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  • An Alphabet of Eponymous Aphorisms, Programming Paradigms, Software Sayings, Annoying Alliteration

    - by Brian Schroer
    Malcolm Anderson blogged about “Einstein’s Razor” yesterday, which reminded me of my favorite software development “law”, the name of which I can never remember. It took much Wikipedia-ing to find it (Hofstadter’s Law – see below), but along the way I compiled the following list: Amara’s Law: We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run. Brook’s Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Law of Demeter: Each unit should only talk to its friends; don't talk to strangers. Einstein’s Razor: “Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler” is the popular paraphrase, but what he actually said was “It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience”, an overly complicated quote which is an obvious violation of Einstein’s Razor. (You can tell by looking at a picture of Einstein that the dude was hardly an expert on razors or other grooming apparati.) Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives: Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment. - O'Toole's Corollary: The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum. Greenspun's Tenth Rule: Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. (Morris’s Corollary: “…including Common Lisp”) Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law. Issawi’s Omelet Analogy: One cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs - but it is amazing how many eggs one can break without making a decent omelet. Jackson’s Rules of Optimization: Rule 1: Don't do it. Rule 2 (for experts only): Don't do it yet. Kaner’s Caveat: A program which perfectly meets a lousy specification is a lousy program. Liskov Substitution Principle (paraphrased): Functions that use pointers or references to base classes must be able to use objects of derived classes without knowing it Mason’s Maxim: Since human beings themselves are not fully debugged yet, there will be bugs in your code no matter what you do. Nils-Peter Nelson’s Nil I/O Rule: The fastest I/O is no I/O.    Occam's Razor: The simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Parkinson’s Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Quentin Tarantino’s Pie Principle: “…you want to go home have a drink and go and eat pie and talk about it.” (OK, he was talking about movies, not software, but I couldn’t find a “Q” quote about software. And wouldn’t it be cool to write a program so great that the users want to eat pie and talk about it?) Raymond’s Rule: Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter.  Sowa's Law of Standards: Whenever a major organization develops a new system as an official standard for X, the primary result is the widespread adoption of some simpler system as a de facto standard for X. Turing’s Tenet: We shall do a much better programming job, provided we approach the task with a full appreciation of its tremendous difficulty, provided that we respect the intrinsic limitations of the human mind and approach the task as very humble programmers.  Udi Dahan’s Race Condition Rule: If you think you have a race condition, you don’t understand the domain well enough. These rules didn’t exist in the age of paper, there is no reason for them to exist in the age of computers. When you have race conditions, go back to the business and find out actual rules. Van Vleck’s Kvetching: We know about as much about software quality problems as they knew about the Black Plague in the 1600s. We've seen the victims' agonies and helped burn the corpses. We don't know what causes it; we don't really know if there is only one disease. We just suffer -- and keep pouring our sewage into our water supply. Wheeler’s Law: All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection... Except for the problem of too many layers of indirection. Wheeler also said “Compatibility means deliberately repeating other people's mistakes.”. The Wrong Road Rule of Mr. X (anonymous): No matter how far down the wrong road you've gone, turn back. Yourdon’s Rule of Two Feet: If you think your management doesn't know what it's doing or that your organisation turns out low-quality software crap that embarrasses you, then leave. Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment: Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Zawinski is also responsible for “Some people, when confronted with a problem, think 'I know, I'll use regular expressions.' Now they have two problems.” He once commented about X Windows widget toolkits: “Using these toolkits is like trying to make a bookshelf out of mashed potatoes.”

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  • MSSQL: Copying data from one database to another

    - by DigiMortal
    I have database that has data imported from another server using import and export wizard of SQL Server Management Studio. There is also empty database with same tables but it also has primary keys, foreign keys and indexes. How to get data from first database to another? Here is the description of my crusade. And believe me – it is not nice one. Bugs in import and export wizard There is some awful bugs in import and export wizard that makes data imports and exports possible only on very limited manner: wizard is not able to analyze foreign keys, wizard wants to create tables always, whatever you say in settings. The result is faulty and useless package. Now let’s go step by step and make things work in our scenario. Database There are two databases. Let’s name them like this: PLAIN – contains data imported from remote server (no indexes, no keys, no nothing, just plain dumb data) CORRECT – empty database with same structure as remote database (indexes, keys and everything else but no data) Our goal is to get data from PLAIN to CORRECT. 1. Create import and export package In this point we will create faulty SSIS package using SQL Server Management Studio. Run import and export wizard and let it create SSIS package that reads data from CORRECT and writes it to, let’s say, CORRECT-2. Make sure you enable identity insert. Make sure there are no views selected. Make sure you don’t let package to create tables (you can miss this step because it wants to create tables anyway). Save package to SSIS. 2. Modify import and export package Now let’s clean up the package and remove all faulty crap. Connect SQL Server Management Studio to SSIS instance. Select the package you just saved and export it to your hard disc. Run Business Intelligence Studio. Create new SSIS project (DON’T MISS THIS STEP). Add package from disc as existing item to project and open it. Move to Control Flow page do one of following: Remove all preparation SQL-tasks and connect Data Flow tasks. Modify all preparation SQL-tasks so the existence of tables is checked before table is created (yes, you have to do it manually). Add new Execute-SQL task as first task in control flow: Open task properties. Assign destination connection as connection to use. Insert the following SQL as command:   EXEC sp_MSForEachTable 'ALTER TABLE ? NOCHECK CONSTRAINT ALL' GO   EXEC sp_MSForEachTable 'DELETE FROM ?' GO   Save task. Add new Execute-SQL task as last task in control flow: Open task properties. Assign destination connection as connection to use. Insert the following SQL as command:   EXEC sp_MSForEachTable 'ALTER TABLE ? CHECK CONSTRAINT ALL' GO   Save task Now connect first Execute-SQL task with first Data Flow task and last Data Flow task with second Execute-SQL task. Now move to Package Explorer tab and change connections under Connection Managers folder. Make source connection to use database PLAIN. Make destination connection to use database CORRECT. Save package and rebuilt the project. Update package using SQL Server Management Studio. Some hints: Make sure you take the package from solution folder because it is saved there now. Don’t overwrite existing package. Use numeric suffix and let Management Studio to create a new version of package. Now you are done with your package. Run it to test it and clean out all the errors you find. TRUNCATE vs DELETE You can see that I used DELETE FROM instead of TRUNCATE. Why? Because TRUNCATE has some nasty limits (taken from MSDN): “You cannot use TRUNCATE TABLE on a table referenced by a FOREIGN KEY constraint; instead, use DELETE statement without a WHERE clause. Because TRUNCATE TABLE is not logged, it cannot activate a trigger. TRUNCATE TABLE may not be used on tables participating in an indexed view.” As I am not sure what tables you have and how they are used I provided here the solution that should work for all scenarios. If you need better performance then in some cases you can use TRUNCATE table instead of DELETE. Conclusion My conclusion is bitter this time although I am very positive guy. It is A.D. 2010 and still we have to write stupid hacks for simple things. Simple tools that existed before are long gone and we have to live mysterious bloatware that is our only choice when using default tools. If you take a look at the length of this posting and the count of steps I had to do for one easy thing you should treat it as a signal that something has went wrong in last years. Although I got my job done I would be still more happy if out of box tools are more intelligent one day. References T-SQL Trick for Deleting All Data in Your Database (Mauro Cardarelli) TRUNCATE TABLE (MSDN Library) Error Handling in SQL 2000 – a Background (Erland Sommarskog) Disable/Enable Foreign Key and Check constraints in SQL Server (Decipher)

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  • VB Myth - Case Insensitivity is Awesome!

    - by Damon
    I was reading Andy Brown's article 10 Reasons Why Visual Basic is Better than C# and the first claim is that VB is superior because of case insensitivity.  I think the reasons he outlines are basically as follows: Your fingers get tired finding the shift key (e.g. typing PascalCase and camelCase members) You are much more likely to make mistakes while typing names When you accidentally leave caps lock on, it really matters These three arguments culminate in the conclusion: "It doesn't matter if you disagree with everything else in this article: case-sensitivity alone is sufficient reason to ditch C#!" Righto.  I've been using Visual Basic since version 5.0, I wrote a book about ASP.NET in Visual Basic, so I want everyone to know I'm definitely not a VB.NET hater.  I had to converted to C# because it was the language of preference at the places I've worked, so I'm used to both languages.  I love me some case sensitivity.  So first, let's debunk the claims. First, your fingers do not get tired of finding the shift key unless you are writing code in notepad and compiling everything on the command line.  Visual Studio pretty much takes away the need to use the shift key at all. For the most part, any programmer worth a damn doesn't have to type more than about 3-5 characters of any variable or method name before IntelliSense kicks in to help.  VB or C#, if you are not using the tab key for autocomplete then you are typing too much anyway, regardless of whether the shift key is involved or not.  Also, you've got to be a pretty hard-core candy ass if you're complaining at the end of the day that your little fingers are hurting from hitting the shift key. Second, I cannot logically refute the fact that if there are more stringent rules about case sensitivity it will lead to more mistakes.  As such, know that you will be more prone to mistakes in C#.  However, lets talk about the magnitude of the problem.  If you are using IntelliSense then you have auto-correction built in so you probably won't have much of a problem in the first place.  If you manage to bypass IntelliSense and type something wrong you normally are immediately presented with a red-squiggly to let you know something is amiss.  Normally, a person would look at the problem, figure out what the heck went wrong, and then avoid that problem again in the future.  Granted, I have met people who seem to lack this capability, but their problem is deeper than a decision between VB.NET and C#.  So let's make sure that we're all on the same page about this problem.  If you have two teams of developers, one that uses VB.NET and one that uses C#, do not expect to see the VB.NET team drinking beer at the end of the project in festive revelry while the C# team is crying over what the hell to do because their code is riddled with case-sensitivity problems that nobody can resolve. Lastly, if you leave your caps lock key on, turn it off.  Really, what kind of ass-hat would write an entire VB.NET application ENTIRELY IN CAPS?  I happen to be a fan of case sensitivity because it encourages precision and uniformity.  The last thing I need is a code base that looks like it was ransacked by LeEt HacKors wHo Can uSe wHateVer cASe tHey wanT.  I mean really, if you saw someone write this: PuBLIc Sub MyMethod . End Sub And upon asking them why BL was upper case, they responded "Oh, I accidentally hit the shift key there.  Fortunately for me VB.NET is a case insensitive language so I saved a couple of keystrokes by leaving it in there."  Or if you saw: PUBLIC SUB ANOTHERMETHOD . END SUB And the response to why it was uppercased was "Yeah, I accidentally had caps locks on, fortunately for me VB.NET doesn't care.  Really dodged a bullet there, glad I wasn't using C#."  Would you not think that a bit ridiculous?  If you want to convince C# developers that C# sucks, go for it.  But the case insensitivity argument is crap.

