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• Unclaimed user group prizes, Live meeting on Monday, Next weeks UG, SQLRelay and more prizes

  - by Testas

    Hi Everyone Firstly I want to let you know that I finally found the LINQ book prize winners and the list of people at the bottom of this email are owed a LINQ book. This will be given out at next week’s UG meeting Live meeting with Carolyn Chau, Program Manager at Microsoft on Monday! It is very rare that we get the opportunity to have a Live meeting with a Program Manager in Redmond. Carolyn Chau will be presenting PowerView next Monday at 8pm. Live meeting details can be found on http://sqlserverfaq.com/events/388/Live-Meeting-on-SQL-Server-2012-PowerView-with-Carolyn-Chau-Principal-Program-Manager-in-the-Reporting-Services-in-association-with-SQLPASS-SQLServerFAQ-and-SQLBits.aspx Next week’s UG!! We welcome Mark Broadbent to Manchester next week where he will be presenting his session on SQL Server 2012 on Windows Core. We also hand out the unclaimed prizes. Register at http://sqlserverfaq.com/events/369/Thursday-night-meeting-at-BSS-with-Chris-TestaONeill-and-Mark-Broadbent.aspx Chris Webb is in Manchester!!! Chris Webb will be speaking at the Manchester SQL Server UG on 4th July. He will also be running his Real World Cube Design and Performance Tuning with Analysis Services between the 3rd – 5th July. If you want to attend then you can sign up at the link below http://www.technitrain.com/coursedetail.php?c=13&trackingcode=FAQ SQLRelay and a Special Prize and Jamie Thomson comes to Manchester!!!! SQLRelay takes place in Manchester on the 22nd. We have a special guest, after years of asking Jamie Thomson is coming to Manchester. The SSIS Junkie will be gracing us with his presence with a talk on SSIS 2012. Also we have a prize. Know a friend or colleague who would benefit from SQLRelay? Get them to register at www.sqlserverfaq.com and then register for the event http://sqlserverfaq.com/events/373/ALL-DAY-TUESDAY-EVENT-12-hours-of-SQL-Server-2012-at-the-SQLRelay-meeting-at-the-COOP-Manchester.aspx Then send an email to [email protected] with the subject of SQLFriend with the name of your friend. If you are both at the SQLRelay event on the day and your names are pulled out of the hat you will win a PASS 2011 DVD and your friend will win the “Best of PASS DVD 2011” worth  $1000 courtesy of SQLPASS. The draw will take place between 4.30pm – 5pm on the day. SQLBits feedback!!!!! Attended SQLBits? We really need to know your opinion. Please fill out the survey for the days you attended If you attended any of the days at SQLBits please can you all fill out the following survey http://www.sqlbits.com/SQLBitsX If you attended the Thursday Training day then please fill out the following survey: http://www.sqlbits.com/SQLBitsXThursday If you attended the Friday Deep Dives day then please fill out the following survey: http://www.sqlbits.com/SQLBitsXFriday If you attended the Saturday Community day then please fill out the following survey: http://www.sqlbits.com/SQLBitsXSaturday Thanks   Chris and Martin   LINQ BOOK winners Andrew Birds Chris Kennedy Dave Carpenter David Forrester Ian Ringrose James Cullen James Simpson Kevan Riley Kirsty Hunter Martin Bell Martin Croft Michael Docherty Naga Anand Ram Mangipudi Neal Atkinson Nick Colebourn Pavel Nefyodov Ralph Baines Rick Hibbert saad saleh Simon Enion Stan Venn Steve Powell Stuart Quinn

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• The busy developers guide to the Kinect SDK Beta

  - by mbcrump

  The Kinect is awesome. From day one, I’ve said this thing has got potential. After playing with several open-source Kinect projects, I am please to announce that Microsoft has released the official SDK beta on 6/16/2011. I’ve created this quick start guide to get you up to speed in no time flat. Let’s begin: What is it? The Kinect for Windows SDK beta is a starter kit for applications developers that includes APIs, sample code, and drivers. This SDK enables the academic research and enthusiast communities to create rich experiences by using Microsoft Xbox 360 Kinect sensor technology on computers running Windows 7. (defined by Microsoft) Links worth checking out: Download Kinect for Windows SDK beta – You can either download a 32 or 64 bit SDK depending on your OS. Readme for Kinect for Windows SDK Beta from Microsoft Research  Programming Guide: Getting Started with the Kinect for Windows SDK Beta Code Walkthroughs of the samples that ship with the Kinect for Windows SDK beta (Found in \Samples Folder) Coding4Fun Kinect Toolkit – Lots of extension methods and controls for WPF and WinForms. Kinect Mouse Cursor – Use your hands to control things like a mouse created by Brian Peek. Kinect Paint – Basically MS Paint but use your hands! Kinect for Windows SDK Quickstarts Installing and Using the Kinect Sensor Getting it installed: After downloading the Kinect SDK Beta, double click the installer to get the ball rolling. Hit the next button a few times and it should complete installing. Once you have everything installed then simply plug in your Kinect device into the USB Port on your computer and hopefully you will get the following screen: Once installed, you are going to want to check out the following folders: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Research KinectSDK – This contains the actual Kinect Sample Executables along with the documentation as a CHM file. Also check out the C:\Users\Public\Documents\Microsoft Research KinectSDK Samples directory: The main thing to note here is that these folders contain the source code to the applications where you can compile/build them yourself. Audio NUI DEMO Time Let’s get started with some demos. Navigate to the C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Research KinectSDK folder and double click on ShapeGame.exe. Next up is SkeletalViewer.exe (image taken from http://www.i-programmer.info/news/91-hardware/2619-microsoft-launch-kinect-sdk-beta.html as I could not get a good image using SnagIt) At this point, you will have to download Kinect Mouse Cursor – This is really cool because you can use your hands to control the mouse cursor. I actually used this to resize itself. Last up is Kinect Paint – This is very cool, just make sure you read the instructions! MS Paint on steroids! A few tips for getting started building Kinect Applications. It appears WPF is the way to go with building Kinect Applications. You must also use a version of Visual Studio 2010.  Your going to need to reference Microsoft.Research.Kinect.dll when building a Kinect Application. Right click on References and then goto Browse and navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Research KinectSDK and select Microsoft.Research.Kinect.dll. You are going to want to make sure your project has the Platform target set to x86. The Coding4Fun Kinect Toolkit really makes things easier with extension methods and controls. Just note that this is for WinForms or WPF. Conclusion It looks like we have a lot of fun in store with the Kinect SDK. I’m very excited about the release and have already been thinking about all the applications that I can begin building. It seems that development will be easier now that we have an official SDK and the great work from Coding4Fun. Please subscribe to my blog or follow me on twitter for more information about Kinect, Silverlight and other great technology.  Subscribe to my feed

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• 2D Rendering with OpenGL ES 2.0 on Android (matrices not working)

  - by TranquilMarmot

  So I'm trying to render two moving quads, each at different locations. My shaders are as simple as possible (vertices are only transformed by the modelview-projection matrix, there's only one color). Whenever I try and render something, I only end up with slivers of color! I've only done work with 3D rendering in OpenGL before so I'm having issues with 2D stuff. Here's my basic rendering loop, simplified a bit (I'm using the Matrix manipulation methods provided by android.opengl.Matrix and program is a custom class I created that just calls GLES20.glUniformMatrix4fv()): Matrix.orthoM(projection, 0, 0, windowWidth, 0, windowHeight, -1, 1); program.setUniformMatrix4f("Projection", projection); At this point, I render the quads (this is repeated for each quad): Matrix.setIdentityM(modelview, 0); Matrix.translateM(modelview, 0, quadX, quadY, 0); program.setUniformMatrix4f("ModelView", modelview); quad.render(); // calls glDrawArrays and all I see is a sliver of the color each quad is! I'm at my wits end here, I've tried everything I can think of and I'm at the point where I'm screaming at my computer and tossing phones across the room. Anybody got any pointers? Am I using ortho wrong? I'm 100% sure I'm rendering everything at a Z value of 0. I tried using frustumM instead of orthoM, which made it so that I could see the quads but they would get totally skewed whenever they got moved, which makes sense if I correctly understand the way frustum works (it's more for 3D rendering, anyway). If it makes any difference, I defined my viewport with GLES20.glViewport(0, 0, windowWidth, windowHeight); Where windowWidth and windowHeight are the same values that are pased to orthoM It might be worth noting that the android.opengl.Matrix methods take in an offset as the second parameter so that multiple matrices can be shoved into one array, so that'w what the first 0 is for For reference, here's my vertex shader code: uniform mat4 ModelView; uniform mat4 Projection; attribute vec4 vPosition; void main() { mat4 mvp = Projection * ModelView; gl_Position = vPosition * mvp; } I tried swapping Projection * ModelView with ModelView * Projection but now I just get some really funky looking shapes... EDIT Okay, I finally figured it out! (Note: Since I'm new here (longtime lurker!) I can't answer my own question for a few hours, so as soon as I can I'll move this into an actual answer to the question) I changed Matrix.orthoM(projection, 0, 0, windowWidth, 0, windowHeight, -1, 1); to float ratio = windowWwidth / windowHeight; Matrix.orthoM(projection, 0, 0, ratio, 0, 1, -1, 1); I then had to scale my projection matrix to make it a lot smaller with Matrix.scaleM(projection, 0, 0.05f, 0.05f, 1.0f);. I then added an offset to the modelview translations to simulate a camera so that I could center on my action (so Matrix.translateM(modelview, 0, quadX, quadY, 0); was changed to Matrix.translateM(modelview, 0, quadX + camX, quadY + camY, 0);) Thanks for the help, all!

