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• Announcing Oracle Knowledge 8.5: Even Superheroes Need Upgrades

  - by Chris Warner

  It’s no secret that we like Iron Man here at Oracle. We've certainly got stuff in common: one of the world’s largest technology companies and one of the world’s strongest technology-driven superheroes. If you've seen the recent Iron Man movies, you might have even noticed some of our servers sitting in Tony Stark’s lab. Heck, our CEO made a cameo appearance in one of the movies. Yeah, we’re fans. Especially as Iron Man is a regular guy with some amazing technology – like us. But Like all great things even Superheroes need upgrades, whether it’s their suit, their car or their spacestation. Oracle certainly has its share of advanced technology.  For example, Oracle acquired InQuira in 2011 after years of watching the company advance the science of Knowledge Management.  And it was some extremely super technology.  At that time, Forrester’s Kate Leggett wrote about it in ‘Standalone Knowledge Management Is Dead With Oracle's Announcement To Acquire InQuira’ saying ‘Knowledge, accessible via web self-service or agent UIs, is a critical customer service component for industries fielding repetitive questions about policies, procedures, products, and solutions.’  One short sentence that amounts to a very tall order.  Since the acquisition our KM scientists have been hard at work in their labs. Today Oracle announced its first major knowledge management release since its acquisition of InQuira: Oracle Knowledge 8.5. We’ve put a massively-upgraded supersuit on our KM solution because we still have bad guys to fight. And we are very proud to say that we went way beyond our original plans. So what, exactly, did we do in Oracle Knowledge 8.5? We did what any high-tech super-scientist would do. We made Oracle Knowledge smarter, stronger and faster. First, we gave Oracle Knowledge a stronger heart: Certified on Oracle technologies, including Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. Huge scaling and performance improvements. Then we gave it a better reach: Improved iConnect functionality that delivers contextualized knowledge directly into CRM applications. Better content acquisition support across disparate sources. Enhanced Language Support including Natural Language search support for 16 Languages. Enhanced Keyword Search for 23 authoring languages, as well as enhanced out-of-the-box industry ontologies covering 14 languages. And finally we made Oracle Knowledge ridiculously smarter: Improved Natural Language Search and a new Contextual Answer Delivery that understands the true intent of each inquiry to deliver the best possible answers. AnswerFlow for Guided Navigation & Answer Delivery, a new application for guided troubleshooting and answer delivery. Knowledge Analytics standardized on Oracle’s Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. Knowledge Analytics Dashboards optimized search and content creation through targeted, actionable insights. A new three-level language model "Global - Language - Locale" that provides an improved search experience for organizations with a global footprint. We believe that Oracle Knowledge 8.5 is the most sophisticated KM solution in existence today and we’ve worked very hard to help it fulfill the promise of KM: empowering customers and employees with deep insights wherever they need them. We hope you agree it’s a suit worth wearing. We are continuing to invest in Knowledge Management as it continues to be especially relevant today with the enterprise push for peer collaboration, crowd-sourced wisdom, agile innovation, social interaction channels, applied real-time analytics, and personalization. In fact, we believe that Knowledge Management is a critical part of the Customer Experience portfolio for success. From empowering employee’s, to empowering customers, to gaining the insights from interactions across all channels, businesses today cannot efficiently scale their efforts, strengthen their customer relationships or achieve their growth goals without a solid Knowledge Management foundation to build from. And like every good superhero saga, we’re not even close to being finished. Next we are taking Oracle Knowledge into the Cloud. Yes, we’re thinking what you’re thinking: ROCKET BOOTS! Stay tuned for the next adventure… By Nav Chakravarti, Vice-President, Product Management, CRM Knowledge and previously the CTO of InQuira, a knowledge management company acquired by Oracle in 2011. 

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• How to Multitask in the Linux Terminal: 3 Ways to Use Multiple Shells at Once

  - by Chris Hoffman

  The Linux terminal has rich multitasking capabilities. You can switch between the virtual consoles already running on your system, use Bash job control to run processes in the background, and take advantage of GNU screen, a terminal “window manager.” You don’t have to stick to a single command at a time. Whether you want to run a process in the background and revisit it occasionally or run multiple time-consuming tasks at once, Linux offers several options. How to Stress Test the Hard Drives in Your PC or Server How To Customize Your Android Lock Screen with WidgetLocker The Best Free Portable Apps for Your Flash Drive Toolkit

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• How to Install & Use the Window Maker Desktop Environment on Ubuntu

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Window Maker is a Linux desktop environment designed to emulate NeXTSTEP, which eventually evolved into Mac OS X. With its focus on emulating NeXTSTEP, it eschews the task bars and application menu buttons found in many other lightweight desktop environments. Window Maker is now under active development again after seven years without an official release. A lot has changed on the Linux desktop front since Window Maker was last being actively developed, but Window Maker still provides a unique, minimal environment – for users looking for that sort of thing. How To Properly Scan a Photograph (And Get An Even Better Image) The HTG Guide to Hiding Your Data in a TrueCrypt Hidden Volume Make Your Own Windows 8 Start Button with Zero Memory Usage

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• Alan Turing Needs Your Help

  - by Chris Massey

  Well. sort of. Clearly, you are using a computer. If you are on this site, you are probably quite familiar with computers as artifacts of our modern society. Hopefully, you are also familiar with the fact that Alan Turing, logician and mathematician extraordinaire, was instrumental in laying down the foundations of modern computer science, and did a little work to help turn the tide of WWII in the Allies' favor. Hold that thought. A phenomenal collection of Turing's papers (including his first ever...(read more)

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• Brand new battery is 100% charged but at 0% capacity

  - by Chris Conway

  I just bought a brand new battery to replace one that had seemingly died. I followed the instructions that came with the battery and charged it overnight, then ran my computer on battery until it was in a critical state and charged it overnight again. Now the battery appears to be 100% charged and at the same time at 0% capacity—when it's plugged in it doesn't charge and when it's unplugged the computer immediately goes into low power mode. I've taken the battery out and checked the contacts. I've rebooted the system with and without the battery. Nothing seems to help. I'm not sure if I should blame the battery, the laptop, the charger, or the power management software for this state of affairs. The obvious answer would be the battery but I bought this battery because another year-old battery exhibited similar behavior—I assumed it was dead and a Dell tech came to the same conclusion. I'm loathe to order another new battery without first exploring other explanations. What can I do to diagnose this problem? Here's the /proc info: $ cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state present: yes capacity state: critical charging state: charged present rate: 1 mA remaining capacity: 0 mAh present voltage: 9754 mV $ cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/info present: yes design capacity: 6600 mAh last full capacity: 6789 mAh battery technology: rechargeable design voltage: 11100 mV design capacity warning: 660 mAh design capacity low: 200 mAh cycle count: 0 capacity granularity 1: 66 mAh capacity granularity 2: 66 mAh model number: DELL WK serial number: 4043 battery type: LION OEM info: SMP

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• Is there any reason not to go directly from client-side Javascript to a database?

