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• Selling Visual Studio ALM

  - by Tarun Arora

  Introduction As a consultant I have been selling Application Lifecycle Management services using Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server. I’ve been contacted various times by friends working in organization telling me that ALM processes in their company were benchmarked when dinosaurs walked the earth. Most of these individuals already know the great features Microsoft ALM tools offer and are keen to start a conversation with the CIO but don’t exactly know where to start. It is very important how you engage in your first conversation, if you start the conversation with ‘There is this great tooling from Microsoft which offers amazing features to boost developer productivity, … ‘ from experience I can tell you the reply from your CIO would be ‘I already know! Our existing landscape has a combination of bleeding edge open source and cutting edge licensed tools which already cover these features quite well, more over Microsoft products have a high licensing cost associated to them.’ You will always find it harder to sell by feature, the trick is to highlight the gap in the existing processes & tools and then highlight the impact of these gaps to the overall development processes, by now you would have captured enough attention to show off how the ALM tooling offered by Microsoft not only fills those gaps but offers great value adds to take their development practices to the next level. Rangers ALM Assessment Guide Image 1 – Welcome! First look at the Rangers ALM assessment guide Most organization already have some processes in place to cover aspects of ALM. How do you go about proving that there isn’t enough cover in place? This is where Visual Studio ALM Rangers ALM Assessment guide can help. The ALM assessment guide is really a tool that helps you gather information about Development practices and processes within a customer's environment. Several questionnaires are used to identify the current state of individual development lifecycle areas and decide on a desired state for those processes. It also presents guidance and roll-up summaries to help with recommendations moving forward. The ALM Rangers assessment guide can be downloaded from here. Image 2 – ALM Assessment guide divided into different functions of SDLC The assessment guide is divided into different functions of Software Development Lifecycle (listed below), this gives you the ability to access how mature the company is in different areas of SDLC. Architecture & Design Requirement Engineering & UX Development Software Configuration Management Governance Deployment & Operations Testing & Quality Assurance Project Planning & Management Each section has a set of questions, fill in the assessment by selecting “Never/Sometimes/Always” from the Answer column in the question sheets.  Each answer has weightage to the overall score. Each question has a link next to it, clicking the link takes you to the Reference sheet which gives you more details about the question along with a reason for “why you need to ask this question?”, “other ways to phrase the question” and “what to expect as an answer from the customer”. The trick is to engage the customer in a discussion. You need to probe a lot, listen to the customer and have a discussion with several team members, preferably without management to ensure that you receive candid feedback. This reminds me of a funny incident when during an ALM review a customer told me that they have a sophisticated semi-automated application deployment process, further discussions revealed that deployment actually involved 72 manual configuration steps per production node. Such observations can be recorded in the Issue Brainstorming worksheet for further consideration later. It is also worth mentioning the different levels of ALM maturity to the customer. By default the desired state of ALM maturity is set to Standard, it is possible to set a desired state by area, you should strive for Advanced or Dynamic, it always helps by explaining the classification and advantages. Image 3 – ALM levels by description The ALM assessment guide helps you arrive at a quantitative measure of the company’s ALM maturity. The resultant graph plotted on a spider’s web shows you the company’s current state of ALM maturity and the desired state of ALM maturity. Further since the results are classified by area you can immediately spot the areas where the customer needs immediate help. Image 4 – The spiders web! The red cross icons are areas shouting out for immediate attention, the yellow exclamation icons are areas that need improvement. These icons are calculated on the difference between the Current State of ALM maturity VS the Desired state of ALM maturity. Image 5 – Results by area Conclusion To conclude the Rangers ALM assessment guide gives you the ability to, Measure the customer’s current ALM maturity level Understand the ALM maturity level the customer desires to achieve Capture a healthy list of issues the customer wants to brainstorm further Now What’s next…? Download and get started with the Rangers ALM Assessment Guide. If you have successfully captured the above listed three pieces of information you are in a great state to make recommendations on the identified areas highlighting the benefits that Visual Studio ALM tools would offer. In the next post I will be covering how to take the ALM assessment results as the base to actually convert your recommendation into a sell.  Remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. I would love to hear your feedback! If you have any recommendations on things that I should consider or any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment. *** A special thanks goes out to fellow ranges Willy, Ethem and Philip for reviewing the blog post and providing valuable feedback. ***

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• Check Your Spelling, Grammar, and Style in Firefox and Chrome

  - by Matthew Guay

  Are you tired of making simple writing mistakes that get past your browser’s spell-check?  Here’s how you can get advanced grammar check and more in Firefox and Chrome with After the Deadline. Microsoft Word has spoiled us with grammar, syntax, and spell checking, but the default spell check in Firefox and Chrome still only does basic checks.  Even webapps like Google Docs don’t check more than basic spelling errors.  However, WordPress.com is an exception; it offers advanced spelling, grammar, and syntax checking with its After the Deadline proofing system.  This helps you keep from making embarrassing mistakes on your blog posts, and now, thanks to a couple free browser plugins, it can help you keep from making these mistakes in any website or webapp. After the Deadline in Google Chrome Add the After the Deadline extension (link below) to Chrome as usual. As soon as it’s installed, you’re ready to start improving your online writing.  To check spelling, grammar, and more, click the ABC button that you’ll now see at the bottom of most text boxes online. After a quick scan, grammar mistakes are highlighted in green, complex expressions and other syntax problems are highlighted in blue, and spelling mistakes are highlighted in red as would be expected.  Click on an underlined word to choose one of its recommended changes or ignore the suggestion. Or, if you want more explanation about what was wrong with that word or phrase, click Explain for more info. And, if you forget to run an After the Deadline scan before submitting a text entry, it will automatically check to make sure you still want to submit it.  Click Cancel to go back and check your writing first.   To change the After the Deadline settings, click its icon in the toolbar and select View Options.  Additionally, if you want to disable it on the site you’re on, you can click Disable on this site directly from the popup. From the settings page, you can choose extra things to check for such as double negatives and redundant phrases, as well as add sites and words to ignore. After the Deadline in Firefox Add the After the Deadline add-on to Firefox (link below) as normal. After the Deadline basically the same in Firefox as it does in Chrome.  Select the ABC icon in the lower right corner of textboxes to check them for problems, and After the Deadline will underline the problems as it did in Chrome.  To view a suggested change in Firefox, right-click on the underlined word and select the recommended change or ignore the suggestion. And, if you forget to check, you’ll see a friendly reminder asking if you’re sure you want to submit your text like it is. You can access the After the Deadline settings in Firefox from the menu bar.  Click Tools, then select AtD Preferences.  In Firefox, the settings are in a options dialog with three tabs, but it includes the same options as the Chrome settings page.  Here you can make After the Deadline as correction-happy as you like.   Conclusion The web has increasingly become an interactive place, and seldom does a day go by that we aren’t entering text in forms and comments that may stay online forever.  Even our insignificant tweets are being archived in the Library of Congress.  After the Deadline can help you make sure that your permanent internet record is as grammatically correct as possible.  Even though it doesn’t catch every problem, and even misses some spelling mistakes, it’s still a great help. Links Download the After the Deadline extension for Google Chrome Download the After the Deadline add-on for Firefox Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Quick Tip: Disable Favicons in FirefoxStupid Geek Tricks: Duplicate a Tab with a Shortcut Key in Chrome or FirefoxHow to Disable the New Geolocation Feature in Google ChromeStupid Geek Tricks: Compare Your Browser’s Memory Usage with Google ChromeStop YouTube Videos from Automatically Playing in Chrome TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Easily Search Food Recipes With Recipe Chimp Tech Fanboys Field Guide Check these Awesome Chrome Add-ons iFixit Offers Gadget Repair Manuals Online Vista style sidebar for Windows 7 Create Nice Charts With These Web Based Tools

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• Querying Visual Studio project files using T-SQL and Powershell