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• Meet our Interns: Adam and Hanadi

  - by Maria Sandu

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 This week, we’d like to introduce you to two of our ECEMEA Interns, Adam and Hanadi. They’re based in different countries and are part of different teams; however they both have the same enthusiasm in being an Intern at Oracle. “Hi! I’m Adam (Bachelor of Accounting Science & CIMA Diploma in Management Accounting), a member of the Oracle Applications Pre-sales team in Johannesburg, South Africa. Joining Oracle has been a truly inspiring experience thus far. My first week at Oracle has been one of insight and learning. I have had the opportunity to meet and interact with industry leading software solution professionals. Gaining insight into a mammoth multinational company has changed my perception on how things work and has truly opened my eyes to the world of business. Having the privilege of joining the Oracle Graduate Program has afforded me the chance to take advantage of countless training opportunities as well as the chance to learn about Information Technology in a practical manner which is vital to most businesses in today’s modern environment.” “Hi! I’m Hanadi, an Oracle 2013 Sales Intern from Saudi Arabia. I received my BSc in Information Technology from King Saud University and immediately after graduating I applied for the internship at Oracle. I thought it was an incredible opportunity and a great way to shift from college life to career life through learning and practicing in an environment with such high standards. At the beginning, I was a bit nervous in joining the serious business world, but once I joined, I found the program very organized and everyone was extremely helpful, which made it easier for us, as interns, to learn faster. If you are a self-motivated, committed person, who has initiative, accepts challenges, has good soft skills and some technical experience, I would definitely advice you to take a chance and apply for the program once you graduate. Best of luck!” Get the latest updates from the ECEMEA Sales and Presales Internship Programme 2013 by following #Oracleinterns on Twitter or visiting CampusatOracle Facebook Page! /* 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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Remove Ubuntu or XP from the Windows 7 Boot Menu

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  If you’ve ever used a dual-boot system and then removed one of the operating systems, it can still show up in Windows 7’s boot menu. We’ll show you how to get rid of old entries and speed up the boot process. To edit the boot menu, we will use a program called bcdedit that’s included with Windows 7. There are some third-party graphical applications that will edit the menu, but we prefer to use built-in applications when we can. First, we need to open a command prompt with Administrator privileges. Open the start menu and type cmd into the search box. Right click on the cmd program that shows up, and select Run as administrator. Alternatively, if you’ve disabled the search box, you can find the command prompt in All Programs > Accessories. In the command prompt, type in bcdedit and press enter. A list of the boot menu entries will appear. Find the entry that you would like to delete – in our case, this is the last one, with the description of “Ubuntu”. What we need is the long sequence of characters marked as the identifier. Rather than type it out, we will copy it to be pasted later. Right-click somewhere in the command prompt window and select Mark. By clicking the left mouse button and dragging over the appropriate text, select the identifier for the entry you want to delete, including the left and right curly braces on either end. Press the Enter button. This will copy the text to the clipboard. In the command prompt, type in: bcdedit /delete and then right-click somewhere in the command prompt window and select Paste. Press Enter to input the now completed command. The boot menu entry will now be deleted. Type in bcdedit again to confirm that the offending entry is now gone from the list. If you reboot your machine now, you will notice that the boot menu does not even come up, because there is only one entry in the list (unless you had more than two entries to begin with). You’ve shaved a few seconds off of the boot process! Not to mention the added effort of pressing the enter button. There’s a lot more that you can do with bcdedit, like change the description of boot menu entries, create new entries, and much more. For a list of what you can do with bcdedit, type the following into the Command Window. bcdedit /help While there are third-party GUI solutions for accomplishing the same thing, using this method will save you time by not having to go through the extra steps of installing an extra program. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Reinstall Ubuntu Grub Bootloader After Windows Wipes it OutClean Up Ubuntu Grub Boot Menu After UpgradesHow To Switch to Console Mode for Ubuntu VMware GuestSet Windows as Default OS when Dual Booting UbuntuChange the GRUB Menu Timeout on Ubuntu TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010 Daily Motivator (Firefox) FetchMp3 Can Download Videos & Convert Them to Mp3

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• JRE not working on firefox

  - by user1488595

  I am attempting to get JRE 7 run in firefox in ubuntu 12.04, 32 bit. I've tried to follow this article: www.liberiangeek.net/2012/04/install-oracle-java-runtime-jre-7-in-ubuntu-12-04-precise-pangolin/ . I've also tried this repository: www.webupd8.org/2012/06/how-to-install-oracle-java-7-in-debian.html As well as installing JDK, which contains JRE, by following this article: www.liberiangeek.net/2012/04/install-oracle-java-jdk-7-in-ubuntu-12-04-precise-pangolin/ With all above method of installation, I get the following error in firefox console when I run applet with firefox: java.io.IOException: Cannot run program "/usr/lib/jvm/jre1.7.0/bin/java": error=13, Permission denied at java.lang.ProcessBuilder.start(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.jvm.JVMLauncher.start(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.main.server.JVMInstance.startImpl(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.main.server.JVMInstance.start(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.main.server.JVMManager.getOrCreateBestJVMInstance(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.main.server.JVMManager.startAppletImpl(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.main.server.JVMManager.startApplet(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.main.server.JVMManager.startApplet(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.main.server.MozillaPlugin.maybeStartApplet(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.main.server.MozillaPlugin.setWindow(Unknown Source) Caused by: java.io.IOException: error=13, Permission denied at java.lang.UNIXProcess.forkAndExec(Native Method) at java.lang.UNIXProcess.(Unknown Source) at java.lang.ProcessImpl.start(Unknown Source) ... 10 more java.io.IOException at sun.plugin2.main.server.JVMInstance.startImpl(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.main.server.JVMInstance.start(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.main.server.JVMManager.getOrCreateBestJVMInstance(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.main.server.JVMManager.startAppletImpl(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.main.server.JVMManager.startApplet(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.main.server.JVMManager.startApplet(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.main.server.MozillaPlugin.maybeStartApplet(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.main.server.MozillaPlugin.setWindow(Unknown Source) Caused by: java.io.IOException: Cannot run program "/usr/lib/jvm/jre1.7.0/bin/java": error=13, Permission denied at java.lang.ProcessBuilder.start(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.jvm.JVMLauncher.start(Unknown Source) ... 8 more Caused by: java.io.IOException: error=13, Permission denied at java.lang.UNIXProcess.forkAndExec(Native Method) at java.lang.UNIXProcess.(Unknown Source) at java.lang.ProcessImpl.start(Unknown Source) ... 10 more Exception in thread "main" java.lang.RuntimeException: java.io.IOException at sun.plugin2.main.server.JVMManager.getOrCreateBestJVMInstance(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.main.server.JVMManager.startAppletImpl(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.main.server.JVMManager.startApplet(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.main.server.JVMManager.startApplet(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.main.server.MozillaPlugin.maybeStartApplet(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.main.server.MozillaPlugin.setWindow(Unknown Source) Caused by: java.io.IOException at sun.plugin2.main.server.JVMInstance.startImpl(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.main.server.JVMInstance.start(Unknown Source) ... 6 more Caused by: java.io.IOException: Cannot run program "/usr/lib/jvm/jre1.7.0/bin/java": error=13, Permission denied at java.lang.ProcessBuilder.start(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.jvm.JVMLauncher.start(Unknown Source) ... 8 more Caused by: java.io.IOException: error=13, Permission denied at java.lang.UNIXProcess.forkAndExec(Native Method) at java.lang.UNIXProcess.(Unknown Source) at java.lang.ProcessImpl.start(Unknown Source) ... 10 more I've tried to type: sudo chmod 777 /usr/lib/jvm/jre1.7.0/bin/java It did not work. I also tried to run Eclipse, which requires JRE to run. It did not work originally(it works now), returning the following error: java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: Could not load SWT library. Reasons: no swt-gtk-3740 in java.library.path no swt-gtk in java.library.path Can't load library: /home/username/.swt/lib/linux/x86/libswt-gtk-3740.so Can't load library: /home/usename/.swt/lib/linux/x86/libswt-gtk.so at org.eclipse.swt.internal.Library.loadLibrary(Library.java:285) By running "ln -s /usr/lib/jni/libswt-* ~/.swt/lib/linux/x86/" (Thanks, stackoverflow.com/questions/10970754/cant-open-eclipse-in-ubuntu-12-04-java-lang-unsatisfiedlinkerror-could-not-l), Eclipse works again. I have been googling this for days, without luck. Any response would be appreciated.

