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  • Low CPU performance with low usage and clock - Windows 8.1

    - by Daniele
    I recently deleted everything from my PC and reinstalled Windows 8.1 from scratch. When I first booted into Windows everything was extremely slow though the CPU usage was very low (about 1%). After installing some drivers the problem seemed to be solved, I was able to use my PC normally. Today I installed a game and I noticed a strange behavior: the game was playable but the performance worsened more and more in the time. This is the situation BEFORE opening the game (normal): This is AFTER some minutes inside the game (low CPU usage and clock): Some information about my system: PC: Sony Vaio S13 (SVS13A1C5E) OS: Windows 8.1 CPU: Intel Core i7-3520M 2.90GHz GPU(1): Intel HD Graphics 4000 GPU(2): NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M LE I tried searching for new drivers and other solutions but noting worked and I don't know what is the cause. I did not checked the temperatures but the fans are not running fast and the PC does not look overheated. Update: Max CPU Temp: 66°C, Max GPU Temp: 61°C The strange thing is that the GPU load is 99% (GPU-Z) and the fan is almost silent. Update 2: I had troubles with Sony Vaio software, I can't get the FN keys and the STAMINA/SPEED switch to work (it is a physical switch to enable/disable the Nvidia card and change the Power Profile). I'm saying this because I remember that before reinstalling Windows there was an option in the Vaio Control Center (now it is not there anymore) that allowed me to choose from something like "priority to performance (ventilation)" or "priority to silence". The current behavior looks like a "priority to silence", but I can't get the stamina-speed switch to work and so I don't see similar oprions in the Vaio Control Center. I don't know if the problem is related to this.

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  • Is my HDD dead forever?

    - by Roberto
    Yesterday I turned on my computer and it couldn't boot. I found out the hd (320GB SATA Seagate Momentus 7200.3 for notebook) was broken and it couldn't be recognized by the BIOS. I have another of the same hard drive, so I exchanged the boards. I found out that there is a problem on its board since my good hard drive didn't work. But the broken hard drive doesn't work with the good board as well: it can be recognized but when I insert a Windows Instalation DVD it says the hard drive is 0GB. I put it in a case and use it in another computer via USB, and but it doesn't show up in the "My Computer". I used a software to recover files called "GetDataBack for NTFS", it recognized the hard drive but with the wrong size (2TB). I try to make it read the hard drive but it got an I/O error reading sector. It tries to read, the hard drive spins up. So, since I'm using a good board on it, the problem seems to be internal. Is there anything someone could do to recover the files from it?

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  • Picking a linux compatible motherboard

    - by Chris
    Last time I bought a new computer (I build them myself) I got a motherboard that had really poor linux support for a long time. Specifically the audio. I had to wait months before the kernel supported the on board audio chipset. That is exactly the situation I'm trying to avoid this time around. I have some specific questions about "server motherboards" actually. I looked at a few models of server motherboards by intel, and some random models on newegg. I wasn't able to see much of a difference from regular desktop motherboard other than most had two sockets, and support for much more ram. These boards seem more popular with Linux users. Why? AMD and Intel both have server CPUs as well. Some question, what's the difference? To make this question more concrete, I was looking at this this motherboard. The main questions about it that I can't answer are: Can I get a motherboard without on board raid and audio? I wanted to get a hardware raid controller and a PCI audio card. I thought a server motherboard would be cheaper and not have these "extras", since who wants an audio card on a server? Where can I found out about Linux support for the components on this board? "Intel ICH10R", "Realtek ALC889", "Marvell 88E8056" I'm buying this computer to work as a Linux desktop for a lot of compiling, coding and audio/video work, but I don't want to rule out the possibility of installing windows and playing some games at one point. (even if the last game I got has been sitting in its box unopened for almost a year). Is it a good idea to buy a "server motherboard" and play games on it, or are desktop boards better value for this? The ultimate solution for me would be a motherboard that had GPL divers for onboard LAN, a single CPU socket, lots of PCI express and PCI. USB 3.0, and no fancy hard disk controllers since I'll be getting a separate one.

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  • Audio card with built-in ground isolator?

    - by Dave Jarvis
    What audio cards would you recommend that eliminate hum, and hard-drive & mouse movement signal interference? Hardware components: Motherboard. Asus P5Q SE Audio. Realtek ALC 1200, 8-Channel High-Definition Audio CODEC (on board) Harddrive. WD Caviar 320 GB Mouse. Logitech Marbleman USB Mixer. Mackie d.4 Pro Amplifier. Sonance Sonamp 260 All components are plugged into the same Monster Power HDP 910 powerbar (does not help eliminate noise). I have no other components plugged in. The computer uses a Monster iCable 1000 to go from mini (on board audio) to RCA (mixer). I have moved the cable as far from other cables as possible. A ground loop isolator between the mixer and on board audio eliminates all noise. I would rather not use a ground loop isolator; an internal audio card that is Linux-compatible (Kubuntu) would be ideal. Suggestions?

