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• My 2009 MacBook Logic board failed - options to proceed and how difficult?

  - by user181061

  Scannerz just gave my MacBook logic board a big fat F! I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion about 3 weeks ago. The system was running short of memory so I upgraded it. The system was running fine for about 2 weeks. Yesterday the thing started acting erratic. A lot of spinning beach balls, delays, and then some errors saying files couldn't be read to or from the drive. I figured the drive was going because the system is over 3 years old. I ran Scannerz on it and it indicated a lot of errors and irregularities. I rescanned it in cursory mode, and none of them were repeatable, just showing up all over the place in different regions of the scan. I went through the docs and they implied either an I/O cable was bad, a connection was damaged, or the logic board was bad. I tossed on my backup of Snow Leopard that I cloned from the original hard drive because I figured Mountain Lion was to blame and booted from the USB drive with the clone on it. It wasn't. I performed scans on every single port, and errors and irregularities that couldn't be repeated were showing up on every single one of them. I then, for kicks, put a CD into the CD player. Scannerz doesn't test optical drives but I figured surely that will work. No it won't. More spinning beach balls and messages telling me it can't be read. It was working fine 3 days ago. I know a lot of people don't like MacBook's, but mine's been great, at least until now. It was working great even with Mountain Lion after the upgrade. The system is a mid-2009 MacBook. In my opinion, it's a complete waste to toss this system. The display is too good, the keyboard works great, and it still looks good, plus this type of MacBook still uses the FireWire 400 port and I use that for Time Machine backups. I've tried reseating the RAM, it didn't do anything. I shut the system down and put in the old RAM, booted to Snow Leopard, and the problems persist. Here are my questions: The Scannerz documentation somewhere said something about the Airport card not being seated properly, but when I go to iFixit, it's apparent, at least I think it's apparent, that this isn't a slot type Airport card that the user can easily install or remove. If the cables or connections to the Airport card are bad, could they be causing this problem. How about any other connections that can be intermittent, failing or erratic? Any type of resets that I could possibly do to get rid of this? For any of those that have replaced a logic board on a MacBook, if this really is the culprit, are there any "gotcha's" I need to be aware of? As an FYI, I replaced the hard drive on an old iBook @500MHz that I had a long time ago, and I replaced the drive on a 1.33GHz PowerBook about 6 years ago. You have to be careful, but using some of the info on web sites like iFixit it's not that hard. Time consuming, but not that hard. The Intel based MacBook's to me look like they're easier to service than either of those. I'm thinking about getting a unit off of eBay that matches mine but has something else wrong with it, like a busted display. I REFUSE to buy a new system. A guy at my office has a 2007 Mac Pro and he can't upgrade to Mountain Lion because his system is "obsoleted." That's ridiculous. If you pay nearly $7,500 for a system it shouldn't be trash just because Apple decides they don't have enough money (sorry for the soap box, but it's true, IMO!) Any input is appreciated.

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• What networking hardware do I need in this situation (Fairpoint [ISP] "E-DIA" connection)?

  - by Tegeril

  Right away you'd probably want to say, "Well just ask Fairpoint." I've done that, a number of times in as many different ways I can phrase it and just keep hitting a brick wall where they will not commit to giving any useful information and instead recommend contracting an outside firm and spending a pile of money. Anyway... I'm trying to help a family member out with an office connection that is being setup. I've managed to scrape tiny details here and there from our discussions with the ISP (Fairpoint in Maine) about what is going to be done and what is going to be needed. This is the connection that is being setup: http://www.fairpoint.com/enterprise/vantagepoint/e-dia/index.jsp Information I have been given: Via this connection I can get IPs across different C blocks if that were necessary (it is not) Fairpoint is bringing hardware with them that they claim simply does the conversion from whatever line is coming in the building to ethernet, they have referred to this as the "Fairpoint Netvanta" which I know suggests a line of products that I have looked up, but some (most? all?) of those seems to handle all the routing that I saw. Fairpoint says that I need to bring my own router to sit behind their device. They have literally declined to even suggest products that have worked for other clients in the past and fall back on "any business router works, not a home router." That alone makes my head spin. Detail and clarity hit a brick wall from there. At one moment I got them to cough up that the router I provide needs to be able to do VPN tunneling but they typically fall back to "not a home router" and I was even given "just a business router, Cisco or something, it'll be $500-$1000". Now I know that VPN tunneling routers exist well below that price point and since this connection is going to one machine, possibly two only via ethernet, my desire to purchase networking hardware that over-delivers what I need is not very high. They are literally setting all this up, have provided no configuration details for after they finish, and expect me to just plunk a $500+ router behind it and cross my fingers or contract out to a third party company. If there were other options available for the location, I would have dropped them in a second, but there aren't. The device that is connected requires a static IP and I'm honestly a bit hazy on the necessity of an additional router behind their device and generally a bit over my head. I presume that the router needs to be able to serve external static IPs to its clients, but I really don't know what is going to show up when they come to do the install. This was originally going to be run via an ADSL bridge modem with a range of static IPs (which is easy and is currently setup properly) but the location is too far from the telco to get speeds that we really want for upload and this is also a connection that needs high availability. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated (I see a number of options in the Cisco Small Business line and other competitors that aren't going to break the bank…), especially if you've worked with Fairpoint before! Thanks for reading my wall of text.

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• The application called an interface that was marshalled for a different thread

  - by X-Ray

  i'm writing a delphi app that communicates with excel. one thing i noticed is that if i call the Save method on the Excel workbook object, it can appear to hang because excel has a dialog box open for the user. i'm using the late binding. i'd like for my app to be able to notice when Save takes several seconds and then take some kind of action like show a dialog box telling this is what's happening. i figured this'd be fairly easy. all i'd need to do is create a thread that calls Save and have that thread call Excel's Save routine. if it takes too long, i can take some action. procedure TOfficeConnect.Save; var Thread:TOfficeHangThread; begin // spin off as thread so we can control timeout Thread:=TOfficeSaveThread.Create(m_vExcelWorkbook); if WaitForSingleObject(Thread.Handle, 5 {s} * 1000 {ms/s})=WAIT_TIMEOUT then begin Thread.FreeOnTerminate:=true; raise Exception.Create(_('The Office spreadsheet program seems to be busy.')); end; Thread.Free; end; TOfficeSaveThread = class(TThread) private { Private declarations } m_vExcelWorkbook:variant; protected procedure Execute; override; procedure DoSave; public constructor Create(vExcelWorkbook:variant); end; { TOfficeSaveThread } constructor TOfficeSaveThread.Create(vExcelWorkbook:variant); begin inherited Create(true); m_vExcelWorkbook:=vExcelWorkbook; Resume; end; procedure TOfficeSaveThread.Execute; begin m_vExcelWorkbook.Save; end; i understand this problem happens because the OLE object was created from another thread (absolutely). how can i get around this problem? most likely i'll need to "re-marshall" for this call somehow... any ideas? thank you!

