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  • DataGrid : Binding with two different classes with lists ? WPF C#

    - by MyRestlessDream
    It is my first question on StackOverflow so I hope I am doing nothing wrong ! Sorry if it is the case ! I need some help because I can not find the solution of my problem. Of course I have searched everywhere on the web but I can not find it (can not post the links that I am using because of my low reputation :( ). Moreover, I am new in C# and WPF (and self-learning). I used to work in C++/Qt so I do not know how everything works in WPF. And sorry for my English, I am French. My problem My basic classes are that an Employee can use a computer. The id of the computer and the date of use are stored into the class Connection. I would like to display the list information in a DataGrid and in RowDetailsTemplate like here : http://i.stack.imgur.com/Bvn1z.png So it will do a binding to the Employee class but also to the Connection class with only the last value of the property (here the last value of the list "Computer ID" and the last value of the list "Connection Date" on this last computer). So it is a loop in the different lists. How can I do it ? Is it too much to do ? :( I succeed to get the Employee informations but I do not know how to bind the list of computer. When I am trying, it shows me "(Collection)" so it does not go inside the list :( Summary of Questions How to display/bind a value from a list AND from a different class in a DataGrid ? How to display all the values of a list into the RowDetailsTemplate ? Under Windows 7 and Visual Studio 2010 Pro version. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ EDIT ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Solution I have used the solution of Stefan Denchev. Here the modification of my class : http://i.stack.imgur.com/Ijx5i.png And the code used: <DataGrid ItemsSource="{Binding}" Name="table"> <DataGrid.Columns> <DataGridTextColumn Header="First Name" Binding="{Binding FirstName}"/> <DataGridTextColumn Header="Last Name" Binding="{Binding LastName}"/> <DataGridTextColumn Header="Gender" Binding="{Binding Gender}"/> <DataGridTextColumn Header="Last computer used" Binding="{Binding LastComputerID}"/> <DataGridTextColumn Header="Last connection date" Binding="{Binding LastDate}"/> </DataGrid.Columns> <DataGrid.RowDetailsTemplate> <DataTemplate> <DataGrid ItemsSource="{Binding ListOfConnection}"> <DataGrid.Columns> <DataGridTextColumn Header="Computer ID" Binding="{Binding ComputerID}"/> <DataGridTemplateColumn> <DataGridTemplateColumn.CellTemplate> <DataTemplate> <ListView ItemsSource="{Binding ListOfDate}"/> </DataTemplate> </DataGridTemplateColumn.CellTemplate> </DataGridTemplateColumn> </DataGrid.Columns> </DataGrid> </DataTemplate> </DataGrid.RowDetailsTemplate> </DataGrid> With in code behind : List<Employee> allEmployees = WorkflowMgr.Instance.AllEmployees; table.DataContext = allEmployees; And it works ! I have tryed to improve my fake example :) Hope it will help to another developer !

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  • Django 0.0.0.0:80; can't access remotely

    - by user349555
    Hello, I'm trying to access my Django server from another computer on the same network. I've set up my server and can view everything correctly usingpython manage.py runserver and going to http://127.0.0.1:8000 but when I try to use python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:80, I can't view my Django page from another computer. The computer hosting the Django server has intranet IP 192.168.1.146. On my secondary computer, I fire up a browser and try to access http://192.168.1.146:80 to no avail. I've also forwarded port 80 (and I've tried 8000 as well) also to no avail :(. HELP!

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  • Kernel Mode Rootkit

    - by Pajarito
    On the other 3 computers in my family, I believe that we have a kernel-mode rootkit for windows. It appears that the same rootkit is on all of them. We think. We changed all the important passwords from my computer, running linux right now. On all of the infected computers is Symantic Endpoint Protection, because it's free from the university where my mom and dad work. In my opinion symantec is a piece of crap, seeing as it didn't even manager to delete the tracking cookies it found when I tried it on my own computer. The Computers and their set-ups: Computer A: Vista Business; symantec antivirus. runs it as admin, no password. IE8. no other security software other than what comes with windows. IE8 security settings the default Computer B: XP Home Premium; symantec antivirus. runs as normal user, no password, admin account with weak password, spybot, uses IE8 with default settings, sometimes Firefox Computer C: XP Home Premium; symantec antivirus. runs as normal user, no password, admin account with weak password, uses IE8 with default settings, no other security programs except what came with windows This is what's happening. Cut and pasted from my dad's forum post. -- When I scanned my laptop (Dell XPS M1330 with Windows Vista Small Business), Symantec Endpoint Protection hangs for a while, perhaps 10 seconds or so, on some of the following files 9129837.exe, hide_evr2.sys, VirusRemoval.vbs, NewVirusRemoval.vbs, dll.dll, alsmt.ext, and _epnt.sys. It does this if a run a scan that I set up to run on a new thumbnail drive and it does this even if the thumbnail is not plugged in. It doesn't seem to do this if I scan only the C: drive. I've check for problems with symantec endpoint protection and also with Microsoft Security Essentials and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware. They found nothing and I can't find anything by searching for hidden files. Next I tried microsoft's rootkitrevealer. It (rootkitrevealer) finds 279660 (or so) discrepancies and the interface is so glitchy after that I can't really figure out what is going on. The screen is squirrely. The rootkitrevealer pulls up many files in the folder \programdata\applicationdata and there are numberous appended \applicationdata on the end of that as well. -- As you can see, what we did was install MSE and MBAM and scan with both of them. Nothing but a tracking cookie. Then I took over and ran rootkitrevealer.exe from MicroSoft from a flash drive. It found a bunch of discrepancies, but only about 20 or so where security related, the rest being files that you just couldn't see from Windows Explorer. I couldn't see whether of not the files list above, the ones that the scan was hanging on, where in the list. The other thing is, I have no idea what to do about the things the scan comes up with. Then we checked the other computers and they do the same thing when you scan with Symantec. The people at the university seen to think that dad might not have a virus, but 2 of the computers slowed down noticably AND IE8 started acting all funny. None of my family is very computer oriented, and 2 of the possible causes for the rootkit are: -My dad bought a new flash drive, which shipped with a data security executable on it -My dad has to download lots of articles for his work Those are the only things that stand out, but it could have been anything. We are currently backing up our data, and I'll post again after trying IceSword 1.22. I just looked at my dad's forum topic, and someone recommended GMER. I'll try that too.

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  • Why do GPUs overheat?

