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• Ask How-To Geek: Learning the Office Ribbon, Booting to USB with an Old BIOS, and Snapping Windows

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  You’ve got questions and we’ve got answers. Today we highlight how to master the new Office interface, USB boot a computer with outdated BIOS, and snap windows to preset locations. Learning the New Office Ribbon Dear How-To Geek, I feel silly asking this (in light of how long the new Office interface has been out) but my company finally got around to upgrading from Windows XP and Office 2000 so the new interface it totally new to me. Can you recommend any resources for quickly learning the Office ribbon and the new changes? I feel completely lost after two decades of the old Office interface. Help! Sincerely, Where the Hell is Everything? Dear Where the Hell, We think most people were with you at some point in the last few years. “Where the hell is…” could possibly be the slogan for the new ribbon interface. You could browse through some of the dry tutorials online or even get a weighty book on the topic but the best way to learn something new is to get hands on. Ribbon Hero turns learning the new Office features and ribbon layout into a game. It’s no vigorous round of Team Fortress mind you, but it’s significantly more fun than reading a training document. Check out how to install and configure Ribbon Hero here. You’ll be teaching your coworkers new tricks in no time. Boot via USB with an Old BIOS Dear How-To Geek, I’m trying to repurpose some old computers by updating them with lightweight Linux distros but the BIOS on most of the machines is ancient and creaky. How ancient? It doesn’t even support booting from a USB device! I have a large flash drive that I’ve turned into a master installation tool for jobs like this but I can’t use it. The computers in question have USB ports; they just aren’t recognized during the boot process. What can I do? USB Bootin’ in Boise Dear USB Bootin’, It’s great you’re working to breathe life into old hardware! You’ve run into one of the limitations of older BIOSes, USB was around but nobody was thinking about booting off of it. Fortunately if you have a computer old enough to have that kind of BIOS it’s likely to also has a floppy drive or a CDROM drive. While you could make a bootable CDROM for your application we understand that you want to keep using the master USB installer you’ve made. In light of that we recommend PLoP Boot Manager. Think of it like a boot manager for your boot manager. Using it you can create a bootable floppy or CDROM that will enable USB booting of your master USB drive. Make a CD and a floppy version and you’ll have everything in your toolkit you need for future computer refurbishing projects. Read up on creating bootable media with PLoP Boot Manager here. Snapping Windows to Preset Coordinates Dear How-To Geek, Once upon a time I had a company laptop that came with a little utility that snapped windows to preset areas of the screen. This was long before the snap-to-side features in Windows 7. You could essentially configure your screen into a grid pattern of your choosing and then windows would neatly snap into those grids. I have no idea what it was called or if was anymore than a gimmick from the computer manufacturer, but I’d really like to have it on my new computer! Bend and Snap in San Francisco, Dear Bend and Snap, If we had to guess, we’d guess your company must have had a set of laptops from Acer as the program you’re describing sounds exactly like Acer GridVista. Fortunately for you the application was extremely popular and Acer released it independently of their hardware. If, by chance, you’ve since upgraded to a multiple monitor setup the app even supports multiple monitors—many of the configurations are handy for arranging IM windows and other auxiliary communication tools. Check out our guide to installing and configuring Acer GridVista here for more information. Have a question you want to put before the How-To Geek staff? Shoot us an email at [email protected] and then keep an eye out for a solution in the Ask How-To Geek column. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Upgrade Windows 7 Easily (And Understand Whether You Should) The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: Basic Noise Removal Install a Wii Game Loader for Easy Backups and Fast Load Times The Best of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 The Worst of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy Download the New Year in Japan Windows 7 Theme from Microsoft Once More Unto the Breach – Facebook Apps Can Now Access Your Address and Phone Number Dial Zero Speeds You Through Annoying Customer Service Menus Complete Dropquest 2011 and Receive Free Dropbox Storage Desktop Computer versus Laptop Wallpaper The Kids Have No Idea What Old Tech Is [Video]