  - by Chris Smith

  So, let's say I'm going to build a Stack Exchange clone and I decide to use something like CouchDB as my backend store. If I use their built-in authentication and database-level authorization, is there any reason not to allow the client-side Javascript to write directly to the publicly available CouchDB server? Since this is basically a CRUD application and the business logic consists of "Only the author can edit their post" I don't see much of a need to have a layer between the client-side stuff and the database. I would simply use validation on the CouchDB side to make sure someone isn't putting in garbage data and make sure that permissions are set properly so that users can only read their own _user data. The rendering would be done client-side by something like AngularJS. In essence you could just have a CouchDB server and a bunch of "static" pages and you're good to go. You wouldn't need any kind of server-side processing, just something that could serve up the HTML pages. Opening my database up to the world seems wrong, but in this scenario I can't think of why as long as permissions are set properly. It goes against my instinct as a web developer, but I can't think of a good reason. So, why is this a bad idea? EDIT: Looks like there is a similar discussion here: Writing Web "server less" applications EDIT: Awesome discussion so far, and I appreciate everyone's feedback! I feel like I should add a few generic assumptions instead of calling out CouchDB and AngularJS specifically. So let's assume that: The database can authenticate users directly from its hidden store All database communication would happen over SSL Data validation can (but maybe shouldn't?) be handled by the database The only authorization we care about other than admin functions is someone only being allowed to edit their own post We're perfectly fine with everyone being able to read all data (EXCEPT user records which may contain password hashes) Administrative functions would be restricted by database authorization No one can add themselves to an administrator role The database is relatively easy to scale There is little to no true business logic; this is a basic CRUD app

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• 14 Special Google Searches That Show Instant Answers

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Google can do more than display lists of websites – Google will give you quick answers to many special searches. While Google isn’t quite as advanced as Wolfram Alpha, it has quite a few tricks up its sleeve. We’ve also covered searching Google like a pro by learning the Google search operators – if you want to master Google, be sure to learn those. How To Create a Customized Windows 7 Installation Disc With Integrated Updates How to Get Pro Features in Windows Home Versions with Third Party Tools HTG Explains: Is ReadyBoost Worth Using?

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• What are the licensing issues involved in the Oracle/Apache java dispute?

  - by Chris Knight

  I've just started following with interest the soap opera involving Oracle's acquisition of Java and the detriment of goodwill it seems to have generated in the open source community. Specifically, I'm now trying to get my head around the implications of Oracle's decision to refuse Apache an open source license for Harmony. My questions: 1) What is Harmony anyway? Their website states "Apache Harmony software is a modular Java runtime with class libraries and associated tools". How is this different than J2SE or J2EE? Or is Harmony akin to Andriod? 2) The crux of this issue is around the Java Technology Compatibility Kit (or TCK) which certifies that your implementation adheres to the JSR specifications. If I understand correctly, Oracle refuse to offer free or open source license access to the TCK, denying projects like Harmony from being released as open source. Why is this such a big deal for Apache? E.g. why can't (or don't) they release Harmony under a restricted license? 3) From this site is the following quote: It looks like Oracle’s plan is to restrict deployments of Java implementations in certain markets, particularly on mobile platforms, so that it can monetize its own Java offering in those markets without any competition. Presumably anything Oracle produced would be subject to the same restrictions it is imposing on others with respect to end-technology licensing, so how could they get a leg up on the competition? While no doubt distateful, wouldn't other competitors such as Google or Apache be able to release competing platforms under the same license as Oracle?

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• 4 Alternatives to Google Drive for Linux

  - by Chris Hoffman

  We’ve covered using Google Drive on Linux with third-party software, but why bother jumping through those hoops? You can use a cloud storage service that officially supports Linux instead – several of Google Drive’s competitors do. Google may be leaving Linux users out, but other services like Dropbox, Ubuntu One, SpiderOak, and Wuala don’t ignore Linux users. They even offer more storage and other useful features, such as local encryption of your files. Our Geek Trivia App for Windows 8 is Now Available Everywhere How To Boot Your Android Phone or Tablet Into Safe Mode HTG Explains: Does Your Android Phone Need an Antivirus?

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• If unexpected database changes cause you problems – we can help!

  - by Chris Smith

  Have you ever been surprised by an unexpected difference between you database environments? Have you ever found that your Staging database is not the same as your Production database, even though it was the week before? Has an emergency hotfix suddenly appeared in Production over the weekend without your knowledge? Has your client secretly added a couple of indices to their local version of the database to aid performance? Worse still, has a developer ever accidently run a SQL script against the wrong database without noticing their mistake? If you’ve answered “Yes” to any of the above questions then you’ve suffered from ‘drift’. Database drift is where the state of a database (schema, particularly) has moved away from its expected or official state over time. The upshot is that the database is in an unknown or poorly-understood state. Even if these unexpected changes are not destructive, drift can be a big problem when it’s time to release a new version of the database. A deployment to a target database in an unexpected state can error and fail, potentially delaying a vital, time-sensitive update. A big issue with drift is that it can be hard to spot and it can be even harder to determine its provenance. So, before you can deal with an issue caused by drift, you’ll need to know exactly what change has been made, who made it, when they made it and why they made it. Those questions can take a lot of effort to answer. Then you actually need to decide what to do. Do you rollback the change because it was bad? Retrospectively apply it to the Staging environment because it is a required change? Or script the change into version control to get it back in line with your process? Red Gate’s Database Delivery Team have been talking to DBAs, database consultants and database developers to explore the problem of drift. We’ve started to get a really good idea of how big a problem it can be and what database professionals need to know and do, in order to deal with it.  It’s fair to say, we’re pretty excited at the prospect of creating a tool that will really help and we’ve got some great feedback on our initial ideas (see image below).   We’re now well underway with the development of our new drift-spotting product – SQL Lighthouse – and we hope to have a beta release out towards the end of July. What we really need is your help to shape the product into a great tool. So, if database drift is a problem that you’d like help solving and are interested in finding out more about our product, join our mailing list to register your interest in trying out the beta release. Subscribe to our mailing list

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• How To Use Google Drive on Linux: 2 Unofficial Solutions

  - by Chris Hoffman

  When Google announced Google Drive, they promised Linux support. That was about 7 months ago. While Google said Google Drive for Linux was “still a priority” back in July, it seems it’s no longer a priority. If you want to use Google Drive on Linux, both Insync and grive can bring Google Drive to Linux. They’re not official, but they’re better than nothing if you’re waiting for an official client. How To Boot Your Android Phone or Tablet Into Safe Mode HTG Explains: Does Your Android Phone Need an Antivirus? How To Use USB Drives With the Nexus 7 and Other Android Devices

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• HTG Explains: Does Your Android Phone Need an Antivirus?