    - by JAD
    About a year ago, I added a 9800GT (1 GB version) and a Corsair CX500 PSU to an HP M8000N computer. A few weeks ago, the HDD overheated and I decided to transfer the GPU & PSU to a new build, which consists of: i3 @ 3.3Ghz Gigabyte H61 Micro ATX Mobo 4GB RAM 500GB WD HDD DVD RW Drive Cooler Master Elite 430 Tower Once I had Win7 up and running, I installed all the essential drivers that came with the Gigabyte Mobo CD. However, whenever I tried installing the Graphics Media Accelerator driver, the computer would crash and enter an endless boot sequence on the next startup. I skipped installing this driver and installed the CD driver for the 9800GT, which by now is a year old. Everything was working fine, WEI rated my GPU at 6.6 graphics & aero performance. However, after updating my Nvidia drivers to the latest, the WEI dropped my rating to 3.3 for Aero, and 4.7 for graphics performance. Just to make sure that everything was ok, I ran Bad Company 2 on medium settings. The first few minutes ran just fine at a smooth framerate, so I dismissed this as Windows being Windows. About 6 hours later, I ran BC2 again. This time I averaged anywhere from 2-5 FPS. I checked the GPU temperature through GPU-Z, and it came back as 120C. The problem with this, is that the computer was on for six hours up to that point. Wouldn't the card have experienced a reactor core meltdown a lot sooner than that? Granted, the computer was "sleeping" some of the time, but still... The next day I took out a temperature gun and ran some tests. I would point the laser at a very specific area on the reverse side of the card (not the fan or "front"), and compare the temp reading with GPU-Z. After leaving the system on idle on idle for a few minutes, I ran BC2 twice. Here are the results: GPU-Z Reading / Temp Gun Reading / Time Null / 22.3°C / Comp is Off 53°C / 33.5°C / 1:49 78°C / 46°C / 1:53 - (First BC2 run; good framerate) 102°C / 64.6°C / 2:01 - (System is again on idle) 113°C / 64.8°C / 2:10 119°C / 71.8°C / 2:17 - (Second BC2 run; poor framerate) I should also mention that I also took a temp recording of another part of the GPU from 2:01-2:17. The temp in this area jumped from 75°C to 82.9°C in that time frame. This pretty much confirms that GPU-Z is reporting the temperature accurately, and the card is overheating. But I'd like to know why; the cars is doing nothing and still the temperature climbs at a steady rate. I thoroughly cleaned the GPU and PSU when I salvaged them from the old HP M8000N computer with a can of compressed air, dust cant be the issue. Similarly, the rest of the computer is brand new. I installed various Nvidia drivers, but no luck. It seems strange to me that a year-old card is suddenly failing on me; aren't they supposed to last at least two years? Could this be a driver issue? Is the motherboard faulty? Could the PSU be overfeeding the card on voltage? Neither case seems likely, as the CPU, RAM and otherwise the rest of the comp has worked flawlessly and has stayed well within respectable temp ranges (the i3 lingers around 50C, the HDD stays at 30C, so does the PSU). How can I pinpoint the issue?

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  • What would cause an .exe to vanish without a trace?

    - by Peter pete
    I have a few computers. One computer, at home, one day suddenly had its pgbouncer.exe vanish. The antivirus didn't have it in its virus chest [avast]. I couldn't find the bgbouncer anywhere. All the other pgbouncer files remained where they used to be, except the exe had vanished. I hadn't uninstalled it, nor had anyone else used the machine. I hadn't installed any new software since the previous time I had used it either. Just now, however, my TV computer was running out of disk space, which was weird because I had python setup to do transcoding and archiving. I logged in and voila! python.exe had vanished !! Once again, Avast.exe didn't have it in its virus chest, and dunno! I do this time, with the TV computer, know exactly the date that python vanished. Sat the 18th my python scripts ran fine. Sat the 19th python was gone. I'm going to do some hunting in the event log to see what happened that day. But if anyone has experienced vanishings before and has a clue what happened, I would like to know. FYI: Both computers (bgbouncer vanish and python vanish) were running Win7 with the RDP hack and both on SSDs and both with Avast. Both computers had all windows updates set to manual(to prevent random stuff changing!) and neither had recently had any windows updates manually applied. FYI2: Tv computer had since the beginning of October dropbox running all the time trying to download two files. Sadly, a temporary download of each of these two files by dropbox resulted in Avast freaking out and virus-chesting them, and then dropbox downloading them partially again, before being dropboxed. Now, these two files were binaries from a program I had personally written and were clean on other machines. Since the python vanishing I have deleted these two binaries from dropbox (using the website) and dropbox exe on the tv computer is now at peace. I don't think this should cause python.exe to vanish though :/ New edit: On the 18/10/2013, at 0742 my python script ended with an error: "file still in use" which was unexpected but I shrugged it off since sometimes media portal doesn't release the recording. But on second thoughts is weird since the show in use would have been finished recording the day before. On the 18/10/2013 at 0807 the windows event log complains that several drivers required for CutePDF, send to onenote 2010, send to onenote 2013, microsoft xps document writer aren't installed. I just checked now and indeed those printers have vanished! New update! I found my python.exe that had been removed. It was still in the C:\Python33\ directory except it had been renamed to a random string charater.tmp (ie, it was made into a temp file) with a creation date of 19/10/2013 at 0600:02 am. Now, the computer normally wakes at 6am to do transcoding. What could have moved my python file into a tmp file?

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  • Vista 64-bit, DISK BOOT FAILURE

    - by weka
    So I have this Acer Aspire AX3200-U3600A with Windows Vista (64-bit). Every night I turn it off and turn it back on in the morning. Around three weeks ago, I did a fresh factory reimage. Good as new. Then around two days ago, when I turned it on, I noticed it was running extremly slow. As in, it would often freeze up while I had multiple applications open when it usually never froze up. So I decided to restart my computer. Big mistake. My computer froze right after I clicked shut-down. I waited a while. Nothing. Waited some minutes. Nope. I decided to shut it down by pressing the power button. Here is where the problems begin. When I turned it back on, I saw the Windows logo and loading bar and then it loaded to black. I turned it off again forcefully by power button and then once more... then I got: AMD Data Change... Update New Data to DMI! then later the screen clears and I get: AHCI Option ROM BIOS Revision: 01.05.92 Date: 02-19-2008 Copyright (c) 2006-2008 Phoenix Technologies, LTD Port 01: Reset Port Error!! Port 02: then the screen clears again but this time, this loads from the bottom: Nvidia Boot Agent 249.0542 (copyright stuff... blah blah) PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable. PXE-M0F: Exiting Nvidia Boot Agent DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER. So I try to go into Safe Mode. Well, first of all it doesn't load as fast. After it loads disk.sys from windows/drivers, it will wait a while (2-3 mins) THEN load. However it loads the Acer eRecovery Management Tool. I have three options: Reset computer to factory default, Restore computer from user's backup, or Exit. However, the top two options are gray and disabled where as the Exit is in blue and definitely clickable. So obviously safe mode is not there... A strong thing to note: In the beginning when all of this started, I did a Boot Windows Normal from pressing f8 and I got to my desktop! It logged me in. I could see the icons on my files. However my desktop was extremely slow as in when I clicked on the Start menu, it would wait a while, then load up the menu with JUST the gradient, no text or icons... so as you can see... it saw my HDD? Also, before anyone says, I have NO USB plugged in. My mouse and keyboard are not USB inputs, I assure you. And this came without a recovery CD AND when I went in BIOS, to change the BOOT ORDER, I did NOT see a CD-ROM option. And when I tried pressing ALT+F10 to get into Acer eRecovery Management, the top two options were disabled as well. But sometimes on start-up, I get: Windows has encountered a problem communicating with a device connected to your computer. This error can be caused by unplugging a removable storage device such as an external USB drive while the device is in use, or by faulty hardware such as a hard drive or CD-ROM drive that is failing. Make sure any removeable storage is properly connected and then restart your computer. If you continue to receive this error message, contact the hardware manufacturer. Status: 0xc00000e9 Info: An unexpected I/O error has occured. Then I tried Last Known Good Configuration Settings, that gives me a BSOD. What should I do/