  - by jamiet

  Earlier today I had a need to get some information out of a Visual Studio project file and in this blog post I’m going to share a couple of ways of going about that because I’m pretty sure I won’t be the only person that ever wants to do this. The specific problem I was trying to solve was finding out how many objects in my database project (i.e. in my .dbproj file) had any warnings suppressed but the techniques discussed below will work pretty well for any Visual Studio project file because every such file is simply an XML document, hence it can be queried by anything that can query XML documents. Ever heard the phrase “when all you’ve got is hammer everything looks like a nail”? Well that’s me with querying stuff – if I can write SQL then I’m writing SQL. Here’s a little noddy database project I put together for demo purposes: Two views and a stored procedure, nothing fancy. I suppressed warnings for [View1] & [Procedure1] and hence the pertinent part my project file looks like this:   <ItemGroup>    <Build Include="Schema Objects\Schemas\dbo\Views\View1.view.sql">      <SubType>Code</SubType>      <SuppressWarnings>4151,3276</SuppressWarnings>    </Build>    <Build Include="Schema Objects\Schemas\dbo\Views\View2.view.sql">      <SubType>Code</SubType>    </Build>    <Build Include="Schema Objects\Schemas\dbo\Programmability\Stored Procedures\Procedure1.proc.sql">      <SubType>Code</SubType>      <SuppressWarnings>4151</SuppressWarnings>    </Build>  </ItemGroup>  <ItemGroup> Note the <SuppressWarnings> elements – those are the bits of information that I am after. With a lot of help from folks on the SQL Server XML forum  I came up with the following query that nailed what I was after. It reads the contents of the .dbproj file into a variable of type XML and then shreds it using T-SQL’s XML data type methods: DECLARE @xml XML; SELECT @xml = CAST(pkgblob.BulkColumn AS XML) FROM   OPENROWSET(BULK 'C:\temp\QueryingProjectFileDemo\QueryingProjectFileDemo.dbproj' -- <-Change this path!                    ,single_blob) AS pkgblob                    ;WITH XMLNAMESPACES( 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003' AS ns) SELECT  REVERSE(SUBSTRING(REVERSE(ObjectPath),0,CHARINDEX('\',REVERSE(ObjectPath)))) AS [ObjectName]        ,[SuppressedWarnings] FROM   (        SELECT  build.query('.') AS [_node]        ,       build.value('ns:SuppressWarnings[1]','nvarchar(100)') AS [SuppressedWarnings]        ,       build.value('@Include','nvarchar(1000)') AS [ObjectPath]        FROM    @xml.nodes('//ns:Build[ns:SuppressWarnings]') AS R(build)        )q And here’s the output: And that’s it – an easy way of discovering which warnings have been suppressed and for which objects in your database projects. I won’t bother going over the code as it is fairly self-explanatory – peruse it at your leisure.   Once I had the SQL above I figured I’d share it around a little in case it was ever useful to anyone else; hence I’m writing this blog post and I also posted it on the Visual Studio Database Development Tools forum at FYI: Discover which objects have had warnings suppressed. Luckily Kevin Goode saw the thread and he posted a different solution to the same problem, one that uses Powershell. The advantage of Kevin’s Powershell approach is that it is easy to analyse many .dbproj files at the same time. Below is Kevin’s code which I have tweaked ever so slightly so that it produces the same results as my SQL script (I just want any object that had had a warning suppressed whereas Kevin was querying specifically for warning 4151):   cd 'C:\Temp\QueryingProjectFileDemo\' cls $projects = ls -r -i *.dbproj Foreach($project in $projects) { $xml = new-object System.Xml.XmlDocument $xml.set_PreserveWhiteSpace( $true ) $xml.Load($project) #$xpath = @{Start="/e:Project/e:ItemGroup/e:Build[e:SuppressWarnings=4151]/@Include"} #$xpath = @{Start="/e:Project/e:ItemGroup/e:Build[contains(e:SuppressWarnings,'4151')]/@Include"} $xpath = @{Start="/e:Project/e:ItemGroup/e:Build[e:SuppressWarnings]/@Include"} $ns = @{ e = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003" } $xml | Select-Xml -XPath $xpath.Start -Namespace $ns |Select -Expand Node | Select -expand Value } and here’s the output: Nice reusable Powershell and SQL scripts – not bad for an evening’s work. Thank you to Kevin for allowing me to share his code. Don’t forget that these techniques can easily be adapted to query any Visual Studio project file, they’re only XML documents after all! Doubtless many people out there already have code for doing this but nonetheless here is another offering to the great script library in the sky. Have fun! @Jamiet

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• SQL SERVER – What is Incremental Statistics? – Performance improvements in SQL Server 2014 – Part 1

  - by Pinal Dave

  This is the first part of the series Incremental Statistics. Here is the index of the complete series. What is Incremental Statistics? – Performance improvements in SQL Server 2014 – Part 1 Simple Example of Incremental Statistics – Performance improvements in SQL Server 2014 – Part 2 DMV to Identify Incremental Statistics – Performance improvements in SQL Server 2014 – Part 3 Statistics are considered one of the most important aspects of SQL Server Performance Tuning. You might have often heard the phrase, with related to performance tuning. “Update Statistics before you take any other steps to tune performance”. Honestly, I have said above statement many times and many times, I have personally updated statistics before I start to do any performance tuning exercise. You may agree or disagree to the point, but there is no denial that Statistics play an extremely vital role in the performance tuning. SQL Server 2014 has a new feature called Incremental Statistics. I have been playing with this feature for quite a while and I find that very interesting. After spending some time with this feature, I decided to write about this subject over here. New in SQL Server 2014 – Incremental Statistics Well, it seems like lots of people wants to start using SQL Server 2014′s new feature of Incremetnal Statistics. However, let us understand what actually this feature does and how it can help. I will try to simplify this feature first before I start working on the demo code. Code for all versions of SQL Server Here is the code which you can execute on all versions of SQL Server and it will update the statistics of your table. The keyword which you should pay attention is WITH FULLSCAN. It will scan the entire table and build brand new statistics for you which your SQL Server Performance Tuning engine can use for better estimation of your execution plan. UPDATE STATISTICS TableName(StatisticsName) WITH FULLSCAN Who should learn about this? Why? If you are using partitions in your database, you should consider about implementing this feature. Otherwise, this feature is pretty much not applicable to you. Well, if you are using single partition and your table data is in a single place, you still have to update your statistics the same way you have been doing. If you are using multiple partitions, this may be a very useful feature for you. In most cases, users have multiple partitions because they have lots of data in their table. Each partition will have data which belongs to itself. Now it is very common that each partition are populated separately in SQL Server. Real World Example For example, if your table contains data which is related to sales, you will have plenty of entries in your table. It will be a good idea to divide the partition into multiple filegroups for example, you can divide this table into 3 semesters or 4 quarters or even 12 months. Let us assume that we have divided our table into 12 different partitions. Now for the month of January, our first partition will be populated and for the month of February our second partition will be populated. Now assume, that you have plenty of the data in your first and second partition. Now the month of March has just started and your third partition has started to populate. Due to some reason, if you want to update your statistics, what will you do? In SQL Server 2012 and earlier version You will just use the code of WITH FULLSCAN and update the entire table. That means even though you have only data in third partition you will still update the entire table. This will be VERY resource intensive process as you will be updating the statistics of the partition 1 and 2 where data has not changed at all. In SQL Server 2014 You will just update the partition of Partition 3. There is a special syntax where you can now specify which partition you want to update now. The impact of this is that it is smartly merging the new data with old statistics and update the entire statistics without doing FULLSCAN of your entire table. This has a huge impact on performance. Remember that the new feature in SQL Server 2014 does not change anything besides the capability to update a single partition. However, there is one feature which is indeed attractive. Previously, when table data were changed 20% at that time, statistics update were triggered. However, now the same threshold is applicable to a single partition. That means if your partition faces 20% data, change it will also trigger partition level statistics update which, when merged to your final statistics will give you better performance. In summary If you are not using a partition, this feature is not applicable to you. If you are using a partition, this feature can be very helpful to you. Tomorrow: We will see working code of SQL Server 2014 Incremental Statistics. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: SQL Statistics, Statistics

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• Xobni Plus for Outlook [Review]

  - by The Geek

  Overview Xobni Plus is an addin that will bring a sidebar to Outlook which allows you to search through your inbox and contacts a lot easier. It provides the ability to search and keep track of your favorite social networks. Searching with Xobni is a lot more powerful than the default search feature in Outlook. It let’s you drill down your searches to conversations, email, links, and attachments. It now supports Outlook 2010 both 32 & 64-bit versions. Installation & Setup Installation is easy following the wizard. After completing the wizard you can tell you’re friends on Facebook and Twitter that you are now using it. You can also decide to join their Product Improvement Program if you want. After installation when you open Outlook, Xobni appears as a sidebar on the right side. Don’t worry about it always being in the way, as you can hide it if you need more room for other Outlook functions. After Xobni free is installed, you can upgrade to the Plus version at any time. A new window will open up and you can use your Credit Card, PayPal, or redeem a code if you have one. Features & Use Where to begin with the amount of features available in Xobni Plus? It really has an amazing amount of cool features. Of course you’ll have all of the features of the Free Version which we previously covered…and a lot more. After Xobni is installed you’ll notice a section for it on the Ribbon. From here you can search Xobni, show or hide the Sidebar, and change other options. It allows you to easily keep up with various social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn… Check out email analytics and contact ranks. Click on the Files Exchanged tab to search for specific attachments. Quickly search links exchanged with your contacts. Hover over a link to get a preview of what it entails. It gives you the ability to index all of your Yahoo mail as well, without the need for purchasing Yahoo Plus! Then your Yahoo messages appear in the Xobni sidebar. When you select a contact you can see related messages from you Yahoo account. Easily index all of your mail…including Yahoo mail for better organization and faster search results. There are several options you can select to change the way Xobni works. From setting up your Yahoo email, Indexing options, and much more. Additional Features of Xobni Plus Advanced Search Capabilities – Filter results, Boolean & Phrase Search, Ability to search Appointments & Tasks, Advanced Search Builder Search unlimited PST data files Xobni contacts in the compose screen Find links exchanged with your contacts View calendar appointments One year premium tech support No Ads! Performance We ran Xobni Plus on Outlook 2010 32-bit on a Dual-Core AMD Athlon system with 4GB of RAM and found it to run quite smoothly. However, we did notice it would sometimes slow down launching Outlook, especially if other apps are running at the same time. Product Support When you buy a license for Xobni Plus you get a full year of premium tech support. They provide a Questions and Answers page on their site where you can run a search query and answers appear instantly. You can contact support directly as a Plus member through their web form and they advise the turn around time is 2 business days. However, when we tested it, we received a response within 24 hours. They also provide FAQ, Community forum, and you can download the Owners Manual in PDF format from the support page. Conclusion Xobni Plus is a very powerful addin for Outlook and includes a lot more features that we didn’t cover in this review. You can download Xobni free edition which includes an 8 day free trial of the Plus version. This provides a good way to start getting familiar with it. Then upgrade to Xobni Plus at any time for $29.95. Once you get started, you’ll find the sidebar is nicely laid out and intuitive to use. If you live out of Outlook during the day, Xobni Plus is a great addition for fast and powerful searches. It provides an easy way to keep all of your contacts and messages well organized and easy to find. Xobni Plus works with XP, Vista, and Windows 7 (32 & 64-bit editions) Outlook 2003, 2007 and both 32 & 64-bit editions of Outlook 2010. Download Xobni Plus Download Xobni Free Edition Rating Installation: 8 Ease of Use: 8 Features: 9 Performance: 8 Product Support: 8 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Xobni Free Powers Up Outlook’s Search and ContactsCreate an Email Template in Outlook 2003Add Social Elements to Your Gmail Contacts with RapportiveChange Outlook Startup FolderClear Outlook Searches and MRU (Most Recently Used) Lists TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 10 Superb Firefox Wallpapers OpenDNS Guide Google TV The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides

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• Microsoft BUILD 2013 Day 1&ndash;Keynote

  - by Tim Murphy

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tmurphy/archive/2013/06/27/microsoft-build-2013-day-1ndashkeynote.aspx This one is going to be a little long because the keynote was jam-packed so bare with me. The keynote for the first day of BUILD 2013 was kicked off by Steve Balmer.  He made it very clear that Microsoft’s focus is on accelerating its time to market with products and product updates.  His quote was that “Rapid release” is the new norm.  He continued by showing off several new Lumias that have been buzzing around the internet for a while and announce that Sprint will now be carrying the HTC 8XT and Samsung ATIV. Balmer is known for repeating words or phrase for affect.  This time it was “Rapid release, rapid release” and “Touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, …”.  This was fun, but even more fun was when he announce that all attendees would receive an Acer Iconia 8” tablet. SCORE! The next subject Balmer focused on is new apps.  The three new ones were Flipboard, Facebook and NFL Fantasy Football.  I liked the first two because these are ones that people coming from other platforms are missing.  The NFL app is great just because it targets a demographic that can be fanatical.  If these types of apps keep coming than the missing app argument goes away. While many Negative Nancy’s are describing Windows 8.1 as Windows 180 Steve Balmer chose to call it a “refined blend” as in a coffee that has been improved with a new mix.  This includes more multi-tasking options and leveraging Bing straight throughout the entire ecosystem. He ended this first section by explaining that this will also bring more Bing development opportunities to the community. Steve Balmer was followed by Julie Larson-Green who spent her time on stage selling us on Windows 8 all over again from my point of view.  Something that I would not have thought was needed until I had listened to some other attendees who had a number of concerns and complaints.  She showed a number of new gestures that will come with Windows 8.1, and while they were cool I was left wondering if they really improved the experience.  I guess only time will tell. I did like the fact that it the UI implementation to bring up “All Apps” now mirrors that of Windows Phone.  The consistency is a big step forward that I hope to see continue.  The cool factor went up from there as she swiped content from a desktop (mega-tablet) to the XBox One.  This seamless experience I believe is what is really needed for any future platform to be relevant. I was much more enthused by the presentation of Antoine Leblond who humbled us by letting us know that there are 5k new API.  How that can be or how anyone would ever use all of them is another question.  His announcement was that the Visual Studio 2013 preview would be available today along with the Windows 8.1 bits.  One of the features of VS2013 that he demonstrated is the power consumption profiler.  With battery life being a key factor with consumer consumption devices this is a welcome addition. He didn’t limit his presentation to VS2013 features though.  He showed how the Store has been redesigned to enable better search and discoverability of apps and how Win 8.1 can perform multiple screen scales depending on the resolution of the device automatically.  The last feature he demoed was the real time video streaming API which he made sure we understood by attaching a Surface to a little robot.  Oh, but there was one more thing.  Antoine and Julie announce that all attendees would also be getting Surface Pros.  BONUS! How much more could there be?  Gurdeep Singh Pall was about to pile on.  He introduced us to Bing as a platform (BaaP?).  He said if they (Microsoft) could do something with and API that is good 3rd party developers can do something that is dynamite and showed us some of the tools they had produced.  These included natural user interface improvements such as voice commands that looked to put Siri to shame.  Add to that 3D, OCR and translation capabilities and the future looks to be full of opportunities. Balmer then came out to show us one last thing.  Project Spark is a game design environment that will be available for Windows 8.1, XBox 360 and XBox One.  All I can say is that if my kids get their hands on this they are going to be able to learn some of what dad does in a much more enjoyable way. At the end of it all I was both exhausted and energized by what I saw.  What could they have possibly left for the day 2 keynote?  I hear it will feature Scott Hanselman.  If that is right we are in for a treat.  See you there. del.icio.us Tags: BUILD 2013,Windows 8.1,Winodws Phone,XAML,Keynote,Bing,Visual Studio 2013,Project Spark

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• How Can I Safely Destroy Sensitive Data CDs/DVDs?

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  You have a pile of DVDs with sensitive information on them and you need to safely and effectively dispose of them so no data recovery is possible. What’s the most safe and efficient way to get the job done? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader HaLaBi wants to know how he can safely destroy CDs and DVDs with personal data on them: I have old CDs/DVDs which have some backups, these backups have some work and personal files. I always had problems when I needed to physically destroy them to make sure no one will reuse them. Breaking them is dangerous, pieces could fly fast and may cause harm. Scratching them badly is what I always do but it takes long time and I managed to read some of the data in the scratched CDs/DVDs. What’s the way to physically destroy a CD/DVD safely? How should he approach the problem? The Answer SuperUser contributor Journeyman Geek offers a practical solution coupled with a slightly mad-scientist solution: The proper way is to get yourself a shredder that also handles cds – look online for cd shredders. This is the right option if you end up doing this routinely. I don’t do this very often – For small scale destruction I favour a pair of tin snips – they have enough force to cut through a cd, yet are blunt enough to cause small cracks along the sheer line. Kitchen shears with one serrated side work well too. You want to damage the data layer along with shearing along the plastic, and these work magnificently. Do it in a bag, cause this generates sparkly bits. There’s also the fun, and probably dangerous way – find yourself an old microwave, and microwave them. I would suggest doing this in a well ventilated area of course, and not using your mother’s good microwave. There’s a lot of videos of this on YouTube – such as this (who’s done this in a kitchen… and using his mom’s microwave). This results in a very much destroyed cd in every respect. If I was an evil hacker mastermind, this is what I’d do. The other options are better for the rest of us. Another contributor, Keltari, notes that the only safe (and DoD approved) way to dispose of data is total destruction: The answer by Journeyman Geek is good enough for almost everything. But oddly, that common phrase “Good enough for government work” does not apply – depending on which part of the government. It is technically possible to recover data from shredded/broken/etc CDs and DVDs. If you have a microscope handy, put the disc in it and you can see the pits. The disc can be reassembled and the data can be reconstructed — minus the data that was physically destroyed. So why not just pulverize the disc into dust? Or burn it to a crisp? While technically, that would completely eliminate the data, it leaves no record of the disc having existed. And in some places, like DoD and other secure facilities, the data needs to be destroyed, but the disc needs to exist. If there is a security audit, the disc can be pulled to show it has been destroyed. So how can a disc exist, yet be destroyed? Well, the most common method is grinding the disc down to destroy the data, yet keep the label surface of the disc intact. Basically, it’s no different than using sandpaper on the writable side, till the data is gone. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.     

