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• Put Unused Tabs on Hold in Firefox

  - by Asian Angel

  If you have a lot of content heavy webpages open in Firefox, it soon adds up on memory usage. The BarTab extension puts unused tabs on hold and keeps them unloaded until you are ready to access them. Before When you have a few tabs open things are not so bad. But if you have something like 30+ tabs open then Firefox is definitely going to have a much larger memory footprint. For the moment all six tabs are active in our example… After Once the extension is installed you can see quite a difference in the tab bar. Five of the six websites are literally on hold and display as about:blank. In the screenshot above all six tabs were restored from a previous session, but to put new tabs on hold the preferences will have to be modified. Notice that you can have active tabs placed on hold if you do not access them within a set time (“x” seconds, minutes, hours, or days). You may also add your favorite websites as exclusions. Newly opened tabs can now be placed on hold until you are ready for them. Need to place a currently accessed tab on hold? Use the tab context menu to unload the page. Once you use the tab context menu to place a tab on hold your browser will shift over to the closest active tab. You will notice the difference in memory usage when you put a lot of intensive pages on hold. Conclusion If you keep a high number of content heavy webpages open in Firefox then the BarTab extension will help reduce memory usage while browsing. Links Download the BarTab extension (Mozilla Add-ons) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Quick Tip: Use Tab Characters in Textarea Boxes in FirefoxYou Really Want to Completely Disable Tabs in Firefox?Quick Hits: 11 Firefox Tab How-TosQuick Tip: Save Windows and Tabs When Restarting FirefoxMake Firefox Use Multiple Rows of Tabs 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 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010 Daily Motivator (Firefox) FetchMp3 Can Download Videos & Convert Them to Mp3 Use Flixtime To Create Video Slideshows

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• Making the WPeFfort

  - by Laila

  Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 will be launched on April 12th. The basic layout looks pretty much as it did, so it is not immediately obvious on first inspection that it was completely rewritten in the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). The current VS 2008 codebase had reached the end of its life; It was getting slow to initialize and sluggish to run, and was never going to allow for multi-monitor support or easier extensibility. It can't have been an easy decision to rewrite Visual Studio, but the gamble seems to have paid off. Although certain bugs in the betas caused some anxiety about performance, these seem to have been fixed, and the new Visual Studio is definitely faster. In rewriting the codebase, it has been possible to make obvious improvements, such as being able to run different windows on different monitors, and you only being presented with the Toolbox controls and References that are appropriate to your target .NET version. There is also an IntelliTrace debugger, and Intellisense has been improved by virtue of separating a 'Suggestion Mode' and 'Completion Mode' (with its 'Generate From.' 'Highlight References.', and 'Navigate to...' features). At the same time, there has been quite a clearout; Certain features that had been tucked away in the previous versions, such as Brief or Emacs emulation support, have been dropped. (Yes, they were being used!) There are a lot of features that didn't require the rewrite, but are welcome. It is now easier to develop WPF applications (e.g. drag-and-drop Databinding), and there is support for Azure. There are more, and better templates and the design tools are greatly improved (e.g. Expression Web, Expression Blend, WPF Sketchflow, Silverlight designer, Document Map Margin and Inline Call Hierarchy). Sharepoint is better supported, and Office apps will benefit from C#'s support of optional and named arguments, and allowing several Office Solutions within a Deployment package. Most importantly, it is a vote of confidence in the WPF. VS 2010 is the essential missing component that has been impeding the faster adoption of WPF. The fact that it is actually now written in WPF should now reassure the doubters, and convince more developers to make the move from WinForms to WPF. In using WPF, the developers of Visual Studio have had the clout to fix some issues which have been bothering WPF developers for some time (such as blurred text). Do you see a brighter future as a result of transferring from WinForms to WPF? I'd love to know what you think. Cheers, Laila

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• Enhance Your Browsing with Hyperwords in Firefox

  - by Asian Angel

  While browsing it is easy to find information that you would like to know more about, convert, or translate. The Hyperwords extension provides access to these types of resources and more in Firefox. Using Hyperwords Once the extension has finished installing you will be presented with a demo video that will let you learn more about how Hyperwords works. For our first example we chose to look for more information concerning “WASP-12b” using Wikipedia. Notice the small bluish circle on the lower right of the highlighted term…it is the default access for the Hyperwords menu (access by hovering mouse over it). If you hover over the the Wikipedia (or other) link you can access the information in a scrollable popup window. Or if you prefer click on the link to view the information in a new tab. Choose the style that best suits your needs. Hyperwords is extremely useful for quick unit conversions. Suppose you want to share a news story that you have found while browsing. Highlight the title, access Hyperwords, and choose your preferred sharing source. You may need to authorize access for Hyperwords to post to your account. Once you have authorized access you can start sharing those links very easily. This is just a small sampling of Hyperwords many useful features. Preferences Hyperwords has a nice set of preferences available to help you customize it. Alter the menu popup style, add or remove menu entries, and modify other functions for Hyperwords. Conclusion Hyperwords makes a nice addition to Firefox for anyone needing quick access to search, reference, translation, and other services while browsing. Links Download the Hyperwords extension (Mozilla Add-ons) Download the Hyperwords extension (Extension Homepage) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Switch to Private Browsing Mode Easily with Toggle Private BrowsingPreview Tabs in Firefox with Tab Preview 0.3You Really Want to Completely Disable Tabs in Firefox?Quick Hits: 11 Firefox Tab How-TosWhen to Use Protect Tab vs Lock Tab in Firefox 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 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Outlook Tools, one stop tweaking for any Outlook version Zoofs, find the most popular tweeted YouTube videos Video preview of new Windows Live Essentials 21 Cursor Packs for XP, Vista & 7 Map the Stars with Stellarium Use ILovePDF To Split and Merge PDF Files

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• What is the current state of Ubuntu's transition from init scripts to Upstart?

