. so I now I had a 1TB/2TB drive in a RAID1 and another 1TB as a spare. The 1TB drive in the replacement set was bad from the manufacturer. Rather than mess with their refurbished stuff, I bought another 2 TB drive an upped the config to a 2x2TB RAID1 with the other, functioning manufacturer's drive as a spare. I made the mistake of trying to bring the other drive online to clean it out and the signatue clash killed my machine. When the machine rebooted, that drive was marked as the system drive. So, I have a 2x2TB RAID1 that is apparently offline, and 1 spare 1 TB refurbished drive that everything is being run from. Not a great idea. Options I'm considering Bring the 2x2TB drive back online, and then unplug the spare until I can format it in another system. This would involve some data loss, but the more I think about it, I actually think I haven't modified any data that isn't backed up or synced somewhere (go me!) Anything that isn't is likely trivial, enough that I'm willing to take the risk. One downside here is that if the 2 TB doesn't have data on it for some reason, I could be screwed trying to put the other drive back in, no? Try to somehow get the RAID1 updated with the data from the current system drive. Option 3?

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• http://localhost/ always gives 502 unknown host

  - by Nitesh Panchal

  My service for World Wide Web Publishing Service started successfully but whenever I browse to http://localhost/ I always get 502 Unknown host. Also, wampapache is installed side by side but when I stop IIS service and start wampapache from services.msc I get error and when I view it in System event log I get this error: - <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event"> - <System> <Provider Name="Service Control Manager" Guid="{555908d1-a6d7-4695-8e1e-26931d2012f4}" EventSourceName="Service Control Manager" /> <EventID Qualifiers="49152">7024</EventID> <Version>0</Version> <Level>2</Level> <Task>0</Task> <Opcode>0</Opcode> <Keywords>0x8080000000000000</Keywords> <TimeCreated SystemTime="2011-06-12T17:43:28.223498400Z" /> <EventRecordID>346799</EventRecordID> <Correlation /> <Execution ProcessID="456" ThreadID="3936" /> <Channel>System</Channel> <Computer>MACHINENAME</Computer> <Security /> </System> - <EventData> <Data Name="param1">wampapache</Data> <Data Name="param2">%%1</Data> </EventData> </Event> I am fed up of this error and it is driving me nuts. I feel like banging my head against the laptop. I am really serious. Without concentrating on my real application I am trying to solve this issue since 3 hours. I google various threads and few of them said that there could be issue of Reporting Services or Skype. But I have uninstalled Skype and Reporting Services are disabled. What more should I do? I have hosts file present in etc directory and it does have mapping for localhost to 127.0.0.1. What more could I do?

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• Excessive Outbound DNS Traffic

  - by user1318414

  I have a VPS system which I have had for 3 years on one host without issue. Recently, the host started sending an extreme amount of outbound DNS traffic to 31.193.132.138. Due to the way that Linode responded to this, I have recently left Linode and moved to 6sync. The server was completely rebuilt on 6sync with the exception of postfix mail configurations. Currently, the daemons run are as follows: sshd nginx postfix dovecot php5-fpm (localhost only) spampd (localhost only) clamsmtpd (localhost only) Given that the server was 100% rebuilt, I can't find any serious exploits against the above stated daemons, passwords have changed, ssh keys don't even exist on the rebuild yet, etc... it seems extremely unlikely that this is a compromise which is being used to DoS the address. The provided IP is noted online as a known SPAM source. My initial assumption was that it was attempting to use my postfix server as a relay, and the bogus addresses it was providing were domains with that IP registered as their nameservers. I would imagine given my postfix configuration that DNS queries for things such as SPF information would come in with equal or greater amount than the number of attempted spam e-mails sent. Both Linode and 6Sync have said that the outbound traffic is extremely disproportionate. The following is all the information I received from Linode regarding the outbound traffic: 21:28:28.647263 IP 97.107.134.33.32775 > 31.193.132.138.53: 28720 op8+% [b2&3=0x4134] [17267a] [30550q] [28773n] [14673au][|domain] 21:28:28.647264 IP 97.107.134.33 > 31.193.132.138: udp 21:28:28.647264 IP 97.107.134.33.32775 > 31.193.132.138.53: 28720 op8+% [b2&3=0x4134] [17267a] [30550q] [28773n] [14673au][|domain] 21:28:28.647265 IP 97.107.134.33 > 31.193.132.138: udp 21:28:28.647265 IP 97.107.134.33.32775 > 31.193.132.138.53: 28720 op8+% [b2&3=0x4134] [17267a] [30550q] [28773n] [14673au][|domain] 21:28:28.647266 IP 97.107.134.33 > 31.193.132.138: udp 6sync cannot confirm whether or not the recent spike in outbound traffic was to the same IP or over DNS, but I have presumed as such. For now my server is blocking the entire 31.0.0.0/8 subnet to help deter this while I figure it out. Anyone have any idea what is going on?

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• Thinkpad speaker turns mute - Linux Codec issue?