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  • can't backup to a NAS drive as offline schedule task

    - by imageng
    I have seen this problem issue discussed in several forums including this one, but could not find a solution. On MS server 2003 I configured a Backup task, the target backup is on a NAS disc (Seagate BlackArmor NAS 110). The backup task is working well as a scheduled task or by a direct command, when I am logged on. It is not working when the user is offline (in this case - Administrator). I already tried the following actions: 1) addressing to the target as network drive (Y:location..), 2)Using UNC instead, 3) making the drive a domain member (the NAS admin S/W allows to define itself as a domain member) The result log message for 1 and 2 is: "The operation was not performed because the specified media cannot be found." The result log message for 3 is empty file. The schedule task "RUN" command is: C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntbackup.exe backup "@C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows NT\NTBackup\data\de-board.bks" /a /d "Set created 2/14/2010 at 5:10 PM" /v:yes /r:no /rs:no /hc:off /m incremental /j "de-board" /l:s /f "\10.0.0.8\public\Backups\IBMServer\de-board.bkf" 10.0.0.8 is the static IP of the NAS. "Run only if logged on" is NOT marked. Password of the administrator user is set. It is obvious that there is no access to the NAS when the user is logged-out. Do you have any idea how can I solve it? Thanks

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  • picking a linux compatable motherboard

    - by Chris
    Last time I bought a new computer (I build them myself) I got a motherboard that had really poor linux support for a long time. Specifically the audio. I had to wait months before the kernel supported the on board audio chipset. That is exactly the situation I'm trying to avoid this time around. I have some specific questions about "server motherboards" actually. I looked at a few models of server motherboards by intel, and some random models on newegg. I wasn't able to see much of a difference from regular desktop motherboard other than most had two sockets, and support for much more ram. These boards seem more popular with Linux users. Why? AMD and Intel both have server CPUs as well. Some question, what's the difference? To make this question more concrete, I was looking at this this motherboard. The main questions about it that I can't answer are: Can I get a motherboard without on board raid and audio? I wanted to get a hardware raid controller and a PCI audio card. I thought a server motherboard would be cheaper and not have these "extras", since who wants an audio card on a server? Where can I found out about Linux support for the components on this board? "Intel ICH10R", "Realtek ALC889", "Marvell 88E8056" I'm buying this computer to work as a Linux desktop for a lot of compiling, coding and audio/video work, but I don't want to rule out the possibility of installing windows and playing some games at one point. (even if the last game I got has been sitting in its box unopened for almost a year). Is it a good idea to buy a "server motherboard" and play games on it, or are desktop boards better value for this? The ultimate solution for me would be a motherboard that had GPL divers for onboard LAN, a single CPU socket, lots of PCI express and PCI. USB 3.0, and no fancy hard disk controllers since I'll be getting a separate one.

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  • raid 0 data recovery?

    - by Fred
    HI All, I have two identical seagate 7200.9 500Gb drives confiured as a RAID 0 spanned disk in windows. One of the drives has lost power and wont spin up at all. I know this normally means death for the data on both drives but i have a cunning plan.. DISK 1 - NO POWER RAID 0 DISK DISK 2 - FULLY FUNCTIONAL RAID 0 DISK DISK 3 - FULLY FUNCTIONAL SPARE DISK Copy the working drive (disk 2) data to a third 500GB DISK (disk 3), remove the logic board from the working disk (disk 2) and replace it with the non working logic board on the broken drive (disk 1) , then hopefully recreate the RAID 0 with disk 1 and disk 3, just long enough to get the data off it. Hope this makes sense, here are my questions: Windows disk manager atm recognises disk 2 but wont let me access it in anyway, therefore copying the data off it (or getting a disk image) cant be done in windows. Does anyone know of any software (in linux or self booting) that would allow me to access this disk? Anyone know of any software that will recreate the spanned drive off two disk images Am i missing any key information that means i definitely shouldn't even bother starting this, i know its a long shot anyway but its worth a try unless i definitely cant do it. The irritating thing is that i am sure its a logic board failure on disk 1 as it simply wont power up at all, suddenly no signs of life, so i am sure the data is intact! Any help would be really appreciated! Thanks

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  • My client's solution of a Windows SBS 2011 VM on an Ubuntu host and VirtualBox is pinning the host CPU