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  • WNDR3700 Router + Cisco SG200-08 + LACP + Dual Uplink

    - by kobaltz
    Background I have a storage server that has several virtual machine images stored on them. I would store them locally, but I have limited space on my desktop (using SSD storage). I would like to increase the bandwidth between the desktop and the storage server by using two NICs on each computer. My original configuration allowed about 55MBps between the desktop and storage server. This storage server also has several TBs of documents, pictures, movies, vms, and ISO/programs. The storage server has 8 1.5TB hard drives in a RAID 10 configuration with a hardware RAID controller. The benchmarks on the RAID 10 are about 300MBps. Configuration In short, I am trying to bridge my switch and router. The switch is a small 8 port Cisco smart switch that supports 802.3ad LACP. I have two computers plugged into the switch, each with 2 Intel Gigabit NICs. The first computer is a Windows 7 machine that has the Intel ANS software installed. I have LACP configured with the computer and now show 3 NICs (2 Physical + 1 TEAM Virtual @ 2Gbps). It looks like this computer is configured correctly. I trunked the two ports that this computer is plugged into with the switch's web interface. The second computer is a homebrew storage box running debian. I also have the bonding enabled on this machine and the switch configured with LACP. Without having the WNDR3700 router in the picture yet, I am able to communicate between the Windows 7 machine and the debian box since they both have static IP addresses. With LACP enabled on both machines I am getting about 106-108MBps speeds. Issue I plug in a network cable from the switch into the router and enable DHCP on the desktop. I saw no need to have a static address on the desktop. My transfer rates are still from 106MBps-108MBps. While this is still a boost, I am trying to figure out how to get about 140-180MBps. I am thinking that I need to increase the bandwidth from the router to the switch. My switch allows 4 groups for port trunking. I plugged in a second network cable from the router to the switch. My question is, what is the proper way to fix this issue. Should I port trunk the two ports that are going from the switch to the router? Keep in mind that the router is a WNDR3700 and is unsure whether or not it supports LACP. I do have OpenWRT installed on the router, but it still wasn't clear in any documentation that I found if it supported 802.3ad LACP standards. I am also wondering if there needs to be anything changed within the Cisco settings. [Edit] - Corrected some numbers, wasn't really paying attention. It looks like the speeds though at least two NICs are bonded with LACP is still reaching the max bandwidth of one port. Is there a way to configure the switch so that I can increase this bandwidth? Also, on the storage server, I had a couple of extra NICs laying around and threw them on there as well. Another EDIT and More Findings I happened to look at the traffic of each individual NIC and think that I see the problem. I tested with a simple transfer for a 4GB file. I noticed that only one of the NICs was taking the load of the traffic. I then copied the file back to the Storage Server and noticed that the other NIC was sending out the traffic. I have 802.3ad LACP enabled on the two NICs and I see that it gets enabled dynamically on the switch's interface. Should I be using Static Link Aggregation?

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  • Wine 1.6.2-Trying to switch to 32-bit Wineprefix from 64-bit Wine (Trusty 14.04). Can anyone help me out?

    - by AlternateSteve90
    Hello fellow Ubuntu users, I'm having a little trouble with Wine 1.6.1 and I was wondering if someone could help me out. I recently downloaded some 32-bit games that I'd wanted to try(BeamNG Drive and Bugbear's Next Car Game demo) and I had run into some trouble trying to get either of these games to run. So I came across a couple pieces of advice on the 'Net, one here on the Ubuntu community site and the other at BeamNG's forums, on how to create a 32-bit wineprefix on a 64-bit setup. I managed to be able to create the wine32 folder, but now I'm having trouble making it my default Wine setup. Anybody have any idea how I can do that? I'll post the URLs for said advice, btw: http://www.beamng.com/threads/1788-Installing-DRIVE-under-Linux-via-Wine How do I create a 32-bit WINE prefix? Here's what I've tried so far in the Terminal: steven@steven-HP-Pavilion-17-Notebook-PC:~$ WINEPREFIX='/home/user/wine32' WINEARCH='win32' wine 'wineboot' wine: chdir to /home/user/wine32 : No such file or directory steven@steven-HP-Pavilion-17-Notebook-PC:~$ WINEPREFIX='/home/steven/wine32' WINEARCH='win32' wine 'wineboot' wine: created the configuration directory '/home/steven/wine32' fixme:storage:create_storagefile Storage share mode not implemented. err:mscoree:LoadLibraryShim error reading registry key for installroot err:mscoree:LoadLibraryShim error reading registry key for installroot err:mscoree:LoadLibraryShim error reading registry key for installroot err:mscoree:LoadLibraryShim error reading registry key for installroot fixme:storage:create_storagefile Storage share mode not implemented. fixme:iphlpapi:NotifyAddrChange (Handle 0x10ee890, overlapped 0x10ee89c): stub wine: configuration in '/home/steven/wine32' has been updated. steven@steven-HP-Pavilion-17-Notebook-PC:~$ WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.wine32 wine dxsetup.exe wine: created the configuration directory '/home/steven/.wine32' fixme:storage:create_storagefile Storage share mode not implemented. err:mscoree:LoadLibraryShim error reading registry key for installroot err:mscoree:LoadLibraryShim error reading registry key for installroot err:mscoree:LoadLibraryShim error reading registry key for installroot err:mscoree:LoadLibraryShim error reading registry key for installroot fixme:storage:create_storagefile Storage share mode not implemented. fixme:iphlpapi:NotifyAddrChange (Handle 0x103e2b8, overlapped 0x103e2d0): stub fixme:storage:create_storagefile Storage share mode not implemented. fixme:iphlpapi:NotifyAddrChange (Handle 0x10fe890, overlapped 0x10fe89c): stub wine: configuration in '/home/steven/.wine32' has been updated. wine: cannot find L"C:\windows\system32\dxsetup.exe" steven@steven-HP-Pavilion-17-Notebook-PC:~$ WINEARCH=win64 winecfgsteven@steven-HP-Pavilion-17-Notebook-PC:~$ WINEPREFIX='/home/steven/wine32' WINEARCH='win32' wine 'wineboot' steven@steven-HP-Pavilion-17-Notebook-PC:~$ WINEARCH=win32 winecfg wine: WINEARCH set to win32 but '/home/steven/.wine' is a 64-bit installation. steven@steven-HP-Pavilion-17-Notebook-PC:~$ WINEPREFIX='/home/steven/wine32' WINEARCH='win32' wine 'wineboot' steven@steven-HP-Pavilion-17-Notebook-PC:~$ WINEPREFIX='/home/user/wine32' WINEARCH='win32' wine 'wineboot' wine: chdir to /home/user/wine32 : No such file or directory steven@steven-HP-Pavilion-17-Notebook-PC:~$ WINEPREFIX='/home/steven/wine32' WINEARCH='win32' wine 'wineboot' steven@steven-HP-Pavilion-17-Notebook-PC:~$ WINEPREFIX=/home/steven/wine32 WINEARCH='win32' wine 'wineboot' steven@steven-HP-Pavilion-17-Notebook-PC:~$ WINEPREFIX=/home/steven/wine32 WINEARCH=win32 wine wineboot steven@steven-HP-Pavilion-17-Notebook-PC:~$ So, yeah. TBH, though, I'm far from an expert and perhaps I've been going about it all the wrong way. In the meantime, I'll try to keep looking for solutions on my own, but if anybody can help me solve this dilemma, especially if anyone happens to own any of these two games in particular, I'd appreciate it. :)

