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  • Is there a way to import a scheduled task from windows 2003 (.job) to windows 2008 (.xml) ?

    - by Rodrigo
    I had some jobs to be moved from the old production server (windows 2003 server standard) to the new machine (windows 2008 server standard), but the new server is unable to read the old .job format, also the import wizard only imports from .xml job files (same version). Obviously I don't want to rebuild all the jobs by hand, but can't find a tool that makes the process a very little easier. I don't trust in Microsoft for this kind of tools, my previously experiences had been to bad (DTS - SSIS). Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

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  • Fix mail that has been put in deferred folder

    - by Safado
    So we have a little more than usual deferred mail on our Postfix server, so I started to look through the messages to make sure we weren't hacked and sending out spam. Everything is fine and it turns out that a bot had filled out our Request Info form multiple times with bad info. However, I did find one that was a legitimate request for more information about our company and I noticed that it isn't sending because they fat-fingered the address with gmal.com. Is there a way I can correct that and have Postfix send it out? This is on a CentOS server.

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  • Why will multiple dvd/cd-rom drives stop reading?

    - by ddc0660
    I'm having difficulty with two dvd/cd drives. When I updated from XP to Vista, I noticed they wouldn't work. I could add cds or dvds to the drives and they would attempt to read the disk, but never "found" a disk in the drive. Vista showed the drives existed without problems. I updated their drivers and nothing changed. I thought perhaps, oddly, both drives were going bad. Then I got Windows 7, and I figured I'd have to do some gymnastics in order to get it onto my system without a working disk drive. However, I can boot from the Windows 7 disk fine! I installed 7 hoping that it was a Vista problem and I'd reclaim my drives, but that is not the case. The same symptoms persist. Thoughts?

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  • repair window-xp - access denied for "document and settings" through command line

    - by Or A
    hi, i'm trying to repair my windows xp and it fails to reboot (bad sector or something). i'm using my dell recovery disk and then select the "Repair" option which takes me to the command line application when i can browse my files and folders (like with cmd.exe). however, when i'm trying to access the "Documents and settings" folder, it gives me access denied. is there any way to override it? is there any other way to access my documents and settings through other method? I'm just trying to recover some files and copy them to another drive on my computer and then reinstall my winxp. Thanks for the help

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  • How can I avoid logging file not founds commonly caused by vulnerability scanners?

    - by agweber
    My apache logs are pretty much full of 'admin.php' not found or unable to stat and similar statements for wp-login.php, default.php, and so on that are often sought after by vulnerability scanners. Can I configure apache to avoid logging these statements for certain files? I don't want to filter out all file not founds as I'd like to fix bad links that I may have put out over the years that no longer correspond to the same files. I can use a tool like fail2ban or denyhosts, but from previous experiences it comes from so many places that those errors are still going to pile up, and the reducing those error messages are what this question is asking about.

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  • Can I use applescript to click buttons in background?

    - by Giorgio
    Sorry for this generic and probably bad-written question. I've never programmed in applescript, but I'm quite familiar with other coding language. I'm in the need of clicking on 2 sequential button inside the lobby of a software (when you click the first a popup appears and we should click 'ok'). However things are a little bit more complicated then this because: 1) the lobby of this program isn't in foreground: it's covered by other windows opened. (I don't have experience so I don't know if this represent a problem). 2) there should be a timer and the program should click this button at regular intervals. Is this feasible with applescript?

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  • How to access network shares, printers, etc.through Windows 7 Built-In VPN?

    - by mbrion
    After I have successfully connected to a Windows 7 box via the built-in VPN: how do I access shares, shared printers, network appliances, etc.? So, call me bad at googling, but: I can find dozens of articles on "How to Set up a VPN Connection" and "How to connect to a VPN" for Windows 7... but I can't find a single article on how to access resources after connecting. I have a home VPN set up in Windows 7; I was able to connect to it from my friend's Windows 7 machine last night. I expected to be able to UNC into my shares; I also expected to be able to go to "Start Computer" and Click "Network" on the left side, and then see all of the devices on my home network (while the VPN was connected). Am I missing something obvious? How do I make this happen?

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  • How to save your Linux state (suspend to disk) periodically to recover from crashes?

    - by WoLpH
    One in a while my laptop crashes/dies because of a bad/empty battery, crappy wifi driver or whatever other reason. For a while I've wondered if it's possible to force Linux to periodically save the state (like vmware snapshots) to disk so you can restore from that with possibly slightly outdated work but at least with all of your apps open in the same state you've left them. I don't really see the point in having to boot everything from cratch constantly, although KDE saves your state on logout, that doesn't happen periodically (by default) either. It would make it much nicer to recover from your crashes if your ram was written to disk periodically. Anyone know if there's a system call to do this without also shutting down the machine? Even a manual button to save the entire state would be nice.

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  • HIGH CPU USAGE FROM SUSTEM [on hold]

    - by user195641
    CAN ANYONE EXPLAIN THIS ? IT IS BAD FOR MY CPU ? CAN ANYONE HELP ME ? I DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO ! THERE IS HIGH DELAY WHEN I OPEN A NEW TASK HOWEVER ITS A INTEL CORE DUO EXTREAMA 3.0GH THANKS There are about 100 items monitored with the agent. They are also monitored on other identical hosts where Zabbix agent does not consume so much of CPU. Agents send collected data to Zabbix proxy. The agent configuration is default. The host CPU has 8 cores (2.4 Gz). The smallest time value for monitored items is 60 seconds.

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  • Windows hangs on startup

    - by Mr_Chimp
    I got in to work this week to find four windows xp computers all having the same problem - they are all hanging on the windows loading screen (the one with the logo and the green progress bar). The only thing I could think that would cause this to happen on all of them at the same time are bad windows updates. Can anyone shed some light? Edit: some further details: CAN get to safe mode. System restore DOESN'T help. HDDs are ok. All were working fine last week.