  - by Adam Eberlin

  What is the current state of Ubuntu's transition from init.d scripts to upstart? I was curious, so I compared the contents of /etc/init.d/ to /etc/init/ on one of our development machines, which is running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Server. # /etc/init.d/ # /etc/init/ acpid acpid.conf apache2 --------------------------- apparmor --------------------------- apport apport.conf atd atd.conf bind9 --------------------------- bootlogd --------------------------- cgroup-lite cgroup-lite.conf --------------------------- console.conf console-setup console-setup.conf --------------------------- container-detect.conf --------------------------- control-alt-delete.conf cron cron.conf dbus dbus.conf dmesg dmesg.conf dns-clean --------------------------- friendly-recovery --------------------------- --------------------------- failsafe.conf --------------------------- flush-early-job-log.conf --------------------------- friendly-recovery.conf grub-common --------------------------- halt --------------------------- hostname hostname.conf hwclock hwclock.conf hwclock-save hwclock-save.conf irqbalance irqbalance.conf killprocs --------------------------- lxc lxc.conf lxc-net lxc-net.conf module-init-tools module-init-tools.conf --------------------------- mountall.conf --------------------------- mountall-net.conf --------------------------- mountall-reboot.conf --------------------------- mountall-shell.conf --------------------------- mounted-debugfs.conf --------------------------- mounted-dev.conf --------------------------- mounted-proc.conf --------------------------- mounted-run.conf --------------------------- mounted-tmp.conf --------------------------- mounted-var.conf networking networking.conf network-interface network-interface.conf network-interface-container network-interface-container.conf network-interface-security network-interface-security.conf newrelic-sysmond --------------------------- ondemand --------------------------- plymouth plymouth.conf plymouth-log plymouth-log.conf plymouth-splash plymouth-splash.conf plymouth-stop plymouth-stop.conf plymouth-upstart-bridge plymouth-upstart-bridge.conf postgresql --------------------------- pppd-dns --------------------------- procps procps.conf rc rc.conf rc.local --------------------------- rcS rcS.conf --------------------------- rc-sysinit.conf reboot --------------------------- resolvconf resolvconf.conf rsync --------------------------- rsyslog rsyslog.conf screen-cleanup screen-cleanup.conf sendsigs --------------------------- setvtrgb setvtrgb.conf --------------------------- shutdown.conf single --------------------------- skeleton --------------------------- ssh ssh.conf stop-bootlogd --------------------------- stop-bootlogd-single --------------------------- sudo --------------------------- --------------------------- tty1.conf --------------------------- tty2.conf --------------------------- tty3.conf --------------------------- tty4.conf --------------------------- tty5.conf --------------------------- tty6.conf udev udev.conf udev-fallback-graphics udev-fallback-graphics.conf udev-finish udev-finish.conf udevmonitor udevmonitor.conf udevtrigger udevtrigger.conf ufw ufw.conf umountfs --------------------------- umountnfs.sh --------------------------- umountroot --------------------------- --------------------------- upstart-socket-bridge.conf --------------------------- upstart-udev-bridge.conf urandom --------------------------- --------------------------- ureadahead.conf --------------------------- ureadahead-other.conf --------------------------- wait-for-state.conf whoopsie whoopsie.conf To be honest, I'm not entirely sure if I'm interpreting the division of responsibilities properly, as I didn't expect to see any overlap (of what framework handles which services). So I was quite surprised to learn that there was a significant amount of overlap in service references, in addition to being unable to discern which of the two was intended to be the primary service framework. Why does there seem to be a fair amount of redundancy in individual service handling between init.d and upstart? Is something else at play here that I'm missing? What is preventing upstart from completely taking over for init.d? Is there some functionality that certain daemons require which upstart does not yet have, which are preventing some services from converting? Or is it something else entirely?

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• Go Big or Go Special

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  Watching Shark Tank tonight and the first presentation was by Mango Mango Preserves and it highlighted an interesting contrast in business trends today and how to capitalize on opportunities.  <Spoiler Alert> Even though every one of the sharks was raving about the product samples they tried, with two of them going for second and third servings, none of them made a deal to invest in the company.</Spoiler>  In fact, one of the sharks, Kevin O’Leary, kept ripping into the owners with statements to the effect that he thinks they are headed over a financial cliff because he felt their costs were way out of line and would be their downfall if they didn’t take action to radically cut costs. He said that he had previously owned a jams and jellies business and knew the cost ratios that you had to have to make it work.  I don’t doubt he knows exactly what he’s talking about and is 100% accurate…for doing business his way, which I’ll call “Go Big”.  But there’s a whole other way to do business today that would be ideal for these ladies to pursue. As I understand it, based on his level of success in various businesses and the fact that he is even in a position to be investing in other companies, Kevin’s approach is to go mass market (Go Big) and make hundreds of millions of dollars in sales (or something along that scale) while squeezing out every ounce of cost that you can to produce an acceptable margin.  But there is a very different way of making a very successful business these days, which is all about building a passionate and loyal community of customers that are rooting for your success and even actively trying to help you succeed by promoting your product or company (Go Special).  This capitalizes on the power of social media, niche marketing, and The Long Tail.  One of the most prolific writers about capitalizing on this trend is Seth Godin, and I hope that the founders of Mango Mango pick up a couple of his books (probably Purple Cow and Tribes would be good starts) or at least read his blog.  I think the adoration expressed by all of the sharks for the product is the biggest hint that they have a remarkable product and that they are perfect for this type of business approach. Both are completely valid business models, and it may certainly be that the scale at which Kevin O’Leary wants to conduct business where he invests his money is well beyond the long tail, but that doesn’t mean that there is not still a lot of money to be made there.  I wish them the best of luck with their endeavors!

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• Create Custom Playlists in Windows Media Player 12

  - by DigitalGeekery

  A playlist is a group of songs or media files that are grouped together based on a theme. Today we’ll look at how to create your own custom playlists in Windows Media Player 12. Create Custom Playlists Open Windows Media Player and switch to the Library view. Click on the Play tab at the top right to reveal the List pane.   If you currently have songs listed on the List pane, you can remove them by clicking Clear list.   To add songs to your playlist, right-click on the song title, select Add to, and then click Play list. You can also drag and drop the song title right onto the play list area. Hold down the Control [Ctrl] key while clicking to select more than one track at a time.   Changing the Playlist Order You can click and drag each item in your playlist to move it up or down.   You can also right click on the title and select Move up or Move down, or to completely remove a track from your playlist. You have the option to shuffle your list by clicking the Options list icon and selecting Shuffle list from the dropdown list. By selecting Sort list by you can sort by Title, Artist, Album, Release date, and more. Saving and naming your playlist To save your playlist, click on the Save list button. You’ll be prompted to enter a name for your playlist in the text box. Click away when you are finished. Windows Media Player will display your most recent playlists in the Navigation panel. Simply select the playlist anytime you want to listen to it.   Conclusion Custom playlists are a great way to group your music by themes such as mood, genre, activity, season, and more. If you are new to Windows Media Player 12, check out our post on managing your music in Windows Media Player. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Fixing When Windows Media Player Library Won’t Let You Add FilesShare Digital Media With Other Computers on a Home Network with Windows 7Install and Use the VLC Media Player on Ubuntu LinuxMake Windows Media Player Automatically Open in Mini Player ModeWhat are wmpnscfg.exe and wmpnetwk.exe and Why Are They Running? 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 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Easily Search Food Recipes With Recipe Chimp Tech Fanboys Field Guide Check these Awesome Chrome Add-ons iFixit Offers Gadget Repair Manuals Online Vista style sidebar for Windows 7 Create Nice Charts With These Web Based Tools