  - by Curlew

  At some point a few days ago the speakers on my Lenovo Thinkpad T410 (Model number: 2537A11) suddenly stopped working randomly. This error happens every time I watch a video or listen to a music file. The sound just abruptly stops. At the moment, I can't produce a single sound no matter what I do. I am using Debian GNU/Linux on this laptop and there doesn't appear to be anything else wrong (the fan is working, no abnormal heat (staying around ~40°C), no other obvious errors or problems). Here is the output of a nice program someone pointed me to: martin@martin:~/Downloads$ sudo python run.py --monitor Using temporary directory: /dev/shm/hda-analyzer You may remove this directory when finished or if you like to download the most recent copy of hda-analyzer tool. Downloading file hda_analyzer.py Downloading file hda_guilib.py Downloading file hda_codec.py Downloading file hda_proc.py Downloading file hda_graph.py Downloading file hda_mixer.py Downloaded all files, executing hda_analyzer.py Watching 1 cards ====================================== Sound is working normally and then it stops and the following lines appear: Diff for codec 0/0 (0x14f15069): --- +++ @@ -164,17 +164,17 @@ Power: setting=D0, actual=D0 Node 0x1f [Pin Complex] wcaps 0x400501: Stereo Pincap 0x00000010: OUT Pin Default 0x901701f0: [Fixed] Speaker at Int N/A Conn = Analog, Color = Unknown DefAssociation = 0xf, Sequence = 0x0 Misc = NO_PRESENCE Pin-ctls: 0x40: OUT - Power: setting=D0, actual=D0 + Power: setting=D3, actual=D3 Connection: 2 0x10* 0x11 Node 0x20 [Pin Complex] wcaps 0x400781: Stereo Digital Pincap 0x00000010: OUT Pin Default 0x40f001f0: [N/A] Other at Ext N/A Conn = Unknown, Color = Unknown DefAssociation = 0xf, Sequence = 0x0 Misc = NO_PRESENCE And now there is also an error in the dmesg output hda-intel: IRQ timing workaround is activated for card #0. Suggest a bigger bdl_pos_adj. I changed the bdl_pos_adj to various numbers (-1, 0, 64, 1024) and either there is no change at all or dmesg reports that the adjustment is too big. I wonder if this bdl_pos_adj is the real reason for the error. Here is my hardware information provided by alsa-info.sh website. Okay, i did some serious testing and even installed Windows and now i officially conclude that this is a hard-ware related issue with my Laptop speakers. Reason: The error occurs in my installed Debian Linux, an Ubuntu Live distribution and Windows XP No error-message appears in all of the OS. The sound just keeps running and i can't hear a thing. I tested different setups, including OSS, ALSA and the pulseaudio server on top If i use my new usb-headphones i can hear sound all the time without any sudden silences. So obviously, although hard to believe, my laptop speakers are not okay (never heard of similar cases). I'll award the bounty to anyone who can point me to good tutorials or the procedure how to exchange my T410 speakers (i still have warranty. The laptop was bought in Germany, but now i am in Denmark). Or to someone who can explain me the output from hda-analyzer (big log above).

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• How to create NTFS partition in Linux to install Windows 7 from USB?

  - by Michal Stefanow

  I messed up with my computer and need help. Generally: install Windows 7 from USB. Problem: "setup was unable to create a new system partition" When first attempt to install Windows 7 failed I tried Linux live USB, installed distro to HDD, and erased all the existing partitions. Current state (fdisk -l): [writing from other computer so no copy and paste] /dev/sda1 305GB Linux /dev/sda2 7GB Extended /dev/sda5 7GB Linux Swam / Solaris To create a new, NTFS partition: fdisk /dev/sda n (for new) p (for primary) 3 (for partintion number) "No free sectors available" All the HDD was formatted couple of minutes before so there is a lot of free space but how to resize a parition? I cannot find an option for resizing in man fdisk. Some people say I should use gparted but my distro doesn't not contain this package. And my distro doesn't support wireless drivers so I have serious problems with downloading stuff. I tried also using cfdisk but any command results in: "cfdisk bad primary partition 1 partition ends in the final partial cylinder" I tried also removing partition 1 and then creating a new one (so there is no "no free sectors"). I'm receiving a warning: "Re-reading the partition table failed with error 16: Device or resource busy. The kernel still uses the old table. The new table will be used at the next reboot." After restating: "grub rescue, no known filesystem" It may indicate that some changes have been made BUT when running Windows 7 installed some another error: "Windows cannot be installed to Disk 0 Partition 1" More detailed: "Windows cannot be installed to this hard disk space. Windows must be installed to a partition formatted as NTFS." So formatting drive using Windows 7 installer BUT this time yet another error: "Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition. See the setup log files for more information" Apparently I cannot access logs (how?) and I am back to drawing board with my live USB (this time showing partition as HPFS/NTFS). Any suggestions how to install Windows 7? Should I reinstall Linux to HDD, erase existing partitions once again, and use Parted rather than gparted (parted is included in the distro). Or maybe should I create another bootable USB such as PartedMagic to painlessly create partitions? I just want to install Windows 7 from USB, my laptop is semi-operational and I am ready to receive some help regarding fdisk and creating NTFS partitions. UPDATE: I did as suggested (removed all the partitions) and tried to install in unallocated space. Tried to create a new partition and format it. Same error: "setup was unable to create a new system partition" Came to the conclusion it may have something to do with TrueCrypt I have recently installed. Right now trying to FIX MBR (as I haven't got possibility to create rescue disc without optical drive)

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• Set up Gmail with Google apps for own domain