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  • Bye Bye Year of the Dragon, Hello BPM

    - by Ajay Khanna
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} As 2012 fades and we usher in a New Year, let’s look back at some of the hottest BPM trends and those we’ll be seeing more of in the coming months. BPM is as much about people as it is about technology. As people adopt new ways of engagement, new channels of communications and new devices to interact , the changes are reflected in BPM practices. As Social and Mobile have become an integral part of our personal and professional lives, we’ll see tighter integration of social and mobile with BPM, and more use cases emerging for smarter process management in 2013. And with products and services becoming less differentiated, organizations will strive to differentiate on Customer Experience. Concepts like Pace Layered Architecture and Dynamic Case Management will provide more flexibility and agility to IT groups and knowledge workers. Take a look at some of these capabilities we showcased (see video) at Oracle OpenWorld 2012. Some of these trends that will continue to gain momentum in 2013: Social networks and social media have provided a new way for businesses to engage with customers. A prospect is likely to reach out to their social network before making any purchase. Companies are increasingly engaging with customers in social networks to influence their purchasing decisions, as well as listening to customers via tools like sentiment analysis to see what customers think about a particular product or process. These insights are valuable as companies look to improve their processes. Inside organizations, workers are using social tools to engage with each other to design new products and processes. Social collaboration tools are being used to resolve issues where an employee needs consultation to reach a decision. Oracle BPM Suite includes social interaction as an integral part of its process design and work management to empower today’s business users. Ubiquitous smart mobile devices are trending as a tool of choice for many workers. Many companies are adopting the policy of “Bring Your Own Device,” and the device of choice is a tablet. Devices like smart phones and tablets not only provide mobility to workers and customers, but they also provide additional important information – the context. By integrating the mobile context (location, photos, and preferences) into your processes, organizations can make much more informed decisions, as well as offer more personalized service to customers. Using Oracle ADF Mobile, you can easily create user interfaces for mobile devices and also capture location data for process execution. Customer experience was at the forefront of trending topics in 2012. Organizations are trying to understand their customers better and offer them more personalized and differentiated services. Customer experience is paramount when companies design sales and support processes. Companies are looking to BPM to consistently and efficiently orchestrate customer facing processes across disparate systems, departments and channels of communication. Oracle BPM Suite provides just the right capabilities for organizations to design and deliver an excellent customer experience. Pace Layered Architecture strategy is gaining traction as a way to maximize agility and minimize disruption in organizations. It provides a framework to manage the evolution of your information system when different pieces of it are changing at different rates and need to be updated independent of one another. Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle BPM Suite are designed with this in mind. The database layer, integration layer, application layer, and process layer should not be required to change at the same time. Most of the business changes to policy or process can be done at the process layer without disrupting the whole infrastructure. By understanding the type of change needed at a particular level, organizations can become much more agile and efficient. Adaptive Case Management proposes more flexibility to manage processes or cases that do not follow a structured process flow. In such situations, the knowledge worker managing the case needs to evaluate what step should occur next because the sequence of steps can’t be predetermined. Another characteristic is that it requires much more collaboration than straight-through process. As simple processes become automated, and customers adopt more and more self-service, cases that reach the case workers are much more complex and need more investigation. Oracle BPM suite includes comprehensive adaptive case management capability to manage such unstructured and complex processes. Smart BPM or making your BPM intelligent has been the holy grail for BPM practitioners who imagined that one day BPM would become one with Business Intelligence, Business Activity Monitoring and Complex Event Processing, making it much more responsive and helpful in organizational decision making. In 2013, organizations will begin to deploy these intelligent BPM solutions. Oracle offers an integrated solution that brings together the powerful functionality of BI, BAM, event processing, and Real Time Decisions to help organizations create smart process based solutions. In order to help customers reach their BPM goals faster and remove risks associated with BPM initiatives, Oracle has introduced Oracle Process Accelerators, pre-built best practices applications built on Oracle BPM Suite that are fully production grade and ready to deploy. These are exiting times for BPM practitioners and there is so much to look forward to in 2013. We wish you a very happy and prosperous New Year 2013. Happy BPMing!

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  • Why you need to learn async in .NET

    - by PSteele
    I had an opportunity to teach a quick class yesterday about what’s new in .NET 4.0.  One of the topics was the TPL (Task Parallel Library) and how it can make async programming easier.  I also stressed that this is the direction Microsoft is going with for C# 5.0 and learning the TPL will greatly benefit their understanding of the new async stuff.  We had a little time left over and I was able to show some code that uses the Async CTP to accomplish some stuff, but it wasn’t a simple demo that you could jump in to and understand so I thought I’d thrown one together and put it in a blog post. The entire solution file with all of the sample projects is located here. A Simple Example Let’s start with a super-simple example (WindowsApplication01 in the solution). I’ve got a form that displays a label and a button.  When the user clicks the button, I want to start displaying the current time for 15 seconds and then stop. What I’d like to write is this: lblTime.ForeColor = Color.Red; for (var x = 0; x < 15; x++) { lblTime.Text = DateTime.Now.ToString("HH:mm:ss"); Thread.Sleep(1000); } lblTime.ForeColor = SystemColors.ControlText; (Note that I also changed the label’s color while counting – not quite an ILM-level effect, but it adds something to the demo!) As I’m sure most of my readers are aware, you can’t write WinForms code this way.  WinForms apps, by default, only have one thread running and it’s main job is to process messages from the windows message pump (for a more thorough explanation, see my Visual Studio Magazine article on multithreading in WinForms).  If you put a Thread.Sleep in the middle of that code, your UI will be locked up and unresponsive for those 15 seconds.  Not a good UX and something that needs to be fixed.  Sure, I could throw an “Application.DoEvents()” in there, but that’s hacky. The Windows Timer Then I think, “I can solve that.  I’ll use the Windows Timer to handle the timing in the background and simply notify me when the time has changed”.  Let’s see how I could accomplish this with a Windows timer (WindowsApplication02 in the solution): public partial class Form1 : Form { private readonly Timer clockTimer; private int counter;   public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); clockTimer = new Timer {Interval = 1000}; clockTimer.Tick += UpdateLabel; }   private void UpdateLabel(object sender, EventArgs e) { lblTime.Text = DateTime.Now.ToString("HH:mm:ss"); counter++; if (counter == 15) { clockTimer.Enabled = false; lblTime.ForeColor = SystemColors.ControlText; } }   private void cmdStart_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { lblTime.ForeColor = Color.Red; counter = 0; clockTimer.Start(); } } Holy cow – things got pretty complicated here.  I use the timer to fire off a Tick event every second.  Inside there, I can update the label.  Granted, I can’t use a simple for/loop and have to maintain a global counter for the number of iterations.  And my “end” code (when the loop is finished) is now buried inside the bottom of the Tick event (inside an “if” statement).  I do, however, get a responsive application that doesn’t hang or stop repainting while the 15 seconds are ticking away. But doesn’t .NET have something that makes background processing easier? The BackgroundWorker Next I try .NET’s BackgroundWorker component – it’s specifically designed to do processing in a background thread (leaving the UI thread free to process the windows message pump) and allows updates to be performed on the main UI thread (WindowsApplication03 in the solution): public partial class Form1 : Form { private readonly BackgroundWorker worker;   public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); worker = new BackgroundWorker {WorkerReportsProgress = true}; worker.DoWork += StartUpdating; worker.ProgressChanged += UpdateLabel; worker.RunWorkerCompleted += ResetLabelColor; }   private void StartUpdating(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e) { var workerObject = (BackgroundWorker) sender; for (int x = 0; x < 15; x++) { workerObject.ReportProgress(0); Thread.Sleep(1000); } }   private void UpdateLabel(object sender, ProgressChangedEventArgs e) { lblTime.Text = DateTime.Now.ToString("HH:mm:ss"); }   private void ResetLabelColor(object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e) { lblTime.ForeColor = SystemColors.ControlText; }   private void cmdStart_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { lblTime.ForeColor = Color.Red; worker.RunWorkerAsync(); } } Well, this got a little better (I think).  At least I now have my simple for/next loop back.  Unfortunately, I’m still dealing with event handlers spread throughout my code to co-ordinate all of this stuff in the right order. Time to look into the future. The async way Using the Async CTP, I can go back to much simpler code (WindowsApplication04 in the solution): private async void cmdStart_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { lblTime.ForeColor = Color.Red; for (var x = 0; x < 15; x++) { lblTime.Text = DateTime.Now.ToString("HH:mm:ss"); await TaskEx.Delay(1000); } lblTime.ForeColor = SystemColors.ControlText; } This code will run just like the Timer or BackgroundWorker versions – fully responsive during the updates – yet is way easier to implement.  In fact, it’s almost a line-for-line copy of the original version of this code.  All of the async plumbing is handled by the compiler and the framework.  My code goes back to representing the “what” of what I want to do, not the “how”. I urge you to download the Async CTP.  All you need is .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 sp1 – no need to set up a virtual machine with the VS2011 beta (unless, of course, you want to dive right in to the C# 5.0 stuff!).  Starting playing around with this today and see how much easier it will be in the future to write async-enabled applications.