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• Use Your Favorite Wallpapers in Windows 7 Starter Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  If you have Windows 7 Starter Edition installed on your netbook, the default wallpaper can get old. If you are tired of looking at the default wallpaper, then join us today as we look at changing it with Oceanis Change Background Windows 7. Special Notes This information is quoted directly from the website and needs to be kept in mind when using Oceanis Change Background Windows 7: If the Oceanis Change Background Windows 7 program no longer works properly after installing some Windows Updates, then uninstall and reinstall the Oceanis Change Background Windows 7 program to have it run properly again. If you ever do an in-place upgrade to another higher level edition of Windows 7 in the future, then be sure to uninstall this Oceanis Change Background Windows 7 program first to avoid incompatibility issues with it in the new edition of Windows 7. It was designed to only work in Windows 7 Starter edition. Before There it is…the default wallpaper everyone with the Starter Edition gets stuck with. Some people may not mind it, but if you are one of the people who really wants something different then get ready to rejoice. After The install file for Oceanis is contained in a zip file so you will need to unzip it to get started. The install process is quick and simple but you will need to do a system restart afterwards. Once you have restarted your computer this is what your screen will look like…do not panic and think that this is all there is to it. This is just the Starter Screen and can be easily changed… Note: Oceanis will auto-start with Windows each time. Using either the Desktop Icon or the Start Menu Entry, open up the Oceanis Main Window. You will see the set of four default wallpapers shown here. At this point the best thing to do is browse for the appropriate folder where you have all of those wonderful new wallpapers just waiting to be used. Note: We found Stretch to be the best Picture Position setting on our system. For our example we had three ready and waiting. We decided to try out the Wallpaper Slideshow feature first. We chose a time frame and saved our changes. Here are our three wallpapers as they switched through. This can be much more interesting than the default wallpaper. There was only one quirk that we encountered while using the Slideshow Setting. On occasion if we minimized a non-maximized window there would be a leftover partial image in place of the window. Our suggestion? Go with one wallpaper at a time and the settings shown below. These are the settings that we had terrific luck with…Only one picture selected, Picture Position = Stretch, & Change Picture Every = Every Day. Using these settings, the Starter Edition acted just like any of the other editions with regard to wallpaper management. Conclusion If you have grown tired of looking at the default wallpaper in Windows 7 Starter Edition then you will certainly appreciate what Oceanis Change Background Windows 7 can do to fix that problem. For more ways to customize your Windows 7 Started Edition, be sure to to check out how to personalize Windows 7 Starter. Links Download Oceanis Change Background Windows 7 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Windows 7 Welcome Screen Taking Forever? Here’s the Fix (Maybe)Awesome Desktop Wallpapers: The Windows 7 EditionHow To Customize Wallpaper in Windows 7 Starter EditionDesktop Fun: Starship Theme WallpapersDesktop Fun: Underwater Theme Wallpapers TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Vista style sidebar for Windows 7 Create Nice Charts With These Web Based Tools Track Daily Goals With 42Goals Video Toolbox is a Superb Online Video Editor Fun with 47 charts and graphs Tomorrow is Mother’s Day

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• what differs a computer scientist/software engineer to regular people who learn programming language and APIs?

  - by Amumu

  In University, we learn and reinvent the wheel a lot to truly learn the programming concepts. For example, we may learn assembly language to understand, what happens inside the box, and how the system operates, when we execute our code. This helps understanding higher level concepts deeper. For example, memory management like in C is just an abstraction of manually managed memory contents and addresses. The problem is, when we're going to work, usually productivity is required more. I could program my own containers, or string class, or date/time (using POSIX with C system call) to do the job, but then, it would take much longer time to use existing STL or Boost library, which abstract all of those thing and very easy to use. This leads to an issue, that a regular person doesn't need to get through all the low level/under the hood stuffs, who learns only one programming language and using language-related APIs. These people may eventually compete with the mainstream graduates from computer science or software engineer and call themselves programmers. At first, I don't think it's valid to call them programmers. I used to think, a real programmer needs to understand the computer deeply (but not at the electronic level). But then I changed my mind. After all, they get the job done and satisfy all the test criteria (logic, performance, security...), and in business environment, who cares if you're an expert and understand how computer works or not. You may get behind the "amateurs" if you spend to much time learning about how things work inside. It is totally valid for those people to call themselves programmers. This makes me confuse. So, after all, programming should be considered an universal skill? Does programming language and concepts matter or the problems we solve matter? For example, many C/C++ vs Java and other high level language, one of the main reason is because C/C++ features performance, as well as accessing low level facility. One of the main reason (in my opinion), is coding in C/C++ seems complex, so people feel good about it (not trolling anyone, just my observation, and my experience as well. Try to google "C hacker syndrome"). While Java on the other hand, made for simplifying programming tasks to help developers concentrate on solving their problems. Based on Java rationale, if the programing language keeps evolve, one day everyone can map their logic directly with natural language. Everyone can program. On that day, maybe real programmers are mathematicians, who could perform most complex logic (including business logic and academic logic) without worrying about installing/configuring compiler, IDEs? What's our job as a computer scientist/software engineer? To solve computer specific problems or to solve problems in general? For example, take a look at this exame: http://cm.baylor.edu/ICPCWiki/attach/Problem%20Resources/2010WorldFinalProblemSet.pdf . The example requires only basic knowledge about the programming language, but focus more on problem solving with the language. In sum, what differs a computer scientist/software engineer to regular people who learn programming language and APIs? A mathematician can be considered a programmer, if he is good enough to use programming language to implement his formula. Can we programmer do this? Probably not for most of us, since we specialize about computer, not math. An electronic engineer, who learns how to use C to program for his devices, can be considered a programmer. If the programming languages keep being simplified, may one day the software engineers, who implements business logic and create softwares, be obsolete? (Not for computer scientist though, since many of the CS topics are scientific, and science won't change, but technology will).

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• What 5 things should SQL Server get rid of?

  - by BuckWoody

  I’ve been “tagged” by my friend Paul Randal. It’s a high-tech way of making someone else do what you want, but since it’s Paul, well, I guess I’m OK with that. He’s asked in his recent blog entry “What five things would you get rid of in SQL Server if you were in charge?” This is, of course, a delicate issue. After all, I work at Microsoft, so anything I say here might be taken as a criticism that would require action – but of course it really doesn’t. Interestingly, you may have more to do with what goes in to SQL Server than I did even as a Program Manager where I “owned” a feature. Unlike many places I’ve worked, Microsoft really does drive its products by what its users want – not every time, and not every user request, mind you, but overall I think we hit the mark pretty well. So, with all of that said, and of course the obligatory statement of “these are my own opinions, and have nothing to do with any official Microsoft position in any way, and do not reflect the opinions of other Microsoft employees or management”, here goes. 1. Get rid of SQL Server Management Studio Does that surprise you? After all, when I was a Program Manager, I actually owned the general architecture for SSMS. But those on my team probably would have been able to guess this one for you. I think that SSMS is a fine development tool. But I think that it does less of a good job for managing a system. It’s based on Visual Studio, probably one of the best development IDE’s around. And when I develop code, I really like it. But for a monitoring/management tool, I prefer a snap-in to the Microsoft Management Console (MMC). I know, the old one (prior to 3.0) was kludgy, difficult to use and program in. But that’s changed. Of course, when I bring this up, you’ll probably immediately say “But I don’t have that in XP.” And that’s one of the reasons we didn’t go there. (But I still don’t like SSMS for management.) 2. ShrinkDB I think this discussion has been done to death, so I’ll leave it at that. 3. SQL Server Agent Does that one surprise you as well? In my mind, since we ALWAYS ride on Windows, just use the task scheduler there, along with PowerShell. You could log the results in Windows logs, files, back into SQL Server, whatever. It’s just a complexity we don’t need in SQL Server. 4. SQL Server Error Logs We have a full logging setup in Windows. They’re well done, easy to understand and ubiquitous. We should just use that. 5. Several SKU’s I won’t say which, but we have a few SKU’s of SQL Server that need to go. And we need to figure out how to help you understand clearly where you need to go to Enterprise or Data Center.  Most folks are trying to push Standard edition to do things it isn’t designed to do, and then they think SQL Server won’t scale. I think we can do a better job of showing you where Standard Edition will hit the wall, and I think with fewer choices it would be pretty simple for you to pick the right one. Well, once again I’ve probably puzzled some folks and angered others. I think my work here is done. :) Back to you, Paul. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• methods DSA_do_verify and SHA1 (OpenSSL library for Windows)