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• Null Values And The T-SQL IN Operator

  - by Jesse

  I came across some unexpected behavior while troubleshooting a failing test the other day that took me long enough to figure out that I thought it was worth sharing here. I finally traced the failing test back to a SELECT statement in a stored procedure that was using the IN t-sql operator to exclude a certain set of values. Here’s a very simple example table to illustrate the issue: Customers CustomerId INT, NOT NULL, Primary Key CustomerName nvarchar(100) NOT NULL SalesRegionId INT NULL   The ‘SalesRegionId’ column contains a number representing the sales region that the customer belongs to. This column is nullable because new customers get created all the time but assigning them to sales regions is a process that is handled by a regional manager on a periodic basis. For the purposes of this example, the Customers table currently has the following rows: CustomerId CustomerName SalesRegionId 1 Customer A 1 2 Customer B NULL 3 Customer C 4 4 Customer D 2 5 Customer E 3   How could we write a query against this table for all customers that are NOT in sales regions 2 or 4? You might try something like this: 1: SELECT 2: CustomerId, 3: CustomerName, 4: SalesRegionId 5: FROM Customers 6: WHERE SalesRegionId NOT IN (2,4)   Will this work? In short, no; at least not in the way that you might expect. Here’s what this query will return given the example data we’re working with: CustomerId CustomerName SalesRegionId 1 Customer A 1 5 Customer E 5   I was expecting that this query would also return ‘Customer B’, since that customer has a NULL SalesRegionId. In my mind, having a customer with no sales region should be included in a set of customers that are not in sales regions 2 or 4.When I first started troubleshooting my issue I made note of the fact that this query should probably be re-written without the NOT IN clause, but I didn’t suspect that the NOT IN clause was actually the source of the issue. This particular query was only one minor piece in a much larger process that was being exercised via an automated integration test and I simply made a poor assumption that the NOT IN would work the way that I thought it should. So why doesn’t this work the way that I thought it should? From the MSDN documentation on the t-sql IN operator: If the value of test_expression is equal to any value returned by subquery or is equal to any expression from the comma-separated list, the result value is TRUE; otherwise, the result value is FALSE. Using NOT IN negates the subquery value or expression. The key phrase out of that quote is, “… is equal to any expression from the comma-separated list…”. The NULL SalesRegionId isn’t included in the NOT IN because of how NULL values are handled in equality comparisons. From the MSDN documentation on ANSI_NULLS: The SQL-92 standard requires that an equals (=) or not equal to (<>) comparison against a null value evaluates to FALSE. When SET ANSI_NULLS is ON, a SELECT statement using WHERE column_name = NULL returns zero rows even if there are null values in column_name. A SELECT statement using WHERE column_name <> NULL returns zero rows even if there are nonnull values in column_name. In fact, the MSDN documentation on the IN operator includes the following blurb about using NULL values in IN sub-queries or expressions that are used with the IN operator: Any null values returned by subquery or expression that are compared to test_expression using IN or NOT IN return UNKNOWN. Using null values in together with IN or NOT IN can produce unexpected results. If I were to include a ‘SET ANSI_NULLS OFF’ command right above my SELECT statement I would get ‘Customer B’ returned in the results, but that’s definitely not the right way to deal with this. We could re-write the query to explicitly include the NULL value in the WHERE clause: 1: SELECT 2: CustomerId, 3: CustomerName, 4: SalesRegionId 5: FROM Customers 6: WHERE (SalesRegionId NOT IN (2,4) OR SalesRegionId IS NULL)   This query works and properly includes ‘Customer B’ in the results, but I ultimately opted to re-write the query using a LEFT OUTER JOIN against a table variable containing all of the values that I wanted to exclude because, in my case, there could potentially be several hundred values to be excluded. If we were to apply the same refactoring to our simple sales region example we’d end up with: 1: DECLARE @regionsToIgnore TABLE (IgnoredRegionId INT) 2: INSERT @regionsToIgnore values (2),(4) 3:  4: SELECT 5: c.CustomerId, 6: c.CustomerName, 7: c.SalesRegionId 8: FROM Customers c 9: LEFT OUTER JOIN @regionsToIgnore r ON r.IgnoredRegionId = c.SalesRegionId 10: WHERE r.IgnoredRegionId IS NULL By performing a LEFT OUTER JOIN from Customers to the @regionsToIgnore table variable we can simply exclude any rows where the IgnoredRegionId is null, as those represent customers that DO NOT appear in the ignored regions list. This approach will likely perform better if the number of sales regions to ignore gets very large and it also will correctly include any customers that do not yet have a sales region.

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• Common reasons for the &lsquo;Sys is undefined&rsquo; error in ASP.NET Ajax applications

    In this blog I will try to summarize the most common reasons for getting the famous 'Sys is undefined' error when running an Ajax enabled web site or application (there are almost one milion results on Google for that phrase). Where does it come from? In every Ajax web pages source you will see a code like this: <script type="text/javascript"> //<![CDATA[ Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManager._initialize('ScriptManager1', document.getElementById('form1')); Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManager.getInstance()._updateControls([], [], [], 90); //]]> </script>   This is the initialization script of the ScriptManager. So, if for some reason the Sys namespace is not available when the code executes you get the Sys is undefined error. Here are the most common reasons and solutions for that problem:   1. The error occurs when you have added a control from RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX, but your application is not configured to use ASP.NET AJAX. For example, in VS 2005 you created a new Blank Site instead of a new Ajax-Enabled Web Site and the Sys is undefined message pops up. To fix it you need to follow the steps described at Configuring ASP.NET Ajax article (check the topic called Adding ASP.NET AJAX Configuration Elements to an Existing Web Site) or simply create the Ajax-Enabled Web Site. You can also check my other blog post on the matter: Visual Studio 2008: Where is the new ASP.NET Ajax-Enabled Web Site template?   2. Authentication - as the website denies access to all pages to unauthorized users, access to the Telerik.Web.UI.WebResource.axd handler is unauthorized (this is the default handler of RadScriptManager). This causes the handler to serve the content of the login page instead of the combined scripts, hence the error. To solve it - add a <location> section to the application configuration file to allow access to Telerik.Web.UI.WebResource.axd to all users, like: <configuration> ... <location path="Telerik.Web.UI.WebResource.axd"> <system.web> <authorization> <allow users="*"/> </authorization> </system.web> </location> ... </configuration>   Note that the access to the standard ScriptResource.axd and WebResource.axd is automatically allowed for all users (authenticated and unauthenticated), so if you use the ScriptManager instead of RadScriptManager - you will not face this problem. The authentication problem does not manifest when you disable script combining or use the CDN. Adding the above configuration section will make it work with RadScriptManagers combined script.   3. The IE6 browser fails to load the compressed script. The problem does not appear in any other browser. There is a well known bug in the older versions of IE6 which lose the first 2,048 bytes of data that are sent back from a Web server that uses HTTP compression. Latest versions of RadScriptManager does not compress the output at all if the client is IE6, but in the previous versions you need to manually disable the output compression to prevent the error. So, if you get the Sys is undefined error in IE6 - update to the latest version of RadControls or simply disable the output compression.   4. Requests to the *.axd files returns Error Code 404 - Not Found. This could  be fixed easily: Check in the IIS management console that the .axd extension (the default HTTP handler extension) is allowed:     Also check if the Verify if file exists checkbox is unchecked (click on the Edit button appearing in the previous screenshot to check). More information can be found in our troubleshooting article and from the ASP.NET QA team blog post   5. The virtual directory in IIS is not marked as Web Application. Converting it to Web Application should fix the problem.   6. Check for the <xhtmlConformance mode="Legacy"/> option in your web.config and remove it. It would be rather rare to become a victim of this exact case, but still have it in mind. Scott Guthrie describes it in more details   In the above points I mentioned several times the terms web resources, javascript output, compressed script. If you want to find out more about these please see the Web Resources Demystified series of my friend and colleague Atanas Korchev   I hope that one of the above solutions will help you get rid of the Sys is undefined error.   Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• "Guiding" a Domain Expert to Retire from Programming

  - by James Kolpack

  I've got a friend who does IT at a local non-profit where they're using a custom web application which is no longer supported by the company who built it. (out of business, support was too expensive, I'm not sure...) Development on this app started around 10+ years ago so the technologies being harnessed are pretty out of date now - classic asp using vbscript and SQL Server 2000. The application domain is in the realm of government bookkeeping - so even though the development team is long gone, there are often new requirements of this software. Enter the... The domain expert. This is an middle aged accounting whiz without much (or any?) prior development experience. He studied the pages, code and queries and learned how to ape the style of the original team which, believe me, is mediocre at best. He's very clever and very tenacious but has no experience in software beyond what he's picked up from this app. Otherwise, he's a pleasant guy to talk to and definitely knows his domain. My friend in IT, and probably his superiors in the company, want him out of the code. They view him as wasting his expertise on coding tasks he shouldn't be doing. My friend got me involved with a few small contracts which I handled without much problem - other than somewhat of a communication barrier with the domain expert. He explained the requirements very quickly, assuming prior knowledge of the domain which I do not have. This is partially his normal style, and I think maybe a bit of resentment from my involvement. So, I think he feels like the owner of the code and has entrenched himself in a development position. So... his coding technique. One of his latest endeavors was to make a page that only he could reach (theoretically - the security model for the system is wretched) where he can enter a raw SQL query, run it, and save the query to run again later. A report that I worked on had been originally implemented by him using 6 distinct queries, 3 or 4 temp tables to coordinate the data between the queries, and the final result obtained by importing the data from the final query into Access and doing a pivot and some formatting. It worked - well, some of the results were incorrect - but at what a cost! (I implemented the report in a single query with at least 1/10th the amount of code.) He edits code in notepad. He doesn't seem to know about online reference material for the languages. I recently read an article on Dr. Dobbs titled "What Makes Bad Programmers Different" - and instantly thought of our domain expert. From the article: Their code is large, messy, and bug laden. They have very superficial knowledge of their problem domain and their tools. Their code has a lot of copy/paste and they have very little interest in techniques that reduce it. The fail to account for edge cases, while inefficiently dealing with the general case. They never have time to comment their code or break it into smaller pieces. Empirical evidence plays no little role in their decisions. 5.5 out of 6. My friend is wanting me to argue the case to their management - specifically, I got this email from their manager to respond to: ...Also, I need to talk to you about what effect there is from Domain Expert continuing to make edits to the live environment. If that is a problem for you I need to know so I can have his access blocked. Some examples would help. In my opinion, from a technical standpoint, it's dangerous to have him making changes without any oversight. On the other hand, I'm just doing one-off contracts at this point and don't have much desire to get involved deeply enough that I'm essentially arguing as one of the Bobs from Office Space. I'd like to help my friend out - but I feel like I'm getting in the middle of a political battle. More importantly - if I do get involved and suggest that his editing privileges be removed, it needs to be handled carefully so that doesn't feel belittled. He is beyond a doubt the foremost expert on this system. I'm hoping this is familiar territory for some other stackechangers, because I'm feeling a little bewildered. How should I respond? Should I argue that he shouldn't be allowed to touch the code? Should I phrase it as "no single developer, no matter how experienced, should be working on production code unchecked"? Should I argue to keep him involved with the code, but with a review process? Should I say "glad I could help, but uh, I'm busy now!" Other options? Thanks a bunch!