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  • c# Properties.Settings.Default Doesn't work as expected

    - by Jack
    I've been working on a program to automate my backup checks with LogMeIn backup (a windows forms based program). I now need a way to store user settings, to save information easily. I've never worked with the Application/User settings that is somewhat "built-in" - and decided to try it, but ran into problems. I added four settings for now: IncludeCriteria (Specialized.StringCollection) ExcludeCriteria (Specialized.StringCollection) ReportPath (string) ReportType (int) But the behavior doesn't act as expected (go figure). After saving some values in my program, I go back into edit/view my settings values using the VS 2008 settings editor. None of my values are stored. While I think this may be because those values are just default values, wouldn't that be where they can be stored/read/changed? Here is my load form code (still very unrefined): private void setupForm() { txtPath.Text = BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.ReportPath == null ? "" : BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.ReportPath; if (BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.ReportType == 0) { radioHTML.Checked = true; } else radioExcel.Checked = true; if (BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.IncludeCriteria.Count > 0) { listIncludeCriteria.DataSource = Properties.Settings.Default.IncludeCriteria; //foreach (string s in Properties.Settings.Default.IncludeCriteria) // listIncludeCriteria.Items.Add(s); } if (BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.ExcludeCriteria.Count > 0) { listExcludeCriteria.DataSource = BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.ExcludeCriteria; //foreach (string s in Properties.Settings.Default.ExcludeCriteria) // listExcludeCriteria.Items.Add(s); } } listIncludeCriteria is just a listbox. When the user saves I call this method: private void saveSettings() { //var settings = BackupReport.Properties.Settings; if (txtPath.Text != "") { BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.ReportPath = txtPath.Text; } if (listIncludeCriteria.Items.Count > 0) { //BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.IncludeCriteria = (StringCollection)listIncludeCriteria.Items.AsQueryable(); foreach (var i in listIncludeCriteria.Items) { if (!isIncludeDuplicate(i.ToString())) BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.IncludeCriteria.Add(i.ToString()); } } if (listExcludeCriteria.Items.Count > 0) { //BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.ExcludeCriteria = (StringCollection)listExcludeCriteria.Items.AsQueryable(); foreach (var i in listExcludeCriteria.Items) { if (!isExcludeDuplicate(i.ToString())) Properties.Settings.Default.ExcludeCriteria.Add(i.ToString()); } } if (radioExcel.Checked == true) BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.ReportType = 1; else BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.ReportType = 0; BackupReport.Properties.Settings.Default.Save(); //Properties.Settings.Default.Save(); this.DialogResult = DialogResult.OK; this.Close(); } The wierd thing is when the form loads, the path I put in the first time seems to come up (ReportPath) - even the listBoxes are populated with a bunch of crap I put in - yet I cant find these values anywhere. Any help would be appreciated! Josh

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  • What Is The Best Database For Delphi Desktop Applications That Supports Stored Procedures?

    - by Cape Cod Gunny
    I started with Turbo Pascal 3, went to TP5, Bought TP6 called Borland the next day and downgraded to TP5.5. Bought Delphi 3, and now have Delphi 5 Enterprise. I sort of lost interest in writing code about 4-5 years ago for two reasons; Spent all day writing ASP & SQL for someone else. PC Techniques magazine went away. I've got a few programs in the shareware market that are solid performers but are in need of serious updating. I love Delphi or did when it was Borland (before Borland bought DBase and all the other crap), I'd like to salvage as much of my D5E code as possible but I doubt I can. I plan on upgrading to Delphi 2010. My next software release needs to interact with a database. I'm very proficient with MS Sql and like to put all of the database code in stored procedures. What is the best database choice that interacts well with Delphi, allows stored procedures and is so easy to deploy that even the Geico gecko could deploy it? 10/25/2009 18:53 PM EST Re-Opened After Reading Install Docs for Delphi 2010 I downloaded a trial version of Delphi 2010 and unzipped the install. I've been reading the install docs included in the package. I started with the install.htm inside the zip package. install.htm wisely tells you to see the following two articles: Installation Notes: http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/39754 Release Notes: http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/39758 the release notes state the following... MSSQL driver requires the installation of the SQL Native Client. SQL Native Client 2008 is required for dbxmss.dll. SQL Native Client 2005 is required for dbxmss9.dll I checked my machine to see if SQL Native Client is installed. Nope. I wasn't done reading the docs so I made a note to install SQL Native Client. I googled dbxmss.dll and dbxmss9.dll and found a very interesting thread on the Embarcadero forums. read thread here. After reading this thread and some careful thought I don't think I will be using Microsoft SQL Express. I can't rely on my customers having the right drivers installed. So, I'm back to looking for a different solution. If I'm selling a $40 product to the general masses I need to have a bulletproof solution that doesn't require my brand new customer to update their machine before my software will work.

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  • Why does this thumbnail generation code throw OutOfMemoryException on large files?

    - by tsilb
    This code works great for generating thumbnails, but when given a very large (100MB+) TIFF file, it throws OutOfMemoryExceptions. When I do it manually in Paint.NET on the same machine, it works fine. How can I improve this code to stop throwing on very large files? In this case I'm loading a 721MB TIF on a machine with 8GB RAM. The Task Manager shows 2GB used so something is preventing it from using all that memory. Specifically it throws when I load the Image to calculate the size of the original. What gives? /// <summary>Creates a thumbnail of a given image.</summary> /// <param name="inFile">Fully qualified path to file to create a thumbnail of</param> /// <param name="outFile">Fully qualified path to created thumbnail</param> /// <param name="x">Width of thumbnail</param> /// <returns>flag; result = is success</returns> public static bool CreateThumbnail(string inFile, string outFile, int x) { // Validation - assume 16x16 icon is smallest useful size. Smaller than that is just not going to do us any good anyway. I consider that an "Exceptional" case. if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(inFile)) throw new ArgumentNullException("inFile"); if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(outFile)) throw new ArgumentNullException("outFile"); if (x < 16) throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("x"); if (!File.Exists(inFile)) throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("inFile", "File does not exist: " + inFile); // Mathematically determine Y dimension int y; using (Image img = Image.FromFile(inFile)) { // OutOfMemoryException double xyRatio = (double)x / (double)img.Width; y = (int)((double)img.Height * xyRatio); } // All this crap could have easily been Image.Save(filename, x, y)... but nooooo.... using (Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(inFile)) using (Bitmap thumb = new Bitmap((Image)bmp, new Size(x, y))) using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(thumb)) { g.SmoothingMode = System.Drawing.Drawing2D.SmoothingMode.HighQuality; g.InterpolationMode = System.Drawing.Drawing2D.InterpolationMode.High; g.CompositingQuality = System.Drawing.Drawing2D.CompositingQuality.HighQuality; System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageCodecInfo codec = System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageCodecInfo.GetImageEncoders()[1]; System.Drawing.Imaging.EncoderParameters ep2 = new System.Drawing.Imaging.EncoderParameters(1); ep2.Param[0] = new System.Drawing.Imaging.EncoderParameter(System.Drawing.Imaging.Encoder.Quality, 100L); g.DrawImage(bmp, new Rectangle(0,0,thumb.Width, thumb.Height)); try { thumb.Save(outFile, codec, ep2); return true; } catch { return false; } } }

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  • How can I troubleshoot an APPCRASH in Internet Explorer?

    - by Schnapple
    I'm writing an ActiveX control using the firebreath framework (hi taxilian!) and while it technically works, I'm running into a weird issue that appears to be unique to me. I've followed the instructions to create a simple plugin and then I ran it in Internet Explorer 8 on Windows 7 x64 (firebreath sets up a test page for the control). But as soon as I try to test it (clicking on a link that fires off JavaScript to interact with the control), IE crashes. Hard. "Internet Explorer has stopped working" style. If I try the control in Firefox (the resulting registered DLL can also be called as a Firefox plugin using a MIME type), it works fine. If I try it on my XP box, it works fine. I emailed the DLL and the testing page to a coworker in the next cube who is like me also running Windows 7 x64 and it works for him just fine as well, so it's not something unique to Windows 7 or x64. When it crashes I get this message: Problem signature: Problem Event Name: APPCRASH Application Name: iexplore.exe Application Version: 8.0.7600.16385 Application Timestamp: 4a5bc69e Fault Module Name: RPCRT4.dll Fault Module Version: 6.1.7600.16385 Fault Module Timestamp: 4a5bdb3b Exception Code: c0000005 Exception Offset: 000220b1 OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1 Locale ID: 1033 Additional Information 1: 0a9e Additional Information 2: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789 Additional Information 3: 0a9e Additional Information 4: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789 Which tells me nothing extremely useful. I can have it attach to a debugger but it just tells me a long list of DLL's, none of which are the ActiveX control in question. It's almost like it's not even getting there. I did a sfc /scannow yesterday to see if anything on my system is corrupt and nothing came up as wrong. I tried various different security levels in IE, but nothing seems to have any effect. As this is a development machine there has been all matter of crap installed on it, so I figure it's bound to be something I've installed since October (when Win7 was released) but I cannot figure out what it is. I presume the information it's giving me when I attach to Visual Studio is useful somehow but I don't know how to interpret it. Admittedly I'm mainly a C#/.NET developer who's a bit out of his element with C/C++ and troubleshooting native code, but does anyone have any advice on how to proceed on figuring out why this very simple ActiveX control crashes IE on my machine and nowhere else?

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  • Fuzzy Regex, Text Processing, Lexical Analysis?