  - by Rei

  i am working on a program to authenticate an ENC signature file by using OpenSSL for windows, and specifically methods DSA_do_verify(...) and SHA1(...) hash algorithm, but is having problems as the result from DSA_do_verify is always 0 (invalid). I am using the signature file of test set 4B from the IHO S-63 Data Protection Scheme, and also the SA public key (downloadable from IHO) for verification. Below is my program, can anyone help to see where i have gone wrong as i have tried many ways but failed to get the verification to be valid, thanks.. The signature file from test set 4B // Signature part R: 3F14 52CD AEC5 05B6 241A 02C7 614A D149 E7D6 C408. // Signature part S: 44BB A3DB 8C46 8D11 B6DB 23BE 1A79 55E6 B083 7429. // Signature part R: 93F5 EF86 1FF6 BA6F 1C2B B9BB 7F36 0C80 2F9B 2414. // Signature part S: 4877 8130 12B4 50D8 3688 B52C 7A84 8E26 D442 8B6E. // BIG p C16C BAD3 4D47 5EC5 3966 95D6 94BC 8BC4 7E59 8E23 B5A9 D7C5 CEC8 2D65 B682 7D44 E953 7848 4730 C0BF F1F4 CB56 F47C 6E51 054B E892 00F3 0D43 DC4F EF96 24D4 665B. // BIG q B7B8 10B5 8C09 34F6 4287 8F36 0B96 D7CC 26B5 3E4D. // BIG g 4C53 C726 BDBF BBA6 549D 7E73 1939 C6C9 3A86 9A27 C5DB 17BA 3CAC 589D 7B3E 003F A735 F290 CFD0 7A3E F10F 3515 5F1A 2EF7 0335 AF7B 6A52 11A1 1035 18FB A44E 9718. // BIG y 15F8 A502 11C2 34BB DF19 B3CD 25D1 4413 F03D CF38 6FFC 7357 BCEE 59E4 EBFD B641 6726 5E5F 0682 47D4 B50B 3B86 7A85 FB4D 6E01 8329 A993 C36C FD9A BFB6 ED6D 29E0. dataServer_pkeyfile.txt (extracted from above) // BIG p C16C BAD3 4D47 5EC5 3966 95D6 94BC 8BC4 7E59 8E23 B5A9 D7C5 CEC8 2D65 B682 7D44 E953 7848 4730 C0BF F1F4 CB56 F47C 6E51 054B E892 00F3 0D43 DC4F EF96 24D4 665B. // BIG q B7B8 10B5 8C09 34F6 4287 8F36 0B96 D7CC 26B5 3E4D. // BIG g 4C53 C726 BDBF BBA6 549D 7E73 1939 C6C9 3A86 9A27 C5DB 17BA 3CAC 589D 7B3E 003F A735 F290 CFD0 7A3E F10F 3515 5F1A 2EF7 0335 AF7B 6A52 11A1 1035 18FB A44E 9718. // BIG y 15F8 A502 11C2 34BB DF19 B3CD 25D1 4413 F03D CF38 6FFC 7357 BCEE 59E4 EBFD B641 6726 5E5F 0682 47D4 B50B 3B86 7A85 FB4D 6E01 8329 A993 C36C FD9A BFB6 ED6D 29E0. Program abstract: QbyteArray pk_data; QFile pk_file("./dataServer_pkeyfile.txt"); if (pk_file.open(QIODevice::Text | QIODevice::ReadOnly)) { pk_data.append(pk_file.readAll()); } pk_file.close(); unsigned char ptr_sha_hashed[20]; unsigned char *ptr_pk_data = (unsigned char *)pk_data.data(); // openssl SHA1 hashing algorithm SHA1(ptr_pk_data, pk_data.length(), ptr_sha_hashed); DSA_SIG *dsasig = DSA_SIG_new(); char ptr_r[] = "93F5EF861FF6BA6F1C2BB9BB7F360C802F9B2414"; //from tset 4B char ptr_s[] = "4877813012B450D83688B52C7A848E26D4428B6E"; //from tset 4B if (BN_hex2bn(&dsasig->r, ptr_r) == 0) return 0; if (BN_hex2bn(&dsasig->s, ptr_s) == 0) return 0; DSA *dsakeys = DSA_new(); //the following values are from the SA public key char ptr_p[] = "FCA682CE8E12CABA26EFCCF7110E526DB078B05EDECBCD1EB4A208F3AE1617AE01F35B91A47E6DF63413C5E12ED0899BCD132ACD50D99151BDC43EE737592E17"; char ptr_q[] = "962EDDCC369CBA8EBB260EE6B6A126D9346E38C5"; char ptr_g[] = "678471B27A9CF44EE91A49C5147DB1A9AAF244F05A434D6486931D2D14271B9E35030B71FD73DA179069B32E2935630E1C2062354D0DA20A6C416E50BE794CA4"; char ptr_y[] = "963F14E32BA5372928F24F15B0730C49D31B28E5C7641002564DB95995B15CF8800ED54E354867B82BB9597B158269E079F0C4F4926B17761CC89EB77C9B7EF8"; if (BN_hex2bn(&dsakeys->p, ptr_p) == 0) return 0; if (BN_hex2bn(&dsakeys->q, ptr_q) == 0) return 0; if (BN_hex2bn(&dsakeys->g, ptr_g) == 0) return 0; if (BN_hex2bn(&dsakeys->pub_key, ptr_y) == 0) return 0; int result; //valid = 1, invalid = 0, error = -1 result = DSA_do_verify(ptr_sha_hashed, 20, dsasig, dsakeys); //result is 0 (invalid)

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• Learn Many Languages

  - by Jeff Foster

  My previous blog, Deliberate Practice, discussed the need for developers to “sharpen their pencil” continually, by setting aside time to learn how to tackle problems in different ways. However, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, a contested and somewhat-controversial concept from language theory, seems to hold reasonably true when applied to programming languages. It states that: “The structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers conceptualize their world.” If you’re constrained by a single programming language, the one that dominates your day job, then you only have the tools of that language at your disposal to think about and solve a problem. For example, if you’ve only ever worked with Java, you would never think of passing a function to a method. A good developer needs to learn many languages. You may never deploy them in production, you may never ship code with them, but by learning a new language, you’ll have new ideas that will transfer to your current “day-job” language. With the abundant choices in programming languages, how does one choose which to learn? Alan Perlis sums it up best. “A language that doesn‘t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing“ With that in mind, here’s a selection of languages that I think are worth learning and that have certainly changed the way I think about tackling programming problems. Clojure Clojure is a Lisp-based language running on the Java Virtual Machine. The unique property of Lisp is homoiconicity, which means that a Lisp program is a Lisp data structure, and vice-versa. Since we can treat Lisp programs as Lisp data structures, we can write our code generation in the same style as our code. This gives Lisp a uniquely powerful macro system, and makes it ideal for implementing domain specific languages. Clojure also makes software transactional memory a first-class citizen, giving us a new approach to concurrency and dealing with the problems of shared state. Haskell Haskell is a strongly typed, functional programming language. Haskell’s type system is far richer than C# or Java, and allows us to push more of our application logic to compile-time safety. If it compiles, it usually works! Haskell is also a lazy language – we can work with infinite data structures. For example, in a board game we can generate the complete game tree, even if there are billions of possibilities, because the values are computed only as they are needed. Erlang Erlang is a functional language with a strong emphasis on reliability. Erlang’s approach to concurrency uses message passing instead of shared variables, with strong support from both the language itself and the virtual machine. Processes are extremely lightweight, and garbage collection doesn’t require all processes to be paused at the same time, making it feasible for a single program to use millions of processes at once, all without the mental overhead of managing shared state. The Benefits of Multilingualism By studying new languages, even if you won’t ever get the chance to use them in production, you will find yourself open to new ideas and ways of coding in your main language. For example, studying Haskell has taught me that you can do so much more with types and has changed my programming style in C#. A type represents some state a program should have, and a type should not be able to represent an invalid state. I often find myself refactoring methods like this… void SomeMethod(bool doThis, bool doThat) { if (!(doThis ^ doThat)) throw new ArgumentException(“At least one arg should be true”); if (doThis) DoThis(); if (doThat) DoThat(); } …into a type-based solution, like this: enum Action { DoThis, DoThat, Both }; void SomeMethod(Action action) { if (action == Action.DoThis || action == Action.Both) DoThis(); if (action == Action.DoThat || action == Action.Both) DoThat(); } At this point, I’ve removed the runtime exception in favor of a compile-time check. This is a trivial example, but is just one of many ideas that I’ve taken from one language and implemented in another.

