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• 48-bit bitwise operations in Javascript?

  - by randomhelp

  I've been given the task of porting Java's Java.util.Random() to JavaScript, and I've run across a huge performance hit/inaccuracy using bitwise operators in Javascript on sufficiently large numbers. Some cursory research states that "bitwise operators in JavaScript are inherently slow," because internally it appears that JavaScript will cast all of its double values into signed 32-bit integers to do the bitwise operations (see https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Core_JavaScript_1.5_Reference/Operators/Bitwise_Operators for more on this.) Because of this, I can't do a direct port of the Java random number generator, and I need to get the same numeric results as Java.util.Random(). Writing something like this.next = function(bits) { if (!bits) { bits = 48; } this.seed = (this.seed * 25214903917 + 11) & ((1 << 48) - 1); return this.seed >>> (48 - bits); }; (which is an almost-direct port of the Java.util.Random()) code won't work properly, since Javascript can't do bitwise operations on an integer that size.) I've figured out that I can just make a seedable random number generator in 32-bit space using the Lehmer algorithm, but the trick is that I need to get the same values as I would with Java.util.Random(). What should I do to make a faster, functional port?

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• IIS serving static content gives 503 at random

  - by Steffen

  We're having a few issues with our image server. It's a Win 2008 running IIS 7.5 and it only serves static content: images. It has run without issues for quite a while, until recently when we disabled Output Caching, as we noticed having it enabled meant it sent no-cache host-headers to the clients (forcing them to fetch the images from the server every time) We've read quite a bit about it, and it seems IIS just works that way - either you use Output Caching or you get to use cache host-headers. Anyway having disabled the Output Cache, we now experience random 5 minutes intervals, where all requests just get a 503 Service Unavailable. During this period the "Files cached" performance counter staggers (neither increased nor decreased) and after the period all caches are flushed. You might find it weird I talk about caching, since we disabled Output Caching. The thing is we changed the ObjectTTL parameter in registry, so we cache files for 3 minutes (which has worked very well, our Disk I/O dropped significantly) So even with Output Caching disabled, we're still caching plenty of files - if we could just get rid of the random 503 it'd be perfect :-D We don't get any messages in the Windows event log during these 503 intervals, so we're pretty stumped as to what to do. Any ideas are very welcome :-)

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• Random Sampling in Excel

  - by bonsvr

  I have an Excel sheet as follows: NO NAME AMOUNT 1 A 50 1 B 50 2 A 100 2 C 100 3 D 70 3 B 70 4 A 30 4 F 30 5 C 150 5 G 150 . . . . There are let's say 10,000 rows. I want to get a random sample from rows. There are 2 conditions: 1. Sampling must be based on "NO" column. 2. Size of the sample is determined by the user: it can be %5, %10 or %20. For example, one decides to randomly choose %20 of total rows in the above example: The result is like: NO NAME AMOUNT 2 A 100 2 C 100 90 Z 500 90 E 500 . . . . There should be 2,000 rows. I don't know whether my question is too specific. I am new to Excel VBA, and I faced a situation like this. Above process is about getting a random sample from an account ledger for auditing purposes.

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• Getting 0xc00000e windows 7 "Boot device inaccessible" after random crashes

  - by Dynde

  I've been having some weird random crashes that I can't seem to locate, and I'm unsure if it's windows or hardware related. It's a brand new computer and very powerful. I've run into a couple of these random crashes, now I don't know what causes them, as it happens during the night, when I'm sleeping. When I wake up, all I see is a boot manager screen that says Exception: 0xc00000e "Boot device inaccessible". A simple restart doesn't fix the problem - it seems to struggle locating my primary hdd - but a complete shutdown works, it'll just fly straight into windows again. The event viewer doesn't tell me much. The most reason incident just gives me this: "The previous system shutdown at 08:55:44 on ?11-?12-?2011 was unexpected." And also a kernel power event: The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly. and I can see only two application event entries around that time at 8.47 (about 8 minutes prior to the crash): The Windows Modules Installer service entered the running state. The WinHTTP Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Service service entered the running state. Can anyone tell me anything about this, or direct me to a forum or something that might know what's wrong? I can supply the extra details of the events too if needed. The hdd is an SSD - could that have anything to do with it? I ran a few diagnostics and memory and hdd should be okay - at least the diagnostics report is clean. Is it a faulty drive?