    - by justinzane
    I'm not quite sure what terminology to search for, so my title is funky... Here is the workflow I've got: Semi-structured documents are scanned to file. The files are OCR'd to text. The text is parsed into Python objects The objects are serialized (to SQL, JSON, whatever) for use. The documents are structures like this: HEADER blah blah, Page ### blah Garbage text... 1. Question Text... continued until now. A. Choice text... adsadsf. B. Another Choice... 2. Another Question... I need to extract the questions and choices. The problem is that, because the text is OCR output, there are occasional strange substitutions like '2' - 'Z' which makes ordinary regular expressions useless. I've tried the Levenshtein module and it helps, but it requires prior knowledge of what edit distance is to be expected. I don't know whether I'm looking to create a parser? a lexer? something else? This has lead me down all kinds of interesting but nonrelevant paths. Guidance would be greatly appreciated. Oh, also, the text is generally from specific technical domains, so general spelling tools are not so helpful. Regarding the structure of the documents, there is no clear visual pattern -- like line breaks or indentation -- with the exception of the fact that "questions" usually begin a line. Crap on the document can cause characters to appear before the actual beginning of the line, which means that something along the lines of r'^[0-9]+' does not reliably work. Though the "questions" always begin with an int, a period and a space; the OCR can substitute other characters or skip characters. This is not so much a problem with Tesseract or Cunieform, rather with the poor quality of the paper documents. # Note: for the project in question, it was decided that having a human prep the OCR'd text was better that spending the time coding a solution. I'd still love good pointers, however.

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  • What is a good dumbed-down, safe template system for PHP?

    - by Wilhelm
    (Summary: My users need to be able to edit the structure of their dynamically generated web pages without being able to do any damage.) Greetings, ladies and gentlemen. I am currently working on a service where customers from a specific demographic can create a specific type of web site and fill it with their own content. The system is written in PHP. Many of the users of this system wish to edit how their particular web site looks, or, more commonly, have a designer do it for them. Editing the CSS is fine and dandy, but sometimes that's not enough. Sometimes they want to shuffle the entire page structure around by editing the raw HTML of the dynamically created web pages. The templating system used by WordPress is, as far as I can see, perfect for my use. Except for one thing which is critically important. In addition to being able to edit how comments are displayed or where the menu goes, someone editing a template can have that template execute arbitrary PHP code. As the same codebase runs all these different sites, with all content in the same databse, allowing my users to run arbitrary code is clearly out of the question. So what I need, is a dumbed-down, idiot-proof templating system where my users can edit most of the page structure on their own, pulling in the dynamic sections wherever, without being able to even echo 1+1;. Observe the following psuedocode: <!DOCTYPE html> <title><!-- $title --></title> <!-- header() --> <!-- menu() --> <div>Some random custom crap added by the user.</div> <!-- page_content() --> That's the degree of power I'd like to grant my users. They don't need to do their own loops or calculations or anything. Just include my variables and functions and leave the rest to me. I'm sure I'm not the only person on the planet that needs something like this. Do you know of any ready-made templating systems I could use? Thanks in advance for your reply.

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  • feeling insufficient while looking for a programming job ...

    - by user325661
    Hello everybody It's really dream to be programmer for me.So i always wanted to be .I had so small knowledges from commodore basic which i couldn't figure out anything in it .Then i tried to learn Visual basic 6 by myself and result wasn't good as i expected because i even didn't understand classes.Then i left to learning programming and to dream to be programmer. But challenge hadn't finished yet . After all of these i started to learn c# and i did chess engine which i hadn't believe that i can create one.I sometimes feel that i understand many thing about programming like knowing classes ,inheritance,abstract class and methods why exist , interfaces ,extension methods ,static classes ,threads. but i am not expert all in it . i just know that as i need . i don't know still i will learn many thing about these.i have also learned html, css2 , php and database concepts a little sql ,tables relations between primary keys etc but i haven't used them in praticaly . i just did some samples so i feel i am lack of knowledges. As a result still i can't evaluate my skills and can't decide what is my level.I just feel myself one step ahead of junior sometimes :) . Still can't decide that it is time to job seeking. While searching job on web i have never seen a junior advertisement. All looking for a good experiencing one.Nobody care about juniors. When found job advertisement which i feel sufficient myself a little then i start to feel that i think i can't do what they want from me and loosing job after have it in short time would leave many crap feelings into my low self-confidence. Please advise me something ... Also i want to ask some of concentrate questions. 1) If i enter a job which i can't provide their expectations should be in employers responsibility to test me while apply the job ? 2) If i answer "yes , i can " questions which is abstract(for example: can u do something like this) would be my responsibility ? Because such abstract questions is not clear and can't know before start it what i really can or not . 3) i have no professional experiences in this job so i even don't know how teams working on projects but a friend of me said that programmers only write method bodies while seniors create all project.So it looks what i can do really easy but i feel that small companies doesn't work like this so it is better work in a big company for starting who has seniors? 4)last applied job was looking for c# . net developer but then i learn that they need .net web developer.Does it take long time to learn specific sides of web programming while knowing c# desktop programming ? Thanks for all answers since now.

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  • perl dancer: passing database info to template

    - by Bubnoff
    Following Dancer tutorial here: http://search.cpan.org/dist/Dancer/lib/Dancer/Tutorial.pod I'm using my own sqlite3 database with this schema CREATE TABLE if not exists location (location_code TEXT PRIMARY KEY, name TEXT, stations INTEGER); CREATE TABLE if not exists session (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, date TEXT, sessions INTEGER, location_code TEXT, FOREIGN KEY(location_code) REFERENCES location(location_code)); My dancer code ( helloWorld.pm ) for the database: package helloWorld; use Dancer; use DBI; use File::Spec; use File::Slurp; use Template; our $VERSION = '0.1'; set 'template' => 'template_toolkit'; set 'logger' => 'console'; my $base_dir = qq(/home/automation/scripts/Area51/perl/dancer); # database crap sub connect_db { my $db = qw(/home/automation/scripts/Area51/perl/dancer/sessions.sqlite); my $dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:SQLite:dbname=$db", "", "", { RaiseError => 1, AutoCommit => 1 }); return $dbh; } sub init_db { my $db = connect_db(); my $file = qq($base_dir/schema.sql); my $schema = read_file($file); $db->do($schema) or die $db->errstr; } get '/' => sub { my $branch_code = qq(BPT); my $dbh = connect_db(); my $sql = q(SELECT * FROM session); my $sth = $dbh->prepare($sql) or die $dbh->errstr; $sth->execute or die $dbh->errstr; my $key_field = q(id); template 'show_entries.tt', { 'branch' => $branch_code, 'data' => $sth->fetchall_hashref($key_field), }; }; init_db(); true; Tried the example template on the site, doesn't work. <% FOREACH id IN data.keys.nsort %> <li>Date is: <% data.$id.sessions %> </li> <% END %> Produces page but with no data. How do I troubleshoot this as no clues come up in the console/cli? Thanks Bubnoff

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  • Cant get description rss tag data with javascript

    - by AdamB
    I'm currently making a widget to take and display items from a feed. I have this working for the most part, but for some reason the data within the tag within the item comes back as empty, but I get the data in the and tags no problem. feed is and xmlhttp.responseXML object. var items = feed.getElementsByTagName("item"); for (var i=0; i<10; i++){ container = document.getElementById('list'); new_element = document.createElement('li'); title = items[i].getElementsByTagName("title")[0].firstChild.nodeValue; link = items[i].getElementsByTagName("link")[0].firstChild.nodeValue; alert(items[i].getElementsByTagName("description")[0].firstChild.nodeValue); new_element.innerHTML = "<a href=\""+link+"\">"+title+"</a> "; container.insertBefore(new_element, container.firstChild); } I have no idea why it wouldn't be working for the tag and would be for the other tags. Here is an example of the rss feed its trying to parse: <rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"> <channel> <title>A title</title> <link>http://linksomehwere</link> <description>The title of the feed</description> <language>en-us</language> <item> <pubDate>Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:34:49 -0500</pubDate> <title>Awesome Title</title> <link>http://link/to/thing</link> <guid>http://link/to/thing</guid> <description> <![CDATA[ <p>some html crap</p> blah blah balh ]]> </description> </item> </channel> </rss>

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  • â?? in my hmtl after purify

    - by mmcgrail
    I have a database the i am rebuilding the table structure was crap so I'm porting some of the data from one table to another. This data appears to have been copy past from MSO product so as I'm getting the data I clean it up with htmlpurifier and some alittle str_replace in php here the clean function function clean_html($html) { $config = HTMLPurifier_Config::createDefault(); $config->set('AutoFormat','RemoveEmpty',true); $config->set('HTML','AllowedAttributes','href,src'); $config->set('HTML','AllowedElements','p,em,strong,a,ul,li,ol,img'); $purifier = new HTMLPurifier($config); $html = $purifier->purify($html); $html = str_replace('&nbsp;',' ',$html); $html = str_replace("\r",'',$html); $html = str_replace("\n",'',$html); $html = str_replace("\t",'',$html); $html = str_replace(' ',' ',$html); $html = str_replace('<p> </p>','',$html); $html = str_replace(chr(160),' ',$html); return trim($html); } but when I put the results into my new table and out put them to the ckeditor I get those three characters. I then have a javascript function that is called to remove special characters from the content of the ckeditor too. it doesn't clean it either function remove_special(str) { var rExps=[ /[\xC0-\xC2]/g, /[\xE0-\xE2]/g, /[\xC8-\xCA]/g, /[\xE8-\xEB]/g, /[\xCC-\xCE]/g, /[\xEC-\xEE]/g, /[\xD2-\xD4]/g, /[\xF2-\xF4]/g, /[\xD9-\xDB]/g, /[\xF9-\xFB]/g, /\xD1/,/\xF1/g, "/[\u00a0|\u1680|[\u2000-\u2009]|u200a|\u200b|\u2028|\u2029|\u202f|\u205f|\u3000|\xa0]/g", /\u000b/g,'/[\u180e|\u000c]/g', /\u2013/g, /\u2014/g, /\xa9/g,/\xae/g,/\xb7/g,/\u2018/g,/\u2019/g,/\u201c/g,/\u201d/g,/\u2026/g]; var repChar=['A','a','E','e','I','i','O','o','U','u','N','n',' ','\t','','-','--','(c)','(r)','*',"'","'",'"','"','...']; for(var i=0; i<rExps.length; i++) { str=str.replace(rExps[i],repChar[i]); } for (var x = 0; x < str.length; x++) { charcode = str.charCodeAt(x); if ((charcode < 32 || charcode > 126) && charcode !=10 && charcode != 13) { str = str.replace(str.charAt(x), ""); } } return str; } Does anyone know off hand what I need to do to get rid of them. I think they may be some sort of quote