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• Snap App Windows to Pre-Defined Screen Sections with Acer GridVista

  - by Asian Angel

  The window snapping feature in Windows 7 and the ability to organize monitor(s) into specific gridded sections have both become popular lately. If you love the idea of having both combined in a single software then join us as we look at Acer GridVista. Note: Acer GridVista works with Windows XP, Vista, & 7. It will also work with dual monitors. Setup Acer GridVista comes in a zip file format and at first you might assume that it is portable in nature but it is not. Once you unzip the enclosed folder you will need to double click on “Setup.exe” to install the program. Acer GridVista in Action Once you have installed the program and started it up all that you will notice at first is the new “System Tray Icon”. Here you can see the “Context Menu”… The only menu command that you will likely use most of the time is the “Grid Configuration Command”. Notice that for our single monitor setup that it lists “Display 1”. The “Single Setting” is enabled by default and you can easily choose the layout that best suits your needs. The enabled layout style will always be highlighted in yellow for easy reference. For our example we chose the “Triple (primary at right)” layout style. Each section will be specifically numbered as shown here. Do not worry…the grid and numbers only appear for a moment and then become invisible again until you move an app window into that section/area of your screen. On every regular app window that you open you will notice three new buttons in the upper right corner. Here is what each of these new buttons do: Acer GridVista Extensions (Transparent, Send To Window Grid, About Acer GridVista): Viewable in a drop-down menu Lock To Grid (Enable/Disable): Enabled by default –> Note: Set to disable on a particular window to keep it free of the “grid locking function” Always On Top (Enable/Disable): Disabled by default A good look at the “Extensions Drop-Down Menu” where you can set an app window to be transparent or send it to a specific screen section on your monitor(s). If you open an app it will not automatically lock into a specific section. To lock the window into a specific section drag-and-drop the app window into the desired section. Notice the red outline and highlighted number on “Section 2” below. The red outline and highlighted number serves as an indicator that if you release the app window at that moment it will lock into the outlined/highlighted section. Now that Notepad is locked into “Section 2” you can see that it is maximized within that section. Continue to drag-and-drop your app windows into the appropriate sections as desired…apps can still be reduced to the “Taskbar” the same as before. Options These are the options available for Acer GridVista… Conclusion If you have been wanting the ability to “snap” windows and organize them into specific screen areas then Acer GridVista is definitely a program that you should try out. Links Download Acer GridVista at Softpedia View detailed information at the Acer GridVista Homepage Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Multitask Like a Pro with AquaSnapHelp Troubleshoot the Blue Screen of Death by Preventing Automatic RebootAdd Windows 7’s AeroSnap Feature to Vista and XPResize Windows to Specific Dimensions Easily With SizerKeyboard Ninja: Assign a Hotkey to any Window TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Playing Games In Chrome Made Easier Stop In The Name Of Love (Firefox addon) Chitika iPad Labs Gives Live iPad Sale Stats Heaven & Hell Finder Icon Using TrueCrypt to Secure Your Data Quickly Schedule Meetings With NeedtoMeet

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• Questions to ask to ensure someone understands programming? (and iOS)

  - by Stephen J

  So, I've been tutoring my friend for 2 years. Most people learn programming on their own in 3-6 months, (sans algorithms). It's confusing 'cause he'll run anywhere I tell him to, understands how to read C and C++ honestly better than the average college student, and he'll modify and repeat anything I do... but for the love of god he doesn't move on to new things and he still has test anxiety. I've recently realized he's copied and toyed with existing, but not once gained an understanding of why. I was under the impression he was learning fast because he could write it, but when you say "Make a function that takes an NSString" and he says "How?" and I say "The same way you make ANY function that takes any parameter, NSString is just a type like int" and all I hear is "No, it's an NSString, it's a special thing." and we get into an arguing match 'cause I'm like "It's just a class like any other class, you've used them for months now" and blah... I've subconsciously avoided comprehension questions because of this. Anyway, if you have him copy a program and say "Just initialize it" "Where?" "I don't care, didLoad or initWithCoder or Awake from nib, anywhere it gets initialized" and "No, it has to be exactly where you had it!" "No it doesn't!" I'm sick of this, but he won't give up. So I'm done avoiding these yelling matches and becoming a sadist from now on. I would like some help in finding questions to ask him that force him to understand what he's doing. I'd like some help and any resources I can find. CQuestions looked like a good site, but now I need some iPhone stuff. For example: *What do properties do? How are they changed? How do you change the name of the getter? *Why are Booleans inefficent? What advantage does int have over a boolean and how does the bit-shift operator help? *What does Copy do to a string? *What's the difference between a view controller and a uiview? *Write a program from memory that displays blah on screen, and flashes each view one by one. From beginner up to intermediate, hobbyist with some algebra at most. I'm just looking for resources to work with. I left in backstory so you know to "twist" the questions so he doesn't know he's supposed to init a variable here or there, but has to figure it out, and learn why it goes "here" or that "anywhere is fine as long as it's". Sample programs, anything. I'm relatively open about this because, being a programmer, I seriously doubt he's the only one who has this issue. I'd like to know how others have overcome similar. What made things "click"? for you? Did you have a hard time finding answers on Google, and how did you learn a better way to find what you were looking for? (He's so exact, he'll search for how to write a checkers program with color X and Y inside a uiview, as his search string, instead of breaking it up into components, I need help with that too, and believe it is related). This type of problem has to remind one of us of someone they know. So, Exercises to force them to think? Ways we overcame this thing in the past? I greatly appreciate any help.

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• The long road to bug-free software

  - by Tony Davis

  The past decade has seen a burgeoning interest in functional programming languages such as Haskell or, in the Microsoft world, F#. Though still on the periphery of mainstream programming, functional programming concepts are gradually seeping into the imperative C# language (for example, Lambda expressions have their root in functional programming). One of the more interesting concepts from functional programming languages is the use of formal methods, the lofty ideal behind which is bug-free software. The idea is that we write a specification that describes exactly how our function (say) should behave. We then prove that our function conforms to it, and in doing so have proved beyond any doubt that it is free from bugs. All programmers already use one form of specification, specifically their programming language's type system. If a value has a specific type then, in a type-safe language, the compiler guarantees that value cannot be an instance of a different type. Many extensions to existing type systems, such as generics in Java and .NET, extend the range of programs that can be type-checked. Unfortunately, type systems can only prevent some bugs. To take a classic problem of retrieving an index value from an array, since the type system doesn't specify the length of the array, the compiler has no way of knowing that a request for the "value of index 4" from an array of only two elements is "unsafe". We restore safety via exception handling, but the ideal type system will prevent us from doing anything that is unsafe in the first place and this is where we start to borrow ideas from a language such as Haskell, with its concept of "dependent types". If the type of an array includes its length, we can ensure that any index accesses into the array are valid. The problem is that we now need to carry around the length of arrays and the values of indices throughout our code so that it can be type-checked. In general, writing the specification to prove a positive property, even for a problem very amenable to specification, such as a simple sorting algorithm, turns out to be very hard and the specification will be different for every program. Extend this to writing a specification for, say, Microsoft Word and we can see that the specification would end up being no simpler, and therefore no less buggy, than the implementation. Fortunately, it is easier to write a specification that proves that a program doesn't have certain, specific and undesirable properties, such as infinite loops or accesses to the wrong bit of memory. If we can write the specifications to prove that a program is immune to such problems, we could reuse them in many places. The problem is the lack of specification "provers" that can do this without a lot of manual intervention (i.e. hints from the programmer). All this might feel a very long way off, but computing power and our understanding of the theory of "provers" advances quickly, and Microsoft is doing some of it already. Via their Terminator research project they have started to prove that their device drivers will always terminate, and in so doing have suddenly eliminated a vast range of possible bugs. This is a huge step forward from saying, "we've tested it lots and it seems fine". What do you think? What might be good targets for specification and verification? SQL could be one: the cost of a bug in SQL Server is quite high given how many important systems rely on it, so there's a good incentive to eliminate bugs, even at high initial cost. [Many thanks to Mike Williamson for guidance and useful conversations during the writing of this piece] Cheers, Tony.