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• Using Unity – Part 3

  - by nmarun

  The previous blog was about registering and invoking different types dynamically. In this one I’d like to show how Unity manages/disposes the instances – say hello to Lifetime Managers. When a type gets registered, either through the config file or when RegisterType method is explicitly called, the default behavior is that the container uses a transient lifetime manager. In other words, the unity container creates a new instance of the type when Resolve or ResolveAll method is called. Whereas, when you register an existing object using the RegisterInstance method, the container uses a container controlled lifetime manager - a singleton pattern. It does this by storing the reference of the object and that means so as long as the container is ‘alive’, your registered instance does not go out of scope and will be disposed only after the container either goes out of scope or when the code explicitly disposes the container. Let’s see how we can use these and test if something is a singleton or a transient instance. Continuing on the same solution used in the previous blogs, I have made the following changes: First is to add typeAlias elements for TransientLifetimeManager type: 1: <typeAlias alias="transient" type="Microsoft.Practices.Unity.TransientLifetimeManager, Microsoft.Practices.Unity"/> You then need to tell what type(s) you want to be transient by nature: 1: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product2"> 2: <lifetime type="transient" /> 3: </type> 4: <!--<type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product2" />--> The lifetime element’s type attribute matches with the alias attribute of the typeAlias element. Now since ‘transient’ is the default behavior, you can have a concise version of the same as line 4 shows. Also note that I’ve changed the mapTo attribute from ‘Product’ to ‘Product2’. I’ve done this to help understand the transient nature of the instance of the type Product2. By making this change, you are basically saying when a type of IProduct needs to be resolved, Unity should create an instance of Product2 by default. 1: public string WriteProductDetails() 2: { 3: return string.Format("Name: {0}<br/>Category: {1}<br/>Mfg Date: {2}<br/>Hash Code: {3}", 4: Name, Category, MfgDate.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss tt"), GetHashCode()); 5: } Again, the above change is purely for the purpose of making the example more clear to understand. The display will show the full date and also displays the hash code of the current instance. The GetHashCode() method returns an integer when an instance gets created – a new integer for every instance. When you run the application, you’ll see something like the below: Now when you click on the ‘Get Product2 Instance’ button, you’ll see that the Mfg Date (which is set in the constructor) and the Hash Code are different from the one created on page load. This proves to us that a new instance is created every single time. To make this a singleton, we need to add a type alias for the ContainerControlledLifetimeManager class and then change the type attribute of the lifetime element to singleton. 1: <typeAlias alias="singleton" type="Microsoft.Practices.Unity.ContainerControlledLifetimeManager, Microsoft.Practices.Unity"/> 2: ... 3: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product2"> 4: <lifetime type="singleton" /> 5: </type> Running the application now gets me the following output: Click on the button below and you’ll see that the Mfg Date and the Hash code remain unchanged => the unity container is storing the reference the first time it is created and then returns the same instance every time the type needs to be resolved. Digging more deeper into this, Unity provides more than the two lifetime managers. ExternallyControlledLifetimeManager – maintains a weak reference to type mappings and instances. Unity returns the same instance as long as the some code is holding a strong reference to this instance. For this, you need: 1: <typeAlias alias="external" type="Microsoft.Practices.Unity.ExternallyControlledLifetimeManager, Microsoft.Practices.Unity"/> 2: ... 3: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product2"> 4: <lifetime type="external" /> 5: </type> PerThreadLifetimeManager – Unity returns a unique instance of an object for each thread – so this effectively is a singleton behavior on a  per-thread basis. 1: <typeAlias alias="perThread" type="Microsoft.Practices.Unity.PerThreadLifetimeManager, Microsoft.Practices.Unity"/> 2: ... 3: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product2"> 4: <lifetime type="perThread" /> 5: </type> One thing to note about this is that if you use RegisterInstance method to register an existing object, this instance will be returned for every thread, making this a purely singleton behavior. Needless to say, this type of lifetime management is useful in multi-threaded applications (duh!!). I hope this blog provided some basics on lifetime management of objects resolved in Unity and in the next blog, I’ll talk about Injection. Please see the code used here.

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• Moving from Winforms to WPF

  - by Elmex

  I am a long time experienced Windows Forms developer, but now it's time to move to WPF because a new WPF project is comming soon to me and I have only a short lead time to prepare myself to learn WPF. What is the best way for a experienced Winforms devleoper? Can you give me some hints and recommendations to learn WPF in a very short time! Are there simple sample WPF solutions and short (video) tutorials? Which books do you recommend? Is www.windowsclient.net a good starting point? Are there alternatives to the official Microsoft site? Thanks in advance for your help!

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• Getting time in ubuntu

  - by user2578666

  include #include <stdio.h> int GetTime() { struct timespec tsp; clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, &tsp); //Call clock_gettime to fill tsp fprintf(stdout, "time=%d.%d\n", tsp.tv_sec, tsp.tv_nsec); fflush(stdout); } I am trying to compile the above code but it keeps throwing the error: time.c: In function ‘GetTime’: time.c:12:4: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘clock_gettime’ [-Wimplicit-function-declaration] time.c:12:18: error: ‘CLOCK_REALTIME’ undeclared (first use in this function) time.c:12:18: note: each undeclared identifier is reported only once for each function it appears in time.c:14:4: warning: format ‘%d’ expects argument of type ‘int’, but argument 3 has type ‘__time_t’ [-Wformat] time.c:14:4: warning: format ‘%d’ expects argument of type ‘int’, but argument 4 has type ‘long int’ [-Wformat] I have tried compiling with -lrt flag and -std=gnu99. Nothing works.

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• Google’s April Fools Day Prank– Google Maps For Nintendo Entertainment System(NES)

  - by Gopinath

  Google is a funny organization and they celebrate most of events we love, in a geeky way. On the occasion of April Fool’s day 2012, Google released 8 bit Google Maps for Nintendo Entertainment System(NES). Here is the screen grab of Buckingham Palace, on 8 bit Google Maps. For those who are not aware of NES,  it is XBox of 1980’s.  NES is considered one of the most influential video game systems ever produced. Released in 1983, NES conquered millions of gamers heart and had a long lasting impact of 20 years. In the year of 2003, Nintendo finally stopped production of NES. Check out the embedded Google’s launch video of 8 Bit Google Maps for NES If you interested to take a tour the 8 bit Google Maps, go to Google Maps and click on the quest button available on right top corner. The guys at techi.com has a good collection of screen grabs taken from 8 Bit Google Maps, check it out here.

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• Linux.com: Q&A on Oracle's Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel

  - by monica.kumar

  Linux.com recently published a Q&A on Oracle's Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel for Linux. The interview highlights the key benefits of Oracle's new offering and also offers an insight into our long and ongoing commitment to advancing Linux. Here are some excerpts from the Q&A: All enhancements made in the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel are open source and have been made available to the Linux community. Oracle Linux, including both the kernels, is free to download, use and distribute. You can download the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel at http://public-yum.oracle.com Source code is available, including a public git repository with full changelog and individual patches and checkins for convenience. Read the entire interview. Visit the Oracle Linux Homepage.