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• PHP MVC error handling, view display and user permissions

  - by cen

  I am building a moderation panel from scratch in a MVC approach and a lot of questions cropped up during development. I would like to hear from others how they handle these situations. Error handling Should you handle an error inside the class method or should the method return something anyway and you handle the error in controller? What about PDO exceptions, how to handle them? For example, let's say we have a method that returns true if the user exists in a table and false if he does not exist. What do you return in the catch statement? You can't just return false because then the controller assumes that everything is alright while the truth is that something must be seriously broken. Displaying the error from the method completely breaks the whole design. Maybe a page redirect inside the method? The proper way to show a view The controller right now looks something like this: include('view/header.php'); if ($_GET['m']=='something') include('view/something.php'); elseif ($_GET['m']=='somethingelse') include('view/somethingelse.php'); include('view/foter.php'); Each view also checks if it was included from the index page to prevent it being accessed directly. There is a view file for each different document body. Is this way of including different views ok or is there a more proper way? Managing user rights Each user has his own rights, what he can see and what he can do. Which part of the system should verify that user has the permission to see the view, controller or view itself? Right now I do permission checks directly in the view because each view can contain several forms that require different permissions and I would need to make a seperate file for each of them if it was put in the controller. I also have to re-check for the permissions everytime a form is submitted because form data can be easily forged. The truth is, all this permission checking and validating the inputs just turns the controller into a huge if/then/else cluster. I feel like 90% of the time I am doing error checks/permissions/validations and very little of the actual logic. Is this normal even for popular frameworks?

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• How to deal with a boss who is extremely competitive [closed]

  - by user72101

  Okay, so I recently joined this group. My boss who I reported to, left a while ago and my colleague was made the team lead. We both now report to the same head, but she heads the team I work in. I am not sure on how to deal with various situations. I would imagine a team lead who motivates the rest of the team, and not someone who would take credit for what others do. I am the only one who works at the same geographic location. She is very smart, no doubt about it. Things get to me, for example I work on an issue and email a dev team, she would respond on top of my emails and as she is the lead, people respond to her rather than to me. If there is an email addressed with the head on it, she would get it to faster than I do, even when she knew I am looking into it. The rest of the team keeps asking me questions or help. I find it hard to say no, and I try to help them as i feel I might need their help someday as well. I slack in my own work or I could have used the time to learn things. I feel that she should be the go to person and not me. If one gets the benefits of being a lead, why not the work that goes with it? I feel I am stuck in a very unfortunate situation and am totally helpless about it. Everyday it is something or the other. I work on a project for months and finally when it is about to go live and there was a minor issue and the head started asking questions, she completely stole my thunder on a call. She would not let me speak and I have to actually cut her off to speak up. The ideal would be not to give it a thought and just do the best I can,but I feel I am capable of much more and not able to give my best because of this constant war at work. Neetu

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• How to Name Linked Servers

  - by Bill Graziano

  I did another SQL Server migration over the weekend that dealt with linked servers.  I’ve seen all kinds of odd naming schemes and there are a few I like and a few I suggest you avoid. Don’t name your linked server for its IP address.  At some point whatever is on the other end of that IP address will move.  You’ll probably need to point your linked server to a new IP address but not change the name of the linked server.  And then you’ve completely lost any context around this.  Bonus points if a new SQL Server eventually ends up at the old IP address further adding confusion when you’re trying to troubleshoot. Don’t name your linked server based on its instance name.  This one is less obvious.  It sounds nice to have a linked server named [VSRV1\SQLTRAN01].  You know what it is and it’s easy to use.  It’s less nice when you’ve got 200 stored procedures that all reference this linked server but the database they reference has moved to a new instance.  Now when you query this you’re actually querying a different instance. (Please note: I’m not saying it’s a good idea to have 200 stored procedures that all reference a linked server.  I’m just saying it’s not all that uncommon.) Consider naming your linked server something that you can easily search on.  See my note above.  You can also get around this by always enclosing the name in brackets.  That is harder to enforce unless you use some odd characters in it. Consider naming your linked server based on the function.  For example, I’ve had some luck having a linked server named [DW] that points to our data warehouse server.  That server can change names or physically move and all I need to do is update the linked server to point to the new destination.  The descriptive name of the linked server is still accurate.  No code needs to change and people still know what it is just by looking at it. Consider naming your linked server for the database.  I’m still thinking through this one.  It may mean you have multiple linked servers that point to the same instance.  I’ve found that database names rarely change.  It also makes it easier to move individual databases to new servers. Consider pointing your linked servers to DNS entries and not IP addresses.  I’ve done this for reporting databases and had some success.  Especially for read-only snapshots that can get created on the main database or on the mirror.  What issues have you had with linked server names?  What has worked for you?  Where are the holes in my approach?

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• Why do I get this file loading exception when trying to draw sprites with libgdx?