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  • Move files contained in a certain dir to the previous one (centOS)

    - by Alex
    i will try to explain my problem (sorry for my bad english). I have an image gallery with a directory structure like that: images/dir1/subdir1/IMG/files.jpg images/dir1/subdir2/IMG/files.jpg images/dir1/subdir3/IMG/files.jpg images/dir2/subdir1/IMG/files.jpg ....... images/dir109/subdir1/IMG/files.jpg the directory named images contains 109 dirs (dir1,dir2, ... dir109), the 109 dirs totally have 1200 subdirs inside, every subdir contain a dir named IMG with images into it (file1.jpg file2.jpg etc ...), i would like to move all the images contained into every dir named IMG into the previous dir (subdir) to have something like that: images/dir1/subdir1/file1.jpg images/dir1/subdir1/file2.jpg images/dir1/subdir2/file1.jpg ........ images/dir109/subdir1/file.jpg

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  • (date) script for freenas

    - by malgaboy
    My webserver is running freenas 8.0.4. Currently in /etc/crontab there is this task (daily) find /mnt/vol1/1 -type f -mtime +16 -exec rm -R {} \; This allow me to delete files older than 16 days.. infact every night a new file is added in /mnt/vol1/1 folder.. but now I wanna make a script that check the folder and keeps only the youngest 2 file.. whitout taking in consideration the days.. Thanks in advance. (sorry for my bad english).

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  • The volume "filesystem root" has only 0 bytes disk space remaining?

    - by radek
    I installed 11.10 ~two weeks ago and run into some strange troubles recently. Installation was on brand new laptop with clear 128GB SSD. I opted for encrypting home directory. Apart from that I accepted defaults during the installation. There is no other OS on my laptop. I had circa 40GB in use when (for the third time) I got to see this very unpleasant window: Twice situation was pretty bad and whole system slowed down considerably. After reboot I could not login to graphical interface (with an error message informing about insufficient space) and had to remove some files from command line first. Third time I still managed to quickly delete some files and it helped. My laptop is mainly work environment: so no torrents, games, just two movies. Only media filling space are ~20GB of pictures, and bunch of pdfs. Working mostly on PostgreSQL & PostGIS, GeoServer and QGIS recently. Although I had lots of opportunities to test and practice my backups I would be extremely grateful if somebody could point me to any potential solutions to this problem. My laptop has been bought just before I installed Ubuntu, and it came without OS. Could that be hardware issue? Or is the encrypted home causing me headaches? Thanks for help! Update: As suggested by @maniat1k, here is current output of fdisk -l: WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted. Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 312581807 156290903+ ee GPT

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  • SQL SERVER – Subquery or Join – Various Options – SQL Server Engine knows the Best

    - by pinaldave
    This is followup post of my earlier article SQL SERVER – Convert IN to EXISTS – Performance Talk, after reading all the comments I have received I felt that I could write more on the same subject to clear few things out. First let us run following four queries, all of them are giving exactly same resultset. USE AdventureWorks GO -- use of = SELECT * FROM HumanResources.Employee E WHERE E.EmployeeID = ( SELECT EA.EmployeeID FROM HumanResources.EmployeeAddress EA WHERE EA.EmployeeID = E.EmployeeID) GO -- use of in SELECT * FROM HumanResources.Employee E WHERE E.EmployeeID IN ( SELECT EA.EmployeeID FROM HumanResources.EmployeeAddress EA WHERE EA.EmployeeID = E.EmployeeID) GO -- use of exists SELECT * FROM HumanResources.Employee E WHERE EXISTS ( SELECT EA.EmployeeID FROM HumanResources.EmployeeAddress EA WHERE EA.EmployeeID = E.EmployeeID) GO -- Use of Join SELECT * FROM HumanResources.Employee E INNER JOIN HumanResources.EmployeeAddress EA ON E.EmployeeID = EA.EmployeeID GO Let us compare the execution plan of the queries listed above. Click on image to see larger image. It is quite clear from the execution plan that in case of IN, EXISTS and JOIN SQL Server Engines is smart enough to figure out what is the best optimal plan of Merge Join for the same query and execute the same. However, in the case of use of Equal (=) Operator, SQL Server is forced to use Nested Loop and test each result of the inner query and compare to outer query, leading to cut the performance. Please note that here I no mean suggesting that Nested Loop is bad or Merge Join is better. This can very well vary on your machine and amount of resources available on your computer. When I see Equal (=) operator used in query like above, I usually recommend to see if user can use IN or EXISTS or JOIN. As I said, this can very much vary on different system. What is your take in above query? I believe SQL Server Engines is usually pretty smart to figure out what is ideal execution plan and use it. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Joins, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Need a solution to store images (1 billion, 1000,000,000) which users will upload to a website via php or javascript upload [on hold]

    - by wish_you_all_peace
    I need a solution to store images (1 billion) which users will upload to a website via PHP or Javascript upload (website will have 1 billion page views a month using Linux Debian distros) assuming 20 photos per user maximum (10 thumbnails of size 90px by 90px and 10 large, script resized images of having maximum width 500px or maximum height 500px depending on shape of image, meaning square, rectangle, horizontal, vertical etc). Assume this to be a LEMP-stack (Linux Nginx MySQL PHP) social-media or social-matchmaking type application whose content will be text and images. Since everyone knows storing tons of images (website users uploaded images in this case) are bad inside a single directory or NFS etc, please explain all the details about the architecture and configuration of the entire setup of storage solution, to store 1 billion images on any method you recommend (no third-party cloud storage like S3 etc. It has to be within the private data center using our own hardware and resources.). The solution has to include both the storage solution and organizing the images uploaded by users. How will we organize the users images if a single user will not have more than 20 images (10 thumbs and 10 large of having either width or height 500px)? Please consider that this has to be organized in a structural way so we can fetch a single user's images via PHP/Javascript or API programmatically through some type of user's unique identifier(s).