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• Need to know the origin and coordinates for 2d texture and 2d/3d vertices in webgl

  - by mathacka

  Long story short, I know my coordinates are off and I believe my indices might be off. I'm trying to render a simple 2d rectangle with a texture in webgl here's the code I have for the vbo/ibo: rectVertices.vertices = new Float32Array( [ -0.5, -0.5, // Vertice 1, bottom / left 0.0, 0.0, // UV 1 -0.5, 0.5, // Vertice 2, top / left 0.0, 1.0, // UV 2 0.5, 0.5, // Vertice 3, top / right 1.0, 1.0, // UV 3 0.5, -0.5, // Vertice 4, bottom / right 1.0, 0.0, // UV 4 ]); rectVertices.indices = new Int16Array([ 1,2,3,1,3,4 ]); /* I'm assuming the vertices go like this (-0.5, 0.5) ------ ( 0.5, 0.5) | | | | (-0.5,-0.5) ------ ( 0.5,-0.5) with the origin in the middle and the texture coordinates go like this: ( 0.0, 1.0) ------ ( 1.0, 1.0) | | | | ( 0.0, 0.0) ------ ( 1.0, 0.0) so as you can see I'm all messed up. I'm also using: gl.pixelStorei(gl.UNPACK_FLIP_Y_WEBGL, true); */ So, I need to know the origins.

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• mysql not starting

  - by Eiriks

  I have a server running on rackspace.com, it been running for about a year (collecting data for a project) and no problems. Now it seems mysql froze (could not connect either through ssh command line, remote app (sequel pro) or web (pages using the db just froze). I got a bit eager to fix this quick and rebooted the virtual server, running ubuntu 10.10. It is a small virtual LAMP server (10gig storage - I'm only using 1, 256mb ram -has not been a problem). Now after the reboot, I cannot get mysql to start again. service mysql status mysql stop/waiting I believe this just means mysql is not running. How do I get this running again? service mysql start start: Job failed to start No. Just typing 'mysql' gives: mysql ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (111) There is a .sock file in this folder, 'ls -l' gives: srwxrwxrwx 1 mysql mysql 0 2012-12-01 17:20 mysqld.sock From googleing this for a while now, I see that many talk about the logfile and my.cnf. Logs Not sure witch ones I should look at. This log-file is empty: 'var/log/mysql/error.log', so is the 'var/log/mysql.err' and 'var/log/mysql.log'. my.cnf is located in '/etc/mysql' and looks like this. Can't see anything clearly wrong with it either. # # The MySQL database server configuration file. # # You can copy this to one of: # - "/etc/mysql/my.cnf" to set global options, # - "~/.my.cnf" to set user-specific options. # # One can use all long options that the program supports. # Run program with --help to get a list of available options and with # --print-defaults to see which it would actually understand and use. # # For explanations see # http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/server-system-variables.html # This will be passed to all mysql clients # It has been reported that passwords should be enclosed with ticks/quotes # escpecially if they contain "#" chars... # Remember to edit /etc/mysql/debian.cnf when changing the socket location. [client] port = 3306 socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock # Here is entries for some specific programs # The following values assume you have at least 32M ram # This was formally known as [safe_mysqld]. Both versions are currently parsed. [mysqld_safe] socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock nice = 0 [mysqld] # # * Basic Settings # # # * IMPORTANT # If you make changes to these settings and your system uses apparmor, you may # also need to also adjust /etc/apparmor.d/usr.sbin.mysqld. # user = mysql socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock port = 3306 basedir = /usr datadir = /var/lib/mysql tmpdir = /tmp skip-external-locking # # Instead of skip-networking the default is now to listen only on # localhost which is more compatible and is not less secure. bind-address = 127.0.0.1 # # * Fine Tuning # key_buffer = 16M max_allowed_packet = 16M thread_stack = 192K thread_cache_size = 8 # This replaces the startup script and checks MyISAM tables if needed # the first time they are touched myisam-recover = BACKUP #max_connections = 100 #table_cache = 64 #thread_concurrency = 10 # # * Query Cache Configuration # query_cache_limit = 1M query_cache_size = 16M # # * Logging and Replication # # Both location gets rotated by the cronjob. # Be aware that this log type is a performance killer. # As of 5.1 you can enable the log at runtime! #general_log_file = /var/log/mysql/mysql.log #general_log = 1 log_error = /var/log/mysql/error.log # Here you can see queries with especially long duration #log_slow_queries = /var/log/mysql/mysql-slow.log #long_query_time = 2 #log-queries-not-using-indexes # # The following can be used as easy to replay backup logs or for replication. # note: if you are setting up a replication slave, see README.Debian about # other settings you may need to change. #server-id = 1 #log_bin = /var/log/mysql/mysql-bin.log expire_logs_days = 10 max_binlog_size = 100M #binlog_do_db = include_database_name #binlog_ignore_db = include_database_name # # * InnoDB # # InnoDB is enabled by default with a 10MB datafile in /var/lib/mysql/. # Read the manual for more InnoDB related options. There are many! # # * Security Features # # Read the manual, too, if you want chroot! # chroot = /var/lib/mysql/ # # For generating SSL certificates I recommend the OpenSSL GUI "tinyca". # # ssl-ca=/etc/mysql/cacert.pem # ssl-cert=/etc/mysql/server-cert.pem # ssl-key=/etc/mysql/server-key.pem [mysqldump] quick quote-names max_allowed_packet = 16M [mysql] #no-auto-rehash # faster start of mysql but no tab completition [isamchk] key_buffer = 16M # # * IMPORTANT: Additional settings that can override those from this file! # The files must end with '.cnf', otherwise they'll be ignored. # !includedir /etc/mysql/conf.d/ I need the data in the database (so i'd like to avoid reinstalling), and I need it back up running again. All hint, tips and solutions are welcomed and appreciated.