  - by BluFire

  I'm having trouble with the "Drawing Images" section on the libgdx tutorial. I set up the documents completely and I typed the code as follows: public class Game implements ApplicationListener { public static final String LOG = Game.class.getSimpleName(); private FPSLogger fpsLogger; private SpriteBatch batch; private Texture texture; private Sprite sprite; private TextureRegion region; //removed irrelevant code for this question... @Override public void render() { texture = new Texture(Gdx.files.internal("android.png")); region = new TextureRegion(texture, 20, 20, 50, 50); sprite = new Sprite(texture, 20, 20, 50, 50); sprite.setPosition(10, 10); sprite.setRotation(45); Gdx.gl.glClearColor(0f, 1f, 0f, 1f); Gdx.gl.glClear(GL20.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); batch.begin(); batch.draw(texture,10,10); batch.draw(region,10,10); sprite.draw(batch); batch.end(); // output the current FPS fpsLogger.log(); } } I went through the tutorial on the website but when I run the code I get errors: Exception in thread "LWJGL Application" com.badlogic.gdx.utils.GdxRuntimeException: Couldn't load file: android.png at com.badlogic.gdx.graphics.Pixmap.<init>(Pixmap.java:137) at com.badlogic.gdx.graphics.glutils.FileTextureData.prepare(FileTextureData.java:55) at com.badlogic.gdx.graphics.Texture.load(Texture.java:175) at com.badlogic.gdx.graphics.Texture.create(Texture.java:159) at com.badlogic.gdx.graphics.Texture.<init>(Texture.java:133) at com.badlogic.gdx.graphics.Texture.<init>(Texture.java:122) at com.game.Game.render(Game.java:46) at com.badlogic.gdx.backends.lwjgl.LwjglApplication.mainLoop (LwjglApplication.java:163) at com.badlogic.gdx.backends.lwjgl.LwjglApplication$1.run(LwjglApplication.java:113) Caused by: com.badlogic.gdx.utils.GdxRuntimeException: File not found: android.png (Internal) at com.badlogic.gdx.files.FileHandle.read(FileHandle.java:108) at com.badlogic.gdx.files.FileHandle.length(FileHandle.java:364) at com.badlogic.gdx.files.FileHandle.readBytes(FileHandle.java:156) at com.badlogic.gdx.graphics.Pixmap.<init>(Pixmap.java:134) ... 8 more I set the android.png in my assests folder in my android project linking it to the desktop one, I don't understand what I'm doing wrong. What is making these errors? FIX. Weird ending.this was the plus where the sprite is suppose to look like. The top right corner of the next image should look like, the bottom left is what turned out in the code. I'm think it was because of the texture region but I'm not 100%. Can somebody explain why it is really warped? I thought the changes I made in the coding will just change position/rotation, rather then a change in the image.

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• A Quick HLSL Question (How to modify some HLSL code)

  - by electroflame

  Thanks for wanting to help! I'm trying to create a circular, repeating ring (that moves outward) on a texture. I've achieved this, to a degree, with the following code: float distance = length(inTex - in_ShipCenter); float time = in_Time; ///* Simple distance/time combination */ float2 colorIndex = float2(distance - time, .3); float4 shipColor = tex2D(BaseTexture, inTex); float4 ringColor = tex2D(ringTexture, colorIndex); float4 finalColor; finalColor.rgb = (shipColor.rgb) + (ringColor.rgb); finalColor.a = shipColor.a; // Use the base texture's alpha (transparency). return finalColor; This works, and works how I want it to. The ring moves outward from the center of the texture at a steady rate, and is constrained to the edges of the base texture (i.e. it won't continue past an edge). However, there are a few issues with it that I would like some help on, though. They are: By combining the color additively (when I set finalColor.rgb), it makes the resulting ring color much lighter than I want (which, is pretty much the definition of additive blending, but I don't really want additive blending in this case). I would really like to be able to pass in the color that I want the ring to be. Currently, I have to pass in a texture that contains the color of the ring, but I think that doing it that way is kind of wasteful and overly-cumbersome. I know that I'm probably being an idiot over this, so I greatly appreciate the help. Some other (possibly relevant) information: I'm using XNA. I'm applying this by providing it to a SpriteBatch (as an Effect). The SpriteBatch is using BlendState.NonPremultiplied. Thanks in advance! EDIT: Thanks for the answers thus far, as they've helped me get a better grasp of the color issue. However, I'm still unsure of how to pass a color in and not use a texture. i.e. Can I create a tex2D by using a float4 instead of a texture? Or can I make a texture from a float4 and pass the texture in to the tex2D? DOUBLE EDIT: Here's some example pictures: With the effect off: With the effect on: With the effect on, but with the color weighting set to full: As you can see, the color weighting makes the base texture completely black (The background is black, so it looks transparent). You can also see the red it's supposed to be, and then the white-ish it really is when blended additively.

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• Safely deploying changes to production servers

  - by oazabir

  When you deploy incremental changes on a production server, which is running and live all the time, you some times see error messages like “Compiler Error Message: The Type ‘XXX’ exists in both…”. Sometimes you find Application_Start event not firing although you shipped a new class, dll or web.config. Sometimes you find static variables not getting initialized and so on. There are so many weird things happen on webservers when you incrementally deploy changes to the server and the server has been up and running for several weeks. So, I came up with a full proof house keeping steps that we always do whenever we deploy some incremental change to our websites. These steps ensure that the web sites are properly recycled , cached are cleared, all the data stored at Application level is initialized. First of all you should have multiple web servers behind load balancer. This way you can take one server our of the production traffic, do your deployment and house keeping tasks like restarting IIS, and then put it back. Then you can do it for the second server and so on. This ensures there’s no outage for customer. If you can do it reasonable fast, hopefully customers won’t notice discrepancy between the servers some having new code and some having old code. You should only do this when your changes aren’t drastic. For ex, you aren’t delivering a complete revamped UI. In that case, some users hitting server1 with latest UI will suddenly get a completely different experience and then on next page refresh, they might hit server2 with old code and get a totally different experience. This works for incremental non-dramatic changes only.   During deployment you should follow these steps: Take server X out of load balancer so that it does not get any traffic. Stop all windows services on the server. Stop IIS. Delete the Temporary ASP.NET folders of all .NET versions incase you have multiple .NET versions running. You can follow this link. Deploy the changes. Flush any distributed cache you have, for ex, Velocity or Memcached. Start IIS. Start the windows services on the server. Warm up all websites by hitting major URLs on the websites. You should have some automated script to do this. You can use tinyget to hit some major URLs, especially pages that take a lot of time to compile. Read my post on keeping websites warm with zero coding. Put server X back to load balancer so that it starts receiving traffic. That’s it. It should give you a clean deployment and prevent unexpected errors. You should print these steps and hang on the desk of your deployment guys so that they never forget during deployment pressure.