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  • Social Media Talk: Facebook, Really?? How Has It Become This Popular??

    - by david.talamelli
    If you have read some of my previous posts over the past few years either here or on my personal blog David's Journal on Tap you will know I am a Social Media enthusiast. I use various social media sites everday in both my work and personal life. I was surprised to read today on Mashable.com that Facebook now Commands 41% of Social Media Trafic. When I think of the Social Media sites I use most, the sites that jump into my mind first are LinkedIn, Blogging and Twitter. I do use Facebook in both work and in my personal life but on the list of sites I use it probably ranks closer to the bottom of the list rather than the top. I know Facebook is engrained in everything these days - but really I am not a huge Facebook fan - and I am finding that over the past 3-6 months my interest in Facebook is going down rather than up. From a work perspective - SM sites let me connect with candidates and communities and they help me talk about the things that I am doing here at Oracle. From a personal perspective SM sites let me keep in touch with friends and family both here and overseas in a really simple and easy way. Sites like LinkedIn give me a great way to proactively talk to both active and passive candidates. Twitter is fantastic to keep in touch with industry trends and keep up to date on the latest trending topics as well as follow conversations about whatever keyword you want to follow. Blogging lets me share my thoughts and ideas with others and while FB does have some great benefits I don't think the benefits outweigh the negatives of using FB. I use TweetDeck to keep track of my twitter feeds, the latest LinkedIn updates and Facebook updates. Tweetdeck is a great tool as it consolidates these 3 SM sites for me and I can quickly scan to see the latest news on any of them. From what I have seen from Facebook it looks like 70%-80% of people are using FB to grow their farm on farmville, start a mafia war on mafiawars or read their horoscope, check their love percentage, etc...... In between all these "updates" every now and again you do see a real update from someone who actually has something to say but there is so much "white noise" on FB from all the games and apps that is hard to see the real messages from all the 'games' information. I don't like having to scroll through what seems likes pages of farmville updates only to get one real piece of information. For me this is where FB's value really drops off. While I use SM everyday I try to use SM effectively. Sifting through so much noise is not effective and really I am not all that interested in Farmville, MafiaWars or any similar game/app. But what about Groups and Facebook Ads?? Groups are ok, but I am not sure I would call them SM game changers - yes there is a group for everything out there, but a group whether it is on FB or not is only as good as the community that supports and participates in it. Many of the Groups on FB (and elsewhere) are set up and never used or promoted by the moderator. I have heard that FB ads do have an impact, and I have not really looked at them - the question of cost jumps and return on investment comes to my mind though. FB does have some benefits, it is a great way to keep in touch with people and a great way to talk to others. I think it would have been interesting to see a different statistic measuring how effective that 41% of Social Media Traffic via FB really is or is it just a case of more people jumping online to play games. To me FB does not equal SM effectiveness, at the moment it is a tool that I sometimes need to use as opposed to want to use. This article was originally posted on David Talamelli's Blog - David's Journal on Tap

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  • Is there an IDE that can simplify the process of creating a game matchmaking website?

    - by Scott
    Yes, I'm an old guy. And I'm well versed in "C" and have written several games which I have been selling on the web for a number of years. And now, I would like to adapt one of my games to be "online". Sounds simple. I'm sure I can use the thousands of lines of "C" code that I've already written. Right? So my initial investigation begins. First, I think I'll need a server program that lives on a dedicated server (or a VPS probably) that talks to a bunch of client applications that live on individual devices around the world. I can certainly handle that! (I think to myself). I'll break up my existing game into two pieces, a client piece that is just the game displays and buttons, and a server piece that does everything else. Piece of cake, right? But that means that the "server piece" must be executed on a remote machine somewhere and run 24/7. Can I do that? [apparently, that question is so basic, so uneducated, and so lame, that nobody has ever posed it before. Because hours of Googling does not yield an answer. Fine. I'll assume I can do that and move on.] I'll need a "game room", which to me means a website where you log in and then go to a lobby of some kind where you can setup your preferences, see if any of your friends are connected, and create or join games. Should be easy, but it's not. No way. Can I do all this with my local website builder? (which happens to be 90 Second Website Builder, a nice product, btw). It turns out, I can not. I can start with that, but must modify each page, so I can interact with my sql database. So I begin making each page a "PHP" page and dynamically modifying the HTML code with PHP code. I'm already starting to get a headache. Because the resulting web pages looked terrible, I began looking at using JQuery. I want to user a JQuery dialog on my website to display a list of friends and allow the user to select one to invite to the game. [google search for "how to populate a JQuery dialog from a sql database" yields nothing but more confusion.] Javascript? Java? HTML? XML? HTML5? PHP? JQuery? Flash? Sockets? Forms? CSS? Learning about each one of these, and how they interact with each other and/or depend on each other is too much for my feeble old brain. Can anyone simplify this process for me? Is there an IDE that will help me do all this without having to go back to college for a few years? Thanks, Scott

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  • AccelerometerInput XNA GameComponent