    - by Scott Stamp
    Here's my situation, I've got a client hosting two servers (one VM), with the host providing VMware Zimbra, the other Windows Small Business Server 2011. Unfortunately, the person before me had configured this setup as follows. Host: Ubuntu Desktop Edition 10.04 (I know, again, not my choice) running VMware Zimbra 8GB of RAM On-board RAID1 of two 320GB Seagate Barracuda drives for the OS Software RAID5 of four 500GB WD Caviar Black drives on MDADM for bulk storage (sorry, I don't know the model #) A relatively competent quad-core Intel Core i7 CPU from the Nehalem architecture (not suspicious of this as the bottleneck) Guest: Windows Small Business Server 2011 4GB of RAM Host-equivalent CPU allocation VDI file for OS hosted on the on-board RAID, VDI file for storage hosted on the on-board RAID For some reason when running, the VM locks up when sitting nearly idle, and the VirtualBox process reports values of 240%+ in top (how is that even possible?!). Anyone have any ideas or suggestions? I'm totally stumped on this one. Happy to provide whatever logs you'd like to take a look at. Ideally I'd drop VirtualBox and provision this with VMware Workstation, but the client has objected to the (very nominal) costs involved. If hardware needs to be purchased to help, it will be, but we're considering upgrades a last-resort at this time. Thanks in advance! *fingers crossed*

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  • ubuntu dmidecode is not functioning properly

    - by Alaa Alomari
    dmidecode is giving irrelevant and conflicted results. it shows that i have two slots while the correct is 8 (the board is Tyan S5350.) uname -a Linux synd01 3.0.0-16-server #29-Ubuntu SMP Tue Feb 14 13:08:12 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux root@synd01:/home/badmin# dmidecode -t 16 dmidecode 2.9 SMBIOS 2.33 present. Handle 0x0011, DMI type 16, 15 bytes Physical Memory Array Location: System Board Or Motherboard Use: System Memory Error Correction Type: None Maximum Capacity: 4 GB Error Information Handle: Not Provided Number Of Devices: 2 while root@synd01:/home/badmin# dmidecode -t 17 | grep Size Size: No Module Installed Size: No Module Installed Size: 1024 MB Size: 1024 MB Size: No Module Installed Size: No Module Installed Size: 1024 MB Size: 1024 MB also lshw shows: *-memory description: System Memory physical id: 11 slot: System board or motherboard size: 4GiB *-bank:0 description: DIMM DDR Synchronous 166 MHz (6.0 ns) [empty] physical id: 0 slot: J3B1 clock: 166MHz (6.0ns) *-bank:1 description: DIMM DDR Synchronous 166 MHz (6.0 ns) [empty] physical id: 1 slot: J3B3 clock: 166MHz (6.0ns) *-bank:2 description: DIMM DDR Synchronous 166 MHz (6.0 ns) physical id: 2 slot: J2B2 size: 1GiB width: 64 bits clock: 166MHz (6.0ns) *-bank:3 description: DIMM DDR Synchronous 166 MHz (6.0 ns) physical id: 3 slot: J2B4 size: 1GiB width: 64 bits clock: 166MHz (6.0ns) *-bank:4 description: DIMM DDR Synchronous 166 MHz (6.0 ns) [empty] physical id: 4 slot: J3B2 clock: 166MHz (6.0ns) *-bank:5 description: DIMM DDR Synchronous 166 MHz (6.0 ns) [empty] physical id: 5 slot: J2B1 clock: 166MHz (6.0ns) *-bank:6 description: DIMM DDR Synchronous 166 MHz (6.0 ns) physical id: 6 slot: J2B3 size: 1GiB width: 64 bits clock: 166MHz (6.0ns) *-bank:7 description: DIMM DDR Synchronous 166 MHz (6.0 ns) physical id: 7 slot: J1B1 size: 1GiB width: 64 bits clock: 166MHz (6.0ns) what might cause this conflict and how can i fix it? Thanks

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  • Windows Server 2008 - RAID 5 Fails on Reboot

    - by Adam
    Hey, I've got an install of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise. It's running software RAID-5 with five disks. The disks were originally formatted under Windows Server 2003, but came up fine once I installed Windows Server 2008. The issue I'm having is that every time I reboot the server, the RAID comes up with a "Failed Redundancy" - the data stays available. I have 4 disks on a PCI SATA controller, and one of the disks connected to the motherboard's on-board SATA ports. (The other on-board port has the system disk connected.) I was having Disk #4 fail consistently, so I tried swapping the cables on the controller end. I swapped the on-board RAID disk with one on the PCI controller. Same issue now, expect with disk #1. Once the system's up, I can reactivate the RAID, it will resync for a while, then go to "Healthy", and will stay that way for an indefinite amount of time - until I reboot. As soon as I reboot, the disk drops again. I've ruled out disk + cable with the recabling. I don't believe it would be the controller as it seems to work fine most of the time - only failing on reboot, and the other port on the same controller connects the system disk - which is clearly working. I did look in the event log, but didn't see anything particularly relevant (although I didn't know what I was looking for - just looked for anything with a "Warning" or "Error" symbol that looked disk-related :)). I'm not particularly familiar with RAID on Windows, does anyone have any idea why this might be doing this? Any idea how to fix it? Any suggestions appreciated! -- Adam

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  • Intel HD Graphics vs NVIDIA Quadro FX 380 PCI-E