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  • How to fix OpenGL/SDL runtime error which is probobly caused by adding textures [closed]

    - by Arturs Lapins
    Hello I've recently worked with OpenGL and SDL and I was adding textures to my GL_QUADS and when I ran my program I came across with a runtime error. I've searched all over the internet for a fix but I couldn't find anything so I guess I had one more option. Asking here. So here is some of my code. int loadTexture(std::string fileName){ SDL_Surface *image=IMG_Load(fileName.c_str()); SDL_DisplayFormatAlpha(image); unsigned int id; glGenTextures(1,&id); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D,&id); glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER,GL_NEAREST); glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER,GL_NEAREST); glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S,GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T,GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D,0,GL_RGBA,image->w,image >h,0,GL_RGBA,GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE,image->pixels); SDL_FreeSurface(image); return id; } That's my loadTexture function. void init() { glClearColor(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0); glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION); glLoadIdentity(); gluPerspective(45.0, 800.0 / 600.0, 1.0, 500.0); glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW); glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST); glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_2D); tex=loadTexture("test.png"); } That's my init function for OpenGL. Btw I have declared my tex variable. void render() { glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); glLoadIdentity(); glTranslatef(0.0, 0.0, -10.0); glRotatef(rotation, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, tex); glBegin(GL_QUADS); glTexCoord2f(1.0, 0.0); glVertex3f(-2.0, 2.0, 0.0); glTexCoord2f(1.0, 1.0); glVertex3f(2.0, 2.0, 0.0); glTexCoord2f(1.0, 0.0); glVertex3f(2.0, -2.0, 0.0); glTexCoord2f(0.0, 0.0); glVertex3f(-2.0, -2.0, 0.0); glEnd(); } That's my render function for all my OpenGL render stuff... The render function is called in the main function which contains a game loop. Here is the runtime error when I run it with Visual C++ Unhandled exception at 0x004ffee9 in OpenGL Crap.exe: 0xC0000005: Access violation reading location 0x05c90000. So I have only had this error when I added textures... ... So I found where the error occured it was at this line glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D,0,GL_RGBA,image->w,image->h,0,GL_RGBA,GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE,image->pixels); but I have totally no Idea what could it be. Update Only thanks to zero298

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  • C# .NET Why does my inherited listview keep drawing in LargeIcon View ?? Because Microsoft is Evil!!

    - by Bugz R us
    I have a inherited Listview which standard has to be in Tile Mode. When using this control, the DrawItem gives e.bounds which are clearly bounds of largeIcon view ?? When debugging to check the view it is actually set to, it says it's in Tile view ?? Yet e.DrawText draws LargeIcon view ?? ......... Edit: ................. This seems only to happen when the control is placed upon another usercontrol? ......... Edit 2: ................. It gets stranger ... When i add buttons next to the list to change the view at runtime, "Tile" is the same as "LargeIcon", and "List" view is the same as "SmallIcons" ??? I've also completely removed the ownerdraw ... .......... Edit 3: ................. MSDN Documentation: Tile view Each item appears as a full-sized icon with the item label and subitem information to the right of it. The subitem information that appears is specified by the application. This view is available only on Windows XP and the Windows Server 2003 family. On earlier operating systems, this value is ignored and the ListView control displays in the LargeIcon view. Well I am on XP ya damn liars ?!? Apparently if the control is within a usercontrol, this value is ignored too ... pff I'm getting enough of this Microsoft crap .... you just keep on hitting bugs ... another day down the drain ... public class InheritedListView : ListView { //Hiding members ... mwuahahahahaha //yeah i was still laughing then [BrowsableAttribute(false)] public new View View { get { return base.View; } } public InheritedListView() { base.View = View.Tile; this.OwnerDraw = true; base.DrawItem += new DrawListViewItemEventHandler(DualLineGrid_DrawItem); } void DualLineGrid_DrawItem(object sender, DrawListViewItemEventArgs e) { View v = this.View; //**when debugging, v is Tile, however e.DrawText() draws in LargeIcon mode, // e.Bounds also reflects LargeIcon mode ???? ** }

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  • Thread won't stop when I want it to? (Java)

    - by Stuart
    I have a thread in my screen recording application that won't cooperate: package recorder; import java.awt.AWTException; import java.awt.Insets; import java.io.IOException; import javax.swing.JFrame; public class RepeatThread extends Thread { boolean stop; public volatile Thread recordingThread; JFrame frame; int count = 0; RepeatThread( JFrame myFrame ) { stop = false; frame = myFrame; } public void run() { while( stop == false ) { int loopDelay = 33; // 33 is approx. 1000/30, or 30 fps long loopStartTime = System.currentTimeMillis(); Insets insets = frame.getInsets(); // Get the shape we're recording try { ScreenRecorder.capture( frame.getX() + insets.left, frame.getY() + insets.top, frame.getWidth() - ( insets.left + insets.right ), frame.getHeight() - ( insets.top + insets.bottom ) ); } catch( AWTException e1 ) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e1.printStackTrace(); } catch( IOException e1 ) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e1.printStackTrace(); } // Add another picture long loopEndTime = System.currentTimeMillis(); int loopTime = (int )( loopEndTime - loopStartTime ); if( loopTime < loopDelay ) { try { sleep( loopDelay - loopTime ); // If we have extra time, // sleep } catch( Exception e ) { } // If something interrupts it, I don't give a crap; just // ignore it } } } public void endThread() { stop = true; count = 0; ScreenRecorder.reset(); // Once I get this annoying thread to work, I have to make the pictures // into a video here! } } It's been bugging me for ages. It periodically takes screenshots to the specified area. When you start recording, it hides (decativates) the window. On a Mac, when you give an application focus, any hidden windows will activate. In my class WListener (which I have confirmed to work), I have: public void windowActivated(WindowEvent e) { if(ScreenRecorder.recordingThread != null) { ScreenRecorder.recordingThread.endThread(); } } So what SHOULD happen is, the screenshot-taking thread stops when he clicks on the application. However, I must be brutally screwing something up, because when the thread is running, it won't even let the window reappear. This is my first thread, so I expected a weird problem like this. Do you know what's wrong?

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  • Kernel Mode Rootkit

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

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  • Hide subdomain AND subdirectory using mod_rewrite?

    - by Jeremy
    I am trying to hide a subdomain and subdirectory from users. I know it may be easier to use a virtual host but will that not change direct links pointing at our site? The site currently resides at http://mail.ctrc.sk.ca/cms/ I want www.ctrc.sk.ca and ctrc.sk.ca to access this folder but still display www.ctrc.sk.ca. If that makes any sense. Here is what our current .htaccess file looks like, we are using Joomla so there already a few rules set up. Help is appreciated. # Helicon ISAPI_Rewrite configuration file # Version 3.1.0.78 ## # @version $Id: htaccess.txt 14401 2010-01-26 14:10:00Z louis $ # @package Joomla # @copyright Copyright (C) 2005 - 2010 Open Source Matters. All rights reserved. # @license http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU/GPL # Joomla! is Free Software ## ##################################################### # READ THIS COMPLETELY IF YOU CHOOSE TO USE THIS FILE # # The line just below this section: 'Options +FollowSymLinks' may cause problems # with some server configurations. It is required for use of mod_rewrite, but may already # be set by your server administrator in a way that dissallows changing it in # your .htaccess file. If using it causes your server to error out, comment it out (add # to # beginning of line), reload your site in your browser and test your sef url's. If they work, # it has been set by your server administrator and you do not need it set here. # ##################################################### ## Can be commented out if causes errors, see notes above. #Options +FollowSymLinks # # mod_rewrite in use RewriteEngine On ########## Begin - Rewrite rules to block out some common exploits ## If you experience problems on your site block out the operations listed below ## This attempts to block the most common type of exploit `attempts` to Joomla! # ## Deny access to extension xml files (uncomment out to activate) #<Files ~ "\.xml$"> #Order allow,deny #Deny from all #Satisfy all #</Files> ## End of deny access to extension xml files RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} mosConfig_[a-zA-Z_]{1,21}(=|\%3D) [OR] # Block out any script trying to base64_encode crap to send via URL RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} base64_encode.*\(.*\) [OR] # Block out any script that includes a <script> tag in URL RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (\<|%3C).*script.*(\>|%3E) [NC,OR] # Block out any script trying to set a PHP GLOBALS variable via URL RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} GLOBALS(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) [OR] # Block out any script trying to modify a _REQUEST variable via URL RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} _REQUEST(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) # Send all blocked request to homepage with 403 Forbidden error! RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [F,L] # ########## End - Rewrite rules to block out some common exploits # Uncomment following line if your webserver's URL # is not directly related to physical file paths. # Update Your Joomla! Directory (just / for root) #RewriteBase / ########## Begin - Joomla! core SEF Section # RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/index.php RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (/|\.php|\.html|\.htm|\.feed|\.pdf|\.raw|/[^.]*)$ [NC] RewriteRule (.*) index.php RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization},L] # ########## End - Joomla! core SEF Section EDIT Yes, mail.ctrc.sk.ca/cms/ is the root directory. Currently the DNS redirects from ctrc.sk.ca and www.ctrc.sk.ca to mail.ctrc.sk.ca/cms. However when it redirects the user still sees the mail.ctrc.sk.ca/cms/ url and I want them to only see www.ctrc.sk.ca.