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• Sunrise / set calculations

  - by dassouki

  I'm trying to calculate the sunset / rise times using python based on the link provided below. My results done through excel and python do not match the real values. Any ideas on what I could be doing wrong? My Excel sheet can be found under .. http://transpotools.com/sun_time.xls # Created on 2010-03-28 # @author: dassouki # @source: [http://williams.best.vwh.net/sunrise_sunset_algorithm.htm][2] # @summary: this is based on the Nautical Almanac Office, United States Naval # Observatory. import math, sys class TimeOfDay(object): def calculate_time(self, in_day, in_month, in_year, lat, long, is_rise, utc_time_zone): # is_rise is a bool when it's true it indicates rise, # and if it's false it indicates setting time #set Zenith zenith = 96 # offical = 90 degrees 50' # civil = 96 degrees # nautical = 102 degrees # astronomical = 108 degrees #1- calculate the day of year n1 = math.floor( 275 * in_month / 9 ) n2 = math.floor( ( in_month + 9 ) / 12 ) n3 = ( 1 + math.floor( in_year - 4 * math.floor( in_year / 4 ) + 2 ) / 3 ) new_day = n1 - ( n2 * n3 ) + in_day - 30 print "new_day ", new_day #2- calculate rising / setting time if is_rise: rise_or_set_time = new_day + ( ( 6 - ( long / 15 ) ) / 24 ) else: rise_or_set_time = new_day + ( ( 18 - ( long/ 15 ) ) / 24 ) print "rise / set", rise_or_set_time #3- calculate sun mean anamoly sun_mean_anomaly = ( 0.9856 * rise_or_set_time ) - 3.289 print "sun mean anomaly", sun_mean_anomaly #4 calculate true longitude true_long = ( sun_mean_anomaly + ( 1.916 * math.sin( math.radians( sun_mean_anomaly ) ) ) + ( 0.020 * math.sin( 2 * math.radians( sun_mean_anomaly ) ) ) + 282.634 ) print "true long ", true_long # make sure true_long is within 0, 360 if true_long < 0: true_long = true_long + 360 elif true_long > 360: true_long = true_long - 360 else: true_long print "true long (360 if) ", true_long #5 calculate s_r_a (sun_right_ascenstion) s_r_a = math.degrees( math.atan( 0.91764 * math.tan( math.radians( true_long ) ) ) ) print "s_r_a is ", s_r_a #make sure it's between 0 and 360 if s_r_a < 0: s_r_a = s_r_a + 360 elif true_long > 360: s_r_a = s_r_a - 360 else: s_r_a print "s_r_a (modified) is ", s_r_a # s_r_a has to be in the same Quadrant as true_long true_long_quad = ( math.floor( true_long / 90 ) ) * 90 s_r_a_quad = ( math.floor( s_r_a / 90 ) ) * 90 s_r_a = s_r_a + ( true_long_quad - s_r_a_quad ) print "s_r_a (quadrant) is ", s_r_a # convert s_r_a to hours s_r_a = s_r_a / 15 print "s_r_a (to hours) is ", s_r_a #6- calculate sun diclanation in terms of cos and sin sin_declanation = 0.39782 * math.sin( math.radians ( true_long ) ) cos_declanation = math.cos( math.asin( sin_declanation ) ) print " sin/cos declanations ", sin_declanation, ", ", cos_declanation # sun local hour cos_hour = ( math.cos( math.radians( zenith ) ) - ( sin_declanation * math.sin( math.radians ( lat ) ) ) / ( cos_declanation * math.cos( math.radians ( lat ) ) ) ) print "cos_hour ", cos_hour # extreme north / south if cos_hour > 1: print "Sun Never Rises at this location on this date, exiting" # sys.exit() elif cos_hour < -1: print "Sun Never Sets at this location on this date, exiting" # sys.exit() print "cos_hour (2)", cos_hour #7- sun/set local time calculations if is_rise: sun_local_hour = ( 360 - math.degrees(math.acos( cos_hour ) ) ) / 15 else: sun_local_hour = math.degrees( math.acos( cos_hour ) ) / 15 print "sun local hour ", sun_local_hour sun_event_time = sun_local_hour + s_r_a - ( 0.06571 * rise_or_set_time ) - 6.622 print "sun event time ", sun_event_time #final result time_in_utc = sun_event_time - ( long / 15 ) + utc_time_zone return time_in_utc #test through main def main(): print "Time of day App " # test: fredericton, NB # answer: 7:34 am long = 66.6 lat = -45.9 utc_time = -4 d = 3 m = 3 y = 2010 is_rise = True tod = TimeOfDay() print "TOD is ", tod.calculate_time(d, m, y, lat, long, is_rise, utc_time) if __name__ == "__main__": main()

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• TFS and shared projects in multiple solutions

  - by David Stratton

  Our .NET team works on projects for our company that fall into distinct categories. Some are internal web apps, some are external (publicly facing) web apps, we also have internal Windows applications for our corporate office users, and Windows Forms apps for our retail locations (stores). Of course, because we hate code reuse, we have a ton of code that is shared among the different applications. Currently we're using SVN as our source control, and we've got our repository laid out like this: - = folder, | = Visual Studio Solution -SVN - Internet | Ourcompany.com | Oursecondcompany.com - Intranet | UniformOrdering website | MessageCenter website - Shared | ErrorLoggingModule | RegularExpressionGenerator | Anti-Xss | OrgChartModule etc... So.. The OurCompany.com solution in the Internet folder would have a website project, and it would also include the ErrorLoggingModule, RegularExpressionGenerator, and Anti-Xss projects from the shared directory. Similarly, our UniformOrdering website solution would have each of these projects included in the solution as well. We prefer to have a project reference to a .dll reference because, first of all, if we need to add or fix a function in the ErrorLoggingModule while working on the OurCompany.com website, it's right there. Also, this allows us to build each solution and see if changes to shared code break any other applications. This should work well on a build server as well if I'm correct. In SVN, there is no problem with this. SVN and Visual Studio aren't tied together in the way TFS's source control is. We never figured out how to work this type of structure in TFS when we were using it, because in TFS, the TFS project was always tied to a Visual Studio Solution. The Source Code repository was a child of the TFS Project, so if we wanted to do this, we had to duplicate the Shared code in each TFS project's source code repository. As my co-worker put it, this "breaks every known best practice about code reuse and simplicity". It was enough of a deal breaker for us that we switched to SVN. Now, however, we're faced with truly fixing our development processes, and the Application Lifecycle Management of TFS is pretty close to exactly what we want, and how we want to work. Our one sticking point is the shared code issue. We're evaluating other commercial and open source solutions, but since we're already paying for TFS with our MSDN Subscriptions, and TFS is pretty much exactly what we want, we'd REALLY like to find a way around this issue. Has anybody else faced this and come up with a solution? If you've seen an article or posting on this that you can share with me, that would help as well. As always, I'm open to answers like "You're looking at it all wrong, bonehead, HERE'S the way it SHOULD be done.