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• SQL Pre-Con…at the Beach

  - by Argenis

    Building upon the success of SQL Rally 2012 (where we packed a room full of DBAs), my friend Robert Davis [Twitter|Blog] and yours truly will be again delivering our day-long Pre-Conference “Demystifying Database Administration Best Practices” this Friday (6/8/2012) – right before SQLSaturday #132 in Pensacola, FL. If you are in the vicinity of Pensacola, come join us! We had tons of fun at Rally. Robert and I love sharing tips and stories that will help you on your day to day duties as a DBA. Some of the topics that we’ll touch on (this is by no means a comprehensive list) Active Directory configuration for SQL Server Deployments Windows Server Deployments Storage and I/O High Availability / Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity Replication Day-To-Day Operations Maintenance TempDB Code Reviews Other Database and Server Settings   Follow this link to sign up for the Pre-Con at Pensacola: http://demystifyingdba.eventbrite.com/ Here’s a blog post that Robert made on the subject of Best Practices.  Hope to see you there!

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• SQL Pre-Con…at the Beach

  - by Argenis

    Building upon the success of SQL Rally 2012 (where we packed a room full of DBAs), my friend Robert Davis [Twitter|Blog] and yours truly will be again delivering our day-long Pre-Conference “Demystifying Database Administration Best Practices” this Friday (6/8/2012) – right before SQLSaturday #132 in Pensacola, FL. If you are in the vicinity of Pensacola, come join us! We had tons of fun at Rally. Robert and I love sharing tips and stories that will help you on your day to day duties as a DBA. Some of the topics that we’ll touch on (this is by no means a comprehensive list) Active Directory configuration for SQL Server Deployments Windows Server Deployments Storage and I/O High Availability / Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity Replication Day-To-Day Operations Maintenance TempDB Code Reviews Other Database and Server Settings   Follow this link to sign up for the Pre-Con at Pensacola: http://demystifyingdba.eventbrite.com/ Here’s a blog post that Robert made on the subject of Best Practices.  Hope to see you there!

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• Objective C and C++ for Game Development

  - by Holland

  I'm trying to figure out which language I should begin learning. I've only been programming for about 6 months, with languages like PHP, Java, and C#. I want to learn how to dev games, and while I know in most cases the answer to this would be through C++ (at least, I would think), though I'm still curious about what Objective C can offer in the sense of long term benefit. It seems like there's a chance that Objective-C may actually become more popular than C++ in a few years, and for all I know, it may become the de facto standard development language for games. Still, despite all of this, I really don't know anything, and this is all speculation. Both languages seem very interesting, and obviously can pull a lot of out of themselves. What do you think? Note: despite what some might say, I really don't want to end up using prebuilt engines, and would rather just learn how to make my own. I'm well aware that it takes a lot more time, but I'm quite ok with that.

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• SQL SERVER – Fix: Error: File cannot be loaded because the execution of scripts is disabled on this system. Please see “get-help about_signing” for more details

  - by pinaldave

  Yesterday I formatted my computer and did fresh install as it was due from long time. After the fresh install when I tried to install Semantic Search application using powershell, I was stopped by following error. File cannot be loaded because the execution of scripts is disabled on this system. Please see “get-help about_signing” for more details Fix/Solution/Workaround: The solution is very simple. Open the Powershell window and type following two lines and everything will fine right after that. Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned Again, this is I have done for my environment where I am very careful what I will run. You can change the policy back to original restricted policy if you want to restrict future execution of the powershell scripts. Simple – isn’t it? Well all complex looking problems are very simple to solve. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Error Messages, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Powershell

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• SSAS Multithreaded sync with Windows 2008 R2

  - by ACALVETT

  We have been happily running some of our systems on WIndows 2003 and have had an upgrade to W2K8 R2 on the list for quite some time. The upgrade has now completed and we can start taking advantage of some of the new features which is the reason for this post. For a long time we have used the sample Robocopy script from the SQLCat team to synchronize some of our larger SSAS databases. If your wondering what i mean by large, around 5 TB with a good few thousand partitions. The script works like a dream...(read more)

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• Moving from Winforms to WPF

  - by Elmex

  I am a long time experienced Windows Forms developer, but now it's time to move to WPF because a new WPF project is comming soon to me and I have only a short lead time to prepare myself to learn WPF. What is the best way for a experienced Winforms devleoper? Can you give me some hints and recommendations to learn WPF in a very short time! Are there simple sample WPF solutions and short (video) tutorials? Which books do you recommend? Is www.windowsclient.net a good starting point? Are there alternatives to the official Microsoft site? Thanks in advance for your help!

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• Microsoft Presss Free E-Book - 12/April/2012 - Introducing Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012

  - by TATWORTH

  At http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0790145342201.do, I have spotted a free e-book "Introducing Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012 ". There is no indication as to how long this will be available for free, so I suggest get it ASAP. It is available in a number of other electronic formats besides PDF."Introducing Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012 explores the exciting enhancements and new capabilities engineered into SQL Server, ranging from improvements in operation to those in reporting and management. This book is for anyone who has an interest in SQL Server 2012 and wants to understand its capabilities, including database administrators, application developers, and technical decision makers."

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• Best/Bad practices for code sharing?

  - by sunpech

  The more I explore Github, the more I like it. I really enjoy how coding is becoming more social. I'm curious as to if there are any bad practices that programmers should avoid in sharing their code with each other. And in naming bad practices, what are the best practices for code sharing? For example: Is it a bad practice for a single repo to have multiple scripts/projects named 'MiscProjects'? Where this repo, as the name suggest, is a collection of miscellaneous small scripts and projects. This may resemble how a programmer organizes projects on his/her local storage, but it's possibly not optimal for code sharing? Maybe if a good README/documentation is done, it would be better? Or as long as it's well documented, anything goes?