  - by erdomester

  I rent a server from a German company. I have remote access to it as well as WHM and CPanel. I decided to use Google's mail servers for obvious reasons. I am not an admin just an average guy trying to set up what needs to be set up. The problem is I am unable to make the necessary settings. I watched Youtube tutorials, followed written ones as well as Google's help, but there is (at least) one serious problem with my domain settings. The domain console alwasy says Your MX records are incorrect When I check dappwall.com in mxtoolbox.com it says Pref Hostname IP Address TTL 10 mail.dappwall.com 46.4.88.247 24 hrs But this is not the host name. I checked WHM and my hostname is server1.dappwall.com. I can confirm it by typing the hostname command in putty. However, if I do an mx lookup at mxtoolbox.com on server1.dappwall.com or mail.dappwall.com I get Lookup failed after 1 name servers timed out or responded non-authoritatively I ran checks on the google apps toolbox on dappwall.com and two problems emerged: 1.No Google mail exchangers found. Relayhost configuration? 10 mail.dappwall.com In Google Apps > Settings for Gmail > Advanced settings it also says that my current MX records for dappwall.com is Priority Points to 10 MAIL.DAPPWALL.COM. So mail.dappwall.com again. I also have access to a robot provided by the company I rent the server from. Here I see this mail at two places but how should I (if it's necessary) modify this? I set Email routing to Automatically Detect Configuration. 2.There SHOULD be a valid SPF record. "v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all" In the DNS Zone Editor I added this spf record: Name TTL Class Type Record dappwall.com. 1440 IN TXT v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all In the cPanel Email Authentication page it says SPF: Status: Enabled Warning: cPanel is unable to verify that this server is an authoritative nameserver for dappwall.com. [?] Your current raw SPF record is : v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all How can I confirm that my server is an authoritative nameserver for dappwall.com? In WHM Service Configuration Mailserver selection Dovecot was set but I disabled it (i don't know if that's ok). What am I missing here? Where is that mail.dappwall.com coming from?

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• Is this iptables NAT exploitable from the external side?

  - by Karma Fusebox

  Could you please have a short look on this simple iptables/NAT-Setup, I believe it has a fairly serious security issue (due to being too simple). On this network there is one internet-connected machine (running Debian Squeeze/2.6.32-5 with iptables 1.4.8) acting as NAT/Gateway for the handful of clients in 192.168/24. The machine has two NICs: eth0: internet-faced eth1: LAN-faced, 192.168.0.1, the default GW for 192.168/24 Routing table is two-NICs-default without manual changes: Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 192.168.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth1 (externalNet) 0.0.0.0 255.255.252.0 U 0 0 0 eth0 0.0.0.0 (externalGW) 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0 The NAT is then enabled only and merely by these actions, there are no more iptables rules: echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward /sbin/iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE # (all iptables policies are ACCEPT) This does the job, but I miss several things here which I believe could be a security issue: there is no restriction about allowed source interfaces or source networks at all there is no firewalling part such as: (set policies to DROP) /sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -o eth1 -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT /sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -i eth1 -o eth0 -j ACCEPT And thus, the questions of my sleepless nights are: Is this NAT-service available to anyone in the world who sets this machine as his default gateway? I'd say yes it is, because there is nothing indicating that an incoming external connection (via eth0) should be handled any different than an incoming internal connection (via eth1) as long as the output-interface is eth0 - and routing-wise that holds true for both external und internal clients that want to access the internet. So if I am right, anyone could use this machine as open proxy by having his packets NATted here. So please tell me if that's right or why it is not. As a "hotfix" I have added a "-s 192.168.0.0/24" option to the NAT-starting command. I would like to know if not using this option was indeed a security issue or just irrelevant thanks to some mechanism I am not aware of. As the policies are all ACCEPT, there is currently no restriction on forwarding eth1 to eth0 (internal to external). But what are the effective implications of currently NOT having the restriction that only RELATED and ESTABLISHED states are forwarded from eth0 to eth1 (external to internal)? In other words, should I rather change the policies to DROP and apply the two "firewalling" rules I mentioned above or is the lack of them not affecting security? Thanks for clarification!

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• What server setup for a small web development company? [closed]

  - by Giordano

  I co-own a company with a friend of mine and we have decided to buy a new server to support our business (our current server is an Asus EEE Box, working great but too limited :) ). I should mention that we are web developers but occasionally we do small-office sys admin. Thus, 99% of time we work on GNU/Linux (mainly Ubuntu) but from time to time we need to setup a Windows environment to assist some customers (e.g. setup a temporary SQL Server 2008). Our requirements: Low budget: we don't want the cheapest solution out there but we can't afford to spend too much. Budget could be ~1000-1500€ (before VAT) Robustness: we would like to setup a RAID array and maybe have an external disk where we can store backups Virtualization: we need to be able to setup few servers for development. The scenario is something like this (~8 appliances running in parallel): Redmine + GIT server Bacula server FTP server 3-4 virtual appliances that could be set up on demand to test our applications or support a customer. The appliances could be: LAMP, Tomcat+PostgreSQL, SQL Server Support: if something breaks down it shouldn't be too difficult to find a replacement. Now, given the main requirements, there are some doubts we need to clarify: Do you suggest to buy a prepackaged solution (for example a customized Dell PowerEdge T110 or T310) or to assemble the server by ourselves (buy the separate components)? What RAID configuration do you suggest? I was thinking of RAID1 (probably cheaper) or RAID5. should we buy a hardware RAID controller or is it ok to use a software RAID (mdadm)? In case, which controller do you suggest? What processor do you suggest (Intel Xeon, i3, i5, i7, AMD)? How much RAM? (I was thinking at least 8GB, ~1GB per appliance) What virtualization software do you recommend? VMWare seems to be the best choice, but what about XEN or KVM? We don't want to buy licenses at the moment so we would like to consider only free options. What OS do you recommend? We know Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo very well (we would like to use Ubuntu Server), however it seems a lot of people goes for CentOS. Thanks in advance if you can help us with this! It's our first "serious" server so many doubts popped up :) Please feel free to add further recommendations if you have some to share ;) Have a nice day

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• Looking For iPhone 4S Alternatives? Here Are 3 Smartphones You Should Consider