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• Java, Jacob and Microsoft Outlook events: Receiving "Can't find event iid" Error

  - by Adam Paynter

  I am writing a Java program that interacts with Microsoft Outlook using the Jacob library (bridges COM and Java). This program creates a new MailItem, displaying its Inspector window to the user. I wish to subscribe to the inspector's Close event to know when the user is finished editing their mail item. To subscribe to the event, I followed the instructions in Jacob's documentation (about 2⁄3 down the page): The current [event] model is conceptually similar to the Visual Basic WithEvents construct. Basically, I provide a class called com.jacob.com.DispatchEvents which has a constructor that takes a source object (of type com.jacob.com.Dispatch) and a target object (of any type). The source object is queried for its IConnectionPointContainer interface and I attempt to obtain an IConnectionPoint for its default source interface (which I obtain from IProvideClassInfo). At the same time, I also create a mapping of DISPID's for the default source interface to the actual method names. I then use the method names to get jmethodID handles from the target Java object. All event methods currently must have the same signature: one argument which is a Java array of Variants, and a void return type. Here is my InspectorEventHandler class, conforming to Jacob's documentation: public class InspectorEventHandler { public void Activate(Variant[] arguments) { } public void BeforeMaximize(Variant[] arguments) { } public void BeforeMinimize(Variant[] arguments) { } public void BeforeMove(Variant[] arguments) { } public void BeforeSize(Variant[] arguments) { } public void Close(Variant[] arguments) { System.out.println("Closing"); } public void Deactivate(Variant[] arguments) { } public void PageChange(Variant[] arguments) { } } And here is how I subscribe to the events using this InspectorEventHandler class: Object outlook = new ActiveXComponent("Outlook.Application"); Object mailItem = Dispatch.call(outlook, "CreateItem", 0).getDispatch(); Object inspector = Dispatch.get(mailItem, "GetInspector").getDispatch(); InspectorEventHandler eventHandler = new InspectorEventHandler(); // This supposedly registers eventHandler with the inspector new DispatchEvents((Dispatch) inspector, eventHandler); However, the last line fails with the following exception: Exception in thread "main" com.jacob.com.ComFailException: Can't find event iid at com.jacob.com.DispatchEvents.init(Native Method) at com.jacob.com.DispatchEvents.(DispatchEvents.java) at cake.CakeApplication.run(CakeApplication.java:30) at cake.CakeApplication.main(CakeApplication.java:15) couldn't get IProvideClassInfo According to Google, a few others have also received this error. Unfortunately, none of them have received an answer. I am using version 1.7 of the Jacob library, which claims to prevent this problem: Version 1.7 also includes code to read the type library directly from the progid. This makes it possible to work with all the Microsoft Office application events, as well as IE5 events. For an example see the samples/test/IETest.java example. I noticed that the aforementioned IETest.java file subscribes to events like this: new DispatchEvents((Dispatch) ieo, ieE,"InternetExplorer.Application.1"); Therefore, I tried subscribing to my events in a similar manner: new DispatchEvents((Dispatch) inspector, eventHandler, "Outlook.Application"); new DispatchEvents((Dispatch) inspector, eventHandler, "Outlook.Application.1"); new DispatchEvents((Dispatch) inspector, eventHandler, "Outlook.Application.12"); All these attempts failed with the same error.

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• sharepoint search is not working

  - by Nikkho

  Hi all, I have an issue with SharePoint search. The situation The server is installed with SharePoint on a farm with 2 servers. A new app pool is created and that app pool is using a domain account called moss_service. moss_service is set to be in the administrator group in both server. moss_service is also set to be the db_creator in the content database. When I checked it initially, the search's default content access account is using another different account, I changed that to be using moss_service account. I didn't do IIS reset because this is a production server, they dont want frequent iis reset. Strangely, checking the services.msc under "office sharepoint server search" the account is still using an old one. (and apparently it's only running on 1 server, the other server is not running) I then change that to the following: domain\moss_service with the password. and then I rerun the crawl. How do I diagnose the issue Basically everytime I change something I restart the crawl and then check the event viewer. Multiple things come out but the following is the major ones: The start address cannot be crawled. The password for the content access account cannot be decrypted because it was stored with different credentials. Re-type the password for the account used to crawl this content. (0x80042406) Performance monitoring cannot be initialized for the gatherer object, because the counters are not loaded or the shared memory object cannot be opened. This only affects availability of the perfmon counters. Restart the computer. Access is denied. Check that the Default Content Access Account has access to this content, or add a crawl rule to crawl this content. (0x80041205) Crawl Logs Result The crawl log is showing this: The password for the content access account cannot be decrypted because it was stored with different credentials. Re-type the password for the account used to crawl this content. I tried changing it again at service.mstsc and the rerun the full crawl again but then it doesn't work. I have tried entering it using the following way: [email protected] and domain\moss_service My Questions are: How do I fix this? Is this the right way to setup the search? Does the search account has to be using a different domain account? Seemed like one fix complicates the other, how do I set this right? Is it worth it to upgrade to sp2?

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• What'd be a good pattern on Doctrine to have multiple languages

  - by PERR0_HUNTER

  Hi! I have this challenge which consist in having a system that offers it's content in multiple languages, however a part of the data contained in the system is not translatable such as dates, ints and such. I mean if I have a content on the following YAML Corporativos: columns: nombre: type: string(254) notnull: true telefonos: type: string(500) email: type: string(254) webpage: type: string(254) CorporativosLang: columns: corporativo_id: type: integer(8) notnull: true lang: type: string(16) fixed: false ubicacion: type: string() fixed: false unsigned: false primary: false notnull: true autoincrement: false contacto: type: string() fixed: false unsigned: false primary: false notnull: true autoincrement: false tipo_de_hoteles: type: string(254) fixed: false unsigned: false primary: false notnull: true autoincrement: false paises: type: string() fixed: false unsigned: false primary: false notnull: true autoincrement: false relations: Corporativo: class: Corporativos local: corporativo_id foreign: id type: one foreignAlias: Data This would allow me to have different corporative offices, however the place of the corp, the contact and other things can be translate into a different language (lang) Now this code here would create me a brand new corporative office with 2 translations $corporativo = new Corporativos(); $corporativo->nombre = 'Duck Corp'; $corporativo->telefonos = '66303713333'; $corporativo->email = '[email protected]'; $corporativo->webpage = 'http://quack.com'; $corporativo->Data[0]->lang = 'en'; $corporativo->Data[0]->ubicacion = 'zomg'; $corporativo->Data[1]->lang = 'es'; $corporativo->Data[1]->ubicacion = 'zomg amigou'; the thing now is I don't know how to retrieve this data in a more friendly way, because if I'd like to access my Corporative info in english I'd had to run DQL for the corp and then another DQL for the specific translation in english, What I'd love to do is have my translatable fields available in the root so I could simply access them $corporativo = new Corporativos(); $corporativo->nombre = 'Duck Corp'; $corporativo->telefonos = '66303713333'; $corporativo->email = '[email protected]'; $corporativo->webpage = 'http://quack.com'; $corporativo->lang = 'en'; $corporativo->ubicacion = 'zomg'; this way the translatable fields would be mapped to the second table automatically. I hope I can explain my self clear :( any suggestions ?

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• using php's libcurl to register user and upload file to server