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• Silverlight Cream for March 05, 2011 -- #1053

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this all-sumbittal (while I was at MVP11) Issue: Michael Washington(-2-), goldytech, JFo, Andrea Boschin, Jonathan Marbutt, Gregor Biswanger, Michael Wolf, and Peter Kuhn. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "A Simple Bindable CheckboxList Control" Jonathan Marbutt WP7: "Struggles with the Panorama Control" JFo Lightswitch: "HTML (including HTML 5) and LightSwitch at the same time?" Michael Washington From SilverlightCream.com: LightSwitch vs HTML 5 ? In his first post-MVP11 post, Michael Washington takes on HTML5 with a Lightswitch discussion. Good discussion follows in the comments also. HTML (including HTML 5) and LightSwitch at the same time? Michael Washington's 2nd post is a great tutorial on creating a re-usable business layer with Lightswitch... all good stuff, and look for more from Michael as Lightswitch matures. How to add Computed Properties in WCF Ria Services on client goldytech has a new post up about providing real-time solutions to client-side calculations with WCF RIA services. Struggles with the Panorama Control JFo details a problem he had with the Panorama control on WP7... detailing 4 problems she had and her solutions... well thought-out explanations too.. a definite good read... and another blogger to add to my list! Windows Phone 7 - Part #7: Understanding Push Notifications Andrea Boschin has part 7 of his WP7 series up at SilverlightShow, concentrating on Push Notifications this time out... great explanation of push notifications in this tutorial from the service and phone side with a working sample to boot. A Simple Bindable CheckboxList Control Jonathan Marbutt took a completely different direction than most and created his own Bindable CheckboxList by starting with ContentControl rather than a Listbox as most do... pretty cool and all the source. Own routed events in Silverlight I met Gregor Biswanger at the MVP Summit and asked him to send me his blog run through Microsoft Translator ... here's a great post on routed events he did back in November... and a discussion of his CallMethodAction Behavior... which looks like another good post subject! Creating a Silverlight Out-of-Browser Splash Screen Michael Wolf has a post up discussing OOB splash screens... I like his "White screen of Awesome" definition ... I'm very familiar with that :) ... check out his solution for getting around that white screen, and lots of external links too. XNA for Silverlight developers: Part 5 - Input (touch + gestures) Peter Kuhn has Part 5 in his tutorial series on XNA for Silverlight devs up at SilverlightShow... this time covering touch and gestures ... how to enable and read gestures, and the difference between Silverlight and XNA in the touch department. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Help for choosing a cost effective game server for Flash client

  - by Sapots Thomas

  I am developing a flash-based game primarily for desktops, to be hosted on facebook platform (like cityville, sims social etc). The gameplay doesn't involve real-time communication between players unlike an mmorpg. Here each player plays in his own world without any knowledge of other online players. I've written almost 95% of the game logic in actionscript on the client side. I used Smartfox Server pro on the server side (mostly used for getting data from the DB) and the entire server code is an extension written in java. I'm using json as the protocol for communication. Although I love smartfox server, as an indie, its tough for me to afford the unlimited users license. Morever its limited just to one machine. So I'm looking for an alternative to smartfox server now. The reason for choosing smartfox server earlier was to use the server properties supported by it. Server properties on smartfox server take advantage of the socket connection and are essentially server side objects in java which store some data for the player which he can change frequently during the game. And when he logs out of the game, the extension can write out the final state in the DB (I'm using MySQL). This significantly reduces the number of DB UPDATE/INSERT calls made during the game. I love the way this works since the data is secure as its on the server side and smartfox server is known to be scalable. (although I'm not sure whether this approach is used widely by gaming industry or not, since this is not an mmorpg, I'm putting all player in the lobby). So my question is whether any of the free and community supported servers like reddwarf, firebase, BlazeDS etc can provide a similar architecture so that I can use server properties without many code changes? EDIT : I am not insisting on the exact same feature (thats asking too much!), but atleast a viable messaging system on the server so that I can send actionscript objects from the client using json/binary so that its fast. OR maybe some completely different way to implement what I need here. Thanks in advance.

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• Atmospheric scattering sky from space artifacts

  - by ollipekka

  I am in the process of implementing atmospheric scattering of a planets from space. I have been using Sean O'Neil's shaders from http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems2/gpugems2_chapter16.html as a starting point. I have pretty much the same problem related to fCameraAngle except with SkyFromSpace shader as opposed to GroundFromSpace shader as here: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/621187-sean-oneils-atmospheric-scattering/ I get strange artifacts with sky from space shader when not using fCameraAngle = 1 in the inner loop. What is the cause of these artifacts? The artifacts disappear when fCameraAngle is limtied to 1. I also seem to lack the hue that is present in O'Neil's sandbox (http://sponeil.net/downloads.htm) Camera position X=0, Y=0, Z=500. GroundFromSpace on the left, SkyFromSpace on the right. Camera position X=500, Y=500, Z=500. GroundFromSpace on the left, SkyFromSpace on the right. I've found that the camera angle seems to handled very differently depending the source: In the original shaders the camera angle in SkyFromSpaceShader is calculated as: float fCameraAngle = dot(v3Ray, v3SamplePoint) / fHeight; Whereas in ground from space shader the camera angle is calculated as: float fCameraAngle = dot(-v3Ray, v3Pos) / length(v3Pos); However, various sources online tinker with negating the ray. Why is this? Here is a C# Windows.Forms project that demonstrates the problem and that I've used to generate the images: https://github.com/ollipekka/AtmosphericScatteringTest/ Update: I have found out from the ScatterCPU project found on O'Neil's site that the camera ray is negated when the camera is above the point being shaded so that the scattering is calculated from point to the camera. Changing the ray direction indeed does remove artifacts, but introduces other problems as illustrated here: Furthermore, in the ScatterCPU project, O'Neil guards against situations where optical depth for light is less than zero: float fLightDepth = Scale(fLightAngle, fScaleDepth); if (fLightDepth < float.Epsilon) { continue; } As pointed out in the comments, along with these new artifacts this still leaves the question, what is wrong with the images where camera is positioned at 500, 500, 500? It feels like the halo is focused on completely wrong part of the planet. One would expect that the light would be closer to the spot where the sun should hits the planet, rather than where it changes from day to night. The github project has been updated to reflect changes in this update.