  - by Gopinath

  If you going to buy iPhone 4S on a two year contract in USA, Europe or Australia you may not find it expensive. But if you are planning to buy it in any other parts of the world, you will definitely feel the heat of ridiculous iPhone 4S price. In India iPhone 4S costs approximately costs $1000 which is 30% more than the price tag of an unlocked iPhone sold in USA. Personally I love iPhones as there is no match for the user experience provided by Apple as well as the wide range of really meaning applications available for iPhone. But it breaks heart to spend $1000 for a phone and I’m forced to look at alternates available in the market. Here are the four iPhone 4S alternates available in almost all the countries where we can buy iPhone 4S Google Galaxy Nexus The Galaxy Nexus is Google’s own Android smartphone manufactured by Samsung and sold under the brand name of Google Nexus. Galaxy Nexus is the pure Android phone available in the market without any bloat software or custom user interfaces like other Androids available in the market. Galaxy Nexus is also the first Android phone to be shipped with the latest version of Android OS, Ice Cream Sandwich. This phone is the benchmark for the rest of Android phones that are going to enter the market soon. In the words of Google this smartphone is called as “Galaxy Nexus: Simple. Beautiful. Beyond Smart.”.  BGR review summarizes the phone as This is almost comical at this point, but the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is my favourite Android device in the world. Easily replacing the HTC Rezound, the Motorola DROID RAZR, and Samsung Galaxy S II, the Galaxy Nexus champions in a brand new version of Android that pushes itself further than almost any other mobile OS in the industry. Samsung Galaxy S II The one single company that is able to sell more smartphones than Apple is Samsung. Samsung recently displaced Apple from the top smartphone seller spot and occupied it with loads of pride. Samsung’s Galaxy S II fits as one the best alternatives to Apple’s iPhone 4S with it’s beautiful design and remarkable performance. Engadget summarizes Samsung Galaxy S2 review as It’s the best Android smartphone yet, but more importantly, it might well be the best smartphone, period. Of course, a 4.3-inch screen size won’t suit everyone, no matter how stupendously thin the device that carries it may be, and we also can’t say for sure that the Galaxy S II would justify a long-term iOS user foresaking his investment into one ecosystem and making the leap to another. Nonetheless, if you’re asking us what smartphone to buy today, unconstrained by such externalities, the Galaxy S II would be the clear choice. Sometimes it’s just as simple as that. Nokia Lumia 800 Here comes unexpected Windows Phone in to the boxing ring. May be they are not as great as Androids available in the market today, but they are picking up very quickly. Especially the Nokia Lumia 800 seems to be first ever Windows Phone 7 aimed at competing serious with Androids and iPhones available in the market. There are reports that Nokia Lumia 800 is outselling all Androids in UK and few high profile tech blogs are calling it as the king of Windows Phone. Considering this phone while evaluating the alternative of iPhone 4S will not disappoint you. We assure. Droid RAZR Remember the Motorola Driod that swept entire Android market share couple of years ago? The first two version of Motorola Droids were the best in the market and they out performed almost every other Android phone those days. The invasion of Samsung Androids, Motorola lost it charm. With the recent release of Droid RAZR, Motorola seems to be in the right direction to reclaiming the prestige. Droid RAZR is the thinnest smartphone available in the market and it’s beauty is not just skin deep. Here is a review of the phone from Engadget blog the RAZR’s beauty is not only skin deep. The LTE radio, 1.2GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM make sure this sleek number is ready to run with the big boys. It kept pace with, and in some cases clearly outclassed its high-end competition. Despite its deficiencies in the display department and underwhelming battery life, the RAZR looks to be a perfectly viable alternative when considering the similarly-pricey Rezound and Galaxy Nexus Further Reading So we have seen the four alternates of iPhone 4S available in the market and I personally love to buy a Samsung smartphone if I’m don’t have money to afford an iPhone 4S. If you are interested in deep diving into the alternates, here few links that help you do more research Apple iPhone 4S vs. Samsung Galaxy Nexus vs. Motorola Droid RAZR: How Their Specs Compare by Huffington Post Nokia Lumia 800 vs. iPhone 4S vs. Nexus Galaxy: Spec Smackdown by PC World Browser Speed Test: Nokia Lumia 800 vs. iPhone 4S vs. Samsung Galaxy S II – by Gizmodo iPhone 4S vs Samsung Galaxy S II by pocket lint Apple iPhone 4S vs. Samsung Galaxy S II by techie buzz This article titled,Looking For iPhone 4S Alternatives? Here Are 3 Smartphones You Should Consider, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• Surface Review from Canadian Guy Who Didn&rsquo;t Go To Build

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  I didn’t go to Build last week, opted to stay home and go trick-or-treating with my daughters instead. I had many friends that did go however, and I was able to catch up with James Chambers last night to hear about the conference and play with his Surface RT and Nokia 920 WP8 devices. I’ve been using Windows 8 for a while now, so I’m not going to comment on OS features – lots of posts out there on that already. Let me instead comment on the hardware itself. Size and Weight The size of the tablet was awesome. The Windows 8 tablet I’m using to reference this against is the one from Build 2011 (Samsung model) we received as well as my iPad. The Surface RT was taller and slightly heavier than the iPad, but smaller and lighter than the Samsung Win 8 tablet. I still don’t prefer the default wide-screen format, but the Surface RT is much more usable even when holding it by the long edge than the Samsung. Build Quality No issues with the build quality, it seemed very solid. But…y’know, people have been going on about how the Surface RT materials are so much better than the plastic feeling models Samsung and others put out. I didn’t really notice *that* much difference in that regard with the Surface RT. Interesting feature I didn’t expect – the Windows button on the device is touch-sensitive, not a mechanical one. I didn’t try video or anything, so I can’t comment on the media experience. The kickstand is a great feature, and the way the Surface RT connects to the combo case/keyboard touchcover is very slick while being incredibly simple. What About That Touch Cover Keyboard? So first, kudos to Microsoft on the touch cover! This thing was insanely responsive (including the trackpad) and really delivered on the thinness I was expecting. With that said, and remember this is with very limited use, I would probably go with the Type Cover instead of the Touch Cover. The difference is buttons. The Touch Cover doesn’t actually have “buttons” on the keyboard – hence why its a “touch” cover. You tap on a key to type it. James tells me after a while you get used to it and you can type very fast. For me, I just prefer the tactile feeling of a button being pressed/depressed. But still – typing on the touch case worked very well. Would I Buy One? So after playing with it, did I cry out in envy and rage that I wasn’t able to get one of these machines? Did I curse my decision to collect Halloween candy with my kids instead of being at Build getting hardware? Well – no. Even with the keyboard, the Surface RT is not a business laptop replacement device. While Office does come included, you can’t install any other applications outside of Windows Store Apps. This might be limiting depending on what other applications you need to have available on your computer. Surface RT is a great personal computing device, as long as you’re not already invested in a competing ecosystem. I’ve heard people make statements that they’re going to replace all the iPads in their homes with Surface tablets. In my home, that’s not feasible – my wife and daughters have amassed quite a collection of games via iTunes. We also buy all our music via iTunes as well, so even with the XBox streaming music service now available we’re still tied quite tightly to iTunes. So who is the Surface RT for? In my mind, if you’re looking for a solid, compact device that provides basic business functionality (read: email) or if you have someone that needs a very simple to use computer for email, web browsing, etc., then Surface RT is a great option. For me, I’m waiting on the Samsung Ativ Smart PC Pro and am curious to see what changes the Surface Pro will come with.