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  • Security Trimmed Cross Site Collection Navigation

    - by Sahil Malik
    Ad:: SharePoint 2007 Training in .NET 3.5 technologies (more information). This article will serve as documentation of a fully functional codeplex project that I just created. This project will give you a WebPart that will give you security trimmed navigation across site collections. The first question is, why create such a project? In every single SharePoint project you will do, one question you will always be faced with is, what should the boundaries of sites be, and what should the boundaries of site collections be? There is no good or bad answer to this, because it really really depends on your needs. There are some factors in play here. Site Collections will allow you to scale, as a Site collection is the smallest entity you can put inside a content database Site collections will allow you to offer different levels of SLAs, because you put a site collection on a separate content database, and put that database on a separate server. Site collections are a security boundary – and they can be moved around at will without affecting other site collections. Site collections are also a branding boundary. They are also a feature deployment boundary, so you can have two site collections on the same web application with completely different nature of services. But site collections break navigation, i.e. a site collection at “/”, and a site collection at “/sites/mySiteCollection”, are completely independent of each other. If you have access to both, the navigation of / won’t show you a link to /sites/mySiteCollection. Some people refer to this as a huge issue in SharePoint. Luckily, some workarounds exist. A long time ago, I had blogged about “Implementing Consistent Navigation across Site Collections”. That approach was a no-code solution, it worked – it gave you a consistent navigation across site collections. But, it didn’t work in a security trimmed fashion! i.e., if I don’t have access to Site Collection ‘X’, it would still show me a link to ‘X’. Well this project gets around that issue. Simply deploy this project, and it’ll give you a WebPart. You can use that WebPart as either a webpart or as a server control dropped via SharePoint designer, and it will give you Security Trimmed Cross Site Collection Navigation. The code has been written for SP2010, but it will work in SP2007 with the help of http://spwcfsupport.codeplex.com . What do I need to do to make it work? I’m glad you asked! Simple! Deploy the .wsp (which you can download here). This will give you a site collection feature called “Winsmarts Cross Site Collection Navigation” as shown below. Go ahead and activate it, and this will give you a WebPart called “Winsmarts Navigation Web Part” as shown below: Just drop this WebPart on your page, and it will show you all site collections that the currently logged in user has access to. Really it’s that easy! This is shown as below - In the above example, I have two site collections that I created at /sites/SiteCollection1 and /sites/SiteCollection2. The navigation shows the titles. You see some extraneous crap as well, you might want to clean that – I’ll talk about that in a minute. What? You’re running into problems? If the problem you’re running into is that you are prompted to login three times, and then it shows a blank webpart that says “Loading your applications ..” and then craps out!, then most probably you’re using a different authentication scheme. Behind the scenes I use a custom WCF service to perform this job. OOTB, I’ve set it to work with NTLM, but if you need to make it work alternate authentications such as forms based auth, or client side certs, you will need to edit the %14%\ISAPI\Winsmarts.CrossSCNav\web.config file, specifically, this section - 1: <bindings> 2: <webHttpBinding> 3: <binding name="customWebHttpBinding"> 4: <security mode="TransportCredentialOnly"> 5: <transport clientCredentialType="Ntlm"/> 6: </security> 7: </binding> 8: </webHttpBinding> 9: </bindings> For Kerberos, change the “clientCredentialType” to “Windows” For Forms auth, remove that transport line For client certs – well that’s a bit more involved, but it’s just web.config changes – hit a good book on WCF or hire me for a billion trillion $. But fair warning, I might be too busy to help immediately. If you’re running into a different problem, please leave a comment below, but the code is pretty rock solid, so .. hmm .. check what you’re doing! BTW, I don’t  make any guarantee/warranty on this – if this code makes you sterile, unpopular, bad hairstyle, anything else, that is your problem! But, there are some known issues - I wrote this as a concept – you can easily extend it to be more flexible. Example, hierarchical nav, or, horizontal nav, jazzy effects with jquery or silverlight– all those are possible very very easily. This webpart is not smart enough to co-exist with another instance of itself on the same page. I can easily extend it to do so, which I will do in my spare(!?) time! Okay good! But that’s not all! As you can see, just dropping the WebPart may show you many extraneous site collections, or maybe you want to restrict which site collections are shown, or exclude a certain site collection to be shown from the navigation. To support that, I created a property on the WebPart called “UrlMatchPattern”, which is a regex expression you specify to trim the results :). So, just edit the WebPart, and specify a string property of “http://sp2010/sites/” as shown below. Note that you can put in whatever regex expression you want! So go crazy, I don’t care! And this gives you a cleaner look.   w00t! Enjoy! Comment on the article ....

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  • Do’s and Don’ts Building SharePoint Applications

    - by Bil Simser
    SharePoint is a great platform for building quick LOB applications. Simple things from employee time trackers to server and software inventory to full blown Help Desks can be crafted up using SharePoint from just customizing Lists. No programming necessary. However there are a few tricks I’ve painfully learned over the years that you can use for your own solutions. DO What’s In A Name? When you create a new list, column, or view you’ll commonly name it something like “Expense Reports”. However this has the ugly effect of creating a url to the list as “Expense%20Reports”. Or worse, an internal field name of “Expense_x0x0020_Reports” which is not only cryptic but hard to remember when you’re trying to find the column by internal name. While “Expense Reports 2011” is user friendly, “ExpenseReports2011” is not (unless you’re a programmer). So that’s not the solution. Well, not entirely. Instead when you create your column or list or view use the scrunched up name (I can’t think of the technical term for it right now) of “ExpenseReports2011”, “WomenAtTheOfficeThatAreMen” or “KoalaMeatIsGoodWhenBroiled”. After you’ve created it, go back and change the name to the more friendly “Silly Expense Reports That Nobody Reads”. The original internal name will be the url and code friendly one without spaces while the one used on data entry forms and view headers will be the human version. Smart Columns When building a view include columns that make sense. By default when you add a column the “Add to default view” is checked. Resist the urge to be lazy and leave it checked. Uncheck that puppy and decide consciously what columns should be included in the view. Pick columns that make sense to what the user is trying to do. This means you have to talk to the user. Yes, I know. That can be trying at times and even painful. Go ahead, talk to them. You might learn something. Find out what’s important to them and why. If they’re doing something repetitively as part of their job, try to make their life easier by including what’s most important to them. Do they really need to see the Created *and* Modified date of a document or do they just need the title and author? You’ll only find out after talking to them (or getting them drunk in a bar and leaving them in the back alley handcuffed to a garbage bin, don’t ask). Gotta Keep it Separated Hey, views are there for a reason. Use them. While “All Items” is a fine way to present a list of well, all items, it’s hardly sufficient to present a list of servers built before the Y2K bug hit. You’ll be scrolling the list for hours finally arriving at Page 387 of 12,591 and cursing that SharePoint guy for convincing you that putting your hardware into a list would be of any use to anyone. Next to collecting the data, presenting it is just as important. Views are often overlooked and many times ignored or misused. They’re the way you can slice and dice the data up so that you’re not trying to consume 3,000 years of human evolution on a single web page. Remember views can be filtered so feel free to create a view for each status or one for each operating system or one for each species of Information Worker you might be putting in that list or document library. Not only will it reduce the number of items someone sees at one time, it’ll also make the information that much more relevant. Also remember that each view is a separate page. Use it in navigation by creating a menu on the Quick Launch to each view. The discoverability of the Views menu isn’t overly obvious and if you violate the rule of columns (see Horizontally Scrolling below) the view menu doesn’t even show up until you shuffle the scroll bar to the left. Navigation links, big giant buttons, a screaming flashing “CLICK ME NOW” will help your users find their way. Sort It! Views are great so we’re building nice, rich views for the user. Awesomesauce. However sort is not very discoverable by the user. For example when you’re looking at a view how do you know if it’s ascending or descending and what is it sorted on. Maybe it’s sorted using two fields so what’s that all about? Help your users by letting them know the information they’re looking at is sorted. Maybe you name the view something appropriate like “Bogus Expense Claims Sorted By Deadbeats”. If you use the naming strategy just make sure you keep the name consistent with the description. In the previous example their better be a Deadbeat column so I can see the sort in action. Having a “Loser” column, while equally correct, is a little obtuse to the average Information Worker. Remember, they usually don’t use acronyms and even if they knew how to, it’s not immediately obvious to them that’s what you’re trying to convey. Another option is to simply drop a Content Editor Web Part above the list and explain exactly the view they’re looking at. Each view is it’s own page so one CEWP won’t be used across the board. Be descriptive in what the user is seeing but try to keep it brief. Dumping the first chapter of I, Claudius might be informative to the data but can gobble up screen real estate and miss the point of having the list. DO NOT Useless Attachments The attachments column is, in a word, useless. For the most part. Sure it indicates there’s an attachment on the list item but in the grand scheme of things that’s not overly informative. Maybe it is and by all means, if it makes sense to you include it. Colour it. Make it shine and stand like the Return of Clippy on every SharePoint list. Without it being functional it can be boring. EndUserSharePoint.com has an article to make the son of Clippy that much more useful so feel free to head over and check out this blog post by Paul Grenier on the task (Warning code ahead! Danger Will Robinson!) In any case, I would suggest you remove it from your views. Again if it’s important then include it but consider the jQuery solution above to make it functional. It’s added by default to views and one of things that people forget to clean up. Horizontal Scrolling Screen real estate is premium so building a list that contains 8,000 columns and stretches horizontally across 15 screens probably isn’t the most user friendly experience. Most users can’t figure out how to scroll vertically let alone horizontally so don’t make it even that more confusing for them. Take the Steve Krug approach in your view designs and try not to make the user think. Again views are your friend. Consider splitting up the data into views where one view contains 10 columns and other view contains the other 10. Okay, maybe your information doesn’t work that way but humans can only process 7 pieces of data at a time, 10 at most (then their heads explode and you don’t want to clean that mess up, especially on a Friday night before the big dance). It drives me batshit crazy when I see a view with 80 columns of data. I often ask the user “So what do you do with all this information”. The response is usually “With this data [the first 10 columns] I decide if I’m going to fire everyone, and with this data [the next 10 columns] I decide if I’m going to set the building on fire and collect the insurance”. It’s at that point I show them how to create two new views “People Who Are About To Get The Axe” and “Beach Time For The Executives”. Again, talk to your users and try to reason with them on cutting down the number of columns they see at once. Vertical Scrolling Another big faux pas I find is the use of multi-line comment fields in views. It’s not so bad when you have a statement like this in your view: “I really like, oh my god, thought I was going to scream when I saw this turtle then I decided what I was going to have for dinner and frankly I hate having to work late so when I was talking to the customer I thought, oh my god, what if the customer has turtles and then it appeared to me that I really was hungry so I'm going to have lunch now.” It’s fine if that’s the only column along with two or three others, but once you slap those 20 columns of data into the list, the comment field wraps and forms a new multi-page novel that takes up your entire screen. Do everyone a favour and just avoid adding the column to views. Train the user to just click through to the item if they need to see the contents. Duplicate Information Duplication is never good. Views and great as you can group data together. For example create a view of project status reports grouped by author. Then you can see what project manager is being a dip and not submitting their report. However if you group by author do you really need the Created By field as well in the view? Or if the view is grouped by Project then Author do you need both. Horizontal real estate is always at a premium so try not to clutter up the view with duplicate data like this. Oh  yeah, if you’re scratching your head saying “But Bil, if I don’t include the Project name in the view and I have a lot of items then how do I know which one I’m looking at”. That’s a hint that your grouping is too vague or you have too much data in the view based on that criteria. Filter it down a notch, create some views, and try to keep the group down to a single screen where you can see the group header at the top of the page. Again it’s just managing the information you have. Redundant, See Redundant This partially relates to duplicate information and smart columns but basically remember to not include the obvious in a view. Remember, don’t make me think. If you’ve gone to the trouble (and it was a lot of trouble wasn’t it?) to create separate views of your data by creating a “September Zombie Brain Sales”, “October Zombie Brain Sales”, etc. then please for the love of all that is holy do not include the Month and Product columns in your view. Similarly if you create a “My” view of anything (“My Favourite Brands of Spandex”, “My Co-Workers I Find The Urge To Disinfect”) then again, do not include the owner or author field (or whatever field you use to identify “My”). That’s just silly. Hope that helps! Happy customizing!