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• UK OUG Conference Highlights and Insights

  - by Richard Bingham

  As per my preemptive post, this was the first time the annual conference organized by the UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG) was split into two events, one for Oracle Applications and another in December for Oracle Technology. Apps13, as it was branded, was hailed as a success, with over 1000 registered attendees and three days of sessions, exhibition, round-tables and many other types of content. As this poster on their stand illustrates, the UKOUG is a strong community with popular participants from both big and small Oracle partners and customers. The venue was a more intimate setting than previous years also, allowing everyone to casually bump into those they hoped to. It gave a real feeling of an Apps Community. The main themes over the days where CRM and Customer Experience, HCM, and FIN/SCM. This allowed people to attend just one focused day if they wanted. In addition the Apps Transformation stream ran across all three days, offering insights, advice, and details on the newer product solutions like Fusion Applications.  Here are some of the key take-aways I got from the conference, specific to my role in Fusion Applications Developer Relations: User Experience continues to be a significant reason for adopting some of the newer application products available, with immediately obvious gains in user productivity and satisfaction reported by customers. Also this doesn't stop with the baked-in UX either, with their Design Patterns proving popular and indeed currently being extended to including things like extending on ADF mobile and customizing the Simplified UI. More on this to come from us soon. The executive sessions emphasized the "it's a journey" phrase, illustrating that modern business applications are powered by technologies such as Cloud, Mobile, Social and Big Data and these can be harnessed to help propel your organization forward. Indeed the emphasis is away from the traditional vendor prescribed linear applications road map, and towards plotting a course based on business priorities supported by a broad range of integrated solutions. To help with this several conference sessions demoed the new "Applications Navigator" tool, developed in partnership with OUG members, which offers a visual framework to help organizations plan their Oracle Applications investments around business and technology imperatives. Initial reaction was positive, especially as customers do not need to decipher Oracle's huge product catalog and embeds the best blend of proven and integrated applications solutions. We'll share more on this when it is generally available. Several sessions focused around explanations and interpretation of Oracle OpenWorld 2013, helping highlight the key Oracle Applications messages and directions. With a relative small percentage of conference attendees also at OpenWorld (from a show of hands) this was a popular way to distill the information available down into specific items of interest for the community. Please note the original OpenWorld 2013 content is still available for download but will not remain available forever (via the Oracle website OpenWorld Content Catalog > pick a session > see the PDF download). With the release of E-Business Suite 12.2 the move to develop and deploy on the Fusion Middleware stack becomes a reality for many Oracle Applications customers. This coupled with recent E-Business Suite features such as the Integrated SOA Gateway and the E-Business Suite SDK for Java, illustrates how the gap between the technologies and techniques involved in extending E-Business Suite and Fusion Applications is quickly narrowing. We'll see this merging continue to evolve going forwards. Getting started with Oracle Cloud Applications is actually easier than many customers expected, with a broad selection of both large and medium sized organizations explaining how they added new features to their existing Oracle Applications portfolios. New functionality available from Fusion HCM and CX are popular extensions that do not have to disrupt those core business services. Coexistence is the buzzword here, and the available integration is also simpler than many expected, commonly involving an initial setup data load, then regularly incremental synchronizations, often without a need for real-time constant communication between systems. With much of this pre-built already the implementation process is also quite rapid. With most people dressed in suits, we wanted to get the conversations going without the traditional english reserve, so we decided to make ourselves a bit more obvious, as the photo below shows. This seemed to be quite successful and helped those interested identify and approach us. Keep a look out for similar again. In fact if you're in the UK there is an "Apps Transformation Day" planned by the UKOUG for the 19th March 2014, with more details to follow. Again something we'll be sure to participate in. I am hoping to attend the next half of the UKOUG annual conference, Tech13, that focuses more on Oracle technology and where there is more likely to be larger attendance of those interested in the lower-level aspects of applications customization and development. If you're going, let me know and maybe we can meet up.

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• Can't get gitosis and ssh to play nice on cygwin

  - by Noel Kennedy

  I have followed this guide to setting up gitosis on a windows 2003 server via cygwin. I have now got to a point where it largely works. I can clone, pull and push. The problem I am having is that I think I have not got the ssh bit right at all. When I connect via msysgit from machines and accounts where I have not created or uploaded ssh keys it works. Every time I clone, pull or push I get a password challenge for the 'git' user running on the server but basically I can execute git commands. When I connect with users with an ssh key in the ~/.ssh folder, I don't get the password challange and instead I get a permissions failure: DEBUG:gitosis.serve.main:Got command "git-upload-pack '/cris.git'" DEBUG:gitosis.access.haveAccess:Access check for 'teamcity@hhit24808' as 'writable' on 'cris.git'... DEBUG:gitosis.access.haveAccess:Stripping .git suffix from 'cris.git', new value 'cris' DEBUG:gitosis.access.haveAccess:Access check for 'teamcity@hhit24808' as 'writeable' on 'cris.git'... DEBUG:gitosis.access.haveAccess:Stripping .git suffix from 'cris.git', new value 'cris' DEBUG:gitosis.access.haveAccess:Access check for 'teamcity@hhit24808' as 'readonly' on 'cris.git'... DEBUG:gitosis.access.haveAccess:Stripping .git suffix from 'cris.git', new value 'cris' ERROR:gitosis.serve.main:Repository read access denied fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly I have uploaded the public rsa key into the key_dir folder. Here is my conf file: [gitosis] loglevel = DEBUG [group gitosis-admin] writable = gitosis-admin members = myemail@mydomain [group cris-developers] members = myemail@mydomain TeamCity@HHIT24808 writable = cris If it matters, I have generated a key without a passphrase as I believe this is necessary to enable ssh for automated scripts. When I use keys with a passphrase, I get challanged for the phrase but then get the same permissions problem. I have tried 'writable' and 'writeable' for permissions. Help!! Update 1: When I try to clone a non-existant repo, I get the same error message, co-incidence? Update 2: Wierd, I've got one machine and one login working. It seems to be something to do with the syntax for addressing git over ssh. This now works on one machine for one login: git clone git@servername:cris.git The same command fails for a user on another machine without an uploaded ssh key. But this command works (after being challanged for git@servername's password) git clone git@servername:/home/git/repositories/cris.git neither command works on a 2nd login whose ssh key has been uploaded

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• Crawling engine architecture - Java/ Perl integration

  - by Bigtwinz

  Hi all, I am looking to develop a management and administration solution around our webcrawling perl scripts. Basically, right now our scripts are saved in SVN and are manually kicked off by SysAdmin/devs etc. Everytime we need to retrieve data from new sources we have to create a ticket with business instructions and goals. As you can imagine, not an optimal solution. There are 3 consistent themes with this system: the retrieval of data has a "conceptual structure" for lack of a better phrase i.e. the retrieval of information follows a particular path we are only looking for very specific information so we dont have to really worry about extensive crawling for awhile (think thousands-tens of thousands of pages vs millions) crawls are url-based instead of site-based. As I enhance this alpha version to a more production-level beta I am looking to add automation and management of the retrieval of data. Additionally our other systems are Java (which I'm more proficient in) and I'd like to compartmentalize the perl aspects so we dont have to lean heavily on outside help. I've evaluated the usual suspects Nutch, Droid etc but the time spent on modifying those frameworks to suit our specific information retrieval cant be justified. So I'd like your thoughts regarding the following architecture. I want to create a solution which use Java as the interface for managing and execution of the perl scripts use Java for configuration and data access stick with perl for retrieval An example use case would be a data analyst delivers us a requirement for crawling perl developer creates the required script and uses this webapp to submit the script (which gets saved to the filesystem) the script gets kicked off from the webapp with specific parameters .... Webapp should be able to create multiple threads of the perl script to initiate multiple crawlers. So questions are what do you think how solid is integration between Java and Perl specifically from calling perl from java has someone used such a system which actually is part perl repository The goal really is to not have a whole bunch of unorganized perl scripts and put some management and organization on our information retrieval. Also, I know I can use perl do do the web part of what we want - but as I mentioned before - trying to keep perl focused. But it seems assbackwards I'm not adverse to making it an all perl solution. Open to any all suggestions and opinions. Thanks