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  • Upload File to Windows Azure Blob in Chunks through ASP.NET MVC, JavaScript and HTML5

    - by Shaun
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/shaunxu/archive/2013/07/01/upload-file-to-windows-azure-blob-in-chunks-through-asp.net.aspxMany people are using Windows Azure Blob Storage to store their data in the cloud. Blob storage provides 99.9% availability with easy-to-use API through .NET SDK and HTTP REST. For example, we can store JavaScript files, images, documents in blob storage when we are building an ASP.NET web application on a Web Role in Windows Azure. Or we can store our VHD files in blob and mount it as a hard drive in our cloud service. If you are familiar with Windows Azure, you should know that there are two kinds of blob: page blob and block blob. The page blob is optimized for random read and write, which is very useful when you need to store VHD files. The block blob is optimized for sequential/chunk read and write, which has more common usage. Since we can upload block blob in blocks through BlockBlob.PutBlock, and them commit them as a whole blob with invoking the BlockBlob.PutBlockList, it is very powerful to upload large files, as we can upload blocks in parallel, and provide pause-resume feature. There are many documents, articles and blog posts described on how to upload a block blob. Most of them are focus on the server side, which means when you had received a big file, stream or binaries, how to upload them into blob storage in blocks through .NET SDK.  But the problem is, how can we upload these large files from client side, for example, a browser. This questioned to me when I was working with a Chinese customer to help them build a network disk production on top of azure. The end users upload their files from the web portal, and then the files will be stored in blob storage from the Web Role. My goal is to find the best way to transform the file from client (end user’s machine) to the server (Web Role) through browser. In this post I will demonstrate and describe what I had done, to upload large file in chunks with high speed, and save them as blocks into Windows Azure Blob Storage.   Traditional Upload, Works with Limitation The simplest way to implement this requirement is to create a web page with a form that contains a file input element and a submit button. 1: @using (Html.BeginForm("About", "Index", FormMethod.Post, new { enctype = "multipart/form-data" })) 2: { 3: <input type="file" name="file" /> 4: <input type="submit" value="upload" /> 5: } And then in the backend controller, we retrieve the whole content of this file and upload it in to the blob storage through .NET SDK. We can split the file in blocks and upload them in parallel and commit. The code had been well blogged in the community. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public ActionResult About(HttpPostedFileBase file) 3: { 4: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 5: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 6: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(file.FileName); 7: var blockDataList = new Dictionary<string, byte[]>(); 8: using (var stream = file.InputStream) 9: { 10: var blockSizeInKB = 1024; 11: var offset = 0; 12: var index = 0; 13: while (offset < stream.Length) 14: { 15: var readLength = Math.Min(1024 * blockSizeInKB, (int)stream.Length - offset); 16: var blockData = new byte[readLength]; 17: offset += stream.Read(blockData, 0, readLength); 18: blockDataList.Add(Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)), blockData); 19:  20: index++; 21: } 22: } 23:  24: Parallel.ForEach(blockDataList, (bi) => 25: { 26: blob.PutBlock(bi.Key, new MemoryStream(bi.Value), null); 27: }); 28: blob.PutBlockList(blockDataList.Select(b => b.Key).ToArray()); 29:  30: return RedirectToAction("About"); 31: } This works perfect if we selected an image, a music or a small video to upload. But if I selected a large file, let’s say a 6GB HD-movie, after upload for about few minutes the page will be shown as below and the upload will be terminated. In ASP.NET there is a limitation of request length and the maximized request length is defined in the web.config file. It’s a number which less than about 4GB. So if we want to upload a really big file, we cannot simply implement in this way. Also, in Windows Azure, a cloud service network load balancer will terminate the connection if exceed the timeout period. From my test the timeout looks like 2 - 3 minutes. Hence, when we need to upload a large file we cannot just use the basic HTML elements. Besides the limitation mentioned above, the simple HTML file upload cannot provide rich upload experience such as chunk upload, pause and pause-resume. So we need to find a better way to upload large file from the client to the server.   Upload in Chunks through HTML5 and JavaScript In order to break those limitation mentioned above we will try to upload the large file in chunks. This takes some benefit to us such as - No request size limitation: Since we upload in chunks, we can define the request size for each chunks regardless how big the entire file is. - No timeout problem: The size of chunks are controlled by us, which means we should be able to make sure request for each chunk upload will not exceed the timeout period of both ASP.NET and Windows Azure load balancer. It was a big challenge to upload big file in chunks until we have HTML5. There are some new features and improvements introduced in HTML5 and we will use them to implement our solution.   In HTML5, the File interface had been improved with a new method called “slice”. It can be used to read part of the file by specifying the start byte index and the end byte index. For example if the entire file was 1024 bytes, file.slice(512, 768) will read the part of this file from the 512nd byte to 768th byte, and return a new object of interface called "Blob”, which you can treat as an array of bytes. In fact,  a Blob object represents a file-like object of immutable, raw data. The File interface is based on Blob, inheriting blob functionality and expanding it to support files on the user's system. For more information about the Blob please refer here. File and Blob is very useful to implement the chunk upload. We will use File interface to represent the file the user selected from the browser and then use File.slice to read the file in chunks in the size we wanted. For example, if we wanted to upload a 10MB file with 512KB chunks, then we can read it in 512KB blobs by using File.slice in a loop.   Assuming we have a web page as below. User can select a file, an input box to specify the block size in KB and a button to start upload. 1: <div> 2: <input type="file" id="upload_files" name="files[]" /><br /> 3: Block Size: <input type="number" id="block_size" value="512" name="block_size" />KB<br /> 4: <input type="button" id="upload_button_blob" name="upload" value="upload (blob)" /> 5: </div> Then we can have the JavaScript function to upload the file in chunks when user clicked the button. 1: <script type="text/javascript"> 1: 2: $(function () { 3: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 4: }); 5: });</script> Firstly we need to ensure the client browser supports the interfaces we are going to use. Just try to invoke the File, Blob and FormData from the “window” object. If any of them is “undefined” the condition result will be “false” which means your browser doesn’t support these premium feature and it’s time for you to get your browser updated. FormData is another new feature we are going to use in the future. It could generate a temporary form for us. We will use this interface to create a form with chunk and associated metadata when invoked the service through ajax. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: if (window.File && window.Blob && window.FormData) { 4: alert("Your brwoser is awesome, let's rock!"); 5: } 6: else { 7: alert("Oh man plz update to a modern browser before try is cool stuff out."); 8: return; 9: } 10: }); Each browser supports these interfaces by their own implementation and currently the Blob, File and File.slice are supported by Chrome 21, FireFox 13, IE 10, Opera 12 and Safari 5.1 or higher. After that we worked on the files the user selected one by one since in HTML5, user can select multiple files in one file input box. 1: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 2: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 3: var file = files[i]; 4: var fileSize = file.size; 5: var fileName = file.name; 6: } Next, we calculated the start index and end index for each chunks based on the size the user specified from the browser. We put them into an array with the file name and the index, which will be used when we upload chunks into Windows Azure Blob Storage as blocks since we need to specify the target blob name and the block index. At the same time we will store the list of all indexes into another variant which will be used to commit blocks into blob in Azure Storage once all chunks had been uploaded successfully. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10:  11: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 12: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 13: var blockSizeInKB = $("#block_size").val(); 14: var blockSize = blockSizeInKB * 1024; 15: var blocks = []; 16: var offset = 0; 17: var index = 0; 18: var list = ""; 19: while (offset < fileSize) { 20: var start = offset; 21: var end = Math.min(offset + blockSize, fileSize); 22:  23: blocks.push({ 24: name: fileName, 25: index: index, 26: start: start, 27: end: end 28: }); 29: list += index + ","; 30:  31: offset = end; 32: index++; 33: } 34: } 35: }); Now we have all chunks’ information ready. The next step should be upload them one by one to the server side, and at the server side when received a chunk it will upload as a block into Blob Storage, and finally commit them with the index list through BlockBlobClient.PutBlockList. But since all these invokes are ajax calling, which means not synchronized call. So we need to introduce a new JavaScript library to help us coordinate the asynchronize operation, which named “async.js”. You can download this JavaScript library here, and you can find the document here. I will not explain this library too much in this post. We will put all procedures we want to execute as a function array, and pass into the proper function defined in async.js to let it help us to control the execution sequence, in series or in parallel. Hence we will define an array and put the function for chunk upload into this array. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4:  5: // start to upload each files in chunks 6: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 7: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 8: var file = files[i]; 9: var fileSize = file.size; 10: var fileName = file.name; 11: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 12: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 13: ... ... 14:  15: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 16: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 17: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 18: }); 19: }); 20: } 21: }); 22: }); As you can see, I used File.slice method to read each chunks based on the start and end byte index we calculated previously, and constructed a temporary HTML form with the file name, chunk index and chunk data through another new feature in HTML5 named FormData. Then post this form to the backend server through jQuery.ajax. This is the key part of our solution. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 15: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 16: // load blob based on the start and end index for each chunks 17: var blob = file.slice(block.start, block.end); 18: // put the file name, index and blob into a temporary from 19: var fd = new FormData(); 20: fd.append("name", block.name); 21: fd.append("index", block.index); 22: fd.append("file", blob); 23: // post the form to backend service (asp.net mvc controller action) 24: $.ajax({ 25: url: "/Home/UploadInFormData", 26: data: fd, 27: processData: false, 28: contentType: "multipart/form-data", 29: type: "POST", 30: success: function (result) { 31: if (!result.success) { 32: alert(result.error); 33: } 34: callback(null, block.index); 35: } 36: }); 37: }); 38: }); 39: } 40: }); Then we will invoke these functions one by one by using the async.js. And once all functions had been executed successfully I invoked another ajax call to the backend service to commit all these chunks (blocks) as the blob in Windows Azure Storage. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.series(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: }); That’s all in the client side. The outline of our logic would be - Calculate the start and end byte index for each chunks based on the block size. - Defined the functions of reading the chunk form file and upload the content to the backend service through ajax. - Execute the functions defined in previous step with “async.js”. - Commit the chunks by invoking the backend service in Windows Azure Storage finally.   Save Chunks as Blocks into Blob Storage In above we finished the client size JavaScript code. It uploaded the file in chunks to the backend service which we are going to implement in this step. We will use ASP.NET MVC as our backend service, and it will receive the chunks, upload into Windows Azure Bob Storage in blocks, then finally commit as one blob. As in the client side we uploaded chunks by invoking the ajax call to the URL "/Home/UploadInFormData", I created a new action under the Index controller and it only accepts HTTP POST request. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: } 8: catch (Exception e) 9: { 10: error = e.ToString(); 11: } 12:  13: return new JsonResult() 14: { 15: Data = new 16: { 17: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 18: error = error 19: } 20: }; 21: } Then I retrieved the file name, index and the chunk content from the Request.Form object, which was passed from our client side. And then, used the Windows Azure SDK to create a blob container (in this case we will use the container named “test”.) and create a blob reference with the blob name (same as the file name). Then uploaded the chunk as a block of this blob with the index, since in Blob Storage each block must have an index (ID) associated with so that finally we can put all blocks as one blob by specifying their block ID list. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 8: var index = int.Parse(Request.Form["index"]); 9: var file = Request.Files[0]; 10: var id = Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)); 11:  12: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 13: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 14: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 15: blob.PutBlock(id, file.InputStream, null); 16: } 17: catch (Exception e) 18: { 19: error = e.ToString(); 20: } 21:  22: return new JsonResult() 23: { 24: Data = new 25: { 26: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 27: error = error 28: } 29: }; 30: } Next, I created another action to commit the blocks into blob once all chunks had been uploaded. Similarly, I retrieved the blob name from the Request.Form. I also retrieved the chunks ID list, which is the block ID list from the Request.Form in a string format, split them as a list, then invoked the BlockBlob.PutBlockList method. After that our blob will be shown in the container and ready to be download. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult Commit() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 8: var list = Request.Form["list"]; 9: var ids = list 10: .Split(',') 11: .Where(id => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(id)) 12: .Select(id => Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(int.Parse(id)))) 13: .ToArray(); 14:  15: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 16: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 17: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 18: blob.PutBlockList(ids); 19: } 20: catch (Exception e) 21: { 22: error = e.ToString(); 23: } 24:  25: return new JsonResult() 26: { 27: Data = new 28: { 29: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 30: error = error 31: } 32: }; 33: } Now we finished all code we need. The whole process of uploading would be like this below. Below is the full client side JavaScript code. 1: <script type="text/javascript" src="~/Scripts/async.js"></script> 2: <script type="text/javascript"> 3: $(function () { 4: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 5: // assert the browser support html5 6: if (window.File && window.Blob && window.FormData) { 7: alert("Your brwoser is awesome, let's rock!"); 8: } 9: else { 10: alert("Oh man plz update to a modern browser before try is cool stuff out."); 11: return; 12: } 13:  14: // start to upload each files in chunks 15: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 16: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 17: var file = files[i]; 18: var fileSize = file.size; 19: var fileName = file.name; 20:  21: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 22: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 23: var blockSizeInKB = $("#block_size").val(); 24: var blockSize = blockSizeInKB * 1024; 25: var blocks = []; 26: var offset = 0; 27: var index = 0; 28: var list = ""; 29: while (offset < fileSize) { 30: var start = offset; 31: var end = Math.min(offset + blockSize, fileSize); 32:  33: blocks.push({ 34: name: fileName, 35: index: index, 36: start: start, 37: end: end 38: }); 39: list += index + ","; 40:  41: offset = end; 42: index++; 43: } 44:  45: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 46: var putBlocks = []; 47: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 48: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 49: // load blob based on the start and end index for each chunks 50: var blob = file.slice(block.start, block.end); 51: // put the file name, index and blob into a temporary from 52: var fd = new FormData(); 53: fd.append("name", block.name); 54: fd.append("index", block.index); 55: fd.append("file", blob); 56: // post the form to backend service (asp.net mvc controller action) 57: $.ajax({ 58: url: "/Home/UploadInFormData", 59: data: fd, 60: processData: false, 61: contentType: "multipart/form-data", 62: type: "POST", 63: success: function (result) { 64: if (!result.success) { 65: alert(result.error); 66: } 67: callback(null, block.index); 68: } 69: }); 70: }); 71: }); 72:  73: // invoke the functions one by one 74: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 75: async.series(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 76: var data = { 77: name: fileName, 78: list: list 79: }; 80: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 81: if (!result.success) { 82: alert(result.error); 83: } 84: else { 85: alert("done!"); 86: } 87: }); 88: }); 89: } 90: }); 91: }); 92: </script> And below is the full ASP.NET MVC controller code. 1: public class HomeController : Controller 2: { 3: private CloudStorageAccount _account; 4: private CloudBlobClient _client; 5:  6: public HomeController() 7: : base() 8: { 9: _account = CloudStorageAccount.Parse(CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("DataConnectionString")); 10: _client = _account.CreateCloudBlobClient(); 11: } 12:  13: public ActionResult Index() 14: { 15: ViewBag.Message = "Modify this template to jump-start your ASP.NET MVC application."; 16:  17: return View(); 18: } 19:  20: [HttpPost] 21: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 22: { 23: var error = string.Empty; 24: try 25: { 26: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 27: var index = int.Parse(Request.Form["index"]); 28: var file = Request.Files[0]; 29: var id = Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)); 30:  31: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 32: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 33: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 34: blob.PutBlock(id, file.InputStream, null); 35: } 36: catch (Exception e) 37: { 38: error = e.ToString(); 39: } 40:  41: return new JsonResult() 42: { 43: Data = new 44: { 45: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 46: error = error 47: } 48: }; 49: } 50:  51: [HttpPost] 52: public JsonResult Commit() 53: { 54: var error = string.Empty; 55: try 56: { 57: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 58: var list = Request.Form["list"]; 59: var ids = list 60: .Split(',') 61: .Where(id => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(id)) 62: .Select(id => Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(int.Parse(id)))) 63: .ToArray(); 64:  65: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 66: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 67: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 68: blob.PutBlockList(ids); 69: } 70: catch (Exception e) 71: { 72: error = e.ToString(); 73: } 74:  75: return new JsonResult() 76: { 77: Data = new 78: { 79: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 80: error = error 81: } 82: }; 83: } 84: } And if we selected a file from the browser we will see our application will upload chunks in the size we specified to the server through ajax call in background, and then commit all chunks in one blob. Then we can find the blob in our Windows Azure Blob Storage.   Optimized by Parallel Upload In previous example we just uploaded our file in chunks. This solved the problem that ASP.NET MVC request content size limitation as well as the Windows Azure load balancer timeout. But it might introduce the performance problem since we uploaded chunks in sequence. In order to improve the upload performance we could modify our client side code a bit to make the upload operation invoked in parallel. The good news is that, “async.js” library provides the parallel execution function. If you remembered the code we invoke the service to upload chunks, it utilized “async.series” which means all functions will be executed in sequence. Now we will change this code to “async.parallel”. This will invoke all functions in parallel. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.parallel(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: }); In this way all chunks will be uploaded to the server side at the same time to maximize the bandwidth usage. This should work if the file was not very large and the chunk size was not very small. But for large file this might introduce another problem that too many ajax calls are sent to the server at the same time. So the best solution should be, upload the chunks in parallel with maximum concurrency limitation. The code below specified the concurrency limitation to 4, which means at the most only 4 ajax calls could be invoked at the same time. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.parallelLimit(putBlocks, 4, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: });   Summary In this post we discussed how to upload files in chunks to the backend service and then upload them into Windows Azure Blob Storage in blocks. We focused on the frontend side and leverage three new feature introduced in HTML 5 which are - File.slice: Read part of the file by specifying the start and end byte index. - Blob: File-like interface which contains the part of the file content. - FormData: Temporary form element that we can pass the chunk alone with some metadata to the backend service. Then we discussed the performance consideration of chunk uploading. Sequence upload cannot provide maximized upload speed, but the unlimited parallel upload might crash the browser and server if too many chunks. So we finally came up with the solution to upload chunks in parallel with the concurrency limitation. We also demonstrated how to utilize “async.js” JavaScript library to help us control the asynchronize call and the parallel limitation.   Regarding the chunk size and the parallel limitation value there is no “best” value. You need to test vary composition and find out the best one for your particular scenario. It depends on the local bandwidth, client machine cores and the server side (Windows Azure Cloud Service Virtual Machine) cores, memory and bandwidth. Below is one of my performance test result. The client machine was Windows 8 IE 10 with 4 cores. I was using Microsoft Cooperation Network. The web site was hosted on Windows Azure China North data center (in Beijing) with one small web role (1.7GB 1 core CPU, 1.75GB memory with 100Mbps bandwidth). The test cases were - Chunk size: 512KB, 1MB, 2MB, 4MB. - Upload Mode: Sequence, parallel (unlimited), parallel with limit (4 threads, 8 threads). - Chunk Format: base64 string, binaries. - Target file: 100MB. - Each case was tested 3 times. Below is the test result chart. Some thoughts, but not guidance or best practice: - Parallel gets better performance than series. - No significant performance improvement between parallel 4 threads and 8 threads. - Transform with binaries provides better performance than base64. - In all cases, chunk size in 1MB - 2MB gets better performance.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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  • Which cloud hosting should I use? [closed]