  - by tunpishuang

  here is a site http://www.lyrkjsw.gov.cn that can let the registered user to upload file (e.g. images or office files) to the site. i want to register user and upload image to this site using libcurl binding with php. only registered user can upload image. so i use cookiejar stored in c:\cookie.txt after register and use c:\cookie.txt in uploadImg() function . register user is valid but failed to upload image , can anybody know is there any mistake of my code: <? /* options */ //the list url $expUrl='http://www.lyrkjsw.gov.cn/hbcms/user/list_resource.php'; //the user info to be registered $regUser='jiong'; $regPass='jiong'; $regMail='[email protected]'; $regUrl=str_replace('list_resource.php','register.php',$expUrl); // options for image upload $fileDir='@D:\img\b.jpg'; $fileTitle='aaaaaaaaaaaaa'; $fileDesc='aaaaaaaaaaaaadesc'; $uploadImgUrl=str_replace('list_resource.php','add_resource.php',$expUrl); /* register function */ function reg($regurl,$u,$p,$m) { $ch = curl_init(); $options=array( CURLOPT_URL=>$regurl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER=>true, CURLOPT_POST=>true, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS=>'mod=register_now&next_url=index.php&addon_app=&referrer_id=&login_name='.$u.'&login_pass='.$p.'&confirm_login_pass='.$p.'&login_email='.$m.'&nickname=&gender=0&qq=&mobile=&telephone=&true_name=&website_name=&website_url=&my_question=&my_answer=', CURLOPT_COOKIESESSION=>true, CURLOPT_HEADER=>true, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR=>'c:\cookie.txt' ); curl_setopt_array($ch,$options); $data = curl_exec($ch); if(strpos($data,'??')){ printf("register ok :)\n"); curl_close($ch); return true; }else{ printf("register failed:(\n"); curl_close($ch); return false; } } /* image uploading function */ function uploadImg($uploadimgurl,$filedir,$filetitle,$filedesc) { $ch = curl_init(); $options=array( CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE=>'c:\cookie.txt', CURLOPT_URL=>$uploadimgurl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER=>1, CURLOPT_POST=>1, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS=>" 'MAX_FILE_SIZE'='33554432'& 'preview_area_id'='upload_file'& 'editor_area_id'='body'& 'js_function'=''& 'resource_id'=''& 'show_top_part'='no'& 'file_1'=$filedir& 'file_title_1'=$filetitle& 'file_desc_1'=$filedesc " ); curl_setopt_array($ch,$options); $data = curl_exec($ch); if(strpos($data,'??')){ printf("upload ok :)\n"); }else{ printf("upload failed :(\n"); } curl_close($ch); } if(reg($regUrl,$regUser,$regPass,$regMail) != false) { uploadImg($uploadImgUrl,$fileDir,$fileTitle,$fileDesc); } http://www.lyrkjsw.gov.cn/hbcms/user/list_resource.php (list file page) http://www.lyrkjsw.gov.cn/hbcms/user/register.php (register page) http://www.lyrkjsw.gov.cn/hbcms/user/add_resource.php (image uploading page)

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• Minimalistic tools for developer documentation

  - by Pekka

  I am currently working on a large PHP CMS / Framework and documenting it extensively as I go along. In addition to phpdoc-style inline comments, I need to document XML structures, details on concepts and practices, write HOWTOs and so on. At the moment, I am using simple OpenOffice documents for that, but I'm unhappy with it and looking for a "real" documentation system. So, I am looking for recommendations for robust, minimalistic, easy-to-use documentation software. I have tried a number of Wikis, most prominently Dokuwiki. I like the open-minded approach, the freedom in editing, and the simplicity, but they provide little support in structuring a multi-chapter documentation, and make basic reorganisation tasks very difficult (e.g. moving pages to a different namespace). Working with the plugins is Cumbersome, and they are not really easy to use. Open Source would be a plus but is not a requirement. Thanks for all the suggestions. I have not had time to look into each one in detail. I will be trying Sphinx, especially because it provides so much support for a good structure. I may update this post later when I'm done and report how it worked out. The suggestions Trac's built-in wiki which is great but for my taste provides too little support for keeping a structure - it's perfect though for "normal", smaller size project documentation Markdown my current favourite because of its minimalism, however not sure yet whether maintaining a structure will be easy enough. A Markdown-Based system would of course be very easy to extend, e.g. to look up cross references from the project's code base. Of course it would be great to find something that already has that out of the box. The DocBook format and to edit, the commercial Oxygen XML Editor - a great standard for building documentation, no doubt. Maybe too "technical" for my purposes as I need something to open quickly, write into and go on coding. Still always worth a mention. Sphinx an Open Source, Python based documentation generator, promising structured documentation and extensive cross-referencing. Interesting and will take a look. Confluence a commercial but very affordable Wiki. XWiki, an Open Source playing in Confluence's league with numerous extensions and connectors to Eclipse and Microsoft Office. TiddlyWiki an open-source Wiki.

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• Telnet connection using c#

  - by alejandrobog

  Our office currently uses telnet to query an external server. The procedure is something like this. Connect - telnet opent 128........ 25000 Query - we paste the query and then hit alt + 019 Response - We receive the response as text in the telnet window So I’m trying to make this queries automatic using a c# app. My code is the following First the connection. (No exceptions) SocketClient = new Socket(AddressFamily.InterNetwork, SocketType.Stream, ProtocolType.Tcp); String szIPSelected = txtIPAddress.Text; String szPort = txtPort.Text; int alPort = System.Convert.ToInt16(szPort, 10); System.Net.IPAddress remoteIPAddress = System.Net.IPAddress.Parse(szIPSelected); System.Net.IPEndPoint remoteEndPoint = new System.Net.IPEndPoint(remoteIPAddress, alPort); SocketClient.Connect(remoteEndPoint); Then I send the query (No exceptions) string data ="some query"; byte[] byData = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(data); SocketClient.Send(byData); Then I try to receive the response byte[] buffer = new byte[10]; Receive(SocketClient, buffer, 0, buffer.Length, 10000); string str = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(buffer, 0, buffer.Length); txtDataRx.Text = str; public static void Receive(Socket socket, byte[] buffer, int offset, int size, int timeout) { int startTickCount = Environment.TickCount; int received = 0; // how many bytes is already received do { if (Environment.TickCount > startTickCount + timeout) throw new Exception("Timeout."); try { received += socket.Receive(buffer, offset + received, size - received, SocketFlags.None); } catch (SocketException ex) { if (ex.SocketErrorCode == SocketError.WouldBlock || ex.SocketErrorCode == SocketError.IOPending || ex.SocketErrorCode == SocketError.NoBufferSpaceAvailable) { // socket buffer is probably empty, wait and try again Thread.Sleep(30); } else throw ex; // any serious error occurr } } while (received < size); } Every time I try to receive the response I get "an exsiting connetion has forcibly closed by the remote host" if open telnet and send the same query I get a response right away Any ideas, or suggestions?

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• SELECT SQL statement problem when getting info from an accdb in VB.Net