    - by Michael B. McLaughlin
    Bad accelerometer controls kill otherwise good games. I decided to try to do something about it. So I create an XNA GameComponent called AccelerometerInput. It’s still a beta project but you are welcome to try it, use it, modify it, etc. I’m releasing under the terms of the Microsoft Public License. Important info: First, it only supports tilt-style controls currently. I have not implemented motion-style controls yet (and make no promises as to when I might find time to do so). Second, I commented it heavily so that you can (hopefully) understand what it is doing. Please read the comments and examine the sample game for a usage overview. There are configurable parameters which I encourage you to make use of (both by modifying the default values where your testing shows it to be appropriate and also by implementing a calibration mechanism in your game that lets the user adjust those configurable values based on his or her own circumstances). Third, even with this code, accelerometer controls are still a fairly advanced topic area; you will likely find nothing but disappointment if you simply plunk this into some project without testing it on a device (or preferably on several devices). Fourth, if you do try this code and find that something doesn’t work as expected on your phone, please let me know as I want to improve it and can only do so with your help. Let me know what phone model it is, what you tried doing, what you expected, and what result you had instead. I may or may not be able to incorporate it into the code, but I can let others know at the very least so that they can make appropriate modifications to their games (I’m hopeful that all phones are reasonably similar in their workings and require, at most, a slight calibration change, but I simply don’t know). Fifth, although I’ll do my best to answer any questions you may have about it, I’m very busy with a number of things currently so it might take a little while. Please look through the code and examine the comments and sample game first before asking any questions. It’s likely that the answer is in there. If not, or if you just aren’t really sure, ask away. Sixth, there are differences between a portrait-mode game and a landscape mode game (specifically in the appropriate default tilt adjustment for toward the user/away from the user calculations). This is documented and the default is set for landscape. If you use this for a portrait game, make the appropriate change (look for the TODO: comment in AccelerometerInput.cs). Seventh, no provision whatsoever is made for disabling screen locking. It is up to you to implement that and to take appropriate measures to detect when the user has been idle for too long and timeout the game. That code is very game-specific. If you have questions about such matters, consult the relevant MSDN documentation and, if you still have questions, visit the App Hub forums and ask there. I answer questions there a lot and so I may even stumble across your question and answer it. But that’s a much better forum than the comments section here for questions of that sort so I would appreciate it if you asked idle detection-related questions there (or on some other suitable site that you may be more familiar and comfortable with). Eighth, this is an XNA GameComponent intended for XNA-based games on WP7. A sufficiently knowledgeable Silverlight developer should have no problem adapting it for use in a Silverlight game or app. I may create a Silverlight version at some point myself. Right now I do not have the time, unfortunately. Ok. Without further ado: http://www.bobtacoindustries.com/developers/utils/AccelerometerInput.zip Have a great St. Patrick’s Day!

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  • Elo system behaves oddly in program I've created

    - by adc
    Alright, so I'm looking to build a small program (C# and XAML) that, essentially, does this: Generate array of players. Each player has a current rating and a true rating. I set current rating to 1200 as a starting point right now; I've also tried setting it to true rating and the average of the two. True rating is what their skill level actually is. Their true rating is calculated based on percentages from the current League of Legends rating system; generating an array of 970 thousand generates results very similar to the data from here: (removed due to URL limit - but trust me, the results are very similar). This array is of length specified by the user. If need be, sort the array from smallest to largest. Play X number of games, again specified by the user. This is done by taking the array of players (which is sorted by Current Rating after being created) and running through it in groups of 10. The first five are on team one, the second five are on team two. It then takes the True Rating of these players and calculates an expected chance to win using the Elo system. It generates a random double and compares it to the expected chance to win; if the number is lower, team one wins - otherwise team two wins. I then update the rating of the players via, again, the Elo system - giving the winning team a score of 1 and the losing team a score of 0. I use a K value of 36 (but have tried 12, 24, and even higher ones) and an F value of 400. After going through the entire loop of players (which I have conveniently forced to be a multiple of ten), it sorts the array - again via current rating. This, if my understanding of the Elo system is correct, runs properly. However, it doesn't seem to work. I have a running test telling me how many players of the full array are within 100 current rating of their true rating. I would expect some portion of the population to be outside this range (as probability is not always going to go in their favor), but a full 40-45% of the population is outside of this range. I also have it outputting the maximum difference between true and current rating - and I have never seen this drop below 500! It hovers between 550-600, occasionally going over or under. I'm at a loss as to what to change - I've fiddled with the K and F values, where I start all the players, etc. but nothing changes the fact that eventually a good 40% of the population is outside the range. And it isn't that I have it playing too few games - it's now run through over 60 thousand games and the problem never disappears or really fluctuates. The full C# code, including everything except the XAML file and the Player class (pastebin is being very slow and I can only post two links, so I can't link to the XAML file): http://pastebin.com/rFcZRL84 The Player class: http://pastebin.com/4cJTdTRu I guess my question is did I do anything wrong? Is there a problem with the way I implemented the system, or is it just that Riot uses a significantly modified Elo system? I don't think it's the latter, as that still wouldn't explain the massive true and current rating differences to me, however.

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  • 11.10 desktop alerts (volume change and terminal bell) stopped working but all other audio still works

    - by FlabbergastedPickle
    All, My sound works just fine in 11.10 64-bit install on HP dm1-4050 Sandy Bridge notebook (e.g. audio works in Banshee, flash, games, browser, Thunderbird email notification, etc.), but the core desktop notifications (e.g. pressing a tab in a terminal where there is more than one option should trigger a terminal bell, or changing volume using volume keys should be accompanied with the supporting "quack" that the volume app makes) do not work. I've intentionally disabled login sound as explained here on ask ubuntu but even enabling it back makes no difference. These notifications did work before just fine and I am not sure when did the actually stop working but it must've been fairly recently. Only things I did were trying to install some ppa edge xorg drivers for my intel card (a separate issue) but also reverted them all with ppa-purge once I discovered they did not improve anything. Other thing I did was check volume settings with alsamixer and did alsactl store for the soundcard after I did some experimenting with volume settings for PCM (on my laptop PCM at 100% crackles so I had to lower it and make pulseaudio ignore its setting as per ask ubuntu's page). That said, neither of these should have any bearing on the said notifications since the volume is up and they clearly work everywhere else but the core desktop events. The system ready drum sound when Ubuntu boots and user reaches the login screen also does not work. The guest login behaves exactly same as mine. Audio works (including the login sound since I've not disabled it for the guest account), but no quacks when changing the volume or terminal bell sounds... I've tried copying ubuntu sounds to /usr/share/sounds/ as suggested on ask ubuntu and that did not work. I also tried using dconf-editor to check sound theme settings and tried both freedesktop (which is what it was set to) and ubuntu, as suggested on ask ubuntu. This did not work either. I tried purging the ~/.pulse folder and the /tmp/*pulse* entries, rebooting and restarting pulseaudio with -D flag. While audio came back on and behaved just fine in all aspects (e.g. one can adjust volume levels, play music, games, in-browser sound stuff, and other app alerts) except for the system ready drum sound (at the login screen), and any system event (terminal bell and volume change quack sound). It is interesting that the quack sound works inside system settings-sound when adjusting levels there, but it does not when volume is changed via top bar's volume settings... I do recall that at one point yesterday when I was restarting pulseaudio the quacks that accompany volume change did start working but I have no idea what caused that. This was also when I first realized those alerts were not working. After rebooting it was again gone. I did compile my own 3.0.14-rt31 kernel a little while ago as instructed on one of the wiki's for the 11.10 rt kernel. Everything works as before except for the said sound alerts. I am not sure if this began happening since I started using the rt kernel though and yesterday's momentary ability to hear those quacks while changing the volume make me believe that the kernel is not one responsible for this problem. One more thing I can think of is that I used alsoft-conf tool to configure buffering on the OpenAL (due to TA Spring's choppy audio) and changed in there default audio device to ALSA. I also tried reverting it to Pulseaudio as the only allowed output but the bottom part of the Backend tab always reverts to ALSA even when I select Pulseaudio. The pulseaudio does remain as the only active choice on top. This, however, once again does not make any sense in terms of preventing desktop audio alerts when everything else including OpenAL games plays sound just fine... So, there you have it, as verbose as I could make it :-). I tried all I could find on this issue and had no luck so far... Any ideas?