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• Random "not accessible" "you might not have permission to use this network resource"

  - by Jim Fred

  A couple of computers, both Win7-64 can connect to shares on a NAS server, at least most of the time. At random intervals, these Win7-64 computers cannot access some shares but can access others on the same NAS. When access is denied, a dialog box appears saying "\\myServer\MyShare02 not accessible...you might not have permission to use this network resource..." Other shares, say \\myServer\MyShare01, ARE accessible from the affected computers and yet other computers CAN access the affected shares. Reboots of the affected computers seem to allow the affected computer to connect to the affected shares - but then, getting a cup of coffee seems to help too. When the problem appears, the network seems to be ok e.g. the affected computers can access other shares on the affected server and can ping etc. Also Other computers can access the affected shares. The NAS server is a NetGear ReadyNas Pro. The problem might be on the NAS side such as a resource limitation but since only 2 Win7-64 PCs seem to be affected the most, the problem could be on the PC side - I'm not sure yet. I of course searched for solutions and found several tips addressing initial connection problems (use correct workgroup name, use IP address instead of server name, remove security restrictions etc) but none of those remedies address the random nature of this problem.

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• PuTTY inserts random characters during a session

  - by Zachary Polikarpus

  I recently started renting space on a remote server so that I could work on a project. I found that a relatively painless way to access it on a windows machine is through PuTTY. However, there is one thing that has always irked me when using it: for seemingly no reason random characters are sometimes inserted at the cursor. Most of the time it is just a single tilde, but rarely it spits out what looks like some escape sequence ([[^8 or the like). It will only occur when I am focused on the window, whether I am typing or 20 feet away from the keyboard. If left for long enough, it will spit tildes at random intervals (average is about 1 minute). Finally, this behavior seems to be inconsistant when running programs such as nano or the mysql interface: in nano, instead of inserting tildes, it will set marks (ctrl-^); in mysql, lines will become un-editable. My question is this: Has anyone else experienced this sort of behavior in PuTTY? And if so, what can be done to prevent/correct this behavior?

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• Diagnosing Random Network Lag

  - by uesp

  I'm having trouble diagnosing some random lag on a 6 server LAMP cluster serving a MediaWiki site. While we're serving some 100 pages/sec the servers themselves are running fine with less than 0.5 load, no locked processes, no paging, no errors being logged, etc.... Lag is present on all servers and is random: one minute its fine the next it's there. DNS lookups on the servers are randomly slow. For example time nslookup google.com varies randomly from a few milliseconds to several seconds and sometimes times out entirely. While we use IP addresses internally on the cluster this may be a symptom of the root issue. We are not running our own DNS server. The Apache server-status pages randomly lag or time out. Benchmarking using ab between servers shows a few loads sometimes take 3000 ms (almost exactly). Benchmarking server-status on the local server itself usually shows no issue (it showed a lag only once among a few hundred tests). The servers are sitting behind a switch and a firewall which I don't have any access to so I don't know their setup or status. While we are under heavier than normal load a 2 Mbps incoming and 20 Mbps outgoing traffic shouldn't be stressing the switch or firewall should it? My feeling is that it is the switch/firewall or something above them in the ISP like their DNS but can't confirm it. I need some other tests or methods of diagnosing this lag to try and narrow down the ultimate cause.

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• Why am I experiencing random connection timeouts? (CentOS)

  - by Ryan

  I have a CentOS server setup that currently hosts several websites (all relative of each other in some form or another). As of recently throughout the day at the most random times the website speed will lag to a crawl and eventually hit a connection timeout. When I say random times this typically happens anywhere between 10am and 1pm usually, however, this morning this happened to me at 8am. I do not have a lot of familiarity with server knowledge as far as what I am looking for in this situation. What are some possible causes of why my server is slowing the websites down to a complete crawl or timing out? Are there specific things I should be checking for when this happens? I have noticed using: tail /var/log/httpd/access_log That usually when this down time occurs there are lot of IP addresses related to BingBot, Googlebot, and sometimes various bots or spiders that I am unfamiliar with. Could this be related and if so how can I avoid this from causing my websites to lag out? Thanks in advance for any help or advice. The websites that are timing out are built with PHP and use a MySQL database to display information.