  - by Shane Fagan

  Hi again all, im getting the error below for this SQL statement in VB.Net SQLString = "SELECT AllPropertyDetails.PropertyID, Street, Town, County, Acres, Quotas, ResidenceDetails, Status, HighestBid, AskingPrice FROM AllPropertyDetails " SQLString += "INNER JOIN Land ON AllPropertyDetails.PropertyID = Land.PropertyID " SQLString += "WHERE Deleted = False " If PriceRadioButton.Checked = True Then SQLString += "ORDER BY AskingPrice ASC" ElseIf AcresRadioButton.Checked = True Then SQLString += "ORDER BY Acres ASC" End If Any ideas why its not working? The fields in the DB and the table names seem ok but its not working :/ System.InvalidOperationException was unhandled Message="An error occurred creating the form. See Exception.InnerException for details. The error is: No value given for one or more required parameters." Source="AuctioneerProject" StackTrace: at AuctioneerProject.My.MyProject.MyForms.Create__Instance__[T](T Instance) in 17d14f5c-a337-4978-8281-53493378c1071.vb:line 190 at AuctioneerProject.My.MyProject.MyForms.get_LandReport() at AuctioneerProject.ReportsMenu.LandButton_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) in C:\Users\admin\Desktop\Auctioneers\AuctioneerProject\AuctioneerProject\ReportsMenu.vb:line 4 at System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnClick(EventArgs e) at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e) at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnMouseUp(MouseEventArgs mevent) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.ButtonBase.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Button.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.DebuggableCallback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam) at System.Windows.Forms.UnsafeNativeMethods.DispatchMessageW(MSG& msg) at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ComponentManager.System.Windows.Forms.UnsafeNativeMethods.IMsoComponentManager.FPushMessageLoop(Int32 dwComponentID, Int32 reason, Int32 pvLoopData) at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ThreadContext.RunMessageLoopInner(Int32 reason, ApplicationContext context) at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ThreadContext.RunMessageLoop(Int32 reason, ApplicationContext context) at System.Windows.Forms.Application.Run(ApplicationContext context) at Microsoft.VisualBasic.ApplicationServices.WindowsFormsApplicationBase.OnRun() at Microsoft.VisualBasic.ApplicationServices.WindowsFormsApplicationBase.DoApplicationModel() at Microsoft.VisualBasic.ApplicationServices.WindowsFormsApplicationBase.Run(String[] commandLine) at AuctioneerProject.My.MyApplication.Main(String[] Args) in 17d14f5c-a337-4978-8281-53493378c1071.vb:line 81 at System.AppDomain._nExecuteAssembly(Assembly assembly, String[] args) at System.AppDomain.ExecuteAssembly(String assemblyFile, Evidence assemblySecurity, String[] args) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.HostingProcess.HostProc.RunUsersAssembly() at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart_Context(Object state) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state) at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart() InnerException: System.Data.OleDb.OleDbException ErrorCode=-2147217904 Message="No value given for one or more required parameters." Source="Microsoft Office Access Database Engine" StackTrace: at System.Data.OleDb.OleDbCommand.ExecuteCommandTextErrorHandling(OleDbHResult hr) at System.Data.OleDb.OleDbCommand.ExecuteCommandTextForSingleResult(tagDBPARAMS dbParams, Object& executeResult) at System.Data.OleDb.OleDbCommand.ExecuteCommandText(Object& executeResult) at System.Data.OleDb.OleDbCommand.ExecuteCommand(CommandBehavior behavior, Object& executeResult) at System.Data.OleDb.OleDbCommand.ExecuteReaderInternal(CommandBehavior behavior, String method) at System.Data.OleDb.OleDbCommand.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior behavior) at System.Data.OleDb.OleDbCommand.ExecuteReader() at AuctioneerProject.LandReport.load_Land() in C:\Users\admin\Desktop\Auctioneers\AuctioneerProject\AuctioneerProject\LandReport.vb:line 37 at AuctioneerProject.LandReport.PriceRadioButton_CheckedChanged(Object sender, EventArgs e) in C:\Users\admin\Desktop\Auctioneers\AuctioneerProject\AuctioneerProject\LandReport.vb:line 79 at System.Windows.Forms.RadioButton.OnCheckedChanged(EventArgs e) at System.Windows.Forms.RadioButton.set_Checked(Boolean value) at AuctioneerProject.LandReport.InitializeComponent() in C:\Users\admin\Desktop\Auctioneers\AuctioneerProject\AuctioneerProject\LandReport.designer.vb:line 40 at AuctioneerProject.LandReport..ctor() in C:\Users\admin\Desktop\Auctioneers\AuctioneerProject\AuctioneerProject\LandReport.vb:line 5 InnerException:

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• How can a test script inform R CMD check that it should emit a custom message?

  - by mariotomo

  I'm writing a R package (delftfews) here at office. we are using svUnit for unit testing. our process for describing new functionality: we define new unit tests, initially marked as DEACTIVATED; one block of tests at a time we activate them and implement the function described by the tests. almost all the time we have a small amount of DEACTIVATED tests, relative to functions that might be dropped or will be implemented. my problem/question is: can I alter the doSvUnit.R so that R CMD check pkg emits a NOTE (i.e. a custom message "NOTE" instead of "OK") in case there are DEACTIVATED tests? as of now, we see only that the active tests don't give error: . . * checking for unstated dependencies in tests ... OK * checking tests ... Running ‘doSvUnit.R’ OK * checking PDF version of manual ... OK which is all right if all tests succeed, but less all right if there are skipped tests and definitely wrong if there are failing tests. In this case, I'd actually like to see a NOTE or a WARNING like the following: . . * checking for unstated dependencies in tests ... OK * checking tests ... Running ‘doSvUnit.R’ NOTE 6 test(s) were skipped. WARNING 1 test(s) are failing. * checking PDF version of manual ... OK As of now, we have to open the doSvUnit.Rout to check the real test results. I contacted two of the maintainers at r-forge and CRAN and they pointed me to the sources of R, in particular the testing.R script. if I understand it correctly, to answer this question we need patching the tools package: scripts in the tests directory are called using a system call, output (stdout and stderr) go to one single file, there are two possible outcomes: ok or not ok, so I opened a change request on R, proposing something like bit-coding the return status, bit-0 for ERROR (as it is now), bit-1 for WARNING, bit-2 for NOTE. with my modification, it would be easy producing this output: . . * checking for unstated dependencies in tests ... OK * checking tests ... Running ‘doSvUnit.R’ NOTE - please check doSvUnit.Rout. WARNING - please check doSvUnit.Rout. * checking PDF version of manual ... OK Brian Ripley replied "There are however several packages with properly written unit tests that do signal as required. Please do take this discussion elsewhere: R-bugs is not the place to ask questions." and closed the change request. anybody has hints?

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• Detect Client Computer name when an RDP session is open

  - by Ubiquitous Che

  Hey all, My manager has pointed out to me a few nifty things that one of our accounting applications can do because it can load different settings based on the machine name of the host and the machine name of the client when the package is opened in an RDP session. We want to provide similar functionality in one of my company's applications. I've found out on this site how to detect if I'm in an RDP session, but I'm having trouble finding information anywhere on how to detect the name of the client computer. Any pointers in the right direction would be great. I'm coding in C# for .NET 3.5 EDIT The sample code I cobbled together from the advice below - it should be enough for anyone who has a use for the WTSQuerySessionInformation to get a feel for what's going on. Note that this isn't necessarily the best way of doing it - just a starting point that I've found useful. When I run this locally, I get boring, expected answers. When I run it on our local office server in an RDP session, I see my own computer name in the WTSClientName property. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Runtime.InteropServices; namespace TerminalServicesTest { class Program { const int WTS_CURRENT_SESSION = -1; static readonly IntPtr WTS_CURRENT_SERVER_HANDLE = IntPtr.Zero; static void Main(string[] args) { StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); uint byteCount; foreach (WTS_INFO_CLASS item in Enum.GetValues(typeof(WTS_INFO_CLASS))) { Program.WTSQuerySessionInformation( WTS_CURRENT_SERVER_HANDLE, WTS_CURRENT_SESSION, item, out sb, out byteCount); Console.WriteLine("{0}({1}): {2}", item.ToString(), byteCount, sb); } Console.WriteLine(); Console.WriteLine("Press any key to exit..."); Console.ReadKey(); } [DllImport("Wtsapi32.dll")] public static extern bool WTSQuerySessionInformation( IntPtr hServer, int sessionId, WTS_INFO_CLASS wtsInfoClass, out StringBuilder ppBuffer, out uint pBytesReturned); } enum WTS_INFO_CLASS { WTSInitialProgram = 0, WTSApplicationName = 1, WTSWorkingDirectory = 2, WTSOEMId = 3, WTSSessionId = 4, WTSUserName = 5, WTSWinStationName = 6, WTSDomainName = 7, WTSConnectState = 8, WTSClientBuildNumber = 9, WTSClientName = 10, WTSClientDirectory = 11, WTSClientProductId = 12, WTSClientHardwareId = 13, WTSClientAddress = 14, WTSClientDisplay = 15, WTSClientProtocolType = 16, WTSIdleTime = 17, WTSLogonTime = 18, WTSIncomingBytes = 19, WTSOutgoingBytes = 20, WTSIncomingFrames = 21, WTSOutgoingFrames = 22, WTSClientInfo = 23, WTSSessionInfo = 24, WTSSessionInfoEx = 25, WTSConfigInfo = 26, WTSValidationInfo = 27, WTSSessionAddressV4 = 28, WTSIsRemoteSession = 29 } }