    - by Michael
    I recently purchased an Acer Veriton which has an i5-650 processor, Windows 7 Pro (64 bit) and Intel HD Graphics listed as the video card. I also purchased a PNY nVIDIA Quadro FX 380 PCI-E card for improved picture and home video viewing and editing. I have already replaced the original 300 wattt power supply to a 430 watt Antec Truepower I had on hand and boosted the RAM to 8 gigs from the original 4. Question 1) Am I getting any improvement in visual quality or system speed with the Quadro or is it a waste of money and I should just save up to buy a bigger video card? This card was on sale for $115. If I am getting improvement then I need to ask another question. Question 2) Instructions for the Quadro installation are as follows... 1--Uninstall the existing VGA driver. -Remove the existing Display Driver via "Add or Remove Porgrams". -Shut down your computer. 2--Remove your Existing Graphics Board (or Disable Integrated 3D Graphics Controller). skipping instructions on how to remove existing graphics board -Systems with integrated (also know as on-board) 3D graphics may require you to disable the integrated 3D graphics system. Consult the owners or vendor manual that came with your PC on how to properly do this. So is the Intel HD Graphics considered a 3D graphics controller? If so should I just contact Acer or can anyone give me instructions? Thanks in advance for any help.

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  • Installing a new Motherboard in a HP xw6200 case

    - by thing2k
    I have a HP xw6200 Workstation, that is rather long in the tooth, and with 2 physical CPUs, it is quite inefficient. So, the plan was to upgrade the internals. Nothing special: AMD Athlon II X4 640 ASUS M4A78KT-M LE (mATX) 2x 2GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM. 3p under my £150 budget The issues: The pin connector for the front panel isn't a good fit, but I can trim it to size. The PSU has a 8-Pin Power connector, unsurprisingly, the new board has a 4 pin socket. The pins do line up, but I would have to cut it in half to fit. Finally, due to the weight of heat-sinks, they are screwed directly into the case. It turns out that these screws also lock the motherboard in place. As to remove it, you remove the heat-sinks, slide the motherboard across and lift it out. I tested the new board for fit, and while it slots in fine, it's not secure. There is nowhere to screw the board down, it is just held in place with plastic standoffs. The only idea I had, was to wedging something between the side of the motherboard and part of the case. Any suggestions?

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  • HDD dead forever???

    - by Roberto
    Yesterday I turned on my computer and it couldn't boot. I found out the hd (320GB SATA Seagate Momentus 7200.3 for notebook) was broken, it couldn't be recognized by the BIOS. I have another of the same hd, so I exchanged the boards. I found out that there is a problem on its board since my good hd didn't work. But the broken hd doesn't work with the good board as well: it can be recognized but when I insert a Windows Instalation DVD it says the hd is 0GB. I put it in a case and use it in another computer via USB, and but it doesn't show up in the "My Computer". I used a software to recover files called "GetDataBack for NTFS", it recognized the hd but with the wrong size (2TB). I try to make it read the hd but it get an I/O error reading sector. It tries to read, the hd spins... So, since I'm using a good board on it, the problem seems to be internal. Is there anything someone could do recover the files from it?

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  • SQL Server: Network pauses after installing cheap SATA card: Is there a solution?

    - by samsmith
    At the risk of being assigned to the "bad DBA" club... I did something desperate, and may have to undo it. Problem: After installing a low cost eSATA board, my SQL Server is intermittently unresponsive (seemingly when there is a lot of IO to the eSATA drive). Questions: 1) Is there a solution to the intermittent unresponsiveness that allows me to keep the eSATA in place? 2) Whether or not (1==true): What is a decent, low cost way to add 1-3 TB storage to SQL for non-critical SQL DBs? Detail: Our SAN is full, and expanding it is costly and will take a month. I have a pressing need to add 1-3 TB for some development DBs (e.g. not mission critical; data loss is OK). As a bandaid, I threw a $20 eSATA PCI board in the Dell 1950 server, and attached an external 2TB eSATA drive. This seemed to work fine, but I notice that our production SQL DBs, and even remote desktop, now experience network "pauses" that they never did before (with both SQL client apps and remote desktop throwing "networking problem" errors). This SQL Server has lots of memory, and runs an instance of SQL 2005 (where all line of business apps reside) and an instance SQL 2008 (for development db's). SQL Server RAM has been appropriately configured, and this setup has run great for years. The server is: Dell 1950 Win2003 x64 14GB RAM PERC controller, 2 mirrored hd's internal Dell SAN over gbit ethernet, dual homed 2 PCIx slots (1 used by NIC for SAN, 1 now in use for eSATA board) Thank you for suggestions!

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  • How two completely unrelated software can affect each other in a very strange manner?