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• Windows Server 2008 IIS Random disconnect

  - by d123

  I am having a bit of a quirk with my IIS server. I'm running my IIS with 2 sets of IPs configured, one in the 192 range and the other in 172 range. I then have multiple apps which will talk to this server for information. Server has no AV or firewalls configured. I noticed that my apps when talking to the server on the 172 range, at random intervals, the server would just not respond. My apps would then disconnect and just try again, and every thing would be fine. This doesn't happen on the 192 range. So what I did is on a Linux box I did a watch command and to wget a file every half second on the 172 and 192 IPs. I noticed the same issue, every once in awhile wget on the 172 range would not get through, but there is no issues at all on 192. Thus I went around to Wireshark and did a dump. This is the last 3 packets, no other packets were received. 7010 100.871877 200.100.30.7 172.0.0.1 TCP 59619 http [ACK] Seq=140 Ack=85242 Win=64128 Len=0 TSV=1072818795 TSER=1660246133 7011 100.872238 200.100.30.7 172.0.0.1 TCP 59619 http [FIN, ACK] Seq=140 Ack=85242 Win=64128 Len=0 TSV=1072818796 TSER=1660246133 7013 100.873081 200.100.30.7 172.0.0.1 TCP 59619 http [ACK] Seq=141 Ack=85243 Win=64128 Len=0 TSV=1072818796 TSER=1660246133 So this is my issue, there is a random disconnect every once in awhile. The server doesn't receive the next SYN packet. HELP?

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• Chuck Jones Shows How to Draw Bugs Bunny [Video]

  - by Asian Angel

  Is drawing one of your passions and/or hobbies? Are you a fan of the classic Bugs Bunny cartoons? Then you will certainly enjoy this delightful video where Chuck Jones shows you how to draw Bugs Bunny! Chuck Jones shows how to draw Bugs Bunny [via Neatorama] How to Make Your Laptop Choose a Wired Connection Instead of Wireless HTG Explains: What Is Two-Factor Authentication and Should I Be Using It? HTG Explains: What Is Windows RT and What Does It Mean To Me?

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• Streaming Netflix Media with My Wii

  - by Ben Griswold

  Late last year, I wrote about Streaming Media with my Sony Blu-ray Disc Player. I am still digging the Blu-ray player setup but guess what showed up in the mail yesterday?   That’s right!  A free Netflix disc which now let’s me instantly watch TV episodes and movies via my Wii console.  I popped the disc into the console and in less than 2 minutes the brain-numbingly simple activation was complete.  (Full-disclosure: I already had my Wi-Fi connection configured, but I’m confident that the Netflix installation disc would have helpfully walked me through this additional step if need be.) As it turns out, the Wii Netflix UI offers far more options than what one gets with the Blu-ray setup.  Not only can I view my Instant Queue, but there’s a list of recently watched movies, a list of recommended titles by category, the star rating system, movies information and nearly everything you find on the web.  I reread Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability on a flight back from Orlando on Wednesday, so my current view of the world may be a little skewed but, the brilliance of Netflix Wii’s user interface is undeniable. It’s not like the Blu-ray navigation is complicated but the Wii navigation feels familiar and intuitive. How intuitive?  Well, you won’t find a single bit of help text on any of the Wii screens – just a simple and obvious point-and-click navigation system.  And the UI is really pretty (which is still very important if you ask me) and so easy it became fun. Did I mention the media streaming works!  Yep, we watched 2 half-hour kid videos yesterday without any streaming issues at all.  If you have a Netflix account and a Wii, order your disc and give it a go. It’s good stuff.

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• Tech Germs – Tis the Season [Infographic]

  - by Asian Angel

  Think the tech and household items you work with or use on a daily basis are clean? Then think again. View a Larger Version of the Infographic Tech Germs [infographic] – Blog Post [via Elinor Mills] How to See What Web Sites Your Computer is Secretly Connecting To HTG Explains: When Do You Need to Update Your Drivers? How to Make the Kindle Fire Silk Browser *Actually* Fast!