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• Learning to create beautiful /next-generation GUI

  - by ShaChris23

  I really want to create a stunning-looking GUI desktop application that looks like, for example: Mac OS X interface Picasa desktop client on windows IPhone apps Office 2007 I've mostly been programming GUI using Qt/Swing/WinForm and I'm tired of creating so plain looking GUI, lol. So I was thinking about diving into stuff like: jQuery WPF/C# iPhone SDK Silverlight Adobe Air/Flex Just to get some ideas on how to create really cool looking UI. Does that sound like a good list? Any developers here that could share what platform they use to create very cool looking desktop app? On a sidenote, I really wonder what developers at Apple / Microsoft use to develop their own cool-looking software. EDIT A lot of responses talk about the importance of usability over "cool-looking".. I totally agree that usability and simplicity are the most important aspects of user interface design. I've been doing GUI development for a while now ( 3 years), so that I understand. But using cool-looking UI also improves user experience + it could make big difference on whether or not your software sells. I mean, otherwise why would Microsoft/Apple try to make their OS UI look "cooler" everytime there's a new version? Why would websites like pragprog.com, or versionsapp.com. make their websites look like that? Basically you kill 2 birds with one stone: stunnning-looking UI + super usability (because it looks simple and intuitive). That is what I'm striving for. And as far as I know, I cannot achieve that using Qt/Winform. Most of the books I have read just show you how to make average-looking (read: 1990's) UI. I want to learn how to create cool-looking UI. And the only place I see cool-looking UIs these days are the technology I list above. I'm not enamored with any technology; but I just want to know how things are done in other technology to see if I could apply them to the technology I'm using, or see if I could use those technology in my line of work. An example: if I were to pick between this UI and this UI, I probably would pick the latter, if just based on looks alone. Functionally, they are just the same UI; they both allow you to keep track of your time. They both contain buttons and textboxes, etc. But the fact that they look different, also differentiate them in terms of attractiveness. So in all, I think the "ice on the cake" is very important. I would say it's the thing you strive for after you are certain you have a totally intuitive, usable UI.

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• What does N years of experience with a language really mean?

  - by marcgg

  I've been looking at jobs descriptions since I'm graduating soon and looking for a job and what's always coming back - I'm not teaching you anything - is the "N years of experience in this language". It has been discussed in this question that if you work professionally with let's say Ruby for 2 years, but during these two years you also did some C# and PHP and were actually coding in Ruby 50% of the time. Do you say you have 1 year of experience in Ruby? 2 years? Another issue that hasn't been reviewed in the other post is for "non-professional experience". I'll give you a personal example: I've been working with Ruby on Rails since 2004 while at school. I did a lot of personal projects and school projects using this technology. I also used Rails in 2 6-month internships. Do I have 5 years of Rails experience (2004-now)? Do I have 1 year(2 internships)? Do I have nothing? I feel like I don't deserve the credit for 5 years, because the first years I wasn't working a lot with rails, but since last year I launched some websites and invested myself a lot in this technology and just saying 1 year doesn't really reflect how much I know the technology... Another example: I Learned C++ at school and did 1 big project with it (2-3 month of work and a semester of classes). I never used it in a company but I'd be able to be productive fairly quickly if I had to work on a C++ project and I have a good grasp of the concepts. Do I have no experience? 3 months? 6 months? ... something else? What I'm really trying to do is to find a way to present my skill set in a way that is compliant to what recruiters expect. I also don't want to end up at an interview that would go something like this... Recruiter (finding out the horrible truth): Oh but you said that you had 2 years of experience with this when you have none! / slaps me in the face / Me (in pain): Oh! The irony! Recruiter (yelling): Get out of my office / calls security, punches me in the throat /

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• Microsoft Access and Java JDBC-ODBC Error

  - by user1638362

  Trying to insert some values in a Microsoft access database using java. I can an error however, java.sql.SQLException: [Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] The specified DSN contains an architecture mismatch between the Driver and Application Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException To create the data source im using SysWoW64 odbcad32 and adding it the datasource to system DNS. I say this as i have seen else where there are problems which occur with 64bit systems. However it still doesn't work for me. Microsoft Office 32bit. import java.sql.Connection; import java.sql.DriverManager; import java.sql.SQLException; import java.sql.Statement; public class RMIAuctionHouseJDBC { /** * @param args */ public static void main(String[] args) { String theItem = "Car"; String theClient="KHAN"; String theMessage="1001"; Connection conn =null; // Create connection object try{ Class.forName("sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver"); System.out.println("Driver Found"); } catch(Exception e) { System.out.println("Driver Not Found"); System.err.println(e); } // connecting to database try{ String database ="jdbc:odbc:Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.accdb)};DBQ=AuctionHouseDatabase.accdb;"; conn = DriverManager.getConnection(database,"",""); System.out.println("Conn Found"); } catch(SQLException se) { System.out.println("Conn Not Found"); System.err.println(se); } // Create select statement and execute it try{ /*String insertSQL = "INSERT INTO AuctionHouse VALUES ( " +"'" +theItem+"', " +"'" +theClient+"', " +"'" +theMessage+"')"; */ Statement stmt = conn.createStatement(); String insertSQL = "Insert into AuctionHouse VALUES ('Item','Name','Price')"; stmt.executeUpdate(insertSQL); // Retrieve the results conn.close(); } catch(SQLException se) { System.out.println("SqlStatment Not Found"); System.err.println(se); } } } java.sql.SQLException: [Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] Data source name not found and no default driver specified at sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbc.createSQLException(Unknown Source) at sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbc.standardError(Unknown Source) at sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbc.SQLDriverConnect(Unknown Source) at sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcConnection.initialize(Unknown Source)

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• exchange web service C# code send email from home