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• Should I expose IObservable<T> on my interfaces?

  - by Alex

  My colleague and I have dispute. We are writing a .NET application that processes massive amounts of data. It receives data elements, groups subsets of them into blocks according to some criterion and processes those blocks. Let's say we have data items of type Foo arriving some source (from the network, for example) one by one. We wish to gather subsets of related objects of type Foo, construct an object of type Bar from each such subset and process objects of type Bar. One of us suggested the following design. Its main theme is exposing IObservable objects directly from the interfaces of our components. // ********* Interfaces ********** interface IFooSource { // this is the event-stream of objects of type Foo IObservable<Foo> FooArrivals { get; } } interface IBarSource { // this is the event-stream of objects of type Bar IObservable<Bar> BarArrivals { get; } } / ********* Implementations ********* class FooSource : IFooSource { // Here we put logic that receives Foo objects from the network and publishes them to the FooArrivals event stream. } class FooSubsetsToBarConverter : IBarSource { IFooSource fooSource; IObservable<Bar> BarArrivals { get { // Do some fancy Rx operators on fooSource.FooArrivals, like Buffer, Window, Join and others and return IObservable<Bar> } } } // this class will subscribe to the bar source and do processing class BarsProcessor { BarsProcessor(IBarSource barSource); void Subscribe(); } // ******************* Main ************************ class Program { public static void Main(string[] args) { var fooSource = FooSourceFactory.Create(); var barsProcessor = BarsProcessorFactory.Create(fooSource) // this will create FooSubsetToBarConverter and BarsProcessor barsProcessor.Subscribe(); fooSource.Run(); // this enters a loop of listening for Foo objects from the network and notifying about their arrival. } } The other suggested another design that its main theme is using our own publisher/subscriber interfaces and using Rx inside the implementations only when needed. //********** interfaces ********* interface IPublisher<T> { void Subscribe(ISubscriber<T> subscriber); } interface ISubscriber<T> { Action<T> Callback { get; } } //********** implementations ********* class FooSource : IPublisher<Foo> { public void Subscribe(ISubscriber<Foo> subscriber) { /* ... */ } // here we put logic that receives Foo objects from some source (the network?) publishes them to the registered subscribers } class FooSubsetsToBarConverter : ISubscriber<Foo>, IPublisher<Bar> { void Callback(Foo foo) { // here we put logic that aggregates Foo objects and publishes Bars when we have received a subset of Foos that match our criteria // maybe we use Rx here internally. } public void Subscribe(ISubscriber<Bar> subscriber) { /* ... */ } } class BarsProcessor : ISubscriber<Bar> { void Callback(Bar bar) { // here we put code that processes Bar objects } } //********** program ********* class Program { public static void Main(string[] args) { var fooSource = fooSourceFactory.Create(); var barsProcessor = barsProcessorFactory.Create(fooSource) // this will create BarsProcessor and perform all the necessary subscriptions fooSource.Run(); // this enters a loop of listening for Foo objects from the network and notifying about their arrival. } } Which one do you think is better? Exposing IObservable and making our components create new event streams from Rx operators, or defining our own publisher/subscriber interfaces and using Rx internally if needed? Here are some things to consider about the designs: In the first design the consumer of our interfaces has the whole power of Rx at his/her fingertips and can perform any Rx operators. One of us claims this is an advantage and the other claims that this is a drawback. The second design allows us to use any publisher/subscriber architecture under the hood. The first design ties us to Rx. If we wish to use the power of Rx, it requires more work in the second design because we need to translate the custom publisher/subscriber implementation to Rx and back. It requires writing glue code for every class that wishes to do some event processing.

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• Introducing the Metro User Interface on Windows 2012

  - by andywe

  Although I am a big fan of using PowerShell to do many of my server operations, that aspect is well covered by those far more knowledgeable than I, and there is vast information around the web already on that. The new Metro interface, and getting around both Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 though is relatively new, even for those whop ran the previews. What is this? A blank Desktop!   Where did the start button go? Well, it is still there...sort of. It is hidden, and acts like an auto hidden component that appear only when the mouse is hovered over the lower left corner of the screen. Those familiar with Gnome or OSX can relate this to the "Hot Corners" functions. To get to the start button, hover your mouse in the very left corner of the task bar. Let it sit there a moment, and a small blue square with colored tiles in it called start will appear. Click it. I clicked it and now I have all the tiles..What is this?   Welcome to the Metro interface. This is a much more modern look, and although at first seems weird and cumbersome, I have actually found that it is a bit more extensible, allowing greater organization and customization than the older explorer desktop. If you look closely, you'll see each box represents either a program, or program group. First, a few basics about using the start view. First and foremost, a right mouse click will bring up a bar on the bottom, with an icon towards the right. Notice it is titled “All Apps”. An even easier way in many places is to hover your mouse in the exact opposite corner, in the upper right. A sidebar will open and expose what used to be a widget bar (remember Vista?), and there are options for Search, Start, and Settings.   Ok Great, but where is everything? It’s all there…Click the All Apps icon.   Look better? Notice the scroll bar at the bottom. Move it right..your desktop is sized to your content..so you can have a smaller, or larger amount of programs exposed. Each icon can be secondary clicked (right mouse click for most of us, and an options bar at the bottom, rather than the old small context menu, is opened with some very familiar options.   Notice the top of the Windows Explorer window has some new features. You still have your right mouse click functions, but since the shortcuts for these items already exist..just copy them. There are many ways, but here is a long way to show you more of the interface. 1. Right mouse click a program icon, and select the Open File Location option. 2. Trusty file manager opens…but if you look closely up at top edge of the window, you’ll see a nifty enhancement. An orange colored box that is titled Shortcut Tools and another lavender box Title Application tools. Each of these adds options at the top of the file manager window to make selection easy. Of course, you can still secondary click an item in the listing window too. 3. Click shortcut tools, right click your app shortcut and copy it. Then simply paste it into the desktop outside the File Explorer window Also note some of the newer features. The large icons up top below the menu that has many common operations. The options change as you select each menu item. Well, that’s it for this installment. I hope this helps you out.

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• Come up with a real-world problem in which only the best solution will do (a problem from Introduction to algorithms) [closed]

  - by Mike

  EDITED (I realized that the question certainly needs a context) The problem 1.1-5 in the book of Thomas Cormen et al Introduction to algorithms is: "Come up with a real-world problem in which only the best solution will do. Then come up with one in which a solution that is “approximately” the best is good enough." I'm interested in its first statement. And (from my understanding) it is asked to name a real-world problem where only the exact solution will work as opposed to a real-world problem where good-enough solution will be ok. So what is the difference between the exact and good enough solution. Consider some physics problem for example the simulation of the fulid flow in the permeable medium. To make this simulation happen some simplyfing assumptions have to be made when deriving a mathematical model. Otherwise the model becomes at least complex and unsolvable. Virtually any particle in the universe has its influence on the fluid flow. But not all particles are equal. Those that form the permeable medium are much more influental than the ones located light years away. Then when the mathematical model needs to be solved an exact solution can rarely be found unless the mathematical model is simple enough (wich probably means the model isn't close to reality). We take an approximate numerical method and after hours of coding and days of verification come up with the program or algorithm which is a solution. And if the model and an algorithm give results close to a real problem by some degree that is good enough soultion. Its worth noting the difference between exact solution algorithm and exact computation result. When considering real-world problems and real-world computation machines I believe all physical problems solutions where any calculations are taken can not be exact because universal physical constants are represented approximately in the computer. Any numbers are represented with the limited precision, at least limited by amount of memory available to computing machine. I can imagine plenty of problems where good-enough, good to some degree solution will work, like train scheduling, automated trading, satellite orbit calculation, health care expert systems. In that cases exact solutions can't be derived due to constraints on computation time, limitations in computer memory or due to the nature of problems. I googled this question and like what this guy suggests: there're kinds of mathematical problems that need exact solutions (little note here: because the question is taken from the book "Introduction to algorithms" the term "solution" means an algorithm or a program, which in this case gives exact answer on each input). But that's probably more of theoretical interest. So I would like to narrow down the question to: What are the real-world practical problems where only the best (exact) solution algorithm or program will do (but not the good-enough solution)? There are problems like breaking of cryptographic ciphers where only exact solution matters in practice and again in practice the process of deciphering without knowing a secret should take reasonable amount of time. Returning to the original question this is the problem where good-enough (fast-enough) solution will do there's no practical need in instant crack though it's desired. So the quality of "best" can be understood in any sense: exact, fastest, requiring least memory, having minimal possible network traffic etc. And still I want this question to be theoretical if possible. In a sense that there may be example of computer X that has limited resource R of amount Y where the best solution to problem P is the one that takes not more than available Y for inputs of size N*Y. But that's the problem of finding solution for P on computer X which is... well, good enough. My final thought that we live in a world where it is required from programming solutions to practical purposes to be good enough. In rare cases really very very good but still not the best ones. Isn't it? :) If it's not can you provide an example? Or can you name any such unsolved problem of practical interest?