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  • Software and/(x)or Hardware Projects for Pre-School Kids

    - by haylem
    I offered to participate at my kid's pre-school for various activities (yes, I'm crazy like that), and one of them is to help them discover extra-curricular (big word for a pre-school, but by lack of a better one... :)) hobbies, which may or may not relate to a professional activity. At first I thought that it wouldn't be really easy to have pre-schoolers relate to programming or the internal workings of a computer system in general (and I'm more used to teaching middle-school to university-level students), but then I thought there must be a way. So I'm trying to figure out ways to introduce very young kids (3yo) to computer systems in a fun and preferably educational way. Of course, I don't expect them to start smashing the stack for fun and profit right away (or at least not voluntarily, though I could use the occasion for some toddler tests...), but I'm confident there must be ways to get them interested in both: using the systems, becoming curious about understanding what they do, interacting with the systems to modify them. I guess this setting is not really relevant after all, it's pretty much the same as if you were aiming to achieve the same for your own kids at home. Ideas Considering we're talking 3yo pre-schoolers here, and that at this age some kids are already quite confident using a mouse (some even a keyboard, if not for typing, at least to press some buttons they've come to associate with actions) while others have not yet had any interaction with computers of any kind, it needs to be: rather basic, demonstrated and played with in less then 5 or 10 minutes, doable in in groups or alone, scalable and extendable in complexity to accommodate their varying abilities. The obvious options are: basic smallish games to play with, interactive systems like LOGO, Kojo, Squeak and clones (possibly even simpler than that), or thngs like Lego Systems. I guess it can be a thing to reflect on both at the software and the hardware levels: it could be done with a desktop or laptop machine, a tablet, a smartphone (or a crap-phone, for that matter, as long as you can modify it), or even get down to building something from scratch (Raspberry Pi and Arduino being popular options at the moment). I can probably be in the form of games, funny visualizations (which are pretty much games) w/ Prototype, virtual worlds to explore. I also thought on the moment (and I hope this won't offend anyone) that some approaches to teaching pets could work (reward systems, haptic feedback and such things could quickly point a kid in the right direction to understanding how things work, in a similar fashion - I'm not suggesting to shock the kids!). Hmm, Is There an Actual Question in There? What type of systems do you think might be a good fit, both in terms of hardware and software? Do you have seen such systems, or have anything in mind to work on? Are you aware of some research in this domain, with tangible results? Any input is welcome. It's not that I don't see options: there are tons, but I have a harder time pinpointing a more concrete and definite type of project/activity, so I figure some have valuable ideas or existing ones. Note: I am not advocating that every kid should learn to program, be interested in computer systems, or that all of them in a class would even care enough to follow such an introduction with more than a blank stare. I don't buy into the "everybody would benefit from learning to program" thing. Wouldn't hurt, but not necessary in any way. But if I can walk out of there with a few of them having smiled using the thing (or heck, cried because others took them away from them), that'd be good enough. Related Questions I've seen and that seem to complement what I'm looking for, but not exactly for the same age groups or with the same goals: Teaching Programming to Kids Recommendations for teaching kids math concepts & skills for programming?

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  • Multiple Out-of-Browser Applications in One Application

    - by Otaku
    I'm looking at a scenario where I need to create a single "master" Silverlight application and then add "child" applications for an out-of-browser Silverlight application. The scenario is something like this. A user will visit a gameboard web site and choose a game to play. Let's call it Checkers. He likes it, so then he installs the out-of-browser app to his desktop. He then finds Chess, and installs that too. For both games, while played on the site, he has stats (games played, win/loss records, etc.). For each game on the site, he navigates to a different page. But now he wants to play offline and view his stats and other cross-games information. He wants to have a single app to launch to play either game. From his single out-of-browser app, he sees that Go is also available, and he places a checkmark against it to download on his next connection. Does anyone have any experience at developing multiple out-of-browser Silverlight apps that reside within a single master app? What considerations need to be had for this type of design? How would this work in terms of install experience from different web pages?

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  • Accepting more simultaneous keyboard inputs

    - by unknownthreat
    Sometimes, a normal computer keyboard will only accept user's inputs up to a certain key simultaneously. I got a logitech keyboard that can accept up to 3-4 key presses at the same time. The computer does not accept any more input if you press more than 4 keys for this keyboard. And it also depends on certain areas of your keyboard as well. Some locations allow more key to be pressed (like the arrow keys), while some locations permit you to press only 1-2 keys. This also differs from keyboard to keyboard as well. Some older keyboards only accept up 1-2 keys. This isn't problematic with usual office work, but when it comes to gaming. For instance, imagine a platform game, where you have to jump, attack, and control direction at the same time. This implies several key presses and some keyboards cannot accept such simultaneous input. However, I've tried this on several games and the amount of possible keyboard inputs seem to be also different. Therefore, we have two issues: Keyboards have different amount of simultaneous inputs. Some games can accept more keyboard inputs than other games. At first, I thought this is hardware only problem, but why do some programs behave differently? Why some programs can accept more keyboard inputs than other programs? So how can we write our programs to accept more keyboard inputs?