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• Outlook 2010 – My Top 9 features

  - by Daniel Moth

  Office 2010 has reached RTM. Here are my favorite Outlook features. Speed. It is faster than previous versions and hangs much less… Ignore Conversation (Ctrl+Del). Not interested in a conversation? Click this button on the new ribbon and you'll never receive another message on that thread (they all go to your Deleted folder). Calendar Preview. When receiving a Meeting Request, before deciding to accept or not you get to see a preview of your calendar for that day and where the new meeting would fit in. See full description on outlook team blog post. Quick Steps. See full description on outlook team blog post. I have created my own quick steps for filing conversations to folders, various pre-populated reply templates, creating calendar invites and creating TODOs from received emails. Search Interface. Many of us knew the magic keywords for making smart searches (e.g. from:Name), but it is great to learn many more through the search tools contextual ribbon tab. Next 7 days. Out of the many enhancements to the Calendar view, my favorite is to be able with  single click to view the next 7 days – that is now my default view. MailTips. See full description on outlook team blog post. The ones I particularly like are when composing a mail to someone that has their Out Of Office reply set, you get to read it before sending the mail (and hence can decide to postpone sending). when composing a mail to a distribution list, a message informs you of the number of recipients. Hopefully, senders will use that as a clue for narrowing down the recipient list or at least verifying that their mail should indeed be sent to so many people. "You are not responding to the latest message in this conversation. Click here to open it.". When composing a reply to a conversation and you have not picked the last message to reply to (don't you hate it when people split threads like that?), this is the inline message you see (under the MailTips area) and if you click on the message it opens the last mail in the conversation so you can reply to that. Rich "Conversation Settings" and in particular "Show Messages from Other Folders". For example, you can see in your inbox not only the message you received but also the reply you sent (it gets pulled in from the Sent folder). Another example: a conversation has been taking place on a distribution list (so your rules filed it to a folder) and they add you on the TO or CC line, so it appears in a different folder; regardless of which folder you open, you are able to see the entire conversation. Note that messages from other folders than the one you are browsing, appear in grey text so you can easily spot them. Reading them in one folder, obviously marks them as read in the other folder… If you haven't yet, when are you making the move to Outlook 2010? Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• Explore Six of the Ocean’s Incredible Coral Reefs with Google Maps

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you ready to view some gorgeous underwater photography and explore our ocean’s coral reefs from the comfort of your desktop? Then you will definitely enjoy this wonderful collection of underwater ‘street view level’ coral reef images from Google Maps. Once you get started you can easily lose yourself in the tranquillity and beauty of these oceanic kingdoms. Here is a quick peek at the collection that is available for your viewing pleasure… 8 Deadly Commands You Should Never Run on Linux 14 Special Google Searches That Show Instant Answers How To Create a Customized Windows 7 Installation Disc With Integrated Updates

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• Ray Bradbury’s Predictions about Future Technology that have been Fulfilled

  - by Asian Angel

  Ray Bradbury wrote about many wonderful items of technology in his stories of the future, but you may be surprised to see just how many of them have become reality. Note: Visit the blog post linked below to see the full-size version of the chart. Ray Bradbury Predictions Fulfilled [via Geeks are Sexy] HTG Explains: What Is Windows RT and What Does It Mean To Me? HTG Explains: How Windows 8′s Secure Boot Feature Works & What It Means for Linux Hack Your Kindle for Easy Font Customization

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• Streaming Media with Sony Blu-ray Disc Player

  - by Ben Griswold

  The best gift under the tree this year? A Sony Blu-ray Disc player: The BDP-N460 allows you to instantly stream thousands of movies, videos and music from the largest selection of leading content providers including Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand, YouTube™, Slacker® Radio and many, many more. Plus, enjoy the ultimate in high-definition entertainment and watch Blu-ray Disc movies in Full HD 1080p quality with HD audio. The BDP-N460 includes built-in software that makes it easy to connect this player to your existing wireless network.  So I did… I paired the disc player with the recommended Linksys Wireless Ethernet Bridge (WET-610N) and I was streaming the last season of Lost episodes in no time. Really cool. Highly recommended.