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  • 5 Ways Android Still Disappoints (Me)

    - by TStewartDev
    Let me make this clear: I'm annoyed with Apple. I don't like their current policies and I don't like where Steve Jobs is taking the company. In general, I don't like it when any one company gets too much control in a market. When that happens, the leading company dictates the game and as consumers, our options all but disappear. That said, I'm still going to buy a new iPhone next week. My Apple-hating friends seem to desperately want me to go Android instead, but frankly, it's not good enough for me, and here are the reasons why. The Modern WinMo One of the reasons that Microsoft has identified for Windows Mobile's rapid decline is the breadth of hardware. They exercised little control over manufacturer's implementations. In theory, that sounds great. We as consumers have lots of choice. In practice, though, it meant among other things that updates to the devices were left up to the manufacturers. As a result, that rarely happened. (I'm still bitter at Toshiba for leaving me hanging back in 2002.) And now, Google is doing the same thing with Android. Case in point: my wife has a Motorola Backflip that we bought in April. It was released in March. Motorola says it will get Android 2.1 "sometime in Q3". Great. Meanwhile, I pull down the latest version of iPhone OS (now iOS) and install it the same day it's released. You may say that I can't judge Android by one lazy manufacturer. Yup, I sure can. With Apple, my original iPhone has been supported perfectly for 3 years. With Android, I will have to wait for upgrades after Google releases them, possibly indefinitely. Not cool. AT&T We signed a new contract with AT&T in April to get my wife's phone. I've had a reasonable experience with them. I don't imagine my experience with Verizon would be any better, and I'm relatively confident that Sprint doesn't have the coverage it takes to work well for us. The fact is, AT&T, for whatever reason, doesn't have jack for Android phones. May not be Android's fault, but it's still a shortcoming that prevents me from having it just like the iPhone's exclusivity keeps some folks on other networks from having it. Innovation? What Innovation? Android has a nice dashboard and a great notification system and… nothing else original. I keep reading about how disappointing the iPhone is nowadays. "It has no innovation," people say. Who does? Android has modeled its behavior after the iPhone. That's fine, but if all you've got is a similar product and I'm invested both skill-wise and app-wise in my current platform, why should I change? Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 looks somewhat innovative, and I'm pretty excited to see what they'll bring to the table, but that's another six months away, at least. I've got a 3 year old phone that has some annoying issues now (thanks to recent encounters with water). I need a new phone now. Is This Going to Work? There's no shortage of criticism of Apple over its App Store policies, and I've vented my own anger about it. However, I will give them credit: their screening of apps has done a great job of weeding out the crap and gives an excellent indication that the app will work on my device. How about Android? Nope. It might work on your phone. Maybe. You'll have to try it to see. Get burned by it? Well, write a nasty review to try to keep others from making the mistake you did. If you don't mind doing that stuff, then Android is the platform for you. Personally, I'd rather have a receptionist screening out the telemarketing and survey calls than hang up on them myself, but that's your call. Slow, Slowing, Slower All this yapping about multitasking. This is an area I've been on Apple's side from the beginning. Sorry folks, but this is the number one reason I hated Windows Mobile: the longer you use it, the slower it gets because it doesn't kill apps. I'm with Steve Jobs on this one: if you see a task manager, we're doing it wrong. I don't want to have to manually kill apps. I hate doing that on Windows let alone on a mobile device. To me, priority one should be keeping the device speedy. Waiting for your device to respond is unacceptable. Bonus! Taken from iPhone Letdown? 8 Things Apple Didn't Announce, here are my responses: 4G Yeah, let me know if your area actually has it. I live in Lincoln, Nebraska. No carrier is going to have 4G here for at least 3 years. Meanwhile, you still get to pay for it. Yay! Cloud iTunes/OTA Sync You got me here. Of course, whether or not your Android device will be able to do it is always a good question. 3G Video Chat You got me here, too. I'm sure you spent countless hours in front of your phone with video chat. Also, I can't wait for the "No Video Chat While Driving" laws. Mobile Hotspot This is a neat feature, but as the author points out, it's left up to the carrier whether to implement it or not. Pretty sure any Android phones that come to AT&T won't have this enabled in the foreseeable future. Is Verizon even allowing this? I just figured Sprint was because they're failing so hard at keeping customers. Free MobileMe I use Google's services with my iPhone. The only people I know who use MobileMe are Apple fanboys and fangirls. If you choose to pay for a service that you can get for free, that's your decision, not Apple's. Voice Input Voice input has been available on phones (even "dumb" phones) for years now. iPhone does have the ability, though limited. Why don't I hear people telling their phones what to do? Maybe because it's still easier to use your fingers than talk to it. Get back to me when this becomes an important feature. Free Navigation Maybe this will be a bigger deal to me now that I'm getting a phone with GPS, but when using my buddy's 3gs, Google maps has worked just fine. Maybe I just don't trust turn-by-turn navigation enough to want it. Dashboard The only legitimate complaint on this list, to me. iPhone's home screen is pathetic, doubly so for the iPad. What a waste of perfectly usable space. I also want to add notifications to this list. Android's notification panel is far superior to the iPhone's. I don't want to hunt all over my screen to find little red dots. Put 'em in one place, Apple.

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  • I Know What I Did This Summer: Put Down Trex Decking