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  • Developing a 2D Game for Windows Phone 8

    - by Vaccano
    I would like to develop a 2D game for Windows Phone 8. I am a professional Application Developer by day and this seems like a fun hobby. But I have been disapointed trying to get going. It seems that 2D games (far and away the majority of games) do not have any real support. It seems the Windows Phone makers did not include support for Direct2D. So unless you are planning to make a fully 3D app, you are out of luck. So, if you just wanted to make a nice 2D app, these are your choices: Write your game using Xaml and C# (Performance Issues?) Write your game using Direct3D and but only draw on one plane. Use the DirectX Took Kit found on codeplex. It allows you to use the dying XNA framework's API for development. Number 3 seems the best for my game. But I hate to waste my time learning the XNA api when Microsoft has clearly stated that it is not going to be supported going forward. Number 2 would work, but 3D development is really hard. I would rather not have to do all that to get the 2D effect. (Assuming Direct2D is easier. I have yet to look into that.) Number 1 seems the easiest, but I worry that my app will not run well if it is based off of xaml rendering rather than DirectX. What is the suggested method from Microsoft? And who decided that 2D games were going to get shortchanged?

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  • Javascript storing properties and functions in variables

    - by richard
    Hello, I'm having trouble with my programming style and I hope to get some feedback here. I recently bought Javascript: The Good Parts and while I find this a big help, I'm still having trouble designing this application. Especially when it comes to writing function and methods. Example: I have a function that let's the user switches games in my app. This function updates game-specific information in the current view. var games = { active: Titanium.App.Properties.getString('active_game'), gameswitcher_positions: { 'Game 1': 0, 'Game 2': 1, 'Game 3': 2, 'Game 4': 3, 'Game 5': 4 }, change: function(game) { if (active_game !== game) { gameswitcher.children[this.gameswitcher_positions[this.active]].backgroundImage = gameswitcher.children[this.gameswitcher_positions[this.active]].backgroundImage.replace('_selected', ''); gameswitcher.children[this.gameswitcher_positions[game]].backgroundImage = gameswitcher.children[this.gameswitcher_positions[game]].backgroundImage.replace('.png', '_selected.png'); events.update(game); this.active = game; } }, init: function() { gameswitcher.children[this.gameswitcher_positions[this.active]].backgroundImage = gameswitcher.children[this.gameswitcher_positions[this.active]].backgroundImage.replace('.png', '_selected.png'); events.update(this.active); } }; gameswitcher is a container view which contains buttons to switch games. I am not satisfied with this approach but I cannot think of a better one. Should I place the gameswitcher_positions outside of the variable in a seperate variable instead of as a property? And what about the active game? Please give me feedback, what am I doing wrong?

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  • PHP, MySQL, Memcache / Ajax Scaling Problem

    - by Jeff Andersen
    I'm building a ajax tic tac toe game in PHP/MySQL. The premise of the game is to be able to share a url like mygame.com/123 with your friends and you play multiple simultaneous games. The way I have it set up is that a file (reload.php) is being called every 3 seconds while the user is viewing their game board space. This reload.php builds their game boards and the output (html) replaces their current game board (thus showing games in which it is their turn) Initially I built it entirely with PHP/MySQL and had zero caching. A friend gave me a suggestion to try doing all of the temporary/quick read information through memcache (storing moves, and ID matchups) and then building the game boards from this information. My issue is that, both solutions encounter a wall when there is roughly 30-40 active users with roughly 40-50 games running. It is running on a VPS from VPS.net with 2 nodes. (Dedicated CPU: 1.2GHz, RAM: 752MB) Each call to reload.php peforms 3 selects and 2 insert queries. The size of the data being pulled is negligible. The same actions happen on index.php to build the boards for the initial visit. Now that the backstory is done, my question is: Would there be a bottleneck in that each user is polling the same file every 3 seconds to rebuild their gameboards, and that all users are sitting on index.php from which the AJAX calls are made within the HTML. If so, is it possible to spread the users' calls out over a set of files designated to building the game boards (eg. reload1.php 2, 3 etc) and direct users to the appropriate file. Would this relieve the pressure? A long winded explanation; however, I didn't have anywhere else to ask. Thanks very much for any insight.

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  • Imperative Programming v/s Declarative Programming v/s Functional Programming

    - by kaleidoscope
    Imperative Programming :: Imperative programming is a programming paradigm that describes computation in terms of statements that change a program state. In much the same way as the imperative mood in natural languages expresses commands to take action, imperative programs define sequences of commands for the computer to perform. The focus is on what steps the computer should take rather than what the computer will do (ex. C, C++, Java). Declarative Programming :: Declarative programming is a programming paradigm that expresses the logic of a computation without describing its control flow. It attempts to minimize or eliminate side effects by describing what the program should accomplish, rather than describing how to go about accomplishing it. The focus is on what the computer should do rather than how it should do it (ex. SQL). A  C# example of declarative v/s. imperative programming is LINQ. With imperative programming, you tell the compiler what you want to happen, step by step. For example, let's start with this collection, and choose the odd numbers: List<int> collection = new List<int> { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 }; With imperative programming, we'd step through this, and decide what we want: List<int> results = new List<int>(); foreach(var num in collection) {     if (num % 2 != 0)           results.Add(num); } Here’s what we are doing: *Create a result collection *Step through each number in the collection *Check the number, if it's odd, add it to the results With declarative programming, on the other hand, we write the code that describes what you want, but not necessarily how to get it var results = collection.Where( num => num % 2 != 0); Here, we're saying "Give us everything where it's odd", not "Step through the collection. Check this item, if it's odd, add it to a result collection." Functional Programming :: Functional programming is a programming paradigm that treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions and avoids state and mutable data. It emphasizes the application of functions.Functional programming has its roots in the lambda calculus. It is a subset of declarative languages that has heavy focus on recursion. Functional programming can be a mind-bender, which is one reason why Lisp, Scheme, and Haskell have never really surpassed C, C++, Java and COBOL in commercial popularity. But there are benefits to the functional way. For one, if you can get the logic correct, functional programming requires orders of magnitude less code than imperative programming. That means fewer points of failure, less code to test, and a more productive (and, many would say, happier) programming life. As systems get bigger, this has become more and more important. To know more : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/602444/what-is-functional-declarative-and-imperative-programming http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb669144.aspx http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperative_programming   Technorati Tags: Ranjit,Imperative Programming,Declarative programming,Functional Programming

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  • Restore Files from Backups on Windows Home Server

    - by Mysticgeek
    If you use Windows Home Server to backup the machines on your network, your in luck if you accidentally delete important files or they become corrupted. Today we take a look at getting your data back from backups on your home server. Open Windows Home Server Console and click select the Computers and Backup tab. Right-click on the computer you need to restore files for and select View Backups. This will open a list of your recent backups. Highlight the one you want to open, then click the Open button in the Restore or View Files section. If this is the first time you’re restoring a file, you’ll be asked to verify installation of the device software. Check the box next to Always trust software from Microsoft Corporation and click Install. Now wait while the backup data is retrieved. After the backup data has been retrieved, an explorer windows opens up to drive (Z:) which is the backup data. It’s just like if you were opening a drive on your local machine. Now you can browse through the backup and find the files your missing. You can open the files directly, or drag them onto your machine to the location you want to restore them.   Restoring your data is actually a very easy process with Windows Home Server. Of course you’ll want to make sure the computers on your network are being backed up to WHS. if you need help with that, check out our article on how to configure your computer to backup to WHS. If you want to backup your home server shares, check out our article on how to backup WHS folder to an external drive. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips GMedia Blog: Setting Up a Windows Home ServerRestore Your PC from Windows Home ServerCreate A Windows Home Server Home Computer Restore DiscInstalling Windows Home ServerConfigure Your Computer to Backup to Windows Home Server TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet How to Find Your Mac Address Use My TextTools to Edit and Organize Text