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• Error using httlib's HTTPSConnection with PKCS#12 certificate

  - by Remi Despres-Smyth

  Hello. I'm trying to use httplib's HTTPSConnection for client validation, using a PKCS #12 certificate. I know the certificate is good, as I can connect to the server using it in MSIE and Firefox. Here's my connect function (the certificate includes the private key). I've pared it down to just the basics: def connect(self, cert_file, host, usrname, passwd): self.cert_file = cert_file self.host = host self.conn = httplib.HTTPSConnection(host=self.host, port=self.port, key_file=cert_file, cert_file=cert_file) self.conn.putrequest('GET', 'pathnet/,DanaInfo=200.222.1.1+') self.conn.endheaders() retCreateCon = self.conn.getresponse() if is_verbose: print "Create HTTPS connection, " + retCreateCon.read() (Note: No comments on the hard-coded path, please - I'm trying to get this to work first; I'll make it pretty afterwards. The hard-coded path is correct, as I connect to it in MSIE and Firefox. I changed the IP address for the post.) When I try to run this using a PKCS#12 certificate (a .pfx file), I get back what appears to be an openSSL error. Here is the entire error traceback: File "Usinghttplib_Test.py", line 175, in t.connect(cert_file=opts["-keys"], host=host_name, usrname=opts["-username"], passwd=opts["-password"]) File "Usinghttplib_Test.py", line 40, in connect self.conn.endheaders() File "c:\python26\lib\httplib.py", line 904, in endheaders self._send_output() File "c:\python26\lib\httplib.py", line 776, in _send_output self.send(msg) File "c:\python26\lib\httplib.py", line 735, in send self.connect() File "c:\python26\lib\httplib.py", line 1112, in connect self.sock = ssl.wrap_socket(sock, self.key_file, self.cert_file) File "c:\python26\lib\ssl.py", line 350, in wrap_socket suppress_ragged_eofs=suppress_ragged_eofs) File "c:\python26\lib\ssl.py", line 113, in __init__ cert_reqs, ssl_version, ca_certs) ssl.SSLError: [Errno 336265225] _ssl.c:337: error:140B0009:SSL routines:SSL_CTX_use_PrivateKey_file:PEM lib Notice, the openSSL error (the last entry in the list) notes "PEM lib", which I found odd, since I'm not trying to use a PEM certificate. For kicks, I converted the PKCS#12 cert to a PEM cert, and ran the same code using that. In that case, I received no error, I was prompted to enter the PEM pass phrase, and the code did attempt to reach the server. (I received the response "The service is not available. Please try again later.", but I believe that would be because the server does not accept the PEM cert. I can't connect in Firefox to the server using the PEM cert either.) Is httplib's HTTPSConnection supposed to support PCKS#12 certificates? (That is, pfx files.) If so, why does it look like openSSL is trying to load it inside the PEM lib? Am I doing this all wrong? Any advice is welcome. EDIT: The certificate file contains both the certificate and the private key, which is why I'm providing the same file name for both the HTTPSConnection's key_file and cert_file parameters.

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• J: Self-reference in bubble sort tacit implementation

  - by Yasir Arsanukaev

  Hello people! Since I'm beginner in J I've decided to solve a simple task using this language, in particular implementing the bubblesort algorithm. I know it's not idiomatically to solve such kind of problem in functional languages, because it's naturally solved using array element transposition in imperative languages like C, rather than constructing modified list in declarative languages. However this is the code I've written: (((<./@(2&{.)), $:@((>./@(2&{.)),2&}.)) ^: (1<#)) ^: # Let's apply it to an array: (((<./@(2&{.)), $:@((>./@(2&{.)),2&}.)) ^: (1<#)) ^: # 5 3 8 7 2 2 3 5 7 8 The thing that confuses me is $: referring to the statement within the outermost parentheses. Help says that: $: denotes the longest verb that contains it. The other book (~ 300 KiB) says: 3+4 7 5*20 100 Symbols like + and * for plus and times in the above phrases are called verbs and represent functions. You may have more than one verb in a J phrase, in which case it is constructed like a sentence in simple English by reading from left to right, that is 4+6%2 means 4 added to whatever follows, namely 6 divided by 2. Let's rewrite my code snippet omitting outermost ()s: ((<./@(2&{.)), $:@((>./@(2&{.)),2&}.)) ^: (1<#) ^: # 5 3 8 7 2 2 3 5 7 8 Reuslts are the same. I couldn't explain myself why this works, why only ((<./@(2&{.)), $:@((>./@(2&{.)),2&}.)) ^: (1<#) is treated as the longest verb for $: but not the whole expression ((<./@(2&{.)), $:@((>./@(2&{.)),2&}.)) ^: (1<#) ^: # and not just (<./@(2&{.)), $:@((>./@(2&{.)),2&}.), because if ((<./@(2&{.)), $:@((>./@(2&{.)),2&}.)) ^: (1<#) is a verb, it should also form another verb after conjunction with #, i. e. one might treat the whole sentence (first snippet) as a verb. Probably there's some limit for the verb length limited by one conjunction. Look at the following code (from here): factorial =: (* factorial@<:) ^: (1&<) factorial 4 24 factorial within expression refers to the whole function, i. e. (* factorial@<:) ^: (1&<). Following this example I've used a function name instead of $:: bubblesort =: (((<./@(2&{.)), bubblesort@((>./@(2&{.)),2&}.)) ^: (1<#)) ^: # bubblesort 5 3 8 7 2 2 3 5 7 8 I expected bubblesort to refer to the whole function, but it doesn't seem true for me since the result is correct. Also I'd like to see other implementations if you have ones, even slightly refactored. Thanks.

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• Unique ID Defined by Most-Derived Class accessible through Base Class

  - by Narfanator

  Okay, so, the idea is that I have a map of "components", which inherit from componentBase, and are keyed on an ID unique to the most-derived*. Only, I can't think of a good way to get this to work. I tried it with the constructor, but that doesn't work (Maybe I did it wrong). The problem with any virtual, etc, inheritance tricks are that the user has to impliment them at the bottom, which can be forgotten and makes it less... clean. *Right phrase? If - is inheritance; foo is most-derived: foo-foo1-foo2-componentBase Here's some code showing the problem, and why CRTP can't cut it: (No, it's not legit code, but I'm trying to get my thoughts down) #include<map> class componentBase { public: virtual static char idFunction() = 0; }; template <class T> class component : public virtual componentBase { public: static char idFunction(){ return reinterpret_cast<char>(&idFunction); } }; class intermediateDerivations1 : public virtual component<intermediateDerivations1> { }; class intermediateDerivations2 : public virtual component<intermediateDerivations2> { }; class derived1 : public intermediateDerivations1 { }; class derived2 : public intermediateDerivations1 { }; //How the unique ID gets used (more or less) std::map<char, componentBase*> TheMap; template<class T> void addToMap(componentBase * c) { TheMap[T::idFunction()] = c; } template<class T> T * getFromMap() { return TheMap[T::idFunction()]; } int main() { //In each case, the key needs to be different. //For these, the CRTP should do it: getFromMap<intermediateDerivations1>(); getFromMap<intermediateDerivations2>(); //But not for these. getFromMap<derived1>(); getFromMap<derived2>(); return 0; } More or less, I need something that is always there, no matter what the user does, and has a sortable value that's unique to the most-derived class. Also, I realize this isn't the best-asked question, I'm actually having some unexpected difficultly wrapping my head around it in words, so ask questions if/when you need clarification.