    - by Alyssa Marie Isk
    Possible Duplicate: How to find web hosting that meets my requirements? If anyone wants to get some real life karma by giving a tiny non-profit pointers, please advise! I posted a thread about our website with highly variable traffic (www.WorldOceansDay.org). The event is on June 8th, and the traffic goes from 100-400/day in the off-season, to about 200,000 trying to access the site at any one time on June 8th. It's a Wordpress site hosted on GoDaddy shared hosting and predictably crashed horribly. From the internet's feedback, we've decided to move to a cloud server to handle the traffic, but I'm a huge newbie and I don't have very reliable mentorship, so I'm turning to crowdsourcing. We're trying to decide between Amazon Web Services and RackSpace Cloud servers. Our sys admin consultant also suggested GoDaddy's new 4GH but I have had such incredibly bad experiences with GoDaddy thus far that I am hesitant. From what I've read on the internet, RackSpace might be cheaper? Would AWS totally break the bank? We don't have a ton of money to spend on hosting. We'll also be using CloudFlare to cache and serve the pages since they're dynamic. I've found a few AWS & RackSpace calculators but I am not 100% on how to find those numbers... GoDaddy? Google Analytics? AWS calc is here: http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html Rackspace is on the right: http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/cloud_hosting_products/servers/pricing/?0a313380 If anyone can help, or through some miracle feels like walking me through this, I would be incredibly appreciative.