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• Windows 8 Task Manager

  - by Daniel Moth

  If you are a user of Task Manager (btw, make sure you've read my Task Manager shortcut tips), you must read the blog post on the overhaul coming to Task Manager in Windows 8 – coo stuff! Also, long time readers of my blog will know that back in 2008 I wrote about Windows Vista and Windows 7 number_of_cores support, and in 2009 I shared a widely borrowed screenshot of Task Manager from one of our 128-core machines. So I was excited to just read on the Windows 8 blog that Windows 8 will support up to 640 cores. They shared a screenshot of a 160-core machine, so there goes my record ;-) Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Tykie

  - by Brian

  Here’s the obituary my mother wrote for Tykie, I still miss the little guy quite a bit. Anyone who’s interested in further information on hearing dogs should check out the IHDI website. I cannot begin to express how helpful a hearing dog can be for the hearing impaired. If you feel so inclined, please make a donation. In Memoriam, Tykie 1993-2010 The American Legion Post 401, South Wichita, KS, supported one of its members and commander by sponsoring a service dog for him. Unlike most service dogs this one was for the hearing impaired. Both Ocie and Betty Sims had hearing loss – Ocie more than Betty. The Post and Auxilliary had garage sales, auctions and other fund-raising endeavors to get donations for the dog. Betty made Teddy bears with growlers that were auctioned for donations to bring a hearing dog from International Hearing Dog, Henderson, Colorado. Tykie, a small wiry, salt and pepper terrier, arrived September 1, 1994 to begin his work that included attending Post 401 meetings and celebrations as well as raising more money to be donated to IHD to help others have hearing dogs. Tykie was a young dog less than a year old when he came to Wichita. He was always anxious to please and seldom barked, though he did put out a kind of cry when he was giving his urgent announcement that someone was at the door or the telephone was ringing. He also enjoyed chasing squirrels in the backyard garden that Ocie prized. In 1995, Betty almost died of a lung infection. Tykie was at the hospital with Ocie when he could visit. Several weeks after she was able to come home after a miraculous recovery, Tykie and Ocie went to a car show in downtown Wichita. Ocie’s retina tore loose in the only eye he could see out of and he almost blind was in great pain. How Ocie and Tykie got home is still a mystery, but the family legend goes that Tykie added seeing eye dog to his repertoire and helped drive him home. Health problems continued for Ocie and when he was placed in a nursing home, Tykie was moved to be Betty’s hearing dog. No problem for Tykie, he still saw his friends at the post and continued to help with visitors at the door. The night of May 3, 1999, Betty and Tykie were in the bedroom watching TV when Tykie began hitting her with both front paws as he would if something were urgent. She said later she thought he wanted to go out. As she and the dog walked down the hall towards the back of the house, Tykie hit her again with his front paws with such urgency that she fell into a small coat closet. That small 2-by-2 closet became their refuge as that very second the roof of her house went off as the f4 tornado raced through the city. Betty acquired one small wound on her hand from a piece of flying glass as she pulled Tykie into the closet with her. Tykie was a hero that day and a lot of days after. He kept Betty going as she rebuilt her home and after her husband died April 15, 2000. Tykie had to be cared for so she had to take him outside and bring him inside. He attended weddings of grandchildren and funerals of Post friends. When Betty died February 17, 2002 Tykie’s life changed again. IHD gave approval for his transfer and retirement to Betty and Ocie’s grandson, Brian Laird, who has a similar hearing loss to his grandfather. A few days after the funeral Tykie flew to his new home in Rutherford, NJ where he was able to take long walks for a couple of years before moving back to the Kansas City area. He was still full of adventure. He was written up in a book about service dogs and his story of the tornado and his picture appeared. He spent weekends at Brian’s mother’s farm to get muddy and be afraid of cats and chickens. He also took on an odyssey as he slipped from his fenced yard in Lenexa one day and walked more than seven miles in Overland Park traffic before being found by a good Samaritan who called IHD to find out where he belonged. Tykie was deaf for about the last two years of his long life and became blind as well, but he continued to strive to please. Tykie was 16 years and 4 months when he was cremated. His ashes were scattered on the graves of Betty and Ocie Sims at Greenwood Cemetery west of Wichita on the afternoon of March 21, 2010, with about a dozen family and Post 401 members. It is still the rule. Service dogs are the only dogs allowed inside the Post home. Submitted by Linda Laird, daughter of Betty and Ocie and mother of Brian Laird.

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• Is code maintenance typically a special project, or is it considered part of daily work?

  - by blueberryfields

  Earlier, I asked to find out which tools are commonly used to monitor methods and code bases, to find out whether the methods have been getting too long. Most of the responses there suggested that, beyond maintenance on the method currently being edited, programmers don't, in general, keep an eye on the rest of the code base. So I thought I'd ask the question in general: Is code maintenance, in general, considered part of your daily work? Do you find that you're spending at least some of your time cleaning up, refactoring, rewriting code in the code base, to improve it, as part of your other assigned work? Is it expected of you/do you expect it of your teammates? Or is it more common to find that cleanup, refactoring, and general maintenance on the codebase as a whole, occurs in bursts (for example, mostly as part of code reviews, or as part of refactoring/cleaning up projects)?

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• Ten Things I Wish I’d Known When I Started Using tSQLt and SQL Test

  The open-source Unit Test framework tSQLt is a great way of writing unit tests in the same language as the one being tested. In retrospect, after using tSQLt for a while, what are the 'gotchas'; those things that you'd have been better off knowing about before you get started? David Green lists a few tips he wished he'd read beforehand. Learn Agile Database Development Best PracticesAgile database development experts Sebastian Meine and Dennis Lloyd are running day-long classes designed to complement Red Gate’s SQL in the City US tour. Classes will be held in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and Seattle. Register Now.