  - by Chris Hoffman

  The media is full of reports saying Android malware is exploding and that Android users are at risk. Does this mean you should install an antivirus app on your Android phone or tablet? While there may be a lot of Android malware in the wild, a look at Android’s protections and studies from antivirus companies reveals that you’re probably safe if you follow some basic precautions. How To Use USB Drives With the Nexus 7 and Other Android Devices Why Does 64-Bit Windows Need a Separate “Program Files (x86)” Folder? Why Your Android Phone Isn’t Getting Operating System Updates and What You Can Do About It

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• How To Use Google Authenticator and Other Two-Factor Authentication Apps Without a Smartphone

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Google, Dropbox, LastPass, Battle.net, Guild Wars 2 – all these services and more offer two-factor authentication apps that work on smartphones. If you don’t have a supported device, you can run an alternative application on your computer. When you log in, you’ll need to enter a time-based code from the app. Two-factor authentication prevents people who know your password – but don’t have the app and its security key – from logging in. How To Delete, Move, or Rename Locked Files in Windows HTG Explains: Why Screen Savers Are No Longer Necessary 6 Ways Windows 8 Is More Secure Than Windows 7

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• Solution for installing the ADF 11.1.1.6.0 Runtimes onto a standalone WLS 10.3.6

  - by Chris Muir

  A few customers are hitting the following problem with regards to JDeveloper 11.1.1.6.0 so it's worth documenting a solution. As noted in my previous post the ADF Runtimes for JDeveloper 11.1.1.6.0 will work against a 10.3.5 and 10.3.6 WLS server.  In terms of the JDeveloper 11.1.1.6.0 download Oracle has coupled the 10.3.5 server with that release, not a 10.3.6 server. This has caught some customers out as they are attempting to use the JDeveloper installer to load the 11.1.1.6.0 ADF Runtimes into the middleware home of a standalone 10.3.6 WLS server.  When doing so the installer complains as follows: "The product maintenance level of the current server (WebLogic Server: 10.3.5.0) is not compatible with the maintenance level of the product installed on your system (WebLogic Server: 10.3.6.0).  Please obtain a compatible installer or perform maintenance or your current system to achieve the desired level." The solution is to install the runtimes using the standalone 11.1.1.6.0 ADF Runtime Libraries installer available from OTN (see the options under "Application Development Runtime").

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• Dark Sun Dispatch 001

  - by Chris Williams

  If you aren't into tabletop (aka pen & paper) RPGs, you might as well click to the next post now... Still here? Awesome. I've recently started running a new D&D 4.0 Dark Sun campaign. If you don't know anything about Dark Sun, here's a quick intro: The campaign take place on the world of Athas, formerly a lush green world that is now a desert wasteland. Forests are rare in the extreme, as is water and metal. Coins are made of ceramic and weapons are often made of hardened wood, bone or obsidian. The green age of Athas was centuries ago and the current state was brought about through the reckless use of sorcerous magic. (In this world, you can augment spells by drawing on the life force of the world & people around you. This is called defiling. Preserving magic draws upon the casters life force and does not damage the surrounding world, but it isn't as powerful.) Humans are pretty much unchanged, but the traditional fantasy races have changed quite a bit. Elves don't live in the forest, they are shifty and untrustworthy desert traders known for their ability to run long distances through the wastes. Halflings are not short, fat, pleasant little riverside people. Instead they are bloodthirsty feral cannibals that roam the few remaining forests and ride reptilians beasts akin to raptors. Gnomes are extinct, as are orcs. Dwarves are mostly farmers and gladiators, and live out in the sun instead of staying under the mountains. Goliaths are half-giants, not known for their intellect. Muls are a Dwarf & Human crossbreed that displays the best traits of both races (human height and dwarven stoutness.) Thri-Kreen are sentient mantis people that are extremely fast. Most of the same character classes are available, with a few new twists. There are no divine characters (such as Priests, Paladins, etc) because the gods are gone. Nobody alive today can remember a time when they were still around. Instead, some folks worship the elemental forces (although they don't give out spells.) The cities are all ruled by Sorcerer King tyrants (except one city: Tyr) who are hundreds of years old and still practice defiling magic whenever they please. Serving the Sorcerer Kings are the Templars, who are also defilers and psionicists. Crossing them is as bad, in many cases, as crossing the Kings themselves. Between the cities you have small towns and trading outposts, and mostly barren desert with sometimes 4-5 days on foot between towns and the nearest oasis. Being caught out in the desert without adequate supplies and protection from the elements is pretty much a death sentence for even the toughest heroes. When you add in the natural (and unnatural) predators that roam the wastes, often in packs, most people don't last long alone. In this campaign, the adventure begins in the (small) trading fortress of Altaruk, a couple weeks walking distance from the newly freed city of Tyr. A caravan carrying trade goods from Altaruk has not made it to Tyr and the local merchant house has dispatched the heroes to find out what happened and to retrieve the goods (and drivers) if possible. The unlikely heroes consist of a human shaman, a thri-kreen monk, a human wizard, a kenku assassin and a (void aspect) genasi swordmage. Gathering up supplies and a little liquid courage, they set out into the desert and manage to find the northbound tracks of the wagon. Shortly after finding the tracks, they are ambushed by a pack of silt-runners (small lizard people with very large teeth and poisoned pointy spears.) The party makes short work of the creatures, taking a few minor wounds in the process. Proceeding onward without resting, they find the remains of the wagon and manage to sneak up on a pack of Kruthiks picking through the rubble and spilled goods. Unfortunately, they failed to take advantage of the opportunity and had a hard fight ahead of them. The party defeated the kruthiks, but took heavy damage (and almost lost a couple of their own) in the process. Once the kruthiks were dispatched, they followed a set of tracks further north to a ruined tower...

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• Do you know your ADF "grace period?"