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  • Releasing Shrinkr – An ASP.NET MVC Url Shrinking Service

    - by kazimanzurrashid
    Few months back, I started blogging on developing a Url Shrinking Service in ASP.NET MVC, but could not complete it due to my engagement with my professional projects. Recently, I was able to manage some time for this project to complete the remaining features that we planned for the initial release. So I am announcing the official release, the source code is hosted in codeplex, you can also see it live in action over here. The features that we have implemented so far: Public: OpenID Login. Base 36 and 62 based Url generation. 301 and 302 Redirect. Custom Alias. Maintaining Generated Urls of User. Url Thumbnail. Spam Detection through Google Safe Browsing. Preview Page (with google warning). REST based API for URL shrinking (json/xml/text). Control Panel: Application Health monitoring. Marking Url as Spam/Safe. Block/Unblock User. Allow/Disallow User API Access. Manage Banned Domains Manage Banned Ip Address. Manage Reserved Alias. Manage Bad Words. Twitter Notification when spam submitted. Behind the scene it is developed with: Entity Framework 4 (Code Only) ASP.NET MVC 2 AspNetMvcExtensibility Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC (yes you can you use it freely in your open source projects) DotNetOpenAuth Elmah Moq xUnit.net jQuery We will be also be releasing  a minor update in few weeks which will contain some of the popular twitter client plug-ins and samples how to use the REST API, we will also try to include the nHibernate + Spark version in that release. In the next release, not sure about the timeline, we will include the Geo-Coding and some rich reporting for both the User and the Administrators. Enjoy!!!

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  • Mapping a Vertex Buffer in DirectX11

    - by judeclarke
    I have a VertexBuffer that I am remapping on a per frame base for a bunch of quads that are constantly updated, sharing the same material\index buffer but have different width/heights. However, currently right now there is a really bad flicker on this geometry. Although it is flickering, the flicker looks correct. I know it is the vertex buffer mapping because if I recreate the entire VB then it will render fine. However, as an optimization I figured I would just remap it. Does anyone know what the problem is? The length (width, size) of the vertex buffer is always the same. One might think it is double buffering, however, it would not be double buffering because it only happens when I map/unmap the buffer, so that leads me to believe that I am setting some parameters wrong on the creation or mapping. I am using DirectX11, my initialization and remap code are: Initialization code D3D11_BUFFER_DESC bd; ZeroMemory( &bd, sizeof(bd) ); bd.Usage = D3D11_USAGE_DYNAMIC; bd.ByteWidth = vertCount * vertexTypeWidth; bd.BindFlags = D3D11_BIND_VERTEX_BUFFER; //bd.CPUAccessFlags = 0; bd.CPUAccessFlags = D3D11_CPU_ACCESS_WRITE; D3D11_SUBRESOURCE_DATA InitData; ZeroMemory( &InitData, sizeof(InitData) ); InitData.pSysMem = vertices; mVertexType = vertexType; HRESULT hResult = device->CreateBuffer( &bd, &InitData, &m_pVertexBuffer ); // This will be S_OK if(hResult != S_OK) return false; Remap code D3D11_MAPPED_SUBRESOURCE resource; HRESULT hResult = deviceContext->Map(m_pVertexBuffer, 0, D3D11_MAP_WRITE_DISCARD, 0, &resource); // This will be S_OK if(hResult != S_OK) return false; resource.pData = vertices; deviceContext->Unmap(m_pVertexBuffer, 0);

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  • Please guide this self-taught Web Developer.

    - by ChickenPuke
    One of the major regrets in life is that I didn't do something with my introversion. I didn't manage to get past the first year of college because of that. I have chosen the path where there are no video games and other time sinks, all I have is the internet to quench my thirst of learning the ins and outs of the field of Web Developing/Designing. Though currently, I'm taking a Web Design Associate course at one of the best Computer Arts and this is the last month of the class. Even though I'm still a sapling, I love this field so much. So basically, At school I'm learning web design while at home I'm teaching myself web-developing. First thing first, returning to college seems impossible at the moment because of some financial problems. I'm pretty comfortable with CSS and HTML and I'm into PHP/MySQL at the moment. Could you please provide me a web-development Curriculum to follow. And do I need to learn about the theories behind? And I think I'm still young(I'm 18 at the time of writing). Is it a good thing or bad thing for choosing this path? I'm glad with my decision but in all honesty, I'm worrying about my future and employment because I'm an undergrad, coming from a country where companies are degree b!tches, it saddens me so. Thank you. (My questions are the bold parts. )

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  • What popular "best practices" are not always best, and why?