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• Should I set up standard email accounts? What are they?

  - by artlung

  A long time ago one used to be able to count on domains having addresses like [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected] ... is this convention dead? Note: I always try to make sure to make a contact available on the websites I put up, so people can contact us if necessary. But are there reasons to handle these or other "standard" email addresses I might not be thinking of? I set up less email addresses than I used to since spam got so awful, and a "predictable" email address just seems to be an invitation to the lousy spammers.

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• Locating Rogue Perl Script

  - by Gary Garside

  I've been trying to source the location of a perl script which is causing havoc on a server which i control. I'm also trying to find out exactly how this script was installed on the server - my best guess is through a wordpress exploit. The server is a basic web setup running Ubuntu 9.04, Apache and MySQL. I use IPTables for firewall, the site runs around 20 sites and the load never really creeps above 0.7. From what i can see the script is making outbound connection to other servers (most likely trying to brute force entry). Here is a top dump of one of the processes: PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 22569 www-data 20 0 22784 3216 780 R 100 0.2 47:00.60 perl The command the process is running is /usr/sbin/sshd . I've tried to find an exact file name but im having no luck... i've ran a lsof -p PID and here is the output: COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE NODE NAME perl 22569 www-data cwd DIR 8,6 4096 2 / perl 22569 www-data rtd DIR 8,6 4096 2 / perl 22569 www-data txt REG 8,6 10336 162220 /usr/bin/perl perl 22569 www-data mem REG 8,6 26936 170219 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.0/auto/Socket/Socket.so perl 22569 www-data mem REG 8,6 22808 170214 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.0/auto/IO/IO.so perl 22569 www-data mem REG 8,6 39112 145112 /lib/libcrypt-2.9.so perl 22569 www-data mem REG 8,6 1502512 145124 /lib/libc-2.9.so perl 22569 www-data mem REG 8,6 130151 145113 /lib/libpthread-2.9.so perl 22569 www-data mem REG 8,6 542928 145122 /lib/libm-2.9.so perl 22569 www-data mem REG 8,6 14608 145125 /lib/libdl-2.9.so perl 22569 www-data mem REG 8,6 1503704 162222 /usr/lib/libperl.so.5.10.0 perl 22569 www-data mem REG 8,6 135680 145116 /lib/ld-2.9.so perl 22569 www-data 0r FIFO 0,6 157216 pipe perl 22569 www-data 1w FIFO 0,6 197642 pipe perl 22569 www-data 2w FIFO 0,6 197642 pipe perl 22569 www-data 3w FIFO 0,6 197642 pipe perl 22569 www-data 4u IPv4 383991 TCP outsidesoftware.com:56869->server12.34.56.78.live-servers.net:www (ESTABLISHED) My gut feeling is outsidesoftware.com is also under attacK? Or possibly being used as a tunnel. I've managed to find a number of rouge files in /tmp and /var/tmp, here is a brief output of one of these files: #!/usr/bin/perl # this spreader is coded by xdh # xdh@xxxxxxxxxxx # only for testing... my @nickname = ("vn"); my $nick = $nickname[rand scalar @nickname]; my $ircname = $nickname[rand scalar @nickname]; #system("kill -9 `ps ax |grep httpdse |grep -v grep|awk '{print $1;}'`"); my $processo = '/usr/sbin/sshd'; The full file contents can be viewed here: http://pastebin.com/yenFRrGP Im trying to achieve a couple of things here... Firstly i need to stop these processes from running. Either by disabling outbound SSH or any IP Tables rules etc... these scripts have been running for around 36 hours now and my main concern is to stop these things running and respawning by themselves. Secondly i need to try and source where and how these scripts have been installed. If anybody has any advise on what to look for in access logs or anything else i would be really grateful. Thanks in advance

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• What Every Developer Should Know About MSI Components