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• For loop from assembly to C

  - by FranXh

  I have a bomb project where I need to defuse certain phases by finding "pas phrases" that will defuse the bomb. Right now I have been working with phase_2, for which the assembly code is shown below. Phase_2 requires as an input 6 numbers, which I need to find in order to defuse this phase. I analyzed this assembly, and I came up with the C code below, that covers lines from 40101c to 401044. It is basically a for loop that makes sure that elements t[0]==t[3], t[1]==t[4] and t[2]==t[5] that the user inputs, are equal. According to my logic, the user can input any 6 numbers as long as the above condition is satisfied. Say 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3 would be a valid "pas phrase". However this solution does not convince me for some reason. Am I doing something wrong? 0000000000400ffc <phase_2>: 400ffc: 48 89 5c 24 e0 mov %rbx,-0x20(%rsp) 401001: 48 89 6c 24 e8 mov %rbp,-0x18(%rsp) 401006: 4c 89 64 24 f0 mov %r12,-0x10(%rsp) 40100b: 4c 89 6c 24 f8 mov %r13,-0x8(%rsp) 401010: 48 83 ec 48 sub $0x48,%rsp 401014: 48 89 e6 mov %rsp,%rsi 401017: e8 65 0a 00 00 callq 401a81 <read_six_numbers> 40101c: 48 89 e5 mov %rsp,%rbp 40101f: 4c 8d 6c 24 0c lea 0xc(%rsp),%r13 401024: 41 bc 00 00 00 00 mov $0x0,%r12d 40102a: 48 89 eb mov %rbp,%rbx 40102d: 8b 45 0c mov 0xc(%rbp),%eax 401030: 39 45 00 cmp %eax,0x0(%rbp) 401033: 74 05 je 40103a <phase_2+0x3e> 401035: e8 2d 09 00 00 callq 401967 <_GLOBAL_RESET_> 40103a: 44 03 23 add (%rbx),%r12d 40103d: 48 83 c5 04 add $0x4,%rbp 401041: 4c 39 ed cmp %r13,%rbp 401044: 75 e4 jne 40102a <phase_2+0x2e> 401046: 45 85 e4 test %r12d,%r12d 401049: 75 05 jne 401050 <phase_2+0x54> 40104b: e8 17 09 00 00 callq 401967 <_GLOBAL_RESET_> 401050: 48 8b 5c 24 28 mov 0x28(%rsp),%rbx 401055: 48 8b 6c 24 30 mov 0x30(%rsp),%rbp 40105a: 4c 8b 64 24 38 mov 0x38(%rsp),%r12 40105f: 4c 8b 6c 24 40 mov 0x40(%rsp),%r13 401064: 48 83 c4 48 add $0x48,%rsp 401068: c3 for (int i=0; i<3; i++){ if(t[i] != t[i+3]){ explode(); } }

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• Problems with contenteditable in Firefox

  - by Jonathan

  Hello, I am working on a Javascript WYSIWYG editor in Firefox. I am using a div with the contenteditable attribute set to true in order to accomplish this (I cannot use a contenteditable iframe for this particular project). This contenteditable div is nested in another div that is not contenteditable. I am encountering the following two problems when using execCommand to apply formatting, including font style and size, as well as bold, italic, and underline: When all text in the div is selected, execCommand simply does not work. execCommand works fine when only part of the text is selected, but does nothing when all of the text is selected. Applying formatting with no text selected yields unexpected results. For example, when calling execCommand('bold') with no text selected and then typing results in bold text being typed until a spacebar is inserted, at which point the bold formatting is lost (until another space is inserted, interestingly enough; then the text becomes bold again). To see what I mean, please try running the following HTML code in Firefox 3: <html> <head><title></title></head> <body> <button onClick="execCommand('bold', false, null);">Bold</button> <div style="width: 300px; border: 1px solid #000000;"> <div contenteditable="true">Some editable text</div> </div> </body> </html> Please try the following: Select the word "Some" only. Click the Bold button. This will make the text bold, as expected. Select the entire phrase "Some editable text" (either manually or using CTRL-A). Click the Bold button. Nothing happens. This demonstrates the first bug shown above. Hit the backspace key to clear the div. Click the Bold button and begin typing. Type a few words with spaces. This will demonstrate the second bug. Any ideas on what could be causing these problems and how to work around them would be greatly appreciated!

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• Zaypay alternatives for payments using call or sms

  - by JohannesH

  We are currently trying to implement a payment provider in zaypay for paying for services using sms or by calling a number. We already have google checkout and paypal working for regular payments but zaypay is rather inflexible, poorly documented and a pain to setup when you have hundreds of products with varying prices. So my question is, do you know of any other european payment providers that take sms and call payments? As a response to Roberts answer/question Hi Robert, I must say that the Zaypay solution is the best and only I've seen thus far regarding phoned payments. However, since its now 2 months ago I finished the implementation of our custom Zaypay UI I can't remember much of the the details of the problems we were having. I'll try to give a brief of them anyways the best I can. First of all I would like to see a redirection type scenario for payalogues. From what I remember you guys are using the JS framework "Prototype" which doesn't play nice with jQuery which we are using so we weren't able to use the popup-type scenario supported by payalogues. Furthermore when implementing our custom interface I remember a lot of missing translations, like words that were codes instead of a word or a phrase. This meant we ended up writing/translating all the messages we needed ourselves. Also, another point of annoyance was the setup of prices and items. I wish we could just send in the order items/prices as a part of the interface like you can in Google Checkout or PayPal (not that they're flawless either), instead of having to define ALL the items you will ever sell through your admin interface beforehand. As far as I can remember it is virtually impossible to use Zaypay for a multi-item order in its current form. Finally there are, as far as I can tell, some security issues that you have to think about when you implement a custom solution... especially a ajax driven one. As I said in my original post you do mention this in the documentation but I believe the documentation wasn't that comprehensive regarding security issues. Again I wish I could give more details but the code & client is long since gone, so I can't look up the comments I wrote. Sorry! Oh yeah, the general API documentation weren't exactly comprehensive and 100% correct either. Again, I don't want to advice people against using Zaypay, I just want to advice that they should try it out first on a realistic prototype and think about their implementation before releasing to production. Maybe its just me who misunderstood a lot of things but I generally had a difficult time using your framework and I was left with a feeling that the API was very new and not thought through from the beginning.

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• Wondering about a way to conserve memory in C# using List<> with structs

  - by Michael Ryan

  I'm not even sure how I should phrase this question. I'm passing some CustomStruct objects as parameters to a class method, and storing them in a List. What I'm wondering is if it's possible and more efficient to add multiple references to a particular instance of a CustomStruct if a equivalent instance it found. This is a dummy/example struct: public struct CustomStruct { readonly int _x; readonly int _y; readonly int _w; readonly int _h; readonly Enum _e; } Using the below method, you can pass one, two, or three CustomStruct objects as parameters. In the final method (that takes three parameters), it may be the case that the 3rd and possibly the 2nd will have the same value as the first. List<CustomStruct> _list; public void AddBackground(CustomStruct normal) { AddBackground(normal, normal, normal); } public void AddBackground(CustomStruct normal, CustomStruct hover) { AddBackground(normal, hover, hover); } public void AddBackground(CustomStruct normal, CustomStruct hover, CustomStruct active) { _list = new List<CustomStruct>(3); _list.Add(normal); _list.Add(hover); _list.Add(active); } As the method stands now, I believe it will create new instances of CustomStruct objects, and then adds a reference of each to the List. It is my understanding that if I instead check for equality between normal and hover and (if equal) insert normal again in place of hover, when the method completes, hover will lose all references and eventually be garbage collected, whereas normal will have two references in the List. The same could be done for active. That would be better, right? The CustomStruct is a ValueType, and therefore one instance would remain on the Stack, and the three List references would just point to it. The overall List size is determined not by the object Type is contains, but by its Capacity. By eliminating the "duplicate" CustomStuct objects, you allow them to be cleaned up. When the CustomStruct objects are passed to these methods, new instances are created each time. When the structs are added to the List, is another copy made? For example, if i pass just one CustomStruct, AddBackground(normal) creates a copy of the original variable, and then passes it three times to Addbackground(normal, hover, active). In this method, three copies are made of the original copy. When the three local variables are added to the List using Add(), are additional copies created inside Add(), and does that defeat the purpose of any equality checks as previously mentioned? Am I missing anything here?

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• Repeating fields in similar database tables

  - by user1738833

  I have been tasked with working on a database that I have never seen before and I'm looking at the DB structure. Some of the central and most heavily queried and joined tables look like virtual duplicates of each other. Here's a massively simplified representation of the situation, with business-sensitive information changed, listing hypothetical table names and fields: TopLevelGroup: PK_TLGroupId, DisplaysXOnBill, DisplaysYOnBill, IsInvoicedForJ, IsInvoicedForK SubGroup: PK_SubGroupId, FK_ParentTopLevelGroupId, DisplaysXOnBill, DisplaysYOnBill, IsInvoicedForJ, IsInvoicedForK SubSubGroup: PK_SubSUbGroupId, FK_ParentSubGroupId, DisplaysXOnBill, DisplaysYOnBill, IsInvoicedForJ, IsInvoicedForK I haven't listed the types of the fields as I don't think it's particularly important to the situation. In addition, it's worth saying that rather than four repeated fields as in the example above, I'm looking at 86 repeated fields. For the most part, those fields genuinely do represent "facts" about the primary table entity, so it's not automatically wrong for that reason. In addition, the "groups" represented here have a property inheritance relationship. If DisplaysXOnBill is NULL in the SubSubGroup, it takes the value of DisplaysXOnBillfrom it's parent, the SubGroup, and so-on up to the TopLevelGroup. Further, the requirements will never require that the model extends beyond three levels, so there is no need for flexibility in that area. Is there a design smell from several tables which describe very similar entities having almost identical fields? If so, what might be a better design of the example above? I'm using the phrase "design smell" to indicate a possible problem. Of course, in any given situation, a particular design might well be the best solution. I'm looking for a more general answer - wondering what might be wrong with this design and what might be the better design were that the case. Possibly related, but not primary questions: Is this database schema in a reasonably normal form (e.g. to 3NF), insofar as can be told from the information I've provided. I can't see a problem with the requirements of 2NF and 3NF, except in their inheriting the requirements of 1NF. Is 1NF satisfied though? Are repeating groups allowed in different tables? Is there a best-practice method for implementing the inheritance relationship in a database as I require? The method above feels clunky to me because any query on the SubSubGroup necessarily needs to join onto the SubGroup and the TopLevelGroup tables to collect inherited facts, which can make even trivial joins requiring facts from the SubSubGroup table rather long-winded. There are, of course, political considerations to making a relatively large change like this. For the purpose of this question, I'm happy to ignore that fact in the interests of keeping the answers ring-fenced to the technical problem.