    - by SnOrfus
    "Best practices" are everywhere in our industry. A Google search on "coding best practices" turns up nearly 1.5 million results. The idea seems to bring comfort to many; just follow the instructions, and everything will turn out fine. When I read about a best practice - for example, I just read through several in Clean Code recently - I get nervous. Does this mean that I should always use this practice? Are there conditions attached? Are there situations where it might not be a good practice? How can I know for sure until I've learned more about the problem? Several of the practices mentioned in Clean Code did not sit right with me, but I'm honestly not sure if that's because they're potentially bad, or if that's just my personal bias talking. I do know that many prominent people in the tech industry seem to think that there are no best practices, so at least my nagging doubts place me in good company. The number of best practices I've read about are simply too numerous to list here or ask individual questions about, so I would like to phrase this as a general question: Which coding practices that are popularly labeled as "best practices" can be sub-optimal or even harmful under certain circumstances? What are those circumstances and why do they make the practice a poor one? I would prefer to hear about specific examples and experiences.

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  • MVP Summit 2011 summary and thoughts: The &ldquo;I hope I don&rsquo;t cross a line and lose my MVP status&rdquo; post

    - by George Clingerman
    I've been wanting to write this post summarizing my thoughts about the MVP summit but have been dragging my feet since it's a very difficult one to write. However seeing Andy (http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/77625.aspx) and Catalin (http://www.catalinzima.com/2011/03/mvp-summit-2011/) and Chris (http://geekswithblogs.net/cwilliams/archive/2011/03/07/144229.aspx) post about it has encouraged me to finally take the plunge. I'm going to have to write carefully though because I'm going to be dancing around a ton of NDA mine fields as well as having to walk the tight-rope of not sending the wrong message or having people read too much into what I'm saying. I want to note that most of what I'm about to say is just based on my observations, they're not thoughts that Microsoft has asked me to pass along and they're not things I heard Microsoft say. It's just me sharing what I think after going to the MVP summit. Let's start off with a short imaginary question and answer session.     Has the App Hub forums and XBLIG management been rather poor by Microsoft? Yes.     Do I think we're going to see changes to that overnight? No.     Will it continue to look bad from the outside? Somewhat. Confusing right? Well that's kind of how things are right now. Lots of confusion. XNA is doing AWESOME. Like, really, really awesome. As a result of that awesomeness, XNA is on three major platforms: Xbox 360, WP7 and PC. This means that internally Microsoft is really excited and invested in the technology. That's fantastic for XNA and really should show you the future the framework has. It's here to stay. So why are Xbox LIVE Indie Game developers feeling so much pain? The ironic thing is that pain is being caused by the success of XNA. When XNA was just a small thing, there was more freedom and more focus. It was just us and them. We were an only child. Now our family has grown and everyone has and wants some time with XNA. This gets XNA pulled in all directions and as it moves onto new platforms, it plays catch up trying to get those platforms up to speed to where Xbox LIVE Indie Games has grown. Forums, documentation, educational content. They all need to be there because Xbox LIVE Indie Games has all of that and more. Along with the catch up in features/documentation/awesomeness there's the catch up that the people on the team have to play. New platforms and new areas of development mean new players and those new guys don't have the history of being around from the beginning. This leads to a lack of understanding at times just how important some things are because they seem so small and insignificant (Rich Text defaulting for new forum profiles would be one things that jumps to mind). If you're not aware that the forums have become more than just a basic Q&A, if you're not aware that they're a central hub to a very active community, then you don't understand why that small change should be prioritized over something else. New people have to get caught up and figure out how to make a framework and central forum site work for everyone it's now serving. So yeah, a lot of our pain this last year has been simply that XNA is doing well and XBLIG is doing well so the focus was shifted to catch other things up. It hurts when a parent seems to not have any time for you and they're spending some much time with your new baby brother. Growing pains. All families and in our case our product family experience it to some degree. I think as WP7 matures we'll see the team figuring out how to give everyone the right amount of attention. While we're talking about some of our growing pains, it is also important to note (although not really an excuse) that the Xbox LIVE Arcade developers complain about many of the same things that we do. If you paid attention to talks and information coming out of GDC 2011, most of the the XBLA guys were saying things that sounded eerily similar to what the XBLIG developers are saying (Scott Nichols from GayGamer.net noticed http://twitter.com/#!/NaviFairyGG/status/43540379206811650). Does this mean we should just accept the status quo since we're being treated exactly the same? No way. However it DOES show that the way we're being treated is no indication of the stability and future of the platform, it's just Microsoft dropping the communication ball on two playing fields. We're not alone and we're not even being treated worse. Not great, but also in a weird way a very good sign. Now on to a few tidbits I think I CAN share from the summit (I'm really crossing my fingers I'm not stepping over some NDA line I shouldn't be). First, I discovered that the XBLIG user base is bigger than I personally had originally estimated. I won't give the exact numbers (although we did beg Microsoft to release some of these numbers so maybe someday?) but it was much larger than my original guestimates and I was pleasantly surprised. Maybe some of you guys had the right number when you were guessing, but I know that mine was much too low. And even MORE importantly the number of users/shoppers is growing at a steady pace as well. Our market is growing! That was fantastic news and really something that I had to share. On to the community manager discussion. It was mentioned. I was mentioned. I blushed. Nothing more to report there than the blush in my cheeks was a light crimson color. If I ever see a job description posted for that position I have a resume waiting in the wings. I can't deny that I think that would be my dream job... ...so after I finished blushing, the MVPs did make it very, very clear that the communication has to improve. Community manager or not the single biggest pain point with the Xbox LIVE Indie Game community has been a lack of communication. I have seen dramatic improvement in the team responding to MVPs and I'm even seeing more communication from them on the forums so I'm hoping that's a long term change. I really think they understood the issue, the problem remains how to open that communication channel in a way that was sustainable. I think they'll get it figured out and hopefully that's sooner rather than later. During the summit, you may have seen me tweeting about how I was "that guy" (http://twitter.com/#!/clingermangw/status/42740432471470081). You also may have noticed that Andy and Catalin both mentioned me in their summit write ups. I may have come on a bit strong while I was there...went a little out of character for myself. I've been agitated for a while with the way things have been and I've been listening to you guys and hearing you guys be agitated. I'm also watching some really awesome indie game developers looking elsewhere and leaving the platform. Some of them we might not have been able to keep even with changes, but others are only leaving because of perceptions and lack of communication from Microsoft. And that pisses me off. And I let Microsoft know that I was pissed off. You made your list and I took that list and verbalized it. I verbalized the hell out of it. [It was actually mentioned that I'm a lot nicer on the forums and in email than I am in person...I felt bad about that, but I couldn't stay silent]. Hopefully it did something guys, I really did try hard to get the message across. Along with my agitation, I also brought some pride. I mentioned several things in person to the team that I was particularly proud of. From people in the community that are doing an awesome job, to the re-launch of XboxIndies that was going on that week and even gamers like Steven Hurdle (http://writingsofmassdeduction.com/) who have purchased one XBLIG every day for over 100 days now. The community is freaking rocking it and I made sure to highlight that. So in conclusion, I'd just like to say hang in there (you know, like that picture of the cat). If you've been worried about investing in Xbox LIVE Indie Games because you think it's on shaky ground. It's not. Dream Build Play being about the Xbox 360 should have helped a little to point that out. The team is really scrambling around trying to figure things out and make improvements all around. There’s quite a few new gals and guys and it's going to take them time to catch up and there are a lot of constantly shifting priorities. We all have one toy, one team and we're fighting for time with it. It's also time for the community to continue spreading our wings and going out on our own more often. The Indie Game Winter Uprising was a fantastic example of that. We took things into our own hands and it got noticed and Microsoft got behind it. They do every time we stand up and do something (look at how many Microsoft employees tweeted, wrote about the re-launch of XboxIndies.com or the support I've gotten from them for my weekly XNA Notes). XNA is here to stay, it's time for us to stop being scared of that and figure out how to make our own games the successes they should be. There's definitely a list of things that need to be fixed, things that should be improved and I think we should definitely keep vocal about that with Microsoft. Keep it short, focused and prioritized. There's also a lot of things we can do ourselves while we're waiting on them to fix and change things. Lots of ways we can compensate for particular weaknesses in the channel. The kind of stuff that we can step up and do ourselves. Do it on our own, you know, the way Indies always do. And I'm really looking forward to watching us do just that.