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• Explore Historic Sites from the Comfort of Your Desktop with Google’s ‘World Wonders Project’

  - by Asian Angel

  Have you always wanted to explore historic sites across the world but lack the extra time and/or funds to do so? Then take heart! Now you can visit historic sites to your heart’s content from home with Google’s ‘World Wonders Project’. Note: The screenshot shown above is from the ‘Archaeological Areas of Pompei’ site. You can explore exotic locations such as Pompei, the Palace and Park of Versailles, Shark Bay, the Tenryu-ji-Temple in Ancient Kyoto, and more. The World Wonders Project Homepage The World Wonders Project YouTube Channel HTG Explains: Learn How Websites Are Tracking You Online Here’s How to Download Windows 8 Release Preview Right Now HTG Explains: Why Linux Doesn’t Need Defragmenting

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• Never Call Me at Work [Humorous Star Wars Video]

  - by Asian Angel

  Have you ever had one of those days when someone close to you calls at the worst possible time? See what happens when this stormtrooper’s wife calls him while he is at work above Tatooine! Needless to say Darth Vader is in a “less than forgiving” mood… Never Call Me At Work [YouTube] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Never Call Me at Work [Humorous Star Wars Video] Add an Image Properties Listing to the Context Menu in Chrome and Iron Add an Easy to View Notification Badge to Tabs in Firefox SpellBook Parks Bookmarklets in Chrome’s Context Menu Drag2Up Brings Multi-Source Drag and Drop Uploading to Firefox Enchanted Swing in the Forest Wallpaper

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• Career development as a Software Developer without becoming a manager.

  - by albertpascual

  I’m a developer, I like to write new exciting code everyday, my perfect day at work is a day that when I wake up, I know that I have to write some code that I haven’t done before or to use a new framework/language/platform that is unknown to me. The best days in the office is when a project is waiting for me to architect or write. In my 15 years in the development field, I had to in order to get a better salary to manage people, not just to lead developers, to actually manage people. Something that I found out when I get into a management position is that I’m not that good at managing people, and not afraid to say it. I do not enjoy that part of the job, the worse one, takes time away from what I really like. Leading developers and managing people are very different things. I do like teaching and leading developers in a project. Yet most people believe, and is true in most companies, the way to get a better salary is to be promoted to a manager position. In order to advance in your career you need to let go of the everyday writing code and become a supervisor or manager. This is the path for developers after they become senior developers. As you get older and your family grows, the only way to hit your salary requirements is to advance your career to become a manager and get that manager salary. That path is the common in most companies, the most intelligent companies out there, have learned that promoting good developers mean getting a crappy manager and losing a good resource. Now scratch everything I said, because as I previously stated, I don’t see myself going to the office everyday and just managing people until is time to go home. I like to spend hours working in some code to accomplish a task, learning new platforms and languages or patterns to existing languages. Being interrupted every 15 minutes by emails or people stopping by my office to resolve their problems, is not something I could enjoy. All the sudden riding my motorcycle to work one cold morning over the Redlands Canyon and listening to .NET Rocks podcast, Michael “Doc” Norton explaining how to take control of your development career without necessary going to the manager’s track. I know, I should not have headphones under my helmet when riding a motorcycle in California. His conversation with Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell was just confirming everything I have ever did with actually more details and assuring that there are other paths. His method was simple yet most of us, already do many of those steps, Mr. Michael “Doc” Norton believe that it pays off on the long run, that finally companies prefer to pay higher salaries to those developers, yet I would actually think that many companies do not see developers that way, this is not true for bigger companies. However I do believe the value of those developers increase and most of the time, changing companies could increase their salary instead of staying in the same one. In short without even trying to get into the shadow of Mr. Norton and without following the steps in the order; you should love to learn new technologies, and then teach them to other geeks. I personally have learn many technologies and I haven’t stop doing that, I am a professor at UCR where I teach ASP.NET and Silverlight. Mr Norton continues that after than, you want to be involve in the development community, user groups, online forums, open source projects. I personally talk to user groups, I’m very active in forums asking and answering questions as well as for those I got awarded the Microsoft MVP for ASP.NET. After you accomplish all those, you should also expose yourself for what you know and what you do not know, learning a new language will make you humble again as well as extremely happy. There is no better feeling that learning a new language or pattern in your daily job. If you love your job everyday and what you do, I really recommend you to follow Michael’s presentation that he kindly share it on the link below. His confirmation is a refreshing, knowing that my future is not behind a desk where the computer screen is on my right hand side instead of in front of me. Where I don’t have to spent the days filling up performance forms for people and the new platforms that I haven’t been using yet are just at my fingertips. Presentation here. http://www.slideshare.net/LeanDog/take-control-of-your-development-career-michael-doc-norton?from=share_email_logout3 Take Control of Your Development Career Welcome! Michael “Doc” Norton @DocOnDev http://docondev.blogspot.com/ [email protected] Recovering Post Technical I love to learn I love to teach I love to work in teams I love to write code I really love to write code What about YOU? Do you love your job? Do you love your Employer? Do you love your Boss? What do you love? What do you really love? Take Control Take Control • Get Noticed • Get Together • Get Your Mojo • Get Naked • Get Schooled Get Noticed Get Noticed Know Your Business Get Noticed Get Noticed Understand Management Get Noticed Get Noticed Do Your Existing Job Get Noticed Get Noticed Make Yourself Expendable Get Together Get Together Join a User Group Get Together Help Run a User Group Get Together Start a User Group Get Your Mojo Get Your Mojo Kata Get Your Mojo Koans Get Your Mojo Breakable Toys Get Your Mojo Open Source Get Naked Get Naked Run with Group A Get Naked Do Something Different Get Naked Own Your Mistakes Get Naked Admit You Don’t Know Get Schooled Get Schooled Choose a Mentor Get Schooled Attend Conferences Get Schooled Teach a New Subject Get Started Read These (Again) Take Control of Your Development Career Thank You! Michael “Doc” Norton @DocOnDev http://docondev.blogspot.com/ [email protected] In a short summary, I recommend any developer to check his blog and more important his presentation, I haven’t been lucky enough to watch him live, I’m looking forward the day I have the opportunity. He is giving us hope in the future of developers, when I see some of my geek friends moving to position that in short years they begin to regret, I get more unsure of my future doing what I love. I would say that now is looking at the spectrum of companies that understand and appreciate developers. There are a few there, hopefully with time code sweat shops will start disappearing and being a developer will feed a family of 4. Cheers Al tweetmeme_url = 'http://weblogs.asp.net/albertpascual/archive/2010/12/07/career-development-as-a-software-developer-without-becoming-a-manager.aspx'; tweetmeme_source = 'alpascual';