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

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

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

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• Seriously, It’s Time to Get Your Content Act Together

  - by Mike Stiles

  Branded content, content marketing, social content, brand journalism, we’re seeing those terms more and more. Why? The technology tools are coming together. We should know. We can gather big data, crunch it, listen to the public, moderate, respond, get to know the customer intimately, know what they like, know what they want, we can target, distribute, amplify, measure engagement and reaction, modify strategy and even automate a great deal of all that. An amazing machine, a sleek, smooth-running engine has been built such that all the parts can interact and work together to deliver peak performance and maximum output. But that engine isn’t going anywhere without any gas. Content is the gas. Yes, we curate other people’s content. We can siphon their gas. There’s tech to help with that too. But as for the creation of original, worthwhile content made for a specific audience, our audience, machines can’t do that…at least not yet. Curated content is great. But somebody has to originate the content for it to be curated and shared. And since the need for good, curated content is obviously large and the desire to share is there, it’s a winning proposition for a brand to be a consistent producer of original content. And yet, it feels like content is an issue we’re avoiding. There’s a reluctance to build a massive pipeline if you have no idea what you’re going to run through it. The C-suite often doesn’t know what content is, that it’s different from ads, where to get it, who makes it, how long it should be, what the point of it is if there’s no hard sell of the product, what it costs, how to use it, how to measure it, how to make sure it’s good, or how to make sure it will keep flowing. It could be the reason many brands aren’t pulling the trigger on socially enabling the enterprise. And that’s a shame, because there are a lot of creative, daring, experimental, uniquely talented entertainers and journalists chomping at the bit to execute content for brands. But for many corporate executives, content is “weird,” and the people who make it are even weirder. The content side of the equation is human. It’s art, but art that can be informed by data. The natural inclination is for brands to turn to their agencies for such creative endeavors. But agencies are falling into one of two categories. They’re failing to transition from ads to content. In “Content Era, What’s the Role of Agencies?” Alexander Jutkowitz says agencies were made for one-hit campaigns, not ongoing content. Or, they’re ready and capable but can’t get clients to do the right things. Agencies have to make money, even if it means continuing to do the wrong things because that’s all the client will agree to. So what we wind up with in the pipeline is advertising, marketing-heavy content, content that was obviously created or spearheaded by non-creative executives, random & inconsistent content, copy written for SEO bots, and other completely uninteresting nightmares. Frank Rose, author of “The Art of Immersion,” writes, “Content without story and excitement is noise pollution.” In the old days, you made an ad and inserted it into shows made by people who knew what they were doing. You could bask in that show’s success and leverage their audience. Now, you are tasked with attracting, amassing and holding your own audience. You may just want to make, advertise and sell your widgets. But now there’s a war on for a precious commodity, attention. People are busy. They have filters to keep uninteresting and irrelevant things out. They value their time and expect value back when they give it up. Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, says, "Your customers don't care about you, your products, your services…they care about themselves, their wants and their needs." Is it worth getting serious about content and doing it right? 61% of consumers feel better about a company that delivers custom content (Custom Content Council). Interesting content is one of the top 3 reasons people follow brands on social (Content+). 78% of consumers think organizations that provide custom content want to build good relationships with them (TMG Custom Media). On the B2B side, 80% of business decision makers prefer to get company info in a series of articles vs. an ad. So what’s the hang-up? Cited barriers to content marketing are lack of human resources (42%) and lack of budget (35%). 54% of brands don’t have a single on-site, dedicated content creator. And only 38% of brands have a content marketing strategy. Tech has built the biggest, most incredible stage for brands that’s ever been built. Putting something on that stage is your responsibility. Do a bad show, or no show at all, and you’ll be the beautiful, talented actress that never got discovered. @mikestilesPhoto: Gabriella Fabbri, stock.xchng

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• Form, function and complexity in rule processing