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  • Objective-C As A First OOP Language?

    - by Daniel Scocco
    I am just finishing the second semester of my CS degree. So far I learned C, all the fundamental algorithms and data structures (e.g., searching, sorting, linked lists, heaps, hash tables, trees, graphs, etc). Next year we'll start with OOP, using either Java or C++. Recently I got some ideas for some iPhone apps and got itchy to start working on them. However I heard some bad things about Objectice-C in the past, so I am wondering if learning it as my first OOP language could be a problem. Not to mention that I think it will be hard to find books/online courses that teach basic OOP concepts using Objective-C to illustrate the concepts (as opposed to books using Java or C++, which are plenty), so this could be another problem. In summary: should I start learning Objective-C and OOP concepts right now by my own, or wait one more semester until I learn Java/C++ at university and then jump into Objective-C? Update: For those interested in getting started with OOP via Objective-C I just found some nice tutorials inside Apple's Developer Library - http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/OOP_ObjC/Introduction/Introduction.html

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  • Speaker at developer conferences and user group meetings

    Catching up on a couple of sessions I did in the past. This article gives an overview of some of my activities. Mainly at the annual German Visual FoxPro Developer Conference also known as SQL-Server & ASP.NET Conference in Frankfurt. The below listed entries are excerpts from the original Conference Coverage documents you'll find on UniversalThread. German Visual FoxPro Developer Conference 2002 (1 session - Vendor session about Active FoxPro Pages 3.0) German Visual FoxPro Developer Conference 2003 (2.5 sessions - Visual FoxPro running on Linux) German Visual FoxPro Developer Conference 2004 (4 sessions - 2x Active FoxPro Pages, VFP on Linux, and VFP using additional databases) German Visual FoxPro Developer Conference 2005 (4 sessions - RegEx, XML, XSLT, and using free (as in beer) development tools) German Visual FoxPro Developer Conference 2006 (3 sessions - .NET interop via COM, writing own CLR host in VFP, and Active FoxPro Pages) Furthermore, I did a couple of (hopefully) interesting sessions at various user group meetings in Speyer and Stuttgart. A more comprehensive list is available under Presentations (in German language). And last but not least, back in May 2005 Microsoft Germany invited me to host a WebCast for MSDN on how to use 'Visual FoxPro mit Visual Studio 2005'. Unfortunately, I was too unexperienced and too nervous (first time ever), we experienced technical issues with the microphone, and the obviously low quality of recording demanded to replace it by a whole series on Visual FoxPro 9.0. The webcast covered the same topics I already described in other articles here on my blog. Despite the desaster I'd like to thank Ralf Westphal for his kind words afterwards - I really felt bad. Eventually, you might ask yourself why it stopped by the end of 2006... Well, new chapter in my life: Mauritius!

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  • GWB | First Blogger Suggestion - More Customization To Skins

    - by Geekswithblogs Administrator
    The first suggested item (and only at this point) was a higher level of skin customization on Geekswithblogs.net. Currently we have over 10 skins to pick from and the ability to change the CSS for those skins. In the skins list, you will find one labeled Naked that doesn't add any formatting, but allows you to define what items look like and what gets displayed. I understand our skin approach is not good by any means and needs a dramatic update. Here is what we came up with in our conversation with the blogger. Better tools for editing CSS from the serverPreview of changes before publishingRetrievable CSS configurations for different custom themesBetter image upload for use of custom themesMore skins selectionUpdated current skins to fix formatting issues with newer browsers and Firefox/Opera/ChromeI would really like to gauge your feedback on these items to see what is important. I know one of my biggest complaints I get is customizable themes, but typically users don't know about the options so we have done a bad job of explaining what is possible and showing every user how to do so. We have a public tutorial system we once tried and wanted it to be member managed as well and the GWB staff contributing, but that went downhill at some point. Maybe it is time to kick that back into gear for the new bloggers we have added over the past couple of years.What do you think? What else is on your mind?

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