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• Mexico leading in Business Transformation Strategies:

  - by [email protected]

  By John Burke Group Vice President Oracle Applications Business Unit     I recently completed a business tour in Mexico, and was surprised by both the economic vibrancy of the country and the thought leadership expressed by many of the customers I met.  An example of the economic vibrancy of the country: across the street from my hotel was the local Bentley dealership, Coach Store, Yves Saint Laurent and of course a Starbucks.  I only made it to Starbucks.  Both the Coach Store and YSL had a line of folks waiting to get in... As for thought leadership, there were several illustrations only on the first day. I had the opportunity to meet with a branch of the Mexican Federal Government. Their questions were not about clerical task automation, far from it! We discussed citizen on-line access to fees and services - for example looking up the duty on an international goods shipment, or tracking that my taxes have been received, or the status of my request for a certain service.  Eligibility, policies and status.  Having an integrated rules or policy automation system that would allow businesses and citizens to access accurate information and ensure the proper collection of fees and payment for 3rd party provided services.    Then in the afternoon, I met with the owner of a roofing company (note: most roofs in Mexico are flat and made of cement).  This CEO started discussing how he wanted to transform his business from a cement products company to a service company and market 5-10-15 year service contracts which would guarantee the structural integrity of the roof and of course that the roof would remain waterproof.  Although his products were guaranteed, they required an annual inspection and most home owners never schedule that inspection until it is too late and water damage has occurred.  These emergency calls reduce his margin and reduce customer satisfaction.  This lead to a discussion of business models in general and why long term differentiation can only come from service, not just for the music or news industries, but also for roofing companies!    I completely agreed with the transformational concepts described in both meetings and quickly understood why there is a Bentley dealership near my hotel.    

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• SSIS Expression Editor & Tester

  Published today on CodePlex is the SSIS Expression Editor & Tester project. If you want to try it just pop over to CodePlex and download it. About five years ago I developed my own expression editor control. It first got used in our custom tasks as the MS editor didn’t become available until SQL 2005 SP1, but even then it had some handy features I preferred. For example resizable panes so that if your expression result was more than two lines you could see them all. It also meant I could change the functions available in the tree view, the most obvious use being to add some handy snippets and samples that I used a lot. This quickly developed into a small expression testing tool. I’d develop complex expressions using my editor and then copy it back into the package itself. I have been meaning to make the tool available for some time and finally made the effort, the code is checked-in and the signed downloads are published on CodePlex. There are two flavours, SQL 2005 or 2008, and just a simple zip file to download and extract. The tool doesn’t need installing, and is completely portable. It does need SSIS to be installed on the local machine though. Each zip file contains two files: ExpressionTester.exe – The tool itself, run this. ExpressionEditor.dll – The reusable editor control. A while ago the gentlemen behind BIDS Helper noticed the editor on a task and asked about using it. This became incorporated into their variable window extensions feature. To try and help them and anyone else that wants to use the editor control, it is available as a single assembly that you can reference yourself, and of course all the source code is on CodePlex too. Just add a reference to the ExpressionEditor.dll assembly and you should be up and running in no time. There is a sample project Package Test in the source code which shows how to use the editor control form in it’s simplest form, or if you want to host control directly then the tester tool is a perfect example.

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• SQL Saturday #162 Cambridge

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  Despite the efforts of American Airlines, this past weekend I attended the first SQL Saturday in the UK!  Hosted by the SQLCambs Chapter of PASS and organized by Mark (b|t) & Lorraine Broadbent, ably assisted by John Martin (b|t), Mark Pryce-Maher (b|t) and other folks whose names I've unfortunately forgotten, it was held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, which is completely surrounded by Cambridge University. On Friday, they presented 3 pre-conference sessions given by the brilliant American Cloud & DBA Guru, Buck Woody (b|t), the brilliant Danish SQL Server Internals Guru, Mark Rasmussen (b|t), and the brilliant Scottish Business Intelligence Guru and recent Outstanding Pass Volunteer, Jen Stirrup (b|t).  While I would have loved to attend any of their pre-cons (having seen them present several times already), finances and American Airlines ultimately made that impossible.  But not to worry, I caught up with them during the regular sessions and at the speaker dinner.  And I got back the money they all owed me.  (Actually I owed Mark some money) The schedule was jam-packed even with only 4 tracks, there were 8 regular slots, a lunch session for sponsor presentations, and a 15 minute keynote given by Buck Woody, who besides giving an excellent history of SQL Server at Microsoft (and before), also explained the source of the "unknown contact" image that appears in Outlook.  Hint: it's not Buck himself. Amazingly, and against all better judgment, I even got to present at SQL Saturday 162!  I did a 5 minute Lightning Talk on Regular Expressions in SSMS.  I then did a regular 50 minute session on Constraints.  You can download the content for the regular session at that link, and for the regular expression presentation here. I had a great time and had a great audience for both of my sessions.  You would never have guessed this was the first event for the organizers, everything went very smoothly, especially for the number of attendees and the relative smallness of the space.  The event sponsors also deserve a lot of credit for making themselves fit in a small area and for staying through the entire event until the giveaways at the very end. Overall this was one of the best SQL Saturdays I've ever attended and I have to congratulate Mark B, Lorraine, John, Mark P-M, and all the volunteers and speakers for making this an astoundingly hard act to follow!  Well done!