  - by KK

  Is it possible to wrtie C# code as below .. and send email using my home network. I have a valid user name and password on that exchange server. Is there any configuration that i can set to achieve this. BY THE WAY ... this code blow works when i run it within office network .... i want this code to work when run from any network .... Thank you for your help guys ... String cMSExchangeWebServiceURL = (String)System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["MSExchangeWebServiceURL"]; String cEmail = (String)System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["Cemail"]; String cPassword = (String)System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["Cpassword"]; String cTo = (String)System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["CTo"]; ExchangeServiceBinding esb = new ExchangeServiceBinding(); esb.Timeout = 1800000; esb.AllowAutoRedirect = true; esb.UseDefaultCredentials = false; esb.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(cEmail, cPassword); esb.Url = cMSExchangeWebServiceURL; ServicePointManager.ServerCertificateValidationCallback += delegate(object sender1, X509Certificate certificate, X509Chain chain, SslPolicyErrors sslPolicyErrors) { return true; }; // Create a CreateItem request object CreateItemType request = new CreateItemType(); // Setup the request: // Indicate that we only want to send the message. No copy will be saved. request.MessageDisposition = MessageDispositionType.SendOnly; request.MessageDispositionSpecified = true; // Create a message object and set its properties MessageType message = new MessageType(); message.Subject = subject; message.Body = new TestOutgoingEmailServer.com.cogniti.mail1.BodyType(); message.Body.BodyType1 = BodyTypeType.HTML; message.Body.Value = body; message.ToRecipients = new EmailAddressType[3]; message.ToRecipients[0] = new EmailAddressType(); //message.ToRecipients[1] = new EmailAddressType(); //message.ToRecipients[2] = new EmailAddressType(); message.ToRecipients[0].EmailAddress = "[email protected]"; message.ToRecipients[0].RoutingType = "SMTP"; //message.CcRecipients = new EmailAddressType[1]; //message.CcRecipients[0] = new EmailAddressType(); //message.CcRecipients[0].EmailAddress = toEmailAddress.ElementAt(1).ToString(); //message.CcRecipients[0].RoutingType = "SMTP"; //There are some more properties in MessageType object //you can set all according to your requirement // Construct the array of items to send request.Items = new NonEmptyArrayOfAllItemsType(); request.Items.Items = new ItemType[1]; request.Items.Items[0] = message; // Call the CreateItem EWS method. CreateItemResponseType response = esb.CreateItem(request);

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• Do you feel underappreciated or resent the geek/nerd stigma?

  - by dotnetdev

  At work we have a piece of A4 paper with the number of everyone in the office. The structure of this document is laid out in rectangles, by department. I work for the department that does all the technical stuff. That includes support—bear in mind that the support staff isn't educated in IT but just has experience in PC maintenance and providing support to a system we resell but don't have source code access to, project manager, team leader, a network administrator, a product manager, and me, a programmer. Anyway, on this paper, we are labelled as nerds and geeks. I did take a little offence to this, as much as it is light hearted (but annoying and old) humour. I have a vivid image that a geek is someone who doesn't go out but codes all day. I code all day at home and at work (when I have something to code...), but I keep balance by going out. I don't know why it is only people who work with computers that get such a stigma. No other profession really gets the same stigma—skilled, technical, or whatever. An account manager (and this is hardly a skilled job) says, "Perhaps [MY NAME HERE] could write some geeky code tomorrow to add this functionality to the website." It is funny how I get such an unfair stigma but I am so pivotal. In fact, if it wasn't for me, the company would have nothing to sell so the account managers would be redundant! I make systems, they get sold, and this is what pays the wages. It's funny how the account managers get a commission for how many systems they sell, or manage to make clients resubscribe to. Yet I built the thing in the first place! On top of that, my brother says all I do is type stuff on a keyboard all day. Surely if I did, I'd be typing at my normal typing speed of 100wpm+ as if I am writing a blog entry. Instead, I plan as I code along on the fly if commercial pressures and time prohibit proper planning. I never type as if I'm writing normal English. There is more to our jobs than just typing code. And my brother is a pipe fitter with no formal qualifications in his name. I could easily, and perhaps more justifiably, say he just manipulates a spanner or something. Does you feel underappreciated or that a geek/nerd stigma is undeserved or unfair?

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• Function Point Analysis -- a seriously over-estimating technique?

  - by kizzx2

  I know questions about FPA has been asked numerous times before, but this time I'm taking a more analytical angle at it, backed up with data. 1. First, some data This question is based on a tutorial. He had a "Sample Count" section where he demonstrated it step by step. You can see some screenshots of his sample application here. In the end, he calculated the unadjusted FP to be 99. There is another article on InformIT with industry data on typical hour/FP. It ranges from 2 hours/FP to 27.4 hours/FP. Let's try to stick with 2 for the moment (since SO readers are probably the more efficient crowd :p). 2. Reality check!? Now just check out the screenshots again. Do a little math here 99 * 2 = 198 hours 198 hours / 40 hours per week = 5 weeks Seriously? That sample application is going to take 5 weeks to implement? Is it just my feeling that it wouldn't take any decent programmer longer than one week to have it completed? Now let's try estimating the cost of the project. We'll use New York's minimum wage at the moment (Wikipedia), which is $7.25 198 * 7.25 = $1435.5 From what I could see from the screenshots, this application is a small excel-improvement app. I could have bought MS Office Pro for 200 bucks which gives me greater interoperability (.xls files) and flexibility (spreadsheets). (For the record, that same Web site has another article discussing productivity. It seems like they typically use 4.2 hours/FP, which gives us even more shocking stats: 99 * 4.2 = 415 hours = 10 weeks = almost 3 whopping months! 415 hours * $7.25 = $3000 zomg (That's even assuming that all our poor coders get the minimum wage!) 3. Am I missing something here? Right now, I could come up with several possible explanation: FPA is really only suited for bigger projects (1000+ FPs) so it becomes extremely inaccurate at smaller scale. The hours/FP metric fluctuates abruptly from team to team, project to project. For a small project like this, we could have used something like 0.5 hour/FP or something. (Now this kind of makes the whole estimation thing pointless, unless my firm does the same type of projects for several years with the same team, not really common.) From my experience with several software metrics, Function Point is really not a lightweight metric. If the hour/FP thing fluctuates so much, then what's the point, maybe I could have gone with User Story Points which is a lot faster to get and arguably almost as uncertain. What would be the FP experts' answers to this?

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• How do we, as a community, help encourage programming in public schools? (Or state Schools for the U

  - by NoMoreZealots

  PRIMARY MOTIVATION My office gets involved with the "First Robotics" competitions and one thing that lingers year to year is the students typically have no preparation for doing even simple programming as part of the public schools system. While the science classes provide some basic grasp of mechanical and electrical concepts, by in large computer programming gets no coverage from the curriculum. (This my be different in other areas of the country/world.) What makes it worse is there is only a short period of time you have to prepare the student's and help them design the robot. Talking to some professors from local colleges, it's a problem because you can't assume even the most basic understanding for freshman CS majors. Languages like Python, Lua and BASIC are simple enough for at least high school level students, if not younger. SCOPE So how do you get public schools to support a programming, at least to the level of "Try it in BASIC" examples that used to be at the end of a chapter in my Algebra book? At least enough to prepare them for event's such as the FIRST Robotic competitions. Which the primary objectives are to teach problem solving and team work, and to possible foster an interest in Math, Science and Engineering in general. (Not force feed to them, as some people her seem to be implying.) Edit: Why teach kids: (Since 2000 CS enrollment in US colleges has decreased by 70% while college enrollment has increased, this is a PROBLEM.) Saying there is no value in teaching someone programming in Jr./High school because they might think "they know programming." Is like saying there's no value in teaching High school science and physics, because they might decide they "know physics." Leading to abuse like: "I passed a high school physics class, I'm going to develop a Unified Quantum Gravitational Theory." Better Prepared students are better students. Instead it would allows college programs to raise the bar on the entry level courses, allowing students to be weeded out based on their understanding of more advanced material. Plus people who did poorly in that in topic in High school aren't as likely to say "I think there's money in computer's so I'll computer science." Plus if people take it in high school and decide THEN that it's not for them, it's better than them wasting their money to PAY a college to figure that out. The result is that people who take the degree are more likely to succeed and be there for the RIGHT reasons. (i.e. It's what they REALLY want to do. And that's REALLY the key to being good at anything.) Programming is like anything else, the more practice and genuine interest you have the better you get. If you start them later, they get less practice. The earlier give them the opportunity to start, the more practice they will get. All other things equal, the more practice the better the programmer.