  - by Alois Kraus

  Hopefully nothing. But if you have to do more than simple XCopy deployment and you need to support updates, upgrades and perhaps side by side scenarios there is no way around MSI. You can create Msi files with a Visual Studio Setup project which is severely limited or you can use the Windows Installer Toolset. I cannot talk about WIX with my German colleagues because WIX has a very special meaning. It is funny to always use the long name when I talk about deployment possibilities. Alternatively you can buy commercial tools which help you to author Msi files but I am not sure how good they are. Given enough pain with existing solutions you can also learn the MSI Apis and create your own packaging solution. If I were you I would use either a commercial visual tool when you do easy deployments or use the free Windows Installer Toolset. Once you know the WIX schema you can create well formed wix xml files easily with any editor. Then you can “compile” from the wxs files your Msi package. Recently I had the “pleasure” to get my hands dirty with C++ (again) and the MSI technology. Installation is a complex topic but after several month of digging into arcane MSI issues I can safely say that there should exist an easier way to install and update files as today. I am not alone with this statement as John Robbins (creator of the cool tool Paraffin) states: “.. It's a brittle and scary API in Windows …”. To help other people struggling with installation issues I present you the advice I (and others) found useful and what will happen if you ignore this advice. What is a MSI file? A MSI file is basically a database with tables which reference each other to control how your un/installation should work. The basic idea is that you declare via these tables what you want to install and MSI controls the how to get your stuff onto or off your machine. Your “stuff” consists usually of files, registry keys, shortcuts and environment variables. Therefore the most important tables are File, Registry, Environment and Shortcut table which define what will be un/installed. The key to master MSI is that every resource (file, registry key ,…) is associated with a MSI component. The actual payload consists of compressed files in the CAB format which can either be embedded into the MSI file or reside beside the MSI file or in a subdirectory below it. To examine MSI files you need Orca a free MSI editor provided by MS. There is also another free editor called Super Orca which does support diffs between MSI and it does not lock the MSI files. But since Orca comes with a shell extension I tend to use only Orca because it is so easy to right click on a MSI file and open it with this tool. How Do I Install It? Double click it. This does work for fresh installations as well as major upgrades. Updates need to be installed via the command line via msiexec /i <msi> REINSTALL=ALL REINSTALLMODE=vomus   This tells the installer to reinstall all already installed features (new features will NOT be installed). The reinstallmode letters do force an overwrite of the old cached package in the %WINDIR%\Installer folder. All files, shortcuts and registry keys are redeployed if they are missing or need to be replaced with a newer version. When things did go really wrong and you want to overwrite everything unconditionally use REINSTALLMODE=vamus. How To Enable MSI Logs? You can download a MSI from Microsoft which installs some registry keys to enable full MSI logging. The log files can be found in your %TEMP% folder and are called MSIxxxx.log. Alternatively you can add to your msiexec command line the option msiexec …. /l*vx <LogFileName> Personally I find it rather strange that * does not mean full logging. To really get all logs I need to add v and x which is documented in the msiexec help but I still find this behavior unintuitive. What are MSI components? The whole MSI logic is bound to the concept of MSI components. Nearly every msi table has a Component column which binds an installable resource to a component. Below are the screenshots of the FeatureComponents and Component table of an example MSI. The Feature table defines basically the feature hierarchy.  To find out what belongs to a feature you need to look at the FeatureComponents table where for each feature the components are listed which will be installed when a feature is installed. The MSI components are defined in the  Component table. This table has as first column the component name and as second column the component id which is a GUID. All resources you want to install belong to a MSI component. Therefore nearly all MSI tables have a Component_ column which contains the component name. If you look e.g. a the File table you see that every file belongs to a component which is true for all other tables which install resources. The component table is the glue between all other tables which contain the resources you want to install. So far so easy. Why is MSI then so complex? Most MSI problems arise from the fact that you did violate a MSI component rule in one or the other way. When you install a feature the reference count for all components belonging to this feature will increase by one. If your component is installed by more than one feature it will get a higher refcount. When you uninstall a feature its refcount will drop by one. Interesting things happen if the component reference count reaches zero: Then all associated resources will be deleted. That looks like a reasonable thing and it is. What it makes complex are the strange component rules you have to follow. Below are some important component rules from the Tao of the Windows Installer … Rule 16: Follow Component Rules Components are a very important part of the Installer technology. They are the means whereby the Installer manages the resources that make up your application. The SDK provides the following guidelines for creating components in your package: Never create two components that install a resource under the same name and target location. If a resource must be duplicated in multiple components, change its name or target location in each component. This rule should be applied across applications, products, product versions, and companies. Two components must not have the same key path file. This is a consequence of the previous rule. The key path value points to a particular file or folder belonging to the component that the installer uses to detect the component. If two components had the same key path file, the installer would be unable to distinguish which component is installed. Two components however may share a key path folder. Do not create a version of a component that is incompatible with all previous versions of the component. This rule should be applied across applications, products, product versions, and companies. Do not create components containing resources that will need to be installed into more than one directory on the user’s system. The installer installs all of the resources in a component into the same directory. It is not possible to install some resources into subdirectories. Do not include more than one COM server per component. If a component contains a COM server, this must be the key path for the component. Do not specify more than one file per component as a target for the Start menu or a Desktop shortcut. … And these rules do not even talk about component ids, update packages and upgrades which you need to understand as well. Lets suppose you install two MSIs (MSI1 and MSI2) which have the same ComponentId but different component names. Both do install the same file. What will happen when you uninstall MSI2?   Hm the file should stay there. But the component names are different. Yes and yes. But MSI uses not use the component name as key for the refcount. Instead the ComponentId column of the Component table which contains a GUID is used as identifier under which the refcount is stored. The components Comp1 and Comp2 are identical from the MSI perspective. After the installation of both MSIs the Component with the Id {100000….} has a refcount of two. After uninstallation of one MSI there is still a refcount of one which drops to zero just as expected when we uninstall the last msi. Then the file which was the same for both MSIs is deleted. You should remember that MSI keeps a refcount across MSIs for components with the same component id. MSI does manage components not the resources you did install. The resources associated with a component are then and only then deleted when the refcount of the component reaches zero.   The dependencies between features, components and resources can be described as relations. m,k are numbers >= 1, n can be 0. Inside a MSI the following relations are valid Feature    1  –> n Components Component    1 –> m Features Component      1  –>  k Resources These relations express that one feature can install several components and features can share components between them. Every (meaningful) component will install at least one resource which means that its name (primary key to stay in database speak) does occur in some other table in the Component column as value which installs some resource. Lets make it clear with an example. We want to install with the feature MainFeature some files a registry key and a shortcut. We can then create components Comp1..3 which are referenced by the resources defined in the corresponding tables.   Feature Component Registry File Shortcuts MainFeature Comp1 RegistryKey1     MainFeature Comp2   File.txt   MainFeature Comp3   File2.txt Shortcut to File2.txt   It is illegal that the same resource is part of more than one component since this would break the refcount mechanism. Lets illustrate this:            Feature ComponentId Resource Reference Count Feature1 {1000-…} File1.txt 1 Feature2 {2000-….} File1.txt 1 The installation part works well but what happens when you uninstall Feature2? Component {20000…} gets a refcount of zero where MSI deletes all resources belonging to this component. In this case File1.txt will be deleted. But Feature1 still has another component {10000…} with a refcount of one which means that the file was deleted too early. You just have ruined your installation. To fix it you then need to click on the Repair button under Add/Remove Programs to let MSI reinstall any missing registry keys, files or shortcuts. The vigilant reader might has noticed that there is more in the Component table. Beside its name and GUID it has also an installation directory, attributes and a KeyPath. The KeyPath is a reference to a file or registry key which is used to detect if the component is already installed. This becomes important when you repair or uninstall a component. To find out if the component is already installed MSI checks if the registry key or file referenced by the KeyPath property does exist. When it does not exist it assumes that it was either already uninstalled (can lead to problems during uninstall) or that it is already installed and all is fine. Why is this detail so important? Lets put all files into one component. The KeyPath should be then one of the files of your component to check if it was installed or not. When your installation becomes corrupt because a file was deleted you cannot repair it with the Repair button under Add/Remove Programs because MSI checks the component integrity via the Resource referenced by its KeyPath. As long as you did not delete the KeyPath file MSI thinks all resources with your component are installed and never executes any repair action. You get even more trouble when you try to remove files during an upgrade (you cannot remove files during an update) from your super component which contains all files. The only way out and therefore best practice is to assign for every resource you want to install an extra component. This ensures painless updatability and repairs and you have much less effort to remove specific files during an upgrade. In effect you get this best practice relation Feature 1  –> n Components Component   1  –>  1 Resources MSI Component Rules Rule 1 – One component per resource Every resource you want to install (file, registry key, value, environment value, shortcut, directory, …) must get its own component which does never change between versions as long as the install location is the same. Penalty If you add more than one resources to a component you will break the repair capability of MSI because the KeyPath is used to check if the component needs repair. MSI ComponentId Files MSI 1.0 {1000} File1-5 MSI 2.0 {2000} File2-5 You want to remove File1 in version 2.0 of your MSI. Since you want to keep the other files you create a new component and add them there. MSI will delete all files if the component refcount of {1000} drops to zero. The files you want to keep are added to the new component {2000}. Ok that does work if your upgrade does uninstall the old MSI first. This will cause the refcount of all previously installed components to reach zero which means that all files present in version 1.0 are deleted. But there is a faster way to perform your upgrade by first installing your new MSI and then remove the old one.  If you choose this upgrade path then you will loose File1-5 after your upgrade and not only File1 as intended by your new component design.   Rule 2 – Only add, never remove resources from a component If you did follow rule 1 you will not need Rule 2. You can add in a patch more resources to one component. That is ok. But you can never remove anything from it. There are tricky ways around that but I do not want to encourage bad component design. Penalty Lets assume you have 2 MSI files which install under the same component one file   MSI1 MSI2 {1000} - ComponentId {1000} – ComponentId File1.txt File2.txt   When you install and uninstall both MSIs you will end up with an installation where either File1 or File2 will be left. Why? It seems that MSI does not store the resources associated with each component in its internal database. Instead Windows will simply query the MSI that is currently uninstalled for all resources belonging to this component. Since it will find only one file and not two it will only uninstall one file. That is the main reason why you never can remove resources from a component!   Rule 3 Never Remove A Component From an Update MSI. This is the same as if you change the GUID of a component by accident for your new update package. The resulting update package will not contain all components from the previously installed package. Penalty When you remove a component from a feature MSI will set the feature state during update to Advertised and log a warning message into its log file when you did enable MSI logging. SELMGR: ComponentId '{2DCEA1BA-3E27-E222-484C-D0D66AEA4F62}' is registered to feature 'xxxxxxx, but is not present in the Component table.  Removal of components from a feature is not supported! MSI (c) (24:44) [07:53:13:436]: SELMGR: Removal of a component from a feature is not supported Advertised means that MSI treats all components of this feature as not installed. As a consequence during uninstall nothing will be removed since it is not installed! This is not only bad because uninstall does no longer work but this feature will also not get the required patches. All other features which have followed component versioning rules for update packages will be updated but the one faulty feature will not. This results in very hard to find bugs why an update was only partially successful. Things got better with Windows Installer 4.5 but you cannot rely on that nobody will use an older installer. It is a good idea to add to your update msiexec call MSIENFORCEUPGRADECOMPONENTRULES=1 which will abort the installation if you did violate this rule.