  - by Chris Muir

  What does the term "support" mean to you in context of vendors such as Oracle giving your organization support with our products? Over the last few weeks I'm taken a straw poll to discuss this very question with customers, and I've received a wide array of answers much to my surprise (which I've paraphrased): "Support means my staff can access dedicated resources to assist them solve problems" "Support means I can call Oracle at anytime to request assistance" "Support means we can expect fixes and patches to bugs in Oracle software" The last expectation is the one I'd like to focus on in this post, keep it in mind while reading this blog. From Oracle's perspective as we're in the business of support, we in fact offer numerous services which are captured on the table in the following page. As the text under the table indicates, you should consult the relevant Oracle Lifetime Support brochures to understand the length of time Oracle will support Oracle products. As I'm a product manager for ADF that sits under the FMW tree of Oracle products, let's consider ADF in particular. The FMW brochure is found here. On page 8 and 9 you'll see the current "Application Development Framework 11gR1 (11.1.1.x)" and "Application Development Framework 11gR2 (11.1.2)" releases are supported out to 2017 for Extended Support. This timeframe is pretty standard for Oracle's current released products, though as new releases roll in we should see those dates extended. On page 8 of the PDF note the comment at the end of this page that refers to the Oracle Support document 209768.1: For more-detailed information on bug fix and patch release policies, please refer to the “Error Correction Support Policy” on MyOracle Support. This policy document is important as it introduces Oracle's Error Correction Support Policy which addresses "patches and fixes". You can find it attached the previous Oracle Support document 209768.1. Broadly speaking while Oracle does provide "generalized support" up to 2017 for ADF, the Error Correction Support Policy dictates when Oracle will provide "patches and fixes" for Oracle software, and this is where the concept of the "grace period" comes in. As Oracle releases different versions of Oracle software, say 11.1.1.4.0, you are fully supported for patches and fixes for that specific version. However when we release the next version, say 11.1.1.5.0, Oracle provides at minimum of 3 months to a maximum of 1 year "grace period" where we'll continue to provide patches and fixes for the previous version. This gives you time to move from 11.1.1.4.0 to 11.1.1.5.0 without being unsupported for patches and fixes. The last paragraph does generalize as I've attempted to highlight the concept of the grace period rather than the specific dates for any version. For specific ADF and FMW versions and their respective grace periods and when they terminated you must visit Oracle Support Note 1290894.1. I'd like to include a screenshot here of the relevant table from that Oracle Support Note but as it is will be frequently updated it's better I force you to visit that note. Be careful to heed the comment in the note: According to policy, the Grace Period has passed because a newer Patch Set has been released for more than a year. Its important to note that the Lifetime Support Policy and Error Correction Support Policy documents are the single source of truth, subject to change, and will provide exceptions when required. This My Oracle Support document is providing a summary of the Grace Period dates and time lines for planning purposes. So remember to return to the policy document for all definitions, note 1290894.1 is a summary only and not guaranteed to be up to date or correct. A last point from Oracle's perspective. Why doesn't Oracle provide patches and fixes for all releases as long as they're supported? Amongst other reasons, it's a matter of practicality. Consider JDeveloper 10.1.3 released in 2005. JDeveloper 10.1.3 is still currently supported to 2017, but since that version was released there has been just under 20 newer releases of JDeveloper. Now multiply that across all Oracle's products and imagine the number of releases Oracle would have to provide fixes and patches for, and maintain environments to test them, build them, staff to write them and more, it's simple beyond the capabilities of even a large software vendor like Oracle. So the "grace period" restricts that patches and fixes window to something manageable. In conclusion does the concept of the "grace period" matter to you? If you define support as "getting assistance from Oracle" then maybe not. But if patches and fixes are important to you, then you need to understand the "grace period" and operate within the bounds of Oracle's Error Correction Support Policy. Disclaimer: this blog post was written July 2012. Oracle Support policies do change from time to time so the emphasis is on you to double check the facts presented in this blog.

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• How to Play PC Games on Your TV

  - by Chris Hoffman

  No need to wait for Valve’s Steam Machines — connect your Windows gaming PC to your TV and use powerful PC graphics in the living room today. It’s easy — you don’t need any unusual hardware or special software. This is ideal if you’re already a PC gamer who wants to play your games on a larger screen. It’s also convenient if you want to play multiplayer PC games with controllers in your living rom. HDMI Cables and Controllers You’ll need an HDMI cable to connect your PC to your television. This requires a TV with HDMI-in, a PC with HDMI-out, and an HDMI cable. Modern TVs and PCs have had HDMI built in for years, so you should already be good to go. If you don’t have a spare HDMI cable lying around, you may have to buy one or repurpose one of your existing HDMI cables. Just don’t buy the expensive HDMI cables — even a cheap HDMI cable will work just as well as a more expensive one. Plug one end of the HDMI cable into the HDMI-out port on your PC and one end into the HDMI-In port on your TV. Switch your TV’s input to the appropriate HDMI port and you’ll see your PC’s desktop appear on your TV.  Your TV becomes just another external monitor. If you have your TV and PC far away from each other in different rooms, this won’t work. If you have a reasonably powerful laptop, you can just plug that into your TV — or you can unplug your desktop PC and hook it up next to your TV. Now you’ll just need an input device. You probably don’t want to sit directly in front of your TV with a wired keyboard and mouse! A wireless keyboard and wireless mouse can be convenient and may be ideal for some games. However, you’ll probably want a game controller like console players use. Better yet, get multiple game controllers so you can play local-multiplayer PC games with other people. The Xbox 360 controller is the ideal controller for PC gaming. Windows supports these controllers natively, and many PC games are designed specifically for these controllers. Note that Xbox One controllers aren’t yet supported on Windows because Microsoft hasn’t released drivers for them. Yes, you could use a third-party controller or go through the process of pairing a PlayStation controller with your PC using unofficial tools, but it’s better to get an Xbox 360 controller. Just plug one or more Xbox controllers into your PC’s USB ports and they’ll work without any setup required. While many PC games to support controllers, bear in mind that some games require a keyboard and mouse. A TV-Optimized Interface Use Steam’s Big Picture interface to more easily browse and launch games. This interface was designed for using on a television with controllers and even has an integrated web browser you can use with your controller. It will be used on the Valve’s Steam Machine consoles as the default TV interface. You can use a mouse with it too, of course. There’s also nothing stopping you from just using your Windows desktop with a mouse and keyboard — aside from how inconvenient it will be. To launch Big Picture Mode, open Steam and click the Big Picture button at the top-right corner of your screen. You can also press the glowing Xbox logo button in the middle of an Xbox 360 Controller to launch the Big Picture interface if Steam is open. Another Option: In-Home Streaming If you want to leave your PC in one room of your home and play PC games on a TV in a different room, you can consider using local streaming to stream games over your home network from your gaming PC to your television. Bear in mind that the game won’t be as smooth and responsive as it would if you were sitting in front of your PC. You’ll also need a modern router with fast wireless network speeds to keep up with the game streaming. Steam’s built-in In-Home Streaming feature is now available to everyone. You could plug a laptop with less-powerful graphics hardware into your TV and use it to stream games from your powerful desktop gaming rig. You could also use an older desktop PC you have lying around. To stream a game, log into Steam on your gaming PC and log into Steam with the same account on another computer on your home network. You’ll be able to view the library of installed games on your other PC and start streaming them. NVIDIA also has their own GameStream solution that allows you to stream games from a PC with powerful NVIDIA graphics hardware. However, you’ll need an NVIDIA Shield handheld gaming console to do this. At the moment, NVIDIA’s game streaming solution can only stream to the NVIDIA Shield. However, the NVIDIA Shield device can be connected to your TV so you can play that streaming game on your TV. Valve’s Steam Machines are supposed to bring PC gaming to the living room and they’ll do it using HDMI cables, a custom Steam controller, the Big Picture interface, and in-home streaming for compatibility with Windows games. You can do all of this yourself today — you’ll just need an Xbox 360 controller instead of the not-yet-released Steam controller. Image Credit: Marco Arment on Flickr, William Hook on Flickr, Lewis Dowling on Flickr