    - by user40602
    I installed an old game on my old PC and it doesn't work; its process/exe file was listed in task manager but nothing appeared on the screen. then some time later i discovered that when some specific program was running an my pc, that game could be executed without that problem! although i am myself a power user and also a programmer, i couldn't find the reason, and don't have any good guesses about it. i just know that when i want to run that game i should have another specific and unrelated program running. i ask if anyone has any idea/guess about the possible reasons for this rare phenomenon! oh and if u ask about the details/names of those programs, i am afraid of telling that, because others may think i am kidding, but i am not (please believe me!), that game is NFS2 and the other program is mysqld.exe (i said before that i am a programmer!). I don't know how mysqld.exe (yes it is the windows version of the famous MySQL DBMS server) can affect NFS2 in such an strange manner, and my curiosity and profession don't let me to forget seeking for the answer, so i decided to take the help of others to see if someone has had a similar experience or a reasonable idea about it.

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  • Windows Phone 7 development: first impressions

    - by DigiMortal
    After hard week in work I got some free time to play with Windows Phone 7 CTP developer tools. Although my first test application is still unfinished I think it is good moment to share my first experiences to you. In this posting I will give you quick overview of Windows Phone 7 developer tools from developer perspective. If you are familiar with Visual Studio 2010 then you will feel comfortable because Windows Phone 7 CTP developer tools base on Visual Studio 2010 Express. Project templates There are five project templates available. Three of them are based on Silverlight and two on XNA Game Studio: Windows Phone Application (Silverlight) Windows Phone List Application (Silverlight) Windows Phone Class Library (Silverlight) Windows Phone Game (XNA Game Studio) Windows Phone Game Library (XNA Game Studio) Currently I am writing to test applications. One of them is based on Windows Phone Application and the other on Windows Phone List Application project template. After creating these projects you see the following views in Visual Studio. Windows Phone Application. Click on image to enlarge. Windows Phone List Application. Click on image to enlarge.  I suggest you to use some of these templates to get started more easily. Windows Phone 7 emulator You can run your Windows Phone 7 applications on Windows Phone 7 emulator that comes with developer tools CTP. If you run your application then emulator is started automatically and you can try out how your application works in phone-like emulator. You can see screenshot of emulator on right. Currently there is opened Windows Phone List Application as it is created by default. Click on image to enlarge it. Emulator is a little bit slow and uncomfortable but it works pretty well. This far I have caused only couple of crashes during my experiments. In these cases emulator works but Visual Studio gets stuck because it cannot communicate with emulator. One important note. Emulator is based on virtual machine although you can see only phone screen and options toolbar. If you want to run emulator you must close all virtual machines running on your machine and run Visual Studio 2010 as administrator. Once you run emulator you can keep it open because you can stop your application in Visual Studio, modify, compile and re-deploy it without restarting emulator. Designing user interfaces You can design user interface of your application in Visual Studio. When you open XAML-files it is displayed in window with two panels. Left panel shows you device screen and works as visual design environment while right panel shows you XAML mark-up and let’s you modify XML if you need it. As it is one of my very first Silverlight applications I felt more comfortable with XAML editor because property names in property boxes of visual designer confused me a little bit. Designer panel is not very good because it is visually hard to follow. It has black background that makes dark borders of controls very hard to see. If you have monitor with very high contrast then it is may be not a real problem. I have usual monitor and I have problem. :) Putting controls on design surface, dragging and resizing them is also pretty painful. Some controls are drawn correctly but for some controls you have to set width and height in XML so they can be resized. After some practicing it is not so annoying anymore. On the right you can see toolbox with some controllers. This is all you get out of the box. But it is sufficient to get started. After getting some experiences you can create your own controls or use existing ones from other vendors or developers. If it is your first time to do stuff with Silverlight then keep Google open – you need it hard. After getting over the first shock you get the point very quickly and start developing at normal speed. :) Writing source code Writing source code is the most familiar part of this action. Good old Visual Studio code editor with all nice features it has. But here you get also some surprises: The anatomy of Silverlight controls is a little bit different than the one of user controls in web and forms projects. Windows Phone 7 doesn’t run on full version of Windows (I bet it is some version of Windows CE or something like this) then there is less system classes you can use. Some familiar classes have less methods that in full version of .NET Framework and in these cases you have to write all the code by yourself or find libraries or source code from somewhere. These problems are really not so much problems than limitations and you get easily over them. Conclusion Windows Phone 7 CTP developer tools help you do a lot of things on Windows Phone 7. Although I expected better performance from tools I think that current performance is not a problem. This far my first test project is going very well and Google has answer for almost every question. Windows Phone 7 is mobile device and therefore it has less hardware resources than desktop computers. This is why toolset is so limited. The more you need memory the more slower is device and as you may guess it needs the more battery. If you are writing apps for mobile devices then make your best to get your application use as few resources as possible and act as fast as possible.