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• Working with Legacy code

  - by andrewstopford

  I'm going to start a series on working with legacy code based on some of things I have learnt over the years. First I define my terms for 'legacy', I define legacy as (as someone on twitter called it) not brownfield but blackfield. Brownfield can be code you did yesterday, last week or last month etc. Blackfield tends to be a great older (think years old) and worked on by a great deal many people. Sure brownfield can also be legacy code but often has far less smells and technical debt, due to it's age the problems are often far worse and far harder to treat.  I'm not sure how many posts I'll write for the series or how long it will run for but I'll add them as and when they occur to me. Finally if you are working with the kind of codebase I describe then Michael Feathers 'Working with Legacy code' is a great resource.

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• How do I know if I am running Wubi or a proper dual-boot?

  - by Don

  I tried to setup a "proper" Windows/Ubuntu dual-boot system, by installing Ubuntu from a USB key. However, I simply could not get the laptop to boot off the USB despite the fact that I made the appropriate changes to the boot device order in the BIOS. So I then turned to Wubi, and (to cut a long story short) it seems I now have a proper dual-boot setup, because I don't need to launch Ubuntu from windows. When I start the laptop, I get that screen that asks me whether I want to run Windows or Ubuntu. However, I'm still not sure if this is a proper dual-boot setup, because when I run windows, it seems that my C: and D: drives are still the same size. If it was a proper dual boot I'd expect separate partitions to have been created for Ubuntu which would have removed some space from the C: and D: drive sizes displayed in Windows. Is there some way that I can confirm whether I'm running a proper dual-boot, and if not, is there some process for converting a Wubi installation to a proper dual-boot?

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