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• Lego Sport Champions: Soccer – An 80s Style LEGO Video

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you a fan of LEGO and soccer? Then watch as these two teams use some fancy LEGO footwork to try and win the championship game in this nicely done retro-look video. Wait!! Is that player building a brick wall?? Lego Sport Champions: Soccer [YouTube] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Have You Ever Wondered How Your Operating System Got Its Name? Should You Delete Windows 7 Service Pack Backup Files to Save Space? What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It? How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 Lego Sport Champions: Soccer – An 80s Style LEGO Video Access the Options for Your Favorite Extensions Easier in Firefox Don’t Sleep Keeps Your Windows Machine Awake DropSpace Syncs Android Files to Dropbox Field of Poppies Wallpaper The History Of Operating Systems [Infographic]

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• The way I think about Diagnostic tools

  - by Daniel Moth

  Every software has issues, or as we like to call them "bugs". That is not a discussion point, just a mere fact. It follows that an important skill for developers is to be able to diagnose issues in their code. Of course we need to advance our tools and techniques so we can prevent bugs getting into the code (e.g. unit testing), but beyond designing great software, diagnosing bugs is an equally important skill. To diagnose issues, the most important assets are good techniques, skill, experience, and maybe talent. What also helps is having good diagnostic tools and what helps further is knowing all the features that they offer and how to use them. The following classification is how I like to think of diagnostics. Note that like with any attempt to bucketize anything, you run into overlapping areas and blurry lines. Nevertheless, I will continue sharing my generalizations ;-) It is important to identify at the outset if you are dealing with a performance or a correctness issue. If you have a performance issue, use a profiler. I hear people saying "I am using the debugger to debug a performance issue", and that is fine, but do know that a dedicated profiler is the tool for that job. Just because you don't need them all the time and typically they cost more plus you are not as familiar with them as you are with the debugger, doesn't mean you shouldn't invest in one and instead try to exclusively use the wrong tool for the job. Visual Studio has a profiler and a concurrency visualizer (for profiling multi-threaded apps). If you have a correctness issue, then you have several options - that's next :-) This is how I think of identifying a correctness issue Do you want a tool to find the issue for you at design time? The compiler is such a tool - it gives you an exact list of errors. Compilers now also offer warnings, which is their way of saying "this may be an error, but I am not smart enough to know for sure". There are also static analysis tools, which go a step further than the compiler in identifying issues in your code, sometimes with the aid of code annotations and other times just by pointing them at your raw source. An example is FxCop and much more in Visual Studio 11 Code Analysis. Do you want a tool to find the issue for you with code execution? Just like static tools, there are also dynamic analysis tools that instead of statically analyzing your code, they analyze what your code does dynamically at runtime. Whether you have to setup some unit tests to invoke your code at runtime, or have to manually run your app (and interact with it) under the tool, or have to use a script to execute your binary under the tool… that varies. The result is still a list of issues for you to address after the analysis is complete or a pause of the execution when the first issue is encountered. If a code path was not taken, no analysis for it will exist, obviously. An example is the GPU Race detection tool that I'll be talking about on the C++ AMP team blog. Another example is the MSR concurrency CHESS tool. Do you want you to find the issue at design time using a tool? Perform a code walkthrough on your own or with colleagues. There are code review tools that go beyond just diffing sources, and they help you with that aspect too. For example, there is a new one in Visual Studio 11 and searching with my favorite search engine yielded this article based on the Developer Preview. Do you want you to find the issue with code execution? Use a debugger - let’s break this down further next. This is how I think of debugging: There is post mortem debugging. That means your code has executed and you did something in order to examine what happened during its execution. This can vary from manual printf and other tracing statements to trace events (e.g. ETW) to taking dumps. In all cases, you are left with some artifact that you examine after the fact (after code execution) to discern what took place hoping it will help you find the bug. Learn how to debug dump files in Visual Studio. There is live debugging. I will elaborate on this in a separate post, but this is where you inspect the state of your program during its execution, and try to find what the problem is. More from me in a separate post on live debugging. There is a hybrid of live plus post-mortem debugging. This is for example what tools like IntelliTrace offer. If you are a tools vendor interested in the diagnostics space, it helps to understand where in the above classification your tool excels, where its primary strength is, so you can market it as such. Then it helps to see which of the other areas above your tool touches on, and how you can make it even better there. Finally, see what areas your tool doesn't help at all with, and evaluate whether it should or continue to stay clear. Even though the classification helps us think about this space, the reality is that the best tools are either extremely excellent in only one of this areas, or more often very good across a number of them. Another approach is to offer a toolset covering all areas, with appropriate integration and hand off points from one to the other. Anyway, with that brain dump out of the way, in follow-up posts I will dive into live debugging, and specifically live debugging in Visual Studio - stay tuned if that interests you. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Personal search – the future of search

  - by jamiet

  [Four months ago I wrote a meandering blog post on another blogging site entitled Personal search – the future of search. The points I made therein are becoming more relevant to what I'm reading about and hoping to get involved in in the future so I'm re-posting here to a wider audience to hopefully get some more feedback and guage reaction to it. This has been prompted by the book Pull by David Siegel that is forming my current holiday reading (recommended to me by a commenter on my previous post Interesting things – Twitter annotations and your phone as a web server) and in particular by Siegel's notion of us all in the future having a personal online data vault.] My one-time colleague Paul Dawson recently wrote an article called The Future of Search and in it he proposed some interesting ideas. Some choice quotes: The growth of Chinese search giant Baidu is an indicator that fully localised and tailored content and offerings have great traction with local audiences This trend is already driving an increase in the use of specialist searches … Look at how Farecast is now integrated into Bing for example, or how Flightstats is now integrated into Google. Search does not necessarily have to begin with a keyword, but could start instead with a click or a touch. Take a look at Retrievr. Start drawing a picture in the box and see what happens. This is certainly search without the need for typing in keywords search technology has advanced greatly in recent years. The recent launch of Microsoft Live Labs’ Pivot has given us a taste of what we can expect to see in the future This really got me thinking about where search might go in the future and as my mind wandered I realised that as the amount of data that we collect about ourselves increases so too will the need and the desire to search it. The amount of electronic data that exists about each and every person is increasing and in the near future I fully expect that we are going to be able to store personal data such as: A history of our location (in fact Google Latitude already offers this facility) Recordings of all our phone conversations Health information history (weight, blood pressure etc…) Energy usage Spending history What films we watch, what radio stations we listen to Voting history Of course, most of this stuff is already stored somewhere but crucially we don’t have easy access to it. My utilities supplier knows how much electricity I’m using but if I want to know for myself I have to go and dig through my statements (assuming I have kept them). Similarly my doctor probably has ready access to all of my health records, my bank knows exactly what I have spent my money on, my cable supplier knows what I watch on TV and my mobile phone supplier probably knows exactly where I am and where I’ve been for the past few years. Strange then that none of this electronic information is available to me in a way that I can really make use of it; after all, its MY information. Its MY data. I created it. That is set to change. As technologies mature and customers become more technically cognizant they will demand more access to the data that companies hold about them. The companies themselves will realise the benefit that they derive from giving users what they want and will embrace ways of providing it. As a result the amount of data that we store about ourselves is going to increase exponentially and the desire to search and derive value from that data is going to grow with it; we are about to enter the era of the “personal datastore” and we will want, and need, to search through it in order to make sense of it all. Its interesting then that today when we think of search we think of search engines and yet in these personal datastores we’re referring to data that search engines can’t touch because WE own it and we (hopefully) choose to keep it private. Someone, I know not who, is going to lead in this space by making it easy for us to search our data and retrieve information that we have either forgotten or maybe didn’t even know in the first place. We will learn new things about ourselves and about our habits; we will share these findings with whomever we choose; we will compare what we discover with others; we will collaborate for mutual benefit and, most of all, we will educate ourselves as to how to live our lives better. Search will be the means to that end, it will enable us to make sense of the wealth of information that we will collect day in day out. The future of search is personal, why would we be interested in anything else? @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Word 2010 Navigation Pane and more