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  • Gamification at OOW

    - by erikanollwebb
    Last week was Oracle OpenWorld, and for those of you not in tech or downtown San Francisco, that might not mean a whole lot.  However, if you are familiar with it, Oracle OpenWorld is our premier customer event.  This year, more than 50,000 people attended.  It's not a good week to visit San Francisco on vacation because Oracle customers take over all the hotels in town!  It was crazy, but a lot of fun and it's a great opportunity for the Apps UX group to do customer research with a range of customers.  This year, more than 100+ customers and partners took the time to team up with our UX experts and provide feedback on new designs and ideas. Over three days,  UX teams conducted 8  one-on-one user feedback sessions, 4 focus groups and 7 surveys. In addition, we conducted a voice capture activity and were able to collect close to 70 speech samples at the lab and DEMOgrounds. This was a great opportunity for us to do some testing on some specific gamification concepts with a set of business analysts.  We pulled in 8 folks for a focus group on gamification concepts and whether they thought those would work for their teams. To get ready for this, my designer extraordinaire, Andrea Cantú, flew into town and we spent almost a week locked in a room together brainstorming design ideas.  We killed a few trees trying to get all of our concepts and other examples together in the process, but in the end, we put together a whole series of examples of how you might gamify an Oracle app (in this case, CRM).  Andrea is a genius for this kind of thing and the comps she created looked great.  Here's a picture of her hard at work!  We also had the good fortune to have my boss, Laurie Pattison and my usability contractor, Shobana Subramanian there to note take and observe as well.  Here's a few shots of us, hard at work preparing for the day (or checking out something on Laurie's iPhone...) To start things off, we gave an overview of gamification and I talked about what it's used for.  Then we gave the participants a scenario about our sales person and what we were trying to get her to do. It was a great opportunity to highlight what our business goals might be and why we might want to add game mechanics.  It was also a good way to get them thinking about how that might work for them in their environments and workplaces. There were some surprises for the day.  We asked how many of them were already familiar with the concept of gamification--only two people had heard of it and only one was using game mechanics in his work.  That's in contrast to a survey we just ran internally with folks in a dev org where almost 50% of about 450 respondents had heard of gamification.  As we discussed the ways game mechanics could be used, it became clear that many of the folks had seen some game mechanics in action but didn't know that's what they were.  We also noticed that the folks in this group felt that if they were trying to sell the concept in their orgs, they wouldn't call it gamification.  That's not a huge surprise to me--they said what we've heard in the past, that gamification does not seem like a serious term for enterprise software.  They said they'd sell it with the goals--as a means to increase behaviors by rewarding users for activities.  It's a funny problem.  The word puts some folks off, but at the same time, I haven't seen another one word description that quite captures the range of things that "gamification" can cover.  My guess is that the more mainstream the term becomes, the more desensitized we'll become to the idea the it's trivializing enterprise software in some way.  Still, it was interesting to note that this group still felt that they would not take this concept to their bosses or teams and call it "gamification".  They focused on the goals, and how we could incentivize desired behaviors with game mechanics.  As I have already stated in other posts, I feel like my org is more receptive to discussing how this is just a more transparent type of usability and user experience methods than talking about gamification.  That's the argument they said they would use. All in all, it was a good session.  I love getting to talk to customers, present ideas and concepts, and get their feedback and input.  It's the type of thing that really helps drive our designs and keeps us grounded in what our customers need/want.  We're already planning where to get more feedback opportunities in the coming months. 

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  • Collaborative Whiteboard using WebSocket in GlassFish 4 - Text/JSON and Binary/ArrayBuffer Data Transfer (TOTD #189)