    - by thatjeffsmith
    If you’re wondering why I would bore everyone with my pictures and frequent status updates/tweets from the past week – it’s so I could document the process of refurbishing my deck, or what some would call a porch. When we go to take a vacation, buy a car, do anything – we also read personal blogs to get the real story. So, if you’re curious about what it takes to tackle this sort of project, read on. Skills/Equipment/Manpower We Possessed I took the old decking out by myself. I’m about 230 lbs, more than 6′ tall, and I’m pretty healthy. This took about 8 hours over two afternoons. Three of us put the deck back together. My wife has two engineering degrees. Her father also has two engineering degrees. Lots of brainpower available here. Also, her dad ran the public works department for a country for more than 20 years – so lots and lots of practical experience on hand. We had a compound mitre saw, a skilsaw, 2-3 crowbars, a framing hammer, 3 cordless drills, a corded drill, lots of sawhorses, a power sander, an angle grinder, a 10×10 Coleman canopy tent, a Ford F-150 pickup truck, outdoor speakers and lots of iTunes playlists, plenty of water and cold beer. Why We Did This Our deck was relatively young – it was built in 2005. However, the pressure treated boards must not have been adequately maintained before we bought the house. I had powerwashed the deck every other year and had it stained a few times. The boards just rotted. We’re going to be in the house for a long time, and we wanted something that would look nice and require little maintenance. More bad deck boards The deck boards were in bad shape Things We Learned The two most important things: The hidden fasteners have to be put in JUST right. Wedge them into the grooved board, then bend down the bit that is screwed down. We didn’t do this on the first board and couldn’t get the second board to fit nearly close enough. Watching the official TREX YouTube video helped immensely, and we should have watched that first. When pre-drilling holes for the boards that need screwed down – DO NOT pre-drill through the underlying framing wood. ONLY pre-drill through the TREX itself. The screw won’t seat in the board properly. Instead of sitting down flush with the board, it will stop at the top of the board and just spin. I had to call the the place that sold me the screws to find this out. So about a third of our screws look like crap. If it doesn’t look or feel right – stop everything and pick up your computer or your phone. It’s not right, and it will be much easier to stop and find out why. We didn’t do this, and now I’m going to see every screw that’s not flush with the boards and get upset. Oh well. The Process How much time did it take? Well I spent about 8 hours taking the deck apart. And then the 3 of use spent 8 hours the first day, 10 hours the second day, 8 hours the third, and another 6 hours on the fourth day. That’s like 104 man-hours. We supposedly saved four or five thousand dollars in labor, but don’t do the math here or you might get a bit upset. The main thing is that we got what we wanted, and there won’t be any surprises later. Now for some pictures… This 6”+ pry bar made the destruction of the old deck much easier Most of the joists, once exposed, were OK. This joist wasn’t sitting on ANYTHING before. We think a lazy gas person cut the board to sneak a gas line in. Awesome… These monster lag bolts had to be accounted for when putting in the additional framing The border pattern Sheri wanted to put in required a lot more framing. These were the first boards to go down – we screwed them in as there was no way to attach clips I sat, kicked in the boards, and then drilled these clips in – but my wife was able to go MUCH faster by using her hands to lock the boards in and drill on her knees. I liked locking the board in with my feet when they needed to be ‘encouraged’ to go straight. The first board took FOREVER to go in, but then when we got rolling, we were able to put in a 20′ board in less than 10 minutes. This was end of construction day #2 – we got much further than we thought we would. Ah, the dreaded last 10% – what to do here? Remember those ‘floating’ stringers? Yeah, we fixed that up a bit, too. My wife used a website (and her brain) to calculate exactly how to cut the stringers to give us the rise/run we needed with the proper clearance and all that jazz. The stairs with stringers and toe kicks – this was worth the effort It started raining on us as I screwed down the steps – this we managed to get our shade tent up on the deck to protect us from the rain too The stairs, finished Finished, mostly Good corner shot The top of the stairs Stairs, looking down Celebratory beer In Summary There are a few things we’re not happy with. I think we can fix them up – but later. I have a few things left to finish, rewire the lighting, get the gas grille put back in, and rehang some screen doors. I was expecting this to be a lot worse than it was. If I didn’t have the help, I would have never done it myself. But I’m glad that I did have that help and did do that project. It’s not often you get to spend that kind of qualify time with family and building cool stuff.

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  • Are your personal insecurities screwing up your internal communications?

    - by Lucy Boyes
    I do some internal comms as part of my job. Quite a lot of it involves talking to people about stuff. I’m spending the next couple of weeks talking to lots of people about internal comms itself, because we haven’t done a lot of audience/user feedback gathering, and it turns out that if you talk to people about how they feel and what they think, you get some pretty interesting insights (and an idea of what to do next that isn’t just based on guesswork and generalising from self). Three things keep coming up from talking to people about what we suck at  in terms of internal comms. And, as far as I can tell, they’re all examples where personal insecurity on the part of the person doing the communicating makes the experience much worse for the people on the receiving end. 1. Spending time telling people how you’re going to do something, not what you’re doing and why Imagine you’ve got to give an update to a lot of people who don’t work in your area or department but do have an interest in what you’re doing (either because they want to know because they’re curious or because they need to know because it’s going to affect their work too). You don’t want to look bad at your job. You want to make them think you’ve got it covered – ideally because you do*. And you want to reassure them that there’s lots of exciting work going on in your area to make [insert thing of choice] happen to [insert thing of choice] so that [insert group of people] will be happy. That’s great! You’re doing a good job and you want to tell people about it. This is good comms stuff right here. However, you’re slightly afraid you might secretly be stupid or lazy or incompetent. And you’re exponentially more afraid that the people you’re talking to might think you’re stupid or lazy or incompetent. Or pointless. Or not-adding-value. Or whatever the thing that’s the worst possible thing to be in your company is. So you open by mentioning all the stuff you’re going to do, spending five minutes or so making sure that everyone knows that you’re DOING lots of STUFF. And the you talk for the rest of the time about HOW you’re going to do the stuff, because that way everyone will know that you’ve thought about this really hard and done tons of planning and had lots of great ideas about process and that you’ve got this one down. That’s the stuff you’ve got to say, right? To prove you’re not fundamentally worthless as a human being? Well, maybe. But probably not. See, the people who need to know how you’re going to do the stuff are the people doing the stuff. And those are the people in your area who you’ve (hopefully-please-for-the-love-of-everything-holy) already talked to in depth about how you’re going to do the thing (because else how could they help do it?). They are the only people who need to know the how**. It’s the difference between strategy and tactics. The people outside of your bubble of stuff-doing need to know the strategy – what it is that you’re doing, why, where you’re going with it, etc. The people on the ground with you need the strategy and the tactics, because else they won’t know how to do the stuff. But the outside people don’t really need the tactics at all. Don’t bother with the how unless your audience needs it. They probably don’t. It might make you feel better about yourself, but it’s much more likely that Bob and Jane are thinking about how long this meeting has gone on for already than how personally impressive and definitely-not-an-idiot you are for knowing how you’re going to do some work. Feeling marginally better about yourself (but, let’s face it, still insecure as heck) is not worth the cost, which in this case is the alienation of your audience. 2. Talking for too long about stuff This is kinda the same problem as the previous problem, only much less specific, and I’ve more or less covered why it’s bad already. Basic motivation: to make people think you’re not an idiot. What you do: talk for a very long time about what you’re doing so as to make it sound like you know what you’re doing and lots about it. What your audience wants: the shortest meaningful update. Some of this is a kill your darlings problem – the stuff you’re doing that seems really nifty to you seems really nifty to you, and thus you want to share it with everyone to show that you’re a smart person who thinks up nifty things to do. The downside to this is that it’s mostly only interesting to you – if other people don’t need to know, they likely also don’t care. Think about how you feel when someone is talking a lot to you about a lot of stuff that they’re doing which is at best tangentially interesting and/or relevant. You’re probably not thinking that they’re really smart and clearly know what they’re doing (unless they’re talking a lot and being really engaging about it, which is not the same as talking a lot). You’re probably thinking about something totally unrelated to the thing they’re talking about. Or the fact that you’re bored. You might even – and this is the opposite of what they’re hoping to achieve by talking a lot about stuff – be thinking they’re kind of an idiot. There’s another huge advantage to paring down what you’re trying to say to the barest possible points – it clarifies your thinking. The lightning talk format, as well as other formats which limit the time and/or number of slides you have to say a thing, are really good for doing this. It’s incredibly likely that your audience in this case (the people who need to know some things about your thing but not all the things about your thing) will get everything they need to know from five minutes of you talking about it, especially if trying to condense ALL THE THINGS into a five-minute talk has helped you get clear in your own mind what you’re doing, what you’re trying to say about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. The bonus of this is that by being clear in your thoughts and in what you say, and in not taking up lots of people’s time to tell them stuff they don’t really need to know, you actually come across as much, much smarter than the person who talks for half an hour or more about things that are semi-relevant at best. 3. Waiting until you’ve got every detail sorted before announcing a big change to the people affected by it This is the worst crime on the list. It’s also human nature. Announcing uncertainty – that something important is going to happen (big reorganisation, product getting canned, etc.) but you’re not quite sure what or when or how yet – is scary. There are risks to it. Uncertainty makes people anxious. It might even paralyse them. You can’t run a business while you’re figuring out what to do if you’ve paralysed everyone with fear over what the future might bring. And you’re scared that they might think you’re not the right person to be in charge of [thing] if you don’t even know what you’re doing with it. Best not to say anything until you know exactly what’s going to happen and you can reassure them all, right? Nope. The people who are going to be affected by whatever it is that you don’t quite know all the details of yet aren’t stupid***. You wouldn’t have hired them if they were. They know something’s up because you’ve got your guilty face on and you keep pulling people into meeting rooms and looking vaguely worried. Here’s the deal: it’s a lot less stressful for everyone (including you) if you’re up front from the beginning. We took this approach during a recent company-wide reorganisation and got really positive feedback. People would much, much rather be told that something is going to happen but you’re not entirely sure what it is yet than have you wait until it’s all fixed up and then fait accompli the heck out of them. They will tell you this themselves if you ask them. And here’s why: by waiting until you know exactly what’s going on to communicate, you remove any agency that the people that the thing is going to happen to might otherwise have had. I know you’re scared that they might get scared – and that’s natural and kind of admirable – but it’s also patronising and infantilising. Ask someone whether they’d rather work on a project which has an openly uncertain future from the beginning, or one where everything’s great until it gets shut down with no forewarning, and very few people are going to tell you they’d prefer the latter. Uncertainty is humanising. It’s you admitting that you don’t have all the answers, which is great, because no one does. It allows you to be consultative – you can actually ask other people what they think and how they feel and what they’d like to do and what they think you should do, and they’ll thank you for it and feel listened to and respected as people and colleagues. Which is a really good reason to start talking to them about what’s going on as soon as you know something’s going on yourself. All of the above assumes you actually care about talking to the people who work with you and for you, and that you’d like to do the right thing by them. If that’s not the case, you can cheerfully disregard the advice here, but if it is, you might want to think about the ways above – and the inevitable countless other ways – that making internal communication about you and not about your audience could actually be doing the people you’re trying to communicate with a huge disservice. So take a deep breath and talk. For five minutes or so. About the important things. Not the other things. As soon as you possibly can. And you’ll be fine.   *Of course you do. You’re good at your job. Don’t worry. **This might not always be true, but it is most of the time. Other people who need to know the how will either be people who you’ve already identified as needing-to-know and thus part of the same set as the people in you’re area you’ve already discussed this with, or else they’ll ask you. But don’t bring this stuff up unless someone asks for it, because most of the people in the audience really don’t care and you’re wasting their time. ***I mean, they might be. But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they’re not.

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