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• Keep taking the tablets

  - by Roger Hart

  A guest editorial for the SimpleTalk newsletter. So why would Red Gate build an Ipad Game? Is it just because tablet devices are exciting and cool? Ok, maybe a little. Mostly, it was seeing that the best existing tablet and smartphone apps do simple, intuitive things, using simple intuitive interfaces to solve single problems. That's pretty close to what we call our own "intuitively simple" approach to software. Tablets and mobile could be fantastic for us, if we can identify those problems that a tablet device can solve. How do you create THE next tool for a completely new technology? We're glad we don't face that problem every day, but it's pretty exciting when we do. We figure we should learn by doing. We created "MobileFoo" (a Red Gate Company) , we picked up some shiny Apple tech, and got to grips with Objective C, and life in the App Store ecosystem. The result so far is an iPad game: Stacks and Heaps It's Rob and Marine's spin on Snakes and Ladders. Instead of snakes we have unhandled exceptions, a blue screen of death, and other hazards. We wanted something compellingly geeky on mobile, and we're pretty sure we've got it. It's trudging through App Store approval as we speak. but if you want to get an idea of what it is like to switch from .net to Objective C, take a look at Rob's post Android and iOS is quite a culture-change for Windows developers. So to give them a feel for the problems real users might have, we needed some real users - we offered our colleagues subsidised tablets. The only conditions were that they get used at work, and we get the feedback. Seeing tablets around the office is starting to give us some data points: Is typing the bottleneck? Will tablets ever cut it as text-entry devices, and could we fix it? Is mobile working held up by the pain of connecting to work LANs? How about security? Multi-tasking will let tablets do more. They're small, easy to use, almost instant to switch on, and connect by Wi Fi. There's plenty on that list to make a sysadmin twitchy. We'll find out as people spend more time working with these devices, and we'd love to hear what you think about tablet devices too. (comments are filtered, what with the spam)

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• Array Multiplication and Division

  - by Narfanator

  I came across a question that (eventually) landed me wondering about array arithmetic. I'm thinking specifically in Ruby, but I think the concepts are language independent. So, addition and subtraction are defined, in Ruby, as such: [1,6,8,3,6] + [5,6,7] == [1,6,8,3,6,5,6,7] # All the elements of the first, then all the elements of the second [1,6,8,3,6] - [5,6,7] == [1,8,3] # From the first, remove anything found in the second and array * scalar is defined: [1,2,3] * 2 == [1,2,3,1,2,3] But What, conceptually, should the following be? None of these are (as far as I can find) defined: Array x Array: [1,2,3] * [1,2,3] #=> ? Array / Scalar: [1,2,3,4,5] / 2 #=> ? Array / Scalar: [1,2,3,4,5] % 2 #=> ? Array / Array: [1,2,3,4,5] / [1,2] #=> ? Array / Array: [1,2,3,4,5] % [1,2] #=> ? I've found some mathematical descriptions of these operations for set theory, but I couldn't really follow them, and sets don't have duplicates (arrays do). Edit: Note, I do not mean vector (matrix) arithmetic, which is completely defined. Edit2: If this is the wrong stack exchange, tell me which is the right one and I'll move it. Edit 3: Add mod operators to the list. Edit 4: I figure array / scalar is derivable from array * scalar: a * b = c => a = b / c [1,2,3] * 3 = [1,2,3]+[1,2,3]+[1,2,3] = [1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3] => [1,2,3] = [1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3] / 3 Which, given that programmer's division ignore the remained and has modulus: [1,2,3,4,5] / 2 = [[1,2], [3,4]] [1,2,3,4,5] % 2 = [5] Except that these are pretty clearly non-reversible operations (not that modulus ever is), which is non-ideal. Edit: I asked a question over on Math that led me to Multisets. I think maybe extensible arrays are "multisets", but I'm not sure yet.

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• Ati Radeon HD 3200 Graphics driver - Installation Problem

  - by samufi

  I have a fresh installation of Ubuntu 12.04 x86 and I am trying to install the proprietary driver for my "Radeon HD 3200 Graphics" video card. I know that there are already many threads about this topic, but I did not find a solution for my problem: For the installation I followed exactly these instructions: What is the correct way to install ATI Catalyst Video Drivers in 12.04 LTS? During the process I faced these problems: I executed ~$ debconf libstdc++6 dkms libqtgui4 wget execstack libelfg0 dh-modaliases and got: debconf: DbDriver "passwords" warning: could not open /var/cache/debconf/passwords.dat: Keine Berechtigung Can't exec "libstdc++6": Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden at /usr/share/perl/5.14/IPC/Open3.pm line 186. open2: exec of libstdc++6 dkms libqtgui4 wget execstack libelfg0 dh-modaliases failed at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/ConfModule.pm line 59 (translation of the German parts: "Keine Berechtigung" means: "no permission"; "Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden" means: "File or folder not found") Because I had no idea if it was a big issue, I just continued: ~$ sudo apt-get install ia32-libs There I got: Paketlisten werden gelesen... Fertig Abhängigkeitsbaum wird aufgebaut Statusinformationen werden eingelesen... Fertig Paket ia32-libs ist nicht verfügbar, wird aber von einem anderen Paket referenziert. Das kann heißen, dass das Paket fehlt, dass es abgelöst wurde oder nur aus einer anderen Quelle verfügbar ist. E: Paket »ia32-libs« hat keinen Installationskandidaten (Translation: [...] the package ia32-libs is not available but is referenced by an other package [...] E: package »ia32-libs« has no installation candidate) Once more I went on. The next steps worked quite fine. But when I came to the point: ~$ sudo dpkg -i *.deb There I got A popup message, something like there was a problem with a system application but in the terminal no errors were reported, also the packages seemed to be installed. so now the Ati Catalyst Center works amdcccle but fglrxinfo gave me X Error of failed request: BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation) Major opcode of failed request: 139 (ATIFGLEXTENSION) Minor opcode of failed request: 66 () Serial number of failed request: 13 Current serial number in output stream: 13 So there is something wrong. (Also there is not the possibility to enable these nice graphical features - the reason why I installed the proprietary driver) Because I worked with a completely fresh Installation I don't know how to fix the problem. If anybody could help I would be very tahnkful! =)

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• Why does Chrome video performance substantially degrade after waking from suspend in 10.10?

  - by Grant Heaslip

  Note: For some more details, some of which may not be true given what I've figured out, see this post. When I first boot my computer, video performance (both native H.264 HTML5 in YouTube and Vimeo, and in Flash) in Chrome is perfectly reasonable. CPU usage stays slow, everything works correctly, and the video is silky-smooth. But for whatever reason, if I suspend my computer then wake it up, video performance plummets. Full screen HTML5 video is choppy at best, and full-screen Flash video basically brings my computer to its knees (I'm talking less than a frame a second, and a 5 second lead time to leave full-screen after hitting Esc). Restarting Chrome doesn't fix this — I need to completely restart my machine before performance goes back to normal. Video performance in other applications, such as Movie Player, doesn't seem to be affected at all by the suspend cycle — it's only Chrome. I'm using a Lenovo X201, with an Intel GMA HD graphics chipset, and Intel compnents all around (I don't need any proprietary drivers). This didn't happen in 10.04, and I haven't anything that I think would have caused this to happen. It's possible that a Chrome release could have caused this, but it seems less likely than a regression between 10.04 and 10.10. Any ideas? EDIT: In response Georg's comment, logging in and out doesn't fix it. Restarting Compiz or switching to Metacity (at least by using "compiz/metacity --replace & disown" — am I doing it right?) doesn't help (actually, it seemed to help somewhat with Flash once, but I haven't been able to reproduce this). I'm not sure about GDM — when I use "sudo restart gdm" I get kicked back to the Linux shell (?), which I have no idea how to get out of. Also, I want to make very clear that this isn't just a case of Flash sucking (it does,but that's beside the point). I"m seeing the same general problem with HTML5 videos, and Flash is performing better on my Nexus One than it does on my Core i5 laptop. There's something screwy going on with Chrome and/or 10.10.