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• Choosing the right .NET architecture. WCF? WPF/Forms, ASP.NET (MVC)?

  - by Tommy Jakobsen

  I’m in the situation that I have to design and implement a rather big system from the bottom. I’m having some (a lot actually) questions about the architecture that I would like your comments and thoughts on. I don’t hope that I’ve written too much here, but I wanted to give you all an idea of what the system is. Quick info about the applications, read if you want: I can’t share much detail about the project, but basically it’s a system where we offer our customer a service to manage their users. We have a hotline where the users call and our hotline uses an (windows) application (intranet) to manage the user’s data, etc. The customer also has a web application where they can see reports, information about their business and users, and the ability to modify their data. Modifying data is not just user data like address and so, but also information about the products/services the user has, which can be complicated. The applications will be built on Microsoft .NET Framework 4, with a MS SQL Server 2008 database. There will be a few applications that have to access this database, such as: Intranet application (used by us and our hotline) Customer web application type 1 Customer web application type 2 Customer web application type n different applications) … Now my big problem is what .NET parts I should use for such a system. For the “backend” I’ve considered using Windows Communication Foundation: Would WCF be a good choice? The intranet application will be an application that has to edit lots of records in the database. It has to be easy to navigate using the keyboard (fast to work with). Has a feature such as “find customer, find that, lookup this, choose this and update that”. What would be the best choice to develop this application in? Would it be WPF or good old Windows Forms? I don’t need all of the fancy graphics features in WPF, like 3D, but the application has to look nice (maybe something like the new Visual Studio/Office tools). And the same question goes for the web pages. They have much the same work to do, but not as many features as the intranet application, and not the same amount of data (much less). That is my questions for now. I’m hoping to get a discussion going that will open my eyes to some of these technologies, helping me decide architecture to go with. I would like to say thanks in advance, and let you all know that any thoughts will be much appreciated.

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• sendmail and MX records when mail server is not on web host

  - by Jim Nelson

  This is a problem I'm sure is easy to fix, but I've been banging my head on it all day. I'm developing a new web site for a client. The web site resides at (this is an example) website.com. I have a PHP form script to email visitors' requests to [email protected]. When I coded this on a staging server on a different domain, all worked fine. When I moved it to website.com, the mail messages never arrived. The web server is on a virtual host with a major ISP. Here's what I've learned since then: My client's mail server is Microsoft Exchange on a box physically in their office. Whenever someone on the outside world emails [email protected], the mail arrives. But if the web server sends to the same email address, it fails every time. This is not a PHP problem. I secure shell in to the web server and have tested this both with sendmail and the UNIX mail application. I've also tested it by emailing various email accounts from the shell. I can email myself, for example, just nobody at the website.com domain. In short, when I'm logged in to website.com, mail to [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] all fail. All other addresses work fine. What I've discovered is those dropped emails are routed to the web server's "catchall" account where they sit in its inbox. I've done an MX lookup on website.com. The MX record points to mailsec.website.com. I can telnet to mailsec.website.com port 25 and see the SMTP server. It appears to me that website.com isn't doing an MX lookup when it's sending mail to [email protected]. My theory is that it recognizes the domain as local, sees that there's no "requests" user account to deliver it to, and drops the mail into the catchall account. What I want is to force sendmail to do the MX lookup and send the message on to the Exchange server. I'm at wit's end here. I can't figure out how to do this. For that matter, I may be way off base here and have misdiagnosed this entirely. Internet mail and MX has always seemed a black art to me, and my ignorance is certainly showing in this question.

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• Function Point Analysis -- a seriously overestimating technique?

  - by kizzx2

  I know questions about FPA has been asked numerous times before, but this time I'm taking a more analytical angle at it, backed up with data. 1. First, some data This question is based on a tutorial. He had a "Sample Count" section where he demonstrated it step by step. You can see some screenshots of his sample application here. In the end, he calculated the unadjusted FP to be 99. There is another article on InformIT with industry data on typical hour/FP. It ranges from 2 hours/FP to 27.4 hours/FP. Let's try to stick with 2 for the moment (since SO readers are probably the more efficient crowd :p). 2. Reality check!? Now just check out the screenshots again. Do a little math here 99 * 2 = 198 hours 198 hours / 40 hours per week = 5 weeks Seriously? That sample application is going to take 5 weeks to implement? Is it just my feeling that it wouldn't take any decent programmer longer than one week (I"m not even saying weekend) to have it completed? Now let's try estimating the cost of the project. We'll use New York's minimum wage at the moment (Wikipedia), which is $7.25 198 * 7.25 = $1435.5 From what I could see from the screenshots, this application is a small excel-improvement app. I could have bought MS Office Pro for 200 bucks which gives me greater interoperability (.xls files) and flexibility (spreadsheets). (For the record, that same Web site has another article discussing productivity. It seems like they typically use 4.2 hours/FP, which gives us even more shocking stats: 99 * 4.2 = 415 hours = 10 weeks = almost 3 whopping months! 415 hours * $7.25 = $3000 zomg (That's even assuming that all our poor coders get the minimum wage!) 3. Am I missing something here? Right now, I could come up with several possible explanation: FPA is really only suited for bigger projects (1000+ FPs) so it becomes extremely inaccurate at smaller scale. The hours/FP metric fluctuates abruptly from team to team, project to project. For a small project like this, we could have used something like 0.5 hour/FP or something. (Now this kind of makes the whole estimation thing pointless, unless my firm does the same type of projects for several years with the same team, not really common.) From my experience with several software metrics, Function Point is really not a lightweight metric. If the hour/FP thing fluctuates so much, then what's the point, maybe I could have gone with User Story Points which is a lot faster to get and arguably almost as uncertain. What would be the FP experts' answers to this?

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• Finding contained bordered regions from Excel imports.

  - by dmaruca

  I am importing massive amounts of data from Excel that have various table layouts. I have good enough table detection routines and merge cell handling, but I am running into a problem when it comes to dealing with borders. Namely performance. The bordered regions in some of these files have meaning. Data Setup: I am importing directly from Office Open XML using VB6 and MSXML. The data is parsed from the XML into a dictionary of cell data. This wonks wonderfully and is just as fast as using docmd.transferspreadsheet in Access, but returns much better results. Each cell contains a pointer to a style element which contains a pointer to a border element that defines the visibility and weight of each border (this is how the data is structured inside OpenXML, also). Challenge: What I'm trying to do is find every region that is enclosed inside borders, and create a list of cells that are inside that region. What I have done: I initially created a BFS(breadth first search) fill routine to find these areas. This works wonderfully and fast for "normal" sized spreadsheets, but gets way too slow for imports into the thousands of rows. One problem is that a border in Excel could be stored in the cell you are checking or the opposing border in the adjacent cell. That's ok, I can consolidate that data on import to reduce the number of checks needed. One thing I thought about doing is to create a separate graph that outlines the cells using the borders as my edges and using a graph algorithm to find regions that way, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to implement the algorithm. I've used Dijkstra in the past and thought I could do similar with this. So I can span out using no endpoint to search the entire graph, and if I encounter a closed node I know that I just found an enclosed region, but how can I know if the route I've found is the optimal one? I guess I could flag that to run a separate check for the found closed node to the previous node ignoring that one edge. This could work, but wouldn't be much better performance wise on dense graphs. Can anyone else suggest a better method? Thanks for taking the time to read this.

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