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• Strange Recurrent Excessive I/O Wait

  - by Chris

  I know quite well that I/O wait has been discussed multiple times on this site, but all the other topics seem to cover constant I/O latency, while the I/O problem we need to solve on our server occurs at irregular (short) intervals, but is ever-present with massive spikes of up to 20k ms a-wait and service times of 2 seconds. The disk affected is /dev/sdb (Seagate Barracuda, for details see below). A typical iostat -x output would at times look like this, which is an extreme sample but by no means rare: iostat (Oct 6, 2013) tps rd_sec/s wr_sec/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz await svctm %util 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 16.00 0.00 156.00 9.75 21.89 288.12 36.00 57.60 5.50 0.00 44.00 8.00 48.79 2194.18 181.82 100.00 2.00 0.00 16.00 8.00 46.49 3397.00 500.00 100.00 4.50 0.00 40.00 8.89 43.73 5581.78 222.22 100.00 14.50 0.00 148.00 10.21 13.76 5909.24 68.97 100.00 1.50 0.00 12.00 8.00 8.57 7150.67 666.67 100.00 0.50 0.00 4.00 8.00 6.31 10168.00 2000.00 100.00 2.00 0.00 16.00 8.00 5.27 11001.00 500.00 100.00 0.50 0.00 4.00 8.00 2.96 17080.00 2000.00 100.00 34.00 0.00 1324.00 9.88 1.32 137.84 4.45 59.60 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 22.00 44.00 204.00 11.27 0.01 0.27 0.27 0.60 Let me provide you with some more information regarding the hardware. It's a Dell 1950 III box with Debian as OS where uname -a reports the following: Linux xx 2.6.32-5-amd64 #1 SMP Fri Feb 15 15:39:52 UTC 2013 x86_64 GNU/Linux The machine is a dedicated server that hosts an online game without any databases or I/O heavy applications running. The core application consumes about 0.8 of the 8 GBytes RAM, and the average CPU load is relatively low. The game itself, however, reacts rather sensitive towards I/O latency and thus our players experience massive ingame lag, which we would like to address as soon as possible. iostat: avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 1.77 0.01 1.05 1.59 0.00 95.58 Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn sdb 13.16 25.42 135.12 504701011 2682640656 sda 1.52 0.74 20.63 14644533 409684488 Uptime is: 19:26:26 up 229 days, 17:26, 4 users, load average: 0.36, 0.37, 0.32 Harddisk controller: 01:00.0 RAID bus controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic MegaRAID SAS 1078 (rev 04) Harddisks: Array 1, RAID-1, 2x Seagate Cheetah 15K.5 73 GB SAS Array 2, RAID-1, 2x Seagate ST3500620SS Barracuda ES.2 500GB 16MB 7200RPM SAS Partition information from df: Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sdb1 480191156 30715200 425083668 7% /home /dev/sda2 7692908 437436 6864692 6% / /dev/sda5 15377820 1398916 13197748 10% /usr /dev/sda6 39159724 19158340 18012140 52% /var Some more data samples generated with iostat -dx sdb 1 (Oct 11, 2013) Device: rrqm/s wrqm/s r/s w/s rsec/s wsec/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz await svctm %util sdb 0.00 15.00 0.00 70.00 0.00 656.00 9.37 4.50 1.83 4.80 33.60 sdb 0.00 0.00 0.00 2.00 0.00 16.00 8.00 12.00 836.00 500.00 100.00 sdb 0.00 0.00 0.00 3.00 0.00 32.00 10.67 9.96 1990.67 333.33 100.00 sdb 0.00 0.00 0.00 4.00 0.00 40.00 10.00 6.96 3075.00 250.00 100.00 sdb 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 4.00 0.00 0.00 100.00 sdb 0.00 0.00 0.00 2.00 0.00 16.00 8.00 2.62 4648.00 500.00 100.00 sdb 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 2.00 0.00 0.00 100.00 sdb 0.00 0.00 0.00 1.00 0.00 16.00 16.00 1.69 7024.00 1000.00 100.00 sdb 0.00 74.00 0.00 124.00 0.00 1584.00 12.77 1.09 67.94 6.94 86.00 Characteristic charts generated with rrdtool can be found here: iostat plot 1, 24 min interval: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/600/yqm3.png/ iostat plot 2, 120 min interval: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/407/griw.png/ As we have a rather large cache of 5.5 GBytes, we thought it might be a good idea to test if the I/O wait spikes would perhaps be caused by cache miss events. Therefore, we did a sync and then this to flush the cache and buffers: echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches and directly afterwards the I/O wait and service times virtually went through the roof, and everything on the machine felt like slow motion. During the next few hours the latency recovered and everything was as before - small to medium lags in short, unpredictable intervals. Now my question is: does anybody have any idea what might cause this annoying behaviour? Is it the first indication of the disk array or the raid controller dying, or something that can be easily mended by rebooting? (At the moment we're very reluctant to do this, however, because we're afraid that the disks might not come back up again.) Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, Chris. Edited to add: we do see one or two processes go to 'D' state in top, one of which seems to be kjournald rather frequently. If I'm not mistaken, however, this does not indicate the processes causing the latency, but rather those affected by it - correct me if I'm wrong. Does the information about uninterruptibly sleeping processes help us in any way to address the problem? @Andy Shinn requested smartctl data, here it is: smartctl -a -d megaraid,2 /dev/sdb yields: smartctl 5.40 2010-07-12 r3124 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net Device: SEAGATE ST3500620SS Version: MS05 Serial number: Device type: disk Transport protocol: SAS Local Time is: Mon Oct 14 20:37:13 2013 CEST Device supports SMART and is Enabled Temperature Warning Disabled or Not Supported SMART Health Status: OK Current Drive Temperature: 20 C Drive Trip Temperature: 68 C Elements in grown defect list: 0 Vendor (Seagate) cache information Blocks sent to initiator = 1236631092 Blocks received from initiator = 1097862364 Blocks read from cache and sent to initiator = 1383620256 Number of read and write commands whose size <= segment size = 531295338 Number of read and write commands whose size > segment size = 51986460 Vendor (Seagate/Hitachi) factory information number of hours powered up = 36556.93 number of minutes until next internal SMART test = 32 Error counter log: Errors Corrected by Total Correction Gigabytes Total ECC rereads/ errors algorithm processed uncorrected fast | delayed rewrites corrected invocations [10^9 bytes] errors read: 509271032 47 0 509271079 509271079 20981.423 0 write: 0 0 0 0 0 5022.039 0 verify: 1870931090 196 0 1870931286 1870931286 100558.708 0 Non-medium error count: 0 SMART Self-test log Num Test Status segment LifeTime LBA_first_err [SK ASC ASQ] Description number (hours) # 1 Background short Completed 16 36538 - [- - -] # 2 Background short Completed 16 36514 - [- - -] # 3 Background short Completed 16 36490 - [- - -] # 4 Background short Completed 16 36466 - [- - -] # 5 Background short Completed 16 36442 - [- - -] # 6 Background long Completed 16 36420 - [- - -] # 7 Background short Completed 16 36394 - [- - -] # 8 Background short Completed 16 36370 - [- - -] # 9 Background long Completed 16 36364 - [- - -] #10 Background short Completed 16 36361 - [- - -] #11 Background long Completed 16 2 - [- - -] #12 Background short Completed 16 0 - [- - -] Long (extended) Self Test duration: 6798 seconds [113.3 minutes] smartctl -a -d megaraid,3 /dev/sdb yields: smartctl 5.40 2010-07-12 r3124 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net Device: SEAGATE ST3500620SS Version: MS05 Serial number: Device type: disk Transport protocol: SAS Local Time is: Mon Oct 14 20:37:26 2013 CEST Device supports SMART and is Enabled Temperature Warning Disabled or Not Supported SMART Health Status: OK Current Drive Temperature: 19 C Drive Trip Temperature: 68 C Elements in grown defect list: 0 Vendor (Seagate) cache information Blocks sent to initiator = 288745640 Blocks received from initiator = 1097848399 Blocks read from cache and sent to initiator = 1304149705 Number of read and write commands whose size <= segment size = 527414694 Number of read and write commands whose size > segment size = 51986460 Vendor (Seagate/Hitachi) factory information number of hours powered up = 36596.83 number of minutes until next internal SMART test = 28 Error counter log: Errors Corrected by Total Correction Gigabytes Total ECC rereads/ errors algorithm processed uncorrected fast | delayed rewrites corrected invocations [10^9 bytes] errors read: 610862490 44 0 610862534 610862534 20470.133 0 write: 0 0 0 0 0 5022.480 0 verify: 2861227413 203 0 2861227616 2861227616 100872.443 0 Non-medium error count: 1 SMART Self-test log Num Test Status segment LifeTime LBA_first_err [SK ASC ASQ] Description number (hours) # 1 Background short Completed 16 36580 - [- - -] # 2 Background short Completed 16 36556 - [- - -] # 3 Background short Completed 16 36532 - [- - -] # 4 Background short Completed 16 36508 - [- - -] # 5 Background short Completed 16 36484 - [- - -] # 6 Background long Completed 16 36462 - [- - -] # 7 Background short Completed 16 36436 - [- - -] # 8 Background short Completed 16 36412 - [- - -] # 9 Background long Completed 16 36404 - [- - -] #10 Background short Completed 16 36401 - [- - -] #11 Background long Completed 16 2 - [- - -] #12 Background short Completed 16 0 - [- - -] Long (extended) Self Test duration: 6798 seconds [113.3 minutes]