  - by Daniel Moth

  I have been using Office 2010 since Beta1 and have not looked back since. I am currently on an internal RC, but will upgrade tomorrow to the RTM version. There are a plethora of new productivity features and for Word 2010 the one that overshadows everything else, IMO, is the Navigation Pane. I could spend time describing it here, but I'll never be able to cover it more thoroughly than what the product team has on their blog post. You enable it via the "Navigation Pane" checkbox in the "Show" group of the "View" tab on the Word ribbon. Even if you have come across this new Word 2010 feature, trust me you will learn something more about it, you will thank me later. Go learn how to make the most of the new Navigation Pane.             As an aside, there are many new benefits in PowerPoint 2010 too, my favorite being support for sections. Not to leave Excel 2010 out, you should check Excel's integration with HPC Server. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• Dell Docking Station Doesn’t Detect USB Mouse and Keyboard

  - by Ben Griswold

  I’ve found myself in this situation with multiple Dell docking stations and multiple Dell laptops running various Windows operating systems.  I don’t know why the docking station stops recognizing my USB mouse and keyboard – it just does.  It’s black magic.  The last time around I just starting plugging the mouse and keyboard into the docked laptop directly and went about my business (as if I wasn’t completing missing out on a couple of the core benefits of using a docking station.)  I guess that’s what happens when you forget how you got yourself out of the mess the last time around.  I had been in this half-assed state for a couple of weeks now, but a coworker fortunately got themselves in and out of the same pickle this morning.  Procrastinate long enough and the solution will just come to you, right? Here’s how to get yourself out of this mess: Undock your computer Unplug your docking station Count to an arbitrary number greater than 12.  (Not sure this is really required, but…) Plug your docking station back in Redock your machine I put my machine to sleep before taking the aforementioned actions.  My coworker completely shutdown his laptop instead.  The steps worked on both of our Win 7 machines this morning and, who knows, it might just work for you too. 

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• Awesome 10 Meter Curved Touchscreen at the University of Groningen [Video]

  - by Asian Angel

  Think that you have seen awesome touchscreen setups before? Then think again because the University of Groningen has put together the ultimate version with a super-sized 10 meter curved screen setup housed at their reality center. To learn more about the assorted hardware and software used in the creation of this touchscreen wonder see the detailed information section on the YouTube page (link provided below). Note: The video has approximately 1 minute of “blank” airplay at the end. Reality touchscreen University of Groningen [via Geeks are Sexy] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Learn To Adjust Contrast Like a Pro in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Have You Ever Wondered How Your Operating System Got Its Name? Should You Delete Windows 7 Service Pack Backup Files to Save Space? What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It? How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions Awesome 10 Meter Curved Touchscreen at the University of Groningen [Video] TV Antenna Helper Makes HDTV Antenna Calibration a Snap Turn a Green Laser into a Microscope Projector [Science] The Open Road Awaits [Wallpaper] N64oid Brings N64 Emulation to Android Devices Super-Charge GIMP’s Image Editing Capabilities with G’MIC [Cross-Platform]

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