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• SQLAuthority News – SQL Server Wait Stats – eBook to Download on Kindle – Answer to FREE PDF Download Request

  - by pinaldave

  Being a book author is a completely new experience for me. I am yet to come across the issues faced by expert book authors. I assume that these interesting issues can be routine ones for expert book authors. One of the biggest requests I am getting for my SQL Server Wait Stats [Amazon] | [Flipkart] | [Kindle] book is my humble attempt to write a book. This is our very first experiment, and the book is beginning of the subject of SQL Server Wait Stats; we will come up with a new version of the book later next year when we have enough information for the SQL Server 2012 version. Following are the top 2 requests that I keep on receiving in emails, on blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. “Please send us FREE PDF of your book so we do not have to purchase it.” “If you can share with us the eBook (free and downloadable) format of your book, we will share it with everybody we know and you will get additional exposure.” Here is my response for the abovementioned requests: If you really need my book and cannot purchase it due to financial trouble, then feel free to let me know and I will purchase it myself and ship it to you. If you are in a country where the print book not available, then you can buy the Kindle book, which is available online in any country, and you can just read it on your computer and mobile devices. You DO NOT have to own a Kindle to read a Kindle format book. You can freely download Kindle software on your desired format and purchase the book online. For next 5 days, the kindle book is available at 3.99 in USA, and in other countries, the price is anywhere between 3.99 and 5.99. The price will go up by USD 2 everywhere across the world after 1st November, 2011. Here is the link to download Kindle Software for free PC, WP7, and in marketplace for various other mobile devices. I thank you for giving warm response to SQL Server Wait Stats book. I am motivated to write the next expanded version of this book. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Database, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Best Ati Radeon x1200 drivers for 12.10

  - by Jaclyn

  [Long story short is at the bottom if you don't care about my ranting] Ok, well, I have the unfortunate distinction of having an Acer Extensa 4420 (Yes, the model with the faulty motherboard, and no, I do not know how it is still working either). Long story short I need the best drivers for my Ati Radeon x1200 integrated graphics card. The Ati Propriatary drivers for 12.10 no longer supports my video card. Currently when I try to play Minecraft, or any game really, the framerate is quite terrible despite the fact that my handy dandy system load monitor says that I have plenty of memory and CPU power (Mind you, this is when I'm not playing minecraft; that kind of uses up all of my resources unless it's on the worst graphical settings, and even then I have terrible framerate, but plenty of resources left over). I tried the fglrx through a workaround guide, and it completely killed my display and I had to uninstall it. I'm considering just trying to install fglrx through synaptic, but I am hesitant to do so since I don't want a repeat of the BSBDD!!! (Black Screen of Bad Drivers 'o DOOOM!!!), so I will wait until after I get some input from you fine ladies and gentlemen on to what your advice it. ok, so I'm running xubuntu 12.10 64 bit. I upgraded from 10.10 to 11.04. Then about a month ago I went from natty to quantal via the update option in the package updater, and then I decided that I was sick of gnome so I installed xfce. I did not install new drivers from natty to when I wound up at 12.10, so that shouldn't have changed, and they were indeed quite terrible back then, but now I'm using xubuntu as my main os, so I actually need good drivers. uuuugh. Anyway, long story short: I need to know what are the best drivers available for my card, and how to install them, because I am a linux novice, and I have tried everything that I can think of, including search google. Small edit: I forgot to note that since I upgraded to 12.10, my VGA out does not work (I haven't had a chance to try the s-video yet), and possibly related, the USB port on that side of my laptop does not work anymore either.

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• Clone an Azure VM using Powershell

  - by jamiet

  In a few months time I will, in association with Technitrain, be running a training course entitled Introduction to SQL Server Data Tools. I am currently working on putting together some hands-on lab material for the course delegates and have decided that in order to save time in asking people to install software during the course I am simply going to prepare a virtual machine (VM) containing all the software and lab material for each delegate to use. Given that I am an MSDN subscriber it makes sense to use Windows Azure to host those VMs given that it will be close to, if not completely, free to do so. What I don’t want to do however is separately build a VM for each delegate, I would much rather build one VM and clone it for each delegate. I’ve spent a bit of time figuring out how to do this using Powershell and in this blog post I am sharing a script that will: Prompt for some information (Azure credentials, Azure subscription name, VM name, username & password, etc…) Create a VM on Azure using that information Prompt you to sysprep the VM and image it (this part can’t be done with Powershell so has to be done manually, a link to instructions is provided in the script output) Create three new VMs based on the image Remove those three VMs Simply download the script and execute it within Powershell, assuming you have an Azure account it should take about 20minutes to execute (spinning up VMs and shutting the down isn’t instantaneous). If you experience any issues please do let me know. There are additional notes below. Hope this is useful! @Jamiet  Notes: Obviously there isn’t a lot of point in creating some new VMs and then instantly deleting them. However, this demo script does provide everything you need should you want to do any of these operations in isolation. The names of the three VMs that get created will be suffixed with 001, 002, 003 but you can edit the script to call them whatever you like. The script doesn’t totally clean up after itself. If you specify a service name & storage account name that don’t already exist then it will create them however it won’t remove them when everything is complete. The created image file will also not be deleted. Removing these items can be done by visiting http://manage.windowsazure.com. When creating the image, ensure you use the correct name (the script output tells you what name to use): Here are some screenshots taken from running the script: When the third and final VM gets removed you are asked to confirm via this dialog: Select ‘Yes’

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