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• How to Tell a Hardware Problem From a Software Problem

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Your computer seems to be malfunctioning — it’s slow, programs are crashing or Windows may be blue-screening. Is your computer’s hardware failing, or does it have a software problem that you can fix on your own? This can actually be a bit tricky to figure out. Hardware problems and software problems can lead to the same symptoms — for example, frequent blue screens of death may be caused by either software or hardware problems. Computer is Slow We’ve all heard the stories — someone’s computer slows down over time because they install too much software that runs at startup or it becomes infected with malware. The person concludes that their computer is slowing down because it’s old, so they replace it. But they’re wrong. If a computer is slowing down, it has a software problem that can be fixed. Hardware problems shouldn’t cause your computer to slow down. There are some rare exceptions to this — perhaps your CPU is overheating and it’s downclocking itself, running slower to stay cooler — but most slowness is caused by software issues. Blue Screens Modern versions of Windows are much more stable than older versions of Windows. When used with reliable hardware with well-programmed drivers, a typical Windows computer shouldn’t blue-screen at all. If you are encountering frequent blue screens of death, there’s a good chance your computer’s hardware is failing. Blue screens could also be caused by badly programmed hardware drivers, however. If you just installed or upgraded hardware drivers and blue screens start, try uninstalling the drivers or using system restore — there may be something wrong with the drivers. If you haven’t done anything with your drivers recently and blue screens start, there’s a very good chance you have a hardware problem. Computer Won’t Boot If your computer won’t boot, you could have either a software problem or a hardware problem. Is Windows attempting to boot and failing part-way through the boot process, or does the computer no longer recognize its hard drive or not power on at all? Consult our guide to troubleshooting boot problems for more information. When Hardware Starts to Fail… Here are some common components that can fail and the problems their failures may cause: Hard Drive: If your hard drive starts failing, files on your hard drive may become corrupted. You may see long delays when you attempt to access files or save to the hard drive. Windows may stop booting entirely. CPU: A failing CPU may result in your computer not booting at all. If the CPU is overheating, your computer may blue-screen when it’s under load — for example, when you’re playing a demanding game or encoding video. RAM: Applications write data to your RAM and use it for short-term storage. If your RAM starts failing, an application may write data to part of the RAM, then later read it back and get an incorrect value. This can result in application crashes, blue screens, and file corruption. Graphics Card: Graphics card problems may result in graphical errors while rendering 3D content or even just while displaying your desktop. If the graphics card is overheating, it may crash your graphics driver or cause your computer to freeze while under load — for example, when playing demanding 3D games. Fans: If any of the fans fail in your computer, components may overheat and you may see the above CPU or graphics card problems. Your computer may also shut itself down abruptly so it doesn’t overheat any further and damage itself. Motherboard: Motherboard problems can be extremely tough to diagnose. You may see occasional blue screens or similar problems. Power Supply: A malfunctioning power supply is also tough to diagnose — it may deliver too much power to a component, damaging it and causing it to malfunction. If the power supply dies completely, your computer won’t power on and nothing will happen when you press the power button. Other common problems — for example, a computer slowing down — are likely to be software problems. It’s also possible that software problems can cause many of the above symptoms — malware that hooks deep into the Windows kernel can cause your computer to blue-screen, for example. The Only Way to Know For Sure We’ve tried to give you some idea of the difference between common software problems and hardware problems with the above examples. But it’s often tough to know for sure, and troubleshooting is usually a trial-and-error process. This is especially true if you have an intermittent problem, such as your computer blue-screening a few times a week. You can try scanning your computer for malware and running System Restore to restore your computer’s system software back to its previous working state, but these aren’t  guaranteed ways to fix software problems. The best way to determine whether the problem you have is a software or hardware one is to bite the bullet and restore your computer’s software back to its default state. That means reinstalling Windows or using the Refresh or reset feature on Windows 8. See whether the problem still persists after you restore its operating system to its default state. If you still see the same problem – for example, if your computer is blue-screening and continues to blue-screen after reinstalling Windows — you know you have a hardware problem and need to have your computer fixed or replaced. If the computer crashes or freezes while reinstalling Windows, you definitely have a hardware problem. Even this isn’t a completely perfect method — for example, you may reinstall Windows and install the same hardware drivers afterwards. If the hardware drivers are badly programmed, the blue-screens may continue. Blue screens of death aren’t as common on Windows these days — if you’re encountering them frequently, you likely have a hardware problem. Most blue screens you encounter will likely be caused by hardware issues. On the other hand, other common complaints like “my computer has slowed down” are easily fixable software problems. When in doubt, back up your files and reinstall Windows. Image Credit: Anders Sandberg on Flickr, comedy_nose on Flickr     