  - by Charles Young

  Tim Bass posted on ‘Orwellian Event Processing’. I was involved in a heated exchange in the comments, and he has more recently published a post entitled ‘Disadvantages of Rule-Based Systems (Part 1)’. Whatever the rights and wrongs of our exchange, it clearly failed to generate any agreement or understanding of our different positions. I don't particularly want to promote further argument of that kind, but I do want to take the opportunity of offering a different perspective on rule-processing and an explanation of my comments. For me, the ‘red rag’ lay in Tim’s claim that “...rules alone are highly inefficient for most classes of (not simple) problems” and a later paragraph that appears to equate the simplicity of form (‘IF-THEN-ELSE’) with simplicity of function.   It is not the first time Tim has expressed these views and not the first time I have responded to his assertions.   Indeed, Tim has a long history of commenting on the subject of complex event processing (CEP) and, less often, rule processing in ‘robust’ terms, often asserting that very many other people’s opinions on this subject are mistaken.   In turn, I am of the opinion that, certainly in terms of rule processing, which is an area in which I have a specific interest and knowledge, he is often mistaken. There is no simple answer to the fundamental question ‘what is a rule?’ We use the word in a very fluid fashion in English. Likewise, the term ‘rule processing’, as used widely in IT, is equally difficult to define simplistically. The best way to envisage the term is as a ‘centre of gravity’ within a wider domain. That domain contains many other ‘centres of gravity’, including CEP, statistical analytics, neural networks, natural language processing and so much more. Whole communities tend to gravitate towards and build themselves around some of these centres. The term 'rule processing' is associated with many different technology types, various software products, different architectural patterns, the functional capability of many applications and services, etc. There is considerable variation amongst these different technologies, techniques and products. Very broadly, a common theme is their ability to manage certain types of processing and problem solving through declarative, or semi-declarative, statements of propositional logic bound to action-based consequences. It is generally important to be able to decouple these statements from other parts of an overall system or architecture so that they can be managed and deployed independently.  As a centre of gravity, ‘rule processing’ is no island. It exists in the context of a domain of discourse that is, itself, highly interconnected and continuous.   Rule processing does not, for example, exist in splendid isolation to natural language processing.   On the contrary, an on-going theme of rule processing is to find better ways to express rules in natural language and map these to executable forms.   Rule processing does not exist in splendid isolation to CEP.   On the contrary, an event processing agent can reasonably be considered as a rule engine (a theme in ‘Power of Events’ by David Luckham).   Rule processing does not live in splendid isolation to statistical approaches such as Bayesian analytics. On the contrary, rule processing and statistical analytics are highly synergistic.   Rule processing does not even live in splendid isolation to neural networks. For example, significant research has centred on finding ways to translate trained nets into explicit rule sets in order to support forms of validation and facilitate insight into the knowledge stored in those nets. What about simplicity of form?   Many rule processing technologies do indeed use a very simple form (‘If...Then’, ‘When...Do’, etc.)   However, it is a fundamental mistake to equate simplicity of form with simplicity of function.   It is absolutely mistaken to suggest that simplicity of form is a barrier to the efficient handling of complexity.   There are countless real-world examples which serve to disprove that notion.   Indeed, simplicity of form is often the key to handling complexity. Does rule processing offer a ‘one size fits all’. No, of course not.   No serious commentator suggests it does.   Does the design and management of large knowledge bases, expressed as rules, become difficult?   Yes, it can do, but that is true of any large knowledge base, regardless of the form in which knowledge is expressed.   The measure of complexity is not a function of rule set size or rule form.  It tends to be correlated more strongly with the size of the ‘problem space’ (‘search space’) which is something quite different.   Analysis of the problem space and the algorithms we use to search through that space are, of course, the very things we use to derive objective measures of the complexity of a given problem. This is basic computer science and common practice. Sailing a Dreadnaught through the sea of information technology and lobbing shells at some of the islands we encounter along the way does no one any good.   Building bridges and causeways between islands so that the inhabitants can collaborate in open discourse offers hope of real progress.

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• How to Troubleshoot TFS Build Server Failure?

  - by Tarun Arora

  Ever found your self in this helpless situation where you think you have tried every possible suggestion on the internet to bring the build server back but it just won’t work. Well some times before hunting around for a solution it is important to understand what the problem is, if the error messages in the build logs don’t seem to help you can always enable tracing on the build server to get more information on what could possibly be the root cause of failure. In this blog post today I’ll be showing you how to enable tracing on, - TFS 2010/11 Server - Build Server - Client Enable Tracing on Team Foundation Server 2010/2011 On the Team Foundation Server navigate to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Application Tier\Web Services, right click web.config and from the context menu select edit.          Search for the <appSettings> node in the config file and set the value of the key ‘traceWriter’ to true.          In the <System.diagnostics> tag set the value of switches from 0 to 4 to set the trace level to maximum to write diagnostics level trace information.          Restart the TFS Application pool to force this change to take effect. The application pool restart will impact any one using the TFS server at present. Note - It is recommended that you do not make any changes to the TFS production application server, this can have serious consequences and can even jeopardize the installation of your server.          Download the Debug view tool from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896647.aspx and set it to capture “Global Events”. Perform any actions in the Team Explorer on the client machine, you should be able to see a series of trace data in the debug view tool now.         Enable Tracing on Build Controller/Agents Log on to the Build Controller/Agent and Navigate to the directory C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Tools         Look for the configuration file ‘TFSBuildServiceHost.exe.config’ if it is not already there create a new text file and rename it to ‘TFSBuildServiceHost.exe.config’         To Enable tracing uncomment the <system.diagnostics> and paste the snippet below if it is not already there. <configuration> <system.diagnostics> <switches> <add name="BuildServiceTraceLevel" value="4"/> </switches> <trace autoflush="true" indentsize="4"> <listeners> <add name="myListener" type="Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TeamFoundationTextWriterTraceListener, Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Common, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" initializeData="c:\logs\TFSBuildServiceHost.exe.log" /> <remove name="Default" /> </listeners> </trace> </system.diagnostics> </configuration> The highlighted path above is where the Log file will be created. If the folder is not already there then create the folder, also, make sure that the account running the build service has access to write to this folder.         Restart the build Controller/Agent service from the administration console (or net stop tfsbuildservicehost & net start tfsbuildservicehost) in order for the new setting to be picked up.         Enable TFS Tracing on the Client Machine On the client machine, shut down Visual Studio, navigate to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common 7\IDE          Search for devenv.exe.config, make a backup copy of the config file and right click the file and from the context menu select edit. If its not already there create this file.          Edit devenv.exe.config by adding the below code snippet before the last </configuration> tag <system.diagnostics> <switches> <add name="TeamFoundationSoapProxy" value="4" /> <add name="VersionControl" value="4" /> </switches> <trace autoflush="true" indentsize="3"> <listeners> <add name="myListener" type="Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TeamFoundationTextWriterTraceListener,Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Common, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" initializeData="c:\tf.log" /> <add name="perfListener" type="Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.PerfTraceListener, Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"/> </listeners> </trace> </system.diagnostics> The highlighted path above is where the Log file will be created. If the folder is not already there then create the folder. Start Visual Studio and after a bit of activity you should be able to see the new log file being created on the folder specified in the config file. Other Resources Below are some Key resource you might like to review. I would highly recommend the documentation, walkthroughs and videos available on MSDN.   Thank you for taking the time out and reading this blog post. If you enjoyed the post, remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Have you come across an interesting one to one with the build server, please share your experience here. Questions/Feedback/Suggestions, etc please leave a comment. Thank You! Share this post : CodeProject