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• Working through exercises in "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X" - I'm stumped

  - by Zigrivers

  I've been working through the exercises in a book recommended here on stackoverflow, however I've run into a problem and after three days of banging my head on the wall, I think I need some help. I'm working through the "Speakline" exercise where we add a TableView to the interface and the table will display the "voices" that you can choose for the text to speech aspect of the program. I am having two problems that I can't seem to get to the bottom of: I get the following error: * Illegal NSTableView data source (). Must implement numberOfRowsInTableView: and tableView:objectValueForTableColumn:row: The tableView that is supposed to display the voices comes up blank I have a feeling that both of these problems are related. I'm including my interface code here: #import <Cocoa/Cocoa.h> @interface AppController : NSObject <NSSpeechSynthesizerDelegate, NSTableViewDelegate> { IBOutlet NSTextField *textField; NSSpeechSynthesizer *speechSynth; IBOutlet NSButton *stopButton; IBOutlet NSButton *startButton; IBOutlet NSTableView *tableView; NSArray *voiceList; } - (IBAction)sayIt:(id)sender; - (IBAction)stopIt:(id)sender; @end And my implementation code here: #import "AppController.h" @implementation AppController - (id)init { [super init]; //Log to help me understand what is happening NSLog(@"init"); speechSynth = [[NSSpeechSynthesizer alloc] initWithVoice:nil]; [speechSynth setDelegate:self]; voiceList = [[NSSpeechSynthesizer availableVoices] retain]; return self; } - (IBAction)sayIt:(id)sender { NSString *string = [[textField stringValue] stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceCharacterSet]]; //Is the string zero-length? if([string length] == 0) { NSLog(@"String from %@ is a string with a length of %d.", textField, [string length]); [speechSynth startSpeakingString:@"Please enter a phrase first."]; } [speechSynth startSpeakingString:string]; NSLog(@"Started to say: %@", string); [stopButton setEnabled:YES]; [startButton setEnabled:NO]; } - (IBAction)stopIt:(id)sender { NSLog(@"Stopping..."); [speechSynth stopSpeaking]; } - (void) speechSynthesizer:(NSSpeechSynthesizer *)sender didFinishSpeaking:(BOOL)complete { NSLog(@"Complete = %d", complete); [stopButton setEnabled:NO]; [startButton setEnabled:YES]; } - (NSInteger)numberOfRowsInTableView:(NSTableView *)aTableView { return [voiceList count]; } - (id)tableView: (NSTableView *)tv objecValueForTableColumn: (NSTableColumn *)tableColumn row:(NSInteger)row { NSString *v = [voiceList objectAtIndex:row]; NSLog(@"v = %@",v); NSDictionary *dict = [NSSpeechSynthesizer attributesForVoice:v]; return [dict objectForKey:NSVoiceName]; } /* - (BOOL)respondsToSelector:(SEL)aSelector { NSString *methodName = NSStringFromSelector(aSelector); NSLog(@"respondsToSelector: %@", methodName); return [super respondsToSelector:aSelector]; } */ @end Hopefully, you guys can see something obvious that I've missed. Thank you!

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• measure rendered html in javascript without affecting the measurement

  - by drawnonward

  I am doing pagination in javascript. This is typographic pagination, not chopping up database results. For the most part it works, but I have run into a heisenberg issue where I cannot quite measure text without affecting it. I am not trying to measure text before it is rendered. I want the actual position it shows up at on screen, so I can paginate to where it is naturally wrapped. I am measuring the vertical position of characters, not the horizontal width of strings. The way I do this is similar to this answer in that I am applying a style to a block of text, then measuring the position of the newly created span. If the span does not reach the end of the page, I clear it and make a new span in a linear search. The problem is that the anti-aliased sub-pixel text layout is different when the span is applied. In rare cases, this causes the text to wrap differently when I measure it. I have only seen this when wrapping at a hyphen, and I assume it would not happen when wrapping at white space. As a concrete example, "prepared-he" is the string I am having trouble with. When I measure up to "prepare" it appears, as expected, to be within the current page. When I measure "prepared" the whole phrase wraps down to the next line, moving it to the next page, so it looks like the "d" is the character to break at. I break the text between "prepare" and "d-he" and that is wrong. Trying to evaluate individual characters opens a whole can of worms I would rather avoid. The wrapping changes because, with the new span, the line is 1 pixel wider. A solution to my problem could either be a better way to measure text using javascript, or a way to wrap text in a new element without affecting layout. I have tried setting margin-right:-1px for the class of the span being created to wrap the text. This had no noticeable effect. I am doing this in a UIWebView on the iPhone. There are some measurement related calls that are available in normal WebKit that are not available here. For example, Range does not have getBoundingClientRect or support setting an offset other than 0 in setStart or setEnd. Thank you

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• How to set header font style as bold for the header of the table in a pdf file, in jsf

  - by Radhika

  Hi I have used PdfPTable to convert table data into a pdf file using com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfPTable. Table is displaying, but table data and the header are in same style. To make difference i have to set the header font style to bold. can anybody help me out in this, I have attached my code here.. Thanks in advance import java.awt.Color; import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.List; import javax.faces.model.ListDataModel; import com.mypackage.core.filter.domainobject.FilterResultDO; import com.itextpdf.text.Font; import com.itextpdf.text.FontFactory; import com.itextpdf.text.Phrase; import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfPTable; public class PDFGenerator { //This method will generate PDF for Filter Result Screen (only DataTable level) @SuppressWarnings("unchecked") public static PdfPTable generatePDF(PdfPTable table,List filterResultDOList ,List filterResultHeaderList ) { //Initialize the table with number of columns required for the Datatable header int numberOfFilterLabelCols = filterResultHeaderList.size(); //PDF Table Frame table = new PdfPTable(numberOfFilterLabelCols); //Getting Filter Detail Table Heading for(int i = 0 ; i < numberOfFilterLabelCols; i++) { ColumnHeader commandHeaderObj = filterResultHeaderList.get(i); table.addCell(commandHeaderObj.getLabel()); } //Getting Filter Detail Data (Rows X Cols) FilterResultDO filterResultDOObj = filterResultDOList.get(0); List filterResultDataList = filterResultDOObj.getFilterResultLst(); int numberOfFilterDataRows = filterResultDataList.size(); //each row iteration for(int row = 0; row < numberOfFilterDataRows; row++) { List filterResultCols = filterResultDataList.get(row); int numberOfFilterDataCols = filterResultCols.size(); //columns iteration of each row for(int col = 0; col < numberOfFilterDataCols ; col++) { String filterColumnsValues = (String) filterResultCols.get(col); table.addCell(filterColumnsValues); } } return table; }//generatePDF }

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• apply style to range of text with javascript in uiwebview

  - by drawnonward

  I am displaying some simple styled text as html in a UIWebView on iPhone. It is basically a series of paragraphs with the occasional strong or emphasized phrase. At runtime I need to apply styles to ranges of text. There are a few similar scenarios, one of which is highlighting search results. If the user has searched for "something" I would like to change the background color behind occurrences of the word, then later restore the original background. Is it possible to apply styles to ranges of text using javascript? A key part of this is also being able to unset the styles. There seem to be two likely paths to follow. One would be modifying some html in Objective-C and passing it through javascript as the new innerHTML of some container. The other would be to use javascript to directly manipulate DOM nodes. I could manipulate html, but that sounds tedious in Objective-C so I would rather manipulate the DOM if that is a reasonable approach. I am not that familiar with javascript and DOM so I do not know if it is a reasonable approach. I wrote some routines to translate between text ranges and node ranges with offsets. So if I start with text range 100-200 and that starts in one paragraph and ends in a third, I can get the text nodes and the offsets within the nodes that represent the given text range. I just need a way to split a text node at an offset in the text. Currently I just apply styles to the paragraphs containing the text range. A few notes: straight javascript please, no external frameworks like jquery. the changes never need to be written to disk. the changes should be undoable or at least removable. the styles to apply already exist in a css file. it needs to work in iPhone 3.0 and forward. all the source files are shipped with the app. please be verbose. Thanks for any suggestions.

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