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• 5 Ways To Try Out and Install Ubuntu On Your Computer

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Want to try out Ubuntu, but not sure where to start? There are lots of ways to try out Ubuntu – you can even install it on Windows and uninstall it from your Control Panel if you don’t like it. Ubuntu can be booted from a USB or CD drive and used without installation, installed under Windows with no partitioning required, run in a window on your Windows desktop, or installed alongside Windows on your computer. 6 Ways Windows 8 Is More Secure Than Windows 7 HTG Explains: Why It’s Good That Your Computer’s RAM Is Full 10 Awesome Improvements For Desktop Users in Windows 8

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• How To Access the Developer Options Menu and Enable USB Debugging on Android 4.2

  - by Chris Hoffman

  In Android 4.2, the Developer Options menu and USB Debugging option have been hidden. If you need to enable USB Debugging, you can access the Developer Options menu with a quick trick. The developer options aren’t just used by developers. USB Debugging is required by adb, which is used for rooting an Android device, backing it up, installing a custom ROM, taking screenshots from a computer, or doing many other things. Why Does 64-Bit Windows Need a Separate “Program Files (x86)” Folder? Why Your Android Phone Isn’t Getting Operating System Updates and What You Can Do About It How To Delete, Move, or Rename Locked Files in Windows

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• Why Solid-State Drives Slow Down As You Fill Them Up

  - by Chris Hoffman

  The benchmarks are clear: Solid-state drives slow down as you fill them up. Fill your solid-state drive to near-capacity and its write performance will decrease dramatically. The reason why lies in the way SSDs and NAND Flash storage work. Filling the drive to capacity is one of the things you should never do with a solid-state drive. A nearly full solid-state drive will have much slower write operations, slowing down your computer.    

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• HTG Explains: Should You Build Your Own PC?

  - by Chris Hoffman

  There was a time when every geek seemed to build their own PC. While the masses bought eMachines and Compaqs, geeks built their own more powerful and reliable desktop machines for cheaper. But does this still make sense? Building your own PC still offers as much flexibility in component choice as it ever did, but prebuilt computers are available at extremely competitive prices. Building your own PC will no longer save you money in most cases. The Rise of Laptops It’s impossible to look at the decline of geeks building their own PCs without considering the rise of laptops. There was a time when everyone seemed to use desktops — laptops were more expensive and significantly slower in day-to-day tasks. With the diminishing importance of computing power — nearly every modern computer has more than enough power to surf the web and use typical programs like Microsoft Office without any trouble — and the rise of laptop availability at nearly every price point, most people are buying laptops instead of desktops. And, if you’re buying a laptop, you can’t really build your own. You can’t just buy a laptop case and start plugging components into it — even if you could, you would end up with an extremely bulky device. Ultimately, to consider building your own desktop PC, you have to actually want a desktop PC. Most people are better served by laptops. Benefits to PC Building The two main reasons to build your own PC have been component choice and saving money. Building your own PC allows you to choose all the specific components you want rather than have them chosen for you. You get to choose everything, including the PC’s case and cooling system. Want a huge case with room for a fancy water-cooling system? You probably want to build your own PC. In the past, this often allowed you to save money — you could get better deals by buying the components yourself and combining them, avoiding the PC manufacturer markup. You’d often even end up with better components — you could pick up a more powerful CPU that was easier to overclock and choose more reliable components so you wouldn’t have to put up with an unstable eMachine that crashed every day. PCs you build yourself are also likely more upgradable — a prebuilt PC may have a sealed case and be constructed in such a way to discourage you from tampering with the insides, while swapping components in and out is generally easier with a computer you’ve built on your own. If you want to upgrade your CPU or replace your graphics card, it’s a definite benefit. Downsides to Building Your Own PC It’s important to remember there are downsides to building your own PC, too. For one thing, it’s just more work — sure, if you know what you’re doing, building your own PC isn’t that hard. Even for a geek, researching the best components, price-matching, waiting for them all to arrive, and building the PC just takes longer. Warranty is a more pernicious problem. If you buy a prebuilt PC and it starts malfunctioning, you can contact the computer’s manufacturer and have them deal with it. You don’t need to worry about what’s wrong. If you build your own PC and it starts malfunctioning, you have to diagnose the problem yourself. What’s malfunctioning, the motherboard, CPU, RAM, graphics card, or power supply? Each component has a separate warranty through its manufacturer, so you’ll have to determine which component is malfunctioning before you can send it off for replacement. Should You Still Build Your Own PC? Let’s say you do want a desktop and are willing to consider building your own PC. First, bear in mind that PC manufacturers are buying in bulk and getting a better deal on each component. They also have to pay much less for a Windows license than the $120 or so it would cost you to to buy your own Windows license. This is all going to wipe out the cost savings you’ll see — with everything all told, you’ll probably spend more money building your own average desktop PC than you would picking one up from Amazon or the local electronics store. If you’re an average PC user that uses your desktop for the typical things, there’s no money to be saved from building your own PC. But maybe you’re looking for something higher end. Perhaps you want a high-end gaming PC with the fastest graphics card and CPU available. Perhaps you want to pick out each individual component and choose the exact components for your gaming rig. In this case, building your own PC may be a good option. As you start to look at more expensive, high-end PCs, you may start to see a price gap — but you may not. Let’s say you wanted to blow thousands of dollars on a gaming PC. If you’re looking at spending this kind of money, it would be worth comparing the cost of individual components versus a prebuilt gaming system. Still, the actual prices may surprise you. For example, if you wanted to upgrade Dell’s $2293 Alienware Aurora to include a second NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 graphics card, you’d pay an additional $600 on Alienware’s website. The same graphics card costs $650 on Amazon or Newegg, so you’d be spending more money building the system yourself. Why? Dell’s Alienware gets bulk discounts you can’t get — and this is Alienware, which was once regarded as selling ridiculously overpriced gaming PCs to people who wouldn’t build their own. Building your own PC still allows you to get the most freedom when choosing and combining components, but this is only valuable to a small niche of gamers and professional users — most people, even average gamers, would be fine going with a prebuilt system. If you’re an average person or even an average gamer, you’ll likely find that it’s cheaper to purchase a prebuilt PC rather than assemble your own. Even at the very high end, components may be more expensive separately than they are in a prebuilt PC. Enthusiasts who want to choose all the individual components for their dream gaming PC and want maximum flexibility may want to build their own PCs. Even then, building your own PC these days is more about flexibility and component choice than it is about saving money. In summary, you probably shouldn’t build your own PC. If you’re an enthusiast, you may want to — but only a small minority of people would actually benefit from building their own systems. Feel free to compare prices, but you may be surprised which is cheaper. Image Credit: Richard Jones on Flickr, elPadawan on Flickr, Richard Jones on Flickr     