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• Your thoughts on Best Practices for Scientific Computing?

  - by John Smith

  A recent paper by Wilson et al (2014) pointed out 24 Best Practices for scientific programming. It's worth to have a look. I would like to hear opinions about these points from experienced programmers in scientific data analysis. Do you think these advices are helpful and practical? Or are they good only in an ideal world? Wilson G, Aruliah DA, Brown CT, Chue Hong NP, Davis M, Guy RT, Haddock SHD, Huff KD, Mitchell IM, Plumbley MD, Waugh B, White EP, Wilson P (2014) Best Practices for Scientific Computing. PLoS Biol 12:e1001745. http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001745 Box 1. Summary of Best Practices Write programs for people, not computers. (a) A program should not require its readers to hold more than a handful of facts in memory at once. (b) Make names consistent, distinctive, and meaningful. (c) Make code style and formatting consistent. Let the computer do the work. (a) Make the computer repeat tasks. (b) Save recent commands in a file for re-use. (c) Use a build tool to automate workflows. Make incremental changes. (a) Work in small steps with frequent feedback and course correction. (b) Use a version control system. (c) Put everything that has been created manually in version control. Don’t repeat yourself (or others). (a) Every piece of data must have a single authoritative representation in the system. (b) Modularize code rather than copying and pasting. (c) Re-use code instead of rewriting it. Plan for mistakes. (a) Add assertions to programs to check their operation. (b) Use an off-the-shelf unit testing library. (c) Turn bugs into test cases. (d) Use a symbolic debugger. Optimize software only after it works correctly. (a) Use a profiler to identify bottlenecks. (b) Write code in the highest-level language possible. Document design and purpose, not mechanics. (a) Document interfaces and reasons, not implementations. (b) Refactor code in preference to explaining how it works. (c) Embed the documentation for a piece of software in that software. Collaborate. (a) Use pre-merge code reviews. (b) Use pair programming when bringing someone new up to speed and when tackling particularly tricky problems. (c) Use an issue tracking tool. I'm relatively new to serious programming for scientific data analysis. When I tried to write code for pilot analyses of some of my data last year, I encountered tremendous amount of bugs both in my code and data. Bugs and errors had been around me all the time, but this time it was somewhat overwhelming. I managed to crunch the numbers at last, but I thought I couldn't put up with this mess any longer. Some actions must be taken. Without a sophisticated guide like the article above, I started to adopt "defensive style" of programming since then. A book titled "The Art of Readable Code" helped me a lot. I deployed meticulous input validations or assertions for every function, renamed a lot of variables and functions for better readability, and extracted many subroutines as reusable functions. Recently, I introduced Git and SourceTree for version control. At the moment, because my co-workers are much more reluctant about these issues, the collaboration practices (8a,b,c) have not been introduced. Actually, as the authors admitted, because all of these practices take some amount of time and effort to introduce, it may be generally hard to persuade your reluctant collaborators to comply them. I think I'm asking your opinions because I still suffer from many bugs despite all my effort on many of these practices. Bug fix may be, or should be, faster than before, but I couldn't really measure the improvement. Moreover, much of my time has been invested on defence, meaning that I haven't actually done much data analysis (offence) these days. Where is the point I should stop at in terms of productivity? I've already deployed: 1a,b,c, 2a, 3a,b,c, 4b,c, 5a,d, 6a,b, 7a,7b I'm about to have a go at: 5b,c Not yet: 2b,c, 4a, 7c, 8a,b,c (I could not really see the advantage of using GNU make (2c) for my purpose. Could anyone tell me how it helps my work with MATLAB?)