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  • How do I fix “Ubuntu is running in low-graphics mode?” for NVIDIA GeForce GT555M

    - by David Chen
    As title, I'm using Ubuntu 10.04, and my ubuntu kept showing the sign “Ubuntu is running in low-graphics mode”. I've read another question with same topic (http://askubuntu.com/questions/10664/how-do-i-fix-ubuntu-is-running-in-low-graphics-mode ), but the other one is using ATI Radeon X1200. How can I fix the problem? I'm running Ubuntu on a 200GB partition, and the rest of my computer is Windows7. My graphic card is NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M, and my computer is ACER ASPIRE 5951G.

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  • So What The Hell Is SpyWare Anyway...?

    According to SoftwareReviews365.com, who specialize in anti spyware software reviews of the best products on the market; spyware is ?computer software that obtains information from a user';s computer ... [Author: Jay Stamford - Computers and Internet - March 29, 2010]

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  • looking for a good programming problem solving tool

    - by ctilley79
    Years ago when I was in school my computer science department used a website that had many different problem solving questions typically used in computer programming. They were ordered in difficulty and you were presented the solution after you attempted the problem. The site was used in competitions and was very useful for training purposes. Since I am trying to brush up on my algorithm skills, a good tool like this would be very useful. Does anyone know of a site similar to this in "modern" times?

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  • Use Autoruns to Manually Clean an Infected PC

    - by Mark Virtue
    There are many anti-malware programs out there that will clean your system of nasties, but what happens if you’re not able to use such a program?  Autoruns, from SysInternals (recently acquired by Microsoft), is indispensable when removing malware manually. There are a few reasons why you may need to remove viruses and spyware manually: Perhaps you can’t abide running resource-hungry and invasive anti-malware programs on your PC You might need to clean your mom’s computer (or someone else who doesn’t understand that a big flashing sign on a website that says “Your computer is infected with a virus – click HERE to remove it” is not a message that can necessarily be trusted) The malware is so aggressive that it resists all attempts to automatically remove it, or won’t even allow you to install anti-malware software Part of your geek credo is the belief that anti-spyware utilities are for wimps Autoruns is an invaluable addition to any geek’s software toolkit.  It allows you to track and control all programs (and program components) that start automatically with Windows (or with Internet Explorer).  Virtually all malware is designed to start automatically, so there’s a very strong chance that it can be detected and removed with the help of Autoruns. We have covered how to use Autoruns in an earlier article, which you should read if you need to first familiarize yourself with the program. Autoruns is a standalone utility that does not need to be installed on your computer.  It can be simply downloaded, unzipped and run (link below).  This makes is ideally suited for adding to your portable utility collection on your flash drive. When you start Autoruns for the first time on a computer, you are presented with the license agreement: After agreeing to the terms, the main Autoruns window opens, showing you the complete list of all software that will run when your computer starts, when you log in, or when you open Internet Explorer: To temporarily disable a program from launching, uncheck the box next to it’s entry.  Note:  This does not terminate the program if it is running at the time – it merely prevents it from starting next time.  To permanently prevent a program from launching, delete the entry altogether (use the Delete key, or right-click and choose Delete from the context-menu)).  Note:  This does not remove the program from your computer – to remove it completely you need to uninstall the program (or otherwise delete it from your hard disk). Suspicious Software It can take a fair bit of experience (read “trial and error”) to become adept at identifying what is malware and what is not.  Most of the entries presented in Autoruns are legitimate programs, even if their names are unfamiliar to you.  Here are some tips to help you differentiate the malware from the legitimate software: If an entry is digitally signed by a software publisher (i.e. there’s an entry in the Publisher column) or has a “Description”, then there’s a good chance that it’s legitimate If you recognize the software’s name, then it’s usually okay.  Note that occasionally malware will “impersonate” legitimate software, but adopting a name that’s identical or similar to software you’re familiar with (e.g. “AcrobatLauncher” or “PhotoshopBrowser”).  Also, be aware that many malware programs adopt generic or innocuous-sounding names, such as “Diskfix” or “SearchHelper” (both mentioned below). Malware entries usually appear on the Logon tab of Autoruns (but not always!) If you open up the folder that contains the EXE or DLL file (more on this below), an examine the “last modified” date, the dates are often from the last few days (assuming that your infection is fairly recent) Malware is often located in the C:\Windows folder or the C:\Windows\System32 folder Malware often only has a generic icon (to the left of the name of the entry) If in doubt, right-click the entry and select Search Online… The list below shows two suspicious looking entries:  Diskfix and SearchHelper These entries, highlighted above, are fairly typical of malware infections: They have neither descriptions nor publishers They have generic names The files are located in C:\Windows\System32 They have generic icons The filenames are random strings of characters If you look in the C:\Windows\System32 folder and locate the files, you’ll see that they are some of the most recently modified files in the folder (see below) Double-clicking on the items will take you to their corresponding registry keys: Removing the Malware Once you’ve identified the entries you believe to be suspicious, you now need to decide what you want to do with them.  Your choices include: Temporarily disable the Autorun entry Permanently delete the Autorun entry Locate the running process (using Task Manager or similar) and terminating it Delete the EXE or DLL file from your disk (or at least move it to a folder where it won’t be automatically started) or all of the above, depending upon how certain you are that the program is malware. To see if your changes succeeded, you will need to reboot your machine, and check any or all of the following: Autoruns – to see if the entry has returned Task Manager (or similar) – to see if the program was started again after the reboot Check the behavior that led you to believe that your PC was infected in the first place.  If it’s no longer happening, chances are that your PC is now clean Conclusion This solution isn’t for everyone and is most likely geared to advanced users. Usually using a quality Antivirus application does the trick, but if not Autoruns is a valuable tool in your Anti-Malware kit. Keep in mind that some malware is harder to remove than others.  Sometimes you need several iterations of the steps above, with each iteration requiring you to look more carefully at each Autorun entry.  Sometimes the instant that you remove the Autorun entry, the malware that is running replaces the entry.  When this happens, we need to become more aggressive in our assassination of the malware, including terminating programs (even legitimate programs like Explorer.exe) that are infected with malware DLLs. Shortly we will be publishing an article on how to identify, locate and terminate processes that represent legitimate programs but are running infected DLLs, in order that those DLLs can be deleted from the system. 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