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• Embracing Community

  - by Chris Williams

  I just put the finishing touches on another article for my Code Magazine column: Embracing Community. You won't see this one until around July, but it focuses on a subject near and dear to my heart: Code Camps! At the end of the article, I mention that I'm interested in hearing some of your war stories about community and what you do to be a part of it. I'll be talking to people at Tech Ed 2010 and Codestock, but I would also like to hear from some of you that read this blog. If you have an interesting story to share, drop me a line (via this blog) and tell me about it. You never know, it just might end up in my column.

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• The 20 Most Important Keyboard Shortcuts For Windows PCs

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Keyboard shortcuts are practically essential for using any type of PC. They’ll speed up almost everything you do. But long lists of keyboard shortcuts can quickly become overwhelming if you’re just getting started. This list will cover the most useful keyboard shortcuts that every Windows user should know. If you haven’t used keyboard shortcuts much, these will show you just how useful keyboard shortcuts can be. Windows Key + Search The Windows key is particularly important on Windows 8 — especially before Windows 8.1 — because it allows you to quickly return to the Start screen. On Windows 7, it opens the Start menu. Either way, you can start typing immediately after you press the Windows key to search for programs, settings, and files. For example, if you want to launch Firefox, you can press the Windows key, start typing the word Firefox, and press Enter when the Firefox shortcut appears. It’s a quick way to launch programs, open files, and locate Control Panel options without even touching your mouse and without digging through a cluttered Start menu. You can also use the arrow keys to select the shortcut you want to launch before pressing Enter. Copy, Cut, Paste Copy, Cut, and Paste are extremely important keyboard shortcuts for text-editing. If you do any typing on your computer, you probably use them. These options can be accessed using the mouse, either by right-clicking on selected text or opening the application’s Edit menu, but this is the slowest way to do it. After selecting some text, press Ctrl+C to copy it or Ctrl+X to cut it. Position the cursor where you want the text and use Ctrl+V to paste it. These shortcuts can save you a huge amount of time over using the mouse. Search the Current Page or File To quickly perform a search in the current application — whether you’re in a web browser, PDF viewer, document editor, or almost any other type of application — press Ctrl+F. The application’s search (or “Find”) feature will pop up, and you can instantly start typing a phrase you want to search for. You can generally press Enter to  go to the next appearance of the word or phrase in the document, quickly searching through it for what you’re interested in. Switch Between Applications and Tabs Rather than clicking buttons on your taskbar, Alt+Tab is a very quick way to switch between running applications. Windows orders the list of open windows by the order you accessed them, so if you’re only using two different applications, you can just press Alt+Tab to quickly switch between them. If switching between more than two windows, you’ll have to hold the Alt key and press Tab repeatedly to toggle through the list of open windows. If you miss the window you want, you can always press Alt+Shift+Tab to move through the list in reverse. To move between tabs in an application — such as the browser tabs in your web browser — press Ctrl+Tab. Ctrl+Shift+Tab will move through tabs in reverse. Quickly Print If you’re the kind of person who still prints things, you can quickly open the print window by pressing Ctrl+P. This can be faster than hunting down the Print option in every program you want to print something from. Basic Browser Shortcuts Web browser shortcuts can save you tons of time, too. Ctrl+T is a very useful one, as it will open a new tab with the address bar focused, so you can quickly press Ctrl +T, type a search phrase or web address, and press Enter to go there. To go back or forward while browsing, hold the Ctrl key and press the left or right arrow keys. If you’d just like to focus your web browser’s address bar so you can type a new web address or search without opening a new tab, press Ctrl + L. You can then start typing something and press Enter. Close Tabs and Windows To quickly close the current application, press Alt+F4. This works on the desktop and even in new Windows 8-style applications. To quickly close the current browser tab or document, press Ctrl+W. This will often close the current window if there are no other tabs open. Lock Your Computer When you’re done using your computer and want to step away, you may want to lock it. People won’t be able to log in and access your desktop unless they know your password. You can do this from the Start menu or Start screen, but the fastest way to lock your screen is by quickly pressing Windows Key + L before you get up. Access the Task Manager Ctrl+Alt+Delete will take you to a screen that allows you to quickly launch the Task Manager or perform other operations, such as signing out. This is particularly useful because if can be used to recover from situations where your computer doesn’t appear responsive or isn’t accepting input. For example, if a full-screen game becomes unresponsive, Ctrl+Alt+Delete will often allow you to escape from it and end it via the Task Manager. Windows 8 Shortcuts On Windows 8 PCs, there are other very important keyboard shortcuts. Windows Key + C will open your Charms bar, while Windows Key + Tab will open the new App Switcher. These keyboard shortcuts will allow you to avoid the hot corners, which can be tedious to use with a mouse. On the desktop side, Windows Key + D will take you back to the desktop from anywhere. Windows Key + X will open a special “power user menu” that gives you quick access to options that are hidden in the new Windows 8 interface, including Shut Down, Restart, and Control Panel. If you’re interested in learning more keyboard shortcuts, be sure to check our longer lists of 47 keyboard shortcuts that work in all web browsers and 42+ keyboard shortcuts to speed up text-editing. Image Credit: Jeroen Bennink on Flickr     

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