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• Friday Fun: The Search For Wondla

  - by Asian Angel

  The best day of the week is finally here again, so it is time to have some fun while waiting to go home for the weekend. The game we have for you today takes you far into humanity’s future where you journey with Eva Nine in her quest to find other humans. Note: Today’s game comes with a double bonus! First, there is a sequel game that you can move on to once you have completed the first one. Second, there are three wallpapers available in multiple sizes for those who enjoy the characters and artwork presented in the game (see below). The Search For Wondla The object of the game is to find the differences between two similar looking images based on artwork from The Search For Wondla by Tony DiTerlizzi. Are you ready to join Eva Nine in her quest to find other humans in the future? Note: There is a version available for those who would like to play The Search For Wondla on their iPads! The first game has 28 levels of difference finding goodness for you to work through. Each level will list the minimum number of differences that you need to find to progress to the next level. If you need a hint along the way just click on the Shake or Reveal options at the bottom of the game play window. Get a level completed quickly enough and you get bonus points! There will also be differences in the images for individual levels each time you play the game, so have fun! Note: The second game has 12 levels to complete. To give you a good feel for the game we have covered the first six levels here and provided seven clues for each level (you are only required to find a minimum of five). Eva Nine viewing the holographic outdoor projections in the main hub of her living quarters… Eva Nine is in a grumpy mood as Muthr visits her at bedtime… Eva Nine in her secret hideaway visiting old “childhood friends” as she contemplates her recent survival test failure. Eva Nine viewing the entire set of floor plans for the underground sanctuary where she was born and has been growing up. Eva Nine’s escape to the surface as the underground sanctuary is attacked by the bounty hunter creature Besteel. Eva Nine on the surface for the first time in her young life. Will she be successful in her quest? There is only one way to find out! Play The Search For Wondla Part 1 Play The Search For Wondla Part 2 Bonus Content If you have enjoyed this game you can learn more about the book and download the three wallpapers shown here by visiting the link below! Note: The wallpapers come in the following sizes: 1024*768, 1280*800, 1280*1024, 1440*900, iPhone, iPhone4, and iPad (click on the Extras link at the bottom of the page). Visit the Search For Wondla Homepage Do you enjoy playing difference finding games? Then you will definitely want to have a look at another wonderful game that we have covered here: Friday Fun: Isis Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Get the Complete Android Guide eBook for Only 99 Cents [Update: Expired] Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 7: Design and Typography How to Choose What to Back Up on Your Linux Home Server How To Harmonize Your Dual-Boot Setup for Windows and Ubuntu Hang in There Scrat! – Ice Age Wallpaper How Do You Know When You’ve Passed Geek and Headed to Nerd? On The Tip – A Lamborghini Theme for Chrome and Iron What if Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner were Human? [Video] Peaceful Winter Cabin Wallpaper Store Tabs for Later Viewing in Opera with Tab Vault

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• Silverlight Cream for March 28, 2010 -- #823

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Michael Washington, Andy Beaulieu, Bill Reiss, jocelyn, Shawn Wildermuth, Cameron Albert, Shawn Oster, Alex Yakhnin, ondrejsv, Giorgetti Alessandro, Jeff Handley, SilverLaw, deepm, and Kyle McClellan. Shoutouts: If I've listed this before, it's worth another... Introduction to Prototyping with SketchFlow (twelve video series) and on the same page is Creating a Beehive Game with Behaviors in Blend 3 (ten video series) Shawn Oster announced his Slides + Code + Video from ‘An Introduction to Developing Applications for Microsoft Silverlight’ from MIX10 Tim Heuer announced earlier this week: Silverlight Client for Facebook updated for Silverlight 4 RC Nikhil Kothari announced the availability of his MIX10 Talk - Slides and Code András Velvárt backed up his great MIX09 effort with MIX10.Zoomery.com... everything in one DZ effort... thanks András! Andy Beaulieu posted his material for his Code Camp 13 in Waltham: Windows Phone: Silverlight for Casual Games From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight MVVM - The Revolution Has Begun Michael Washington did an awesome tutorial on MVVM and Silverlight creating a simple Silverlight File Manager. The post has a link to the tutorial at CodeProject... great tutorial. Windows Phone 7 + Silverlight Performance Andy Beaulieu has a post up we should all bookmark... getting a handle on the graphics performance of our app on WP7. Great examples, and external links. Space Rocks game step 6: Keyboard handling Bill Reiss has a post up about keyboard input for the WP7 game he's building ... this is Episode 6 ... you're working along with him, right? Panoramic Navigation on Windows Phone 7 with No Code! jocelyn at InnovativeSingapore (I found this by way of Shawn's post), has a Panoramic Navigation template out there for WP7 for all of us to grab... great post about it too. My First WP7 Application Shawn Wildermuth has been playing with WP7 development and has his XBOX Game library app up on the emulator... all with source of course Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Game Cameron Albert built a web-based game called 'Shape Attack' and also did it for WP7 to compare the performance... check it out for yourself, but hey, it's game source for the phone... cool :) Changing the Onscreen Keyboard layout in Silverlight for Windows Phone using InputScope Shawn Oster has a cool post on changing the keyboard on WP7 to go along with what you're expecting the user to type... how cool is that?? Deep Zoom on WP7 Check out the quick work Alex Yakhnin made of putting DeepZoom on WP7... all source included. How to: Create a sketchy Siverlight GroupBox in Blend/SketchFlow ondrejsv has the xaml up to take Tim Greenfield's GroupBox control and insert it into SketchFlow. Silverlight / Castle Windsor – implementing a simple logging framework Giorgetti Alessandro posted about CastleWindsor for Silverlight, and a logging system inherited from LevelFilteredLogger in the absence of Log4Net. DomainDataSource in a ViewModel Jeff Handley responds to a common forum post about using DomainDataSource in a ViewModel. Read his comments on AutoLoad and ElementName Bindins. Digital Jugendstil TextEffect (Art Nouveau) - Silverlight 3 SilverLaw has a cool TagCloud demo and a UserControl he calls Art Nouveau up at the Expression Gallery... not for a business app, I don't think :) Configuring your DomainService for a Windows Phone 7 application deepm discusses RIA Services for WP7 and how to enable a WP7 app to communicate with a DomainService. Writing a Custom Filter or Parameter for DomainDataSource Kyle McClellan by way of Jeff Handley's blog, is discussing how to leverage the custom parameter types you defined in the previous version of RIA Services. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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