    - by arungupta
    This blog has published a few blogs on using JSR 356 Reference Implementation (Tyrus) as its integrated in GlassFish 4 promoted builds. TOTD #183: Getting Started with WebSocket in GlassFish TOTD #184: Logging WebSocket Frames using Chrome Developer Tools, Net-internals and Wireshark TOTD #185: Processing Text and Binary (Blob, ArrayBuffer, ArrayBufferView) Payload in WebSocket TOTD #186: Custom Text and Binary Payloads using WebSocket One of the typical usecase for WebSocket is online collaborative games. This Tip Of The Day (TOTD) explains a sample that can be used to build such games easily. The application is a collaborative whiteboard where different shapes can be drawn in multiple colors. The shapes drawn on one browser are automatically drawn on all other peer browsers that are connected to the same endpoint. The shape, color, and coordinates of the image are transfered using a JSON structure. A browser may opt-out of sharing the figures. Alternatively any browser can send a snapshot of their existing whiteboard to all other browsers. Take a look at this video to understand how the application work and the underlying code. The complete sample code can be downloaded here. The code behind the application is also explained below. The web page (index.jsp) has a HTML5 Canvas as shown: <canvas id="myCanvas" width="150" height="150" style="border:1px solid #000000;"></canvas> And some radio buttons to choose the color and shape. By default, the shape, color, and coordinates of any figure drawn on the canvas are put in a JSON structure and sent as a message to the WebSocket endpoint. The JSON structure looks like: { "shape": "square", "color": "#FF0000", "coords": { "x": 31.59999942779541, "y": 49.91999053955078 }} The endpoint definition looks like: @WebSocketEndpoint(value = "websocket",encoders = {FigureDecoderEncoder.class},decoders = {FigureDecoderEncoder.class})public class Whiteboard { As you can see, the endpoint has decoder and encoder registered that decodes JSON to a Figure (a POJO class) and vice versa respectively. The decode method looks like: public Figure decode(String string) throws DecodeException { try { JSONObject jsonObject = new JSONObject(string); return new Figure(jsonObject); } catch (JSONException ex) { throw new DecodeException("Error parsing JSON", ex.getMessage(), ex.fillInStackTrace()); }} And the encode method looks like: public String encode(Figure figure) throws EncodeException { return figure.getJson().toString();} FigureDecoderEncoder implements both decoder and encoder functionality but thats purely for convenience. But the recommended design pattern is to keep them in separate classes. In certain cases, you may even need only one of them. On the client-side, the Canvas is initialized as: var canvas = document.getElementById("myCanvas");var context = canvas.getContext("2d");canvas.addEventListener("click", defineImage, false); The defineImage method constructs the JSON structure as shown above and sends it to the endpoint using websocket.send(). An instant snapshot of the canvas is sent using binary transfer with WebSocket. The WebSocket is initialized as: var wsUri = "ws://localhost:8080/whiteboard/websocket";var websocket = new WebSocket(wsUri);websocket.binaryType = "arraybuffer"; The important part is to set the binaryType property of WebSocket to arraybuffer. This ensures that any binary transfers using WebSocket are done using ArrayBuffer as the default type seem to be blob. The actual binary data transfer is done using the following: var image = context.getImageData(0, 0, canvas.width, canvas.height);var buffer = new ArrayBuffer(image.data.length);var bytes = new Uint8Array(buffer);for (var i=0; i<bytes.length; i++) { bytes[i] = image.data[i];}websocket.send(bytes); This comprehensive sample shows the following features of JSR 356 API: Annotation-driven endpoints Send/receive text and binary payload in WebSocket Encoders/decoders for custom text payload In addition, it also shows how images can be captured and drawn using HTML5 Canvas in a JSP. How could this be turned in to an online game ? Imagine drawing a Tic-tac-toe board on the canvas with two players playing and others watching. Then you can build access rights and controls within the application itself. Instead of sending a snapshot of the canvas on demand, a new peer joining the game could be automatically transferred the current state as well. Do you want to build this game ? I built a similar game a few years ago. Do somebody want to rewrite the game using WebSocket APIs ? :-) Many thanks to Jitu and Akshay for helping through the WebSocket internals! Here are some references for you: JSR 356: Java API for WebSocket - Specification (Early Draft) and Implementation (already integrated in GlassFish 4 promoted builds) Subsequent blogs will discuss the following topics (not necessary in that order) ... Error handling Interface-driven WebSocket endpoint Java client API Client and Server configuration Security Subprotocols Extensions Other topics from the API

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  • visual assist inserts extra spaces?

    - by Kugel
    I'm using Visual Assist X trial on VS2010 Pro. When I do extract method or modify method signature refactorings it gives me this: void Solver::Work( Stack &s, Board &b ) However I would really appreciate if it gave me this: void Solver::Work(Stack &s, Board &b) No extra spaces. Is there a way to set this?

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  • Still failing a function, not sure why...ideas on test cases to run?

    - by igor
    I've been trying to get this Sudoku game working, and I am still failing some of the individual functions. All together the game works, but when I run it through an "autograder", some test cases fail.. Currently I am stuck on the following function, placeValue, failing. I do have the output that I get vs. what the correct one should be, but am confused..what is something going on? EDIT: I do not know what input/calls they make to the function. What happens is that "invalid row" is outputted after every placeValue call, and I can't trace why.. Here is the output (mine + correct one) if it's at all helpful: http://pastebin.com/Wd3P3nDA Here is placeValue, and following is getCoords that placeValue calls.. void placeValue(Square board[BOARD_SIZE][BOARD_SIZE]) { int x,y,value; if(getCoords(x,y)) { cin>>value; if(board[x][y].permanent) { cout<< endl << "That location cannot be changed"; } else if(!(value>=1 && value<=9)) { cout << "Invalid number"<< endl; clearInput(); } else if(validMove(board, x, y, value)) { board[x][y].number=value; } } } bool getCoords(int & x, int & y) { char row; y=0; cin>>row>>y; x = static_cast<int>(toupper(row)); if (isalpha(row) && (x >= 'A' && x <= 'I') && y >= 1 && y <= 9) { x = x - 'A'; // converts x from a letter to corresponding index in matrix y = y - 1; // converts y to corresponding index in matrix return (true); } else if (!(x >= 'A' && x <= 'I')) { cout<<"Invalid row"<<endl; clearInput(); return false; } else { cout<<"Invalid column"<<endl; clearInput(); return false; } }

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  • WordPress wp_nav_menu specific sub menu only

    - by HWD
    I want to create a menu that pulls only the sub-menu options for a particular page. For example, if the menu option DASHBOARD has the sub-menus MESSAGE BOARD and CALENDAR, I want to be able to create a separate menu with just MESSAGE BOARD and CALENDAR. I'd like to do this without the wp_list_pages function so that the menu options can be managed using the Appearances Menus tab in WordPress. Thanks!