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• glutPostRedisplay() does not update display

  - by A D

  I am currently drawing a rectangle to the screen and would like to move it by using the arrow keys. However, when I press an arrow key the vertex data changes but the display does refresh to reflect these changes, even though I am calling glutPostRedisplay(). Is there something else that I must do? My code: #include <GL/glew.h> #include <GL/freeglut.h> #include <GL/freeglut_ext.h> #include <iostream> #include "Shaders.h" using namespace std; const int NUM_VERTICES = 6; const GLfloat POS_Y = -0.1; const GLfloat NEG_Y = -0.01; struct Vertex { GLfloat x; GLfloat y; Vertex() : x(0), y(0) {} Vertex(GLfloat givenX, GLfloat givenY) : x(givenX), y(givenY) {} }; Vertex left_paddle[NUM_VERTICES]; void init() { glClearColor(1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f); left_paddle[0] = Vertex(-0.95f, 0.95f); left_paddle[1] = Vertex(-0.95f, 0.0f); left_paddle[2] = Vertex(-0.85f, 0.95f); left_paddle[3] = Vertex(-0.85f, 0.95f); left_paddle[4] = Vertex(-0.95f, 0.0f); left_paddle[5] = Vertex(-0.85f, 0.0f); GLuint vao; glGenVertexArrays( 1, &vao ); glBindVertexArray( vao ); GLuint buffer; glGenBuffers(1, &buffer); glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, buffer); glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, sizeof(left_paddle), NULL, GL_STATIC_DRAW); GLuint program = init_shaders( "vshader.glsl", "fshader.glsl" ); glUseProgram( program ); GLuint loc = glGetAttribLocation( program, "vPosition" ); glEnableVertexAttribArray( loc ); glVertexAttribPointer( loc, 2, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 0, 0); glBindVertexArray(vao); } void movePaddle(Vertex* array, GLfloat change) { for(int i = 0; i < NUM_VERTICES; i++) { array[i].y = array[i].y + change; } glutPostRedisplay(); } void special( int key, int x, int y ) { switch ( key ) { case GLUT_KEY_DOWN: movePaddle(left_paddle, NEG_Y); break; } } void display() { glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLES, 0, 6); glutSwapBuffers(); } int main(int argc, char **argv) { glutInit(&argc, argv); glutInitDisplayMode(GLUT_DOUBLE | GLUT_RGB); glutInitWindowSize(500,500); glutCreateWindow("Rectangle"); glewInit(); init(); glutDisplayFunc(display); glutSpecialFunc(special); glutMainLoop(); return 0; }

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• The long road to bug-free software

  - by Tony Davis

  The past decade has seen a burgeoning interest in functional programming languages such as Haskell or, in the Microsoft world, F#. Though still on the periphery of mainstream programming, functional programming concepts are gradually seeping into the imperative C# language (for example, Lambda expressions have their root in functional programming). One of the more interesting concepts from functional programming languages is the use of formal methods, the lofty ideal behind which is bug-free software. The idea is that we write a specification that describes exactly how our function (say) should behave. We then prove that our function conforms to it, and in doing so have proved beyond any doubt that it is free from bugs. All programmers already use one form of specification, specifically their programming language's type system. If a value has a specific type then, in a type-safe language, the compiler guarantees that value cannot be an instance of a different type. Many extensions to existing type systems, such as generics in Java and .NET, extend the range of programs that can be type-checked. Unfortunately, type systems can only prevent some bugs. To take a classic problem of retrieving an index value from an array, since the type system doesn't specify the length of the array, the compiler has no way of knowing that a request for the "value of index 4" from an array of only two elements is "unsafe". We restore safety via exception handling, but the ideal type system will prevent us from doing anything that is unsafe in the first place and this is where we start to borrow ideas from a language such as Haskell, with its concept of "dependent types". If the type of an array includes its length, we can ensure that any index accesses into the array are valid. The problem is that we now need to carry around the length of arrays and the values of indices throughout our code so that it can be type-checked. In general, writing the specification to prove a positive property, even for a problem very amenable to specification, such as a simple sorting algorithm, turns out to be very hard and the specification will be different for every program. Extend this to writing a specification for, say, Microsoft Word and we can see that the specification would end up being no simpler, and therefore no less buggy, than the implementation. Fortunately, it is easier to write a specification that proves that a program doesn't have certain, specific and undesirable properties, such as infinite loops or accesses to the wrong bit of memory. If we can write the specifications to prove that a program is immune to such problems, we could reuse them in many places. The problem is the lack of specification "provers" that can do this without a lot of manual intervention (i.e. hints from the programmer). All this might feel a very long way off, but computing power and our understanding of the theory of "provers" advances quickly, and Microsoft is doing some of it already. Via their Terminator research project they have started to prove that their device drivers will always terminate, and in so doing have suddenly eliminated a vast range of possible bugs. This is a huge step forward from saying, "we've tested it lots and it seems fine". What do you think? What might be good targets for specification and verification? SQL could be one: the cost of a bug in SQL Server is quite high given how many important systems rely on it, so there's a good incentive to eliminate bugs, even at high initial cost. [Many thanks to Mike Williamson for guidance and useful conversations during the writing of this piece] Cheers, Tony.

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• Best way to process a queue in C# (PDF treatment)

  - by Bartdude

  First of all let me expose what I would like to do : I already dispose of a long-time running webapp developed in ASP.NET (C#) 2.0. In this app, users can upload standard PDF files (text+pics). The app is running in production on a Windows Server 2003 and has a dedicated database server (SQL server 2008) also running Windows Server 2003. I myself am a quite experienced web developer, but never actually programmed anything non-web (or at least nothing serious). I plan on adding a functionality to the webapp for which I would need a jpg snapshot of each page of the PDF. Creating these "thumbnails" isn't the big deal as such, I already do it inside my webapp using ghostscript. I've only done it on 1 page documents for now though, and the new functionality will need to process bigger documents. In order for this process to be transparent aswell for the admins as the final users, I would like to implement some kind of queue to delay the processing of the thumbnails. There again, no problem to create the queue, it will consist of records in a table, with enough info to find the pdf document back. Then I will need to process this queue, and that's were my interrogations start. Obviously the best solution to process it isn't an ASP script or so, so I will have to get out of my known environment. No problem, but I have no idea which direction to go. Therefore, a few questions : What should I develop ? I presumably need something that is "standby" on the server, runs when needed, then returns to idle state until further notice.Should I be looking into Windows service ? Is there another more appropriate type of project ? Depending on the first answer, what will be the approach ? Should I have somehow SQL server "tell" the program/service/... to process the queue, or should I have that program/service/... periodically check the state of the queue and treat new items. In both case, which functionality can I use ? we're not talking about hundreds of PDF a day (max 50 maybe), I can totally afford to treat the queue 1 item at a time. Can you confirm I don't have to look much further on threads and so ? (I found a lot of answers talking about threads in queue treatment, but it looks quite overkill for my needs) Maybe linked to the previous question : what about concurrent call to the program, whatever it is ? Let's suppose it is currently running, and a new record comes in the queue, what should be the behaviour ? I don't need much detailed answers and would already be happy with answers like "You can do the processing with a service, and yes it's possible to have sqlserver on machine A trigger a service start on machine B" or "You have to develop xxx and then use the scheduler to run it every xxx minutes". I don't mind reading articles and so, but I can hardly afford to spend too much time learning stuff to finally realize I went the wrong way for this project, so basically I'm trying to narrow down the scope of matters I need to investigate. Thanks for reading me, I hope I'll find some helping hands on here :-)

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• Manually setting breakpoints in WinDBG

  - by chris

  I am trying to examine the assembly for an executable using WinDBG, but I am having a hard time getting to it. I want to set a breakpoint at the first instruction in my program, but when I try to do that manually (using the address of the module), WinDBG tells me that it is "unable to insert breakpoint" at that location due to an "Invalid access to memory location." I notice that when I create a breakpoint through the source code GUI, the address is not the same as the first part of my module (In my example: "Win32FileOpen", a simple program I wrote.) Is there a header of some sort that requires adding an offset to the address of my module? In another question, I saw the suggestion: "I would attempt to calculate the breakpoint address as: Module start + code start + code offset" but was unsure where to obtain those values. Can somebody please elaborate on this? The reason I don't just use the source GUI is that I want to be able to do this with a program that I may not have the source/symbols for. If there is an easier way to immediately start working with the executable I open, please let me know. (e.g. Opening an .exe Olly immediately shows me the assembly for that .exe, searching for referenced strings gives me results from that module, etc. WinDBG seems to start me off in ntdll.dll, which is not usually useful for me.) 0:000> lm start end module name 00000000`00130000 00000000`0014b000 Win32FileOpen C (private pdb symbols) C:\cfinley\code\Win32FileOpen\Debug\Win32FileOpen.pdb 00000000`73bd0000 00000000`73c2c000 wow64win (deferred) 00000000`73c30000 00000000`73c6f000 wow64 (deferred) 00000000`74fe0000 00000000`74fe8000 wow64cpu (deferred) 00000000`77750000 00000000`778f9000 ntdll (pdb symbols) c:\symbols\mssymbols\ntdll.pdb\15EB43E23B12409C84E3CC7635BAF5A32\ntdll.pdb 00000000`77930000 00000000`77ab0000 ntdll32 (deferred) 0:000> bu 00000000`00130000 0:000> bl 0 e x86 00000000`001413a0 0001 (0001) 0:**** Win32FileOpen!main <-- One that is generated via GUI 1 e x86 00000000`00130000 0001 (0001) 0:**** Win32FileOpen!__ImageBase <-- One I tried to set manually 0:000> g Unable to insert breakpoint 1 at 00000000`00130000, Win32 error 0n998 "Invalid access to memory location." bp1 at 00000000`00130000 failed WaitForEvent failed ntdll!LdrpDoDebuggerBreak+0x31: 00000000`777fcb61 eb00 jmp ntdll!LdrpDoDebuggerBreak+0x33 (00000000`777fcb63)

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• How to use QSerialDevice in Qt?

  - by Tobias

  Hello, I am trying to use QSerialDevice in Qt to get a connection to my serial port. I also tried QextSerialPort before (which works on Windows Vista but unfortunately not on Windows XP ..) but I need an API which supports XP, Vista and Win7... I build the library and configured it this way: CONFIG += dll CONFIG += debug I did use the current version from SVN (0.2.0 - 2010-04-05) and the 0.2.0 zip package. After building the library I did copy it to my Qt Libdir (C:\Qt\2009.05\qt\lib) and also to C:\Windows\system32. Now I try to link against the lib in my project file: LIBS += -lqserialdevice I import the needed header (abstractserial.h) and use my own AbstractSerial like this: // Initialize this->serialPort->setDeviceName("COM1"); if (!this->serialPort->open(QIODevice::ReadWrite | QIODevice::Unbuffered)) qWarning() << "Error" << this->serialPort->errorString(); // Configure SerialPort this->serialPort->setBaudRate(AbstractSerial::BaudRate4800); this->serialPort->setDataBits(AbstractSerial::DataBits8); this->serialPort->setFlowControl(AbstractSerial::FlowControlOff); this->serialPort->setParity(AbstractSerial::ParityNone); this->serialPort->setStopBits(AbstractSerial::StopBits1); The problem is, that if I run my application, it crashes immediately with exit code -1073741515 (application failed to initialize properly). This is the same error I got using QextSerialPort under Windows XP (it worked with Windows Vista). If I build the QSerialDevice lib with release config and also my program, it crashes immediately but with exit code -1073741819 Can someone help me with this program or with another solution of getting a serial port to work with Qt (maybe another API or something?) Otherwise I have to use Windows API functions which would mean that my program won't work with UNIX systems.. If you have a solution for the problem with QextSerialPort under WinXP SP3, they are also welcome ;) Best Regards, Tobias

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• JQuery getJSON - ajax parseerror

  - by JW

  I've tried to parse the following json response with both the JQuery getJSON and ajax: [{"iId":"1","heading":"Management Services","body":"<h1>Program Overview</h1><h1>January 29, 2009</h1>"}] I've also tried it escaping the "/" characters like this: [{"iId":"1","heading":"Management Services","body":"<h1>Program Overview <\/h1><h1>January 29, 2009<\/h1>"}] When I use the getJSON it dose not execute the callback. So, I tried it with JQuery ajax as follows: $.ajax({ url: jURL, contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8", dataType: "json", beforeSend: function(x) { if(x && x.overrideMimeType) { x.overrideMimeType("application/j-son;charset=UTF-8"); } }, success: function(data){ wId = data.iId; $("#txtHeading").val(data.heading); $("#txtBody").val(data.body); $("#add").slideUp("slow"); $("#edit").slideDown("slow"); },//success error: function (XMLHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown) { alert("XMLHttpRequest="+XMLHttpRequest.responseText+"\ntextStatus="+textStatus+"\nerrorThrown="+errorThrown); } }); The ajax hits the error ans alerts the following: XMLHttpRequest=[{"iId":"1","heading":"Management Services","body":"<h1>Program Overview </h1><h1>January 29, 2009</h1>"}] textStatus=parseerror errorThrown=undefined Then I tried a simple JQuery get call to return the JSON using the following code: $.get(jURL,function(data){ var json = eval("("+data+");"); wId = json.iId; $("#txtHeading").val(json.heading); $("#txtBody").val(json.body); $("#add").slideUp("slow"); $("#edit").slideDown("slow"); }) The .get returns the JSON, but the eval comes up with errors no matter how I've modified the JSON (content-type header, other variations of the format, etc.) What I've come up with is that there seem to be an issue returning the HTML in the JSON and getting it parsed. However, I have hope that I may have missed something that would allow me to get this data via JSON. Does anyone have any ideas?

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• using ILMerge with .NET 4 libraries

  - by Sarah Vessels

  I'm having trouble using ILMerge in my post-build after upgrading from .NET 3.5/Visual Studio 2008 to .NET 4/Visual Studio 2010. I have a Solution with several projects whose target framework is set to ".NET Framework 4". I use the following ILMerge command to merge the individual project DLLs into a single DLL: if not $(ConfigurationName) == Debug if exist "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\ILMerge\ILMerge.exe" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\ILMerge\ILMerge.exe" /lib:"C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319" /lib:"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\PublicAssemblies" /keyfile:"$(SolutionDir)$(SolutionName).snk" /targetplatform:v4 /out:"$(SolutionDir)bin\development\$(SolutionName).dll" "$(SolutionDir)Connection\$(OutDir)Connection.dll" ...other project DLLs... /xmldocs If I leave off specifying the location of the .NET 4 framework directory, I get an "Unresolved assembly reference not allowed: System" error from ILMerge. If I leave off specifying the location of the MSTest directory, I get an "Unresolved assembly reference not allowed: Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.UnitTestFramework" error. The ILMerge command above works and produces a DLL. When I reference that DLL in another .NET 4 C# project, however, and try to use code within it, I get the following warning: The primary reference "MyILMergedDLL" could not be resolved because it has an indirect dependency on the .NET Framework assembly "mscorlib, Version=4.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" which has a higher version "4.0.65535.65535" than the version "4.0.0.0" in the current target framework. If I then remove the /targetplatform:v4 flag and try to use MyILMergedDLL.dll, I get the following error: The type 'System.Xml.Serialization.IXmlSerializable' is defined in an assembly that is not referenced. You must add a reference to assembly 'System.Xml, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089'. It doesn't seem like I should have to do that. Whoever uses my MyILMergedDLL.dll API should not have to add references to whatever libraries it references. How can I get around this?

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• Building a VS2010 solution from TFS2008

  - by slugster

  I have a TFS 2008 Build Agent that has been used to build .Net 3.5 applications. I now have a .Net 4.0 app which i want to compile on the same build agent. I have ensured that MSBuild 4.0 is installed on there and all the required componentry is also installed, but i am getting the following MSB4062 error when building: [Any CPU/Release] C:\Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets(244,5): error MSB4062: The "Microsoft.WebApplication.Build.Tasks.GetSilverlightItemsFromProperty" task could not be loaded from the assembly C:\Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.Build.Tasks.dll. Could not load file or assembly 'file:///C:\Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.Build.Tasks.dll' or one of its dependencies. This assembly is built by a runtime newer than the currently loaded runtime and cannot be loaded. Confirm that the declaration is correct, and that the assembly and all its dependencies are available. I am presuming that i get this because the TFSBuild.proj gets executed by MSBuild 3.5 which in turn means my solution is compiled with MSBuild 3.5. Am i correct with my diagnosis? Is there any way to ensure that TFS2008 uses MSBuild 4.0 for my solution? Can it be done on a single team project so that it doesn't affect any other team projects being built on the same build agent? Note that i have checked the question Build failing - VS2010 solution on TFS2008 and this is not a duplicate. Thanks :)

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