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  • Website Reviewing Application/Interface

    - by Eric Di Bari
    I am the technology director at a small nonprofit, and we are in the process of making a new website. We have several proposed mock-ups of different homepage designs, and need to receive input from our board members. Is there an online application/program/framework that will receive and organize user comments? I'm looking for something that will allow commenting while viewing the page, rather than just a message board or wiki.

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  • How to implement "short" nested vanity urls in rails?

    - by UnSandpiper
    I understand how to create a vanity URL in Rails in order to translate http://mysite.com/forum/1 into http://mysite.com/some-forum-name But I'd like to take it a step further and get the following working (if it is possible at all): Instead of: http://mysite.com/forum/1/board/99/thread/321 I'd like in the first step to get to something like this: http://mysite.com/1/99/321 and ultimately have it like http://mysite.com/some-forum-name/some-board-name/this-is-the-thread-subject. Is this possible?

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  • Simple XNA 2D demo: why is my F# version slower than C# version?

    - by Den
    When running this XNA application it should display a rotated rectangle that moves from top-left corner to bottom-right corner. It looks like my F# version is noticeably much slower. It seems that the Draw method skips a lot of frames. I am using VS 2012 RC, XNA 4.0, .NET 4.5, F# 3.0. I am trying to make it as functional as possible. What could be the reason for poor performance? C#: class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { using (var game = new FlockGame()) { game.Run(); } } } public class FlockGame : Game { private GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; private DrawingManager drawingManager; private Vector2 position = Vector2.Zero; public FlockGame() { graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); } protected override void Initialize() { drawingManager = new DrawingManager(graphics.GraphicsDevice); this.IsFixedTimeStep = false; } protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { position = new Vector2(position.X + 50.1f * (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds, position.Y + 50.1f * (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds); base.Update(gameTime); } protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { //this.GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Lavender) drawingManager.DrawRectangle(position, new Vector2(100.0f, 100.0f), 0.7845f, Color.Red); base.Draw(gameTime); } } public class DrawingManager { private GraphicsDevice GraphicsDevice; private Effect Effect; public DrawingManager(GraphicsDevice graphicsDevice) { GraphicsDevice = graphicsDevice; this.Effect = new BasicEffect(this.GraphicsDevice) { VertexColorEnabled = true, Projection = Matrix.CreateOrthographicOffCenter(0.0f, this.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width, this.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f) }; } private VertexPositionColor[] GetRectangleVertices (Vector2 center, Vector2 size, float radians, Color color) { var halfSize = size/2.0f; var topLeft = -halfSize; var bottomRight = halfSize; var topRight = new Vector2(bottomRight.X, topLeft.Y); var bottomLeft = new Vector2(topLeft.X, bottomRight.Y); topLeft = Vector2.Transform(topLeft, Matrix.CreateRotationZ(radians)) + center; topRight = Vector2.Transform(topRight, Matrix.CreateRotationZ(radians)) + center; bottomRight = Vector2.Transform(bottomRight, Matrix.CreateRotationZ(radians)) + center; bottomLeft = Vector2.Transform(bottomLeft, Matrix.CreateRotationZ(radians)) + center; return new VertexPositionColor[] { new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(topLeft, 0.0f), color), new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(topRight, 0.0f), color), new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(topRight, 0.0f), color), new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(bottomRight, 0.0f), color), new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(bottomRight, 0.0f), color), new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(bottomLeft, 0.0f), color), new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(bottomLeft, 0.0f), color), new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(topLeft, 0.0f), color) }; } public void DrawRectangle(Vector2 center, Vector2 size, float radians, Color color) { var vertices = GetRectangleVertices(center, size, radians, color); foreach (var pass in this.Effect.CurrentTechnique.Passes) { pass.Apply(); this.GraphicsDevice.DrawUserPrimitives(PrimitiveType.LineList, vertices, 0, vertices.Length/2); } } } F#: namespace Flocking module FlockingProgram = open System open Flocking [<STAThread>] [<EntryPoint>] let Main _ = use g = new FlockGame() g.Run() 0 //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ namespace Flocking open System open System.Diagnostics open Microsoft.Xna.Framework open Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics open Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input type public FlockGame() as this = inherit Game() let mutable graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this) let mutable drawingManager = null let mutable position = Vector2.Zero override Game.LoadContent() = drawingManager <- new Rendering.DrawingManager(graphics.GraphicsDevice) this.IsFixedTimeStep <- false override Game.Update gameTime = position <- Vector2(position.X + 50.1f * float32 gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds, position.Y + 50.1f * float32 gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds) base.Update gameTime override Game.Draw gameTime = //this.GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Lavender) Rendering.DrawRectangle(drawingManager, position, Vector2(100.0f, 100.0f), 0.7845f, Color.Red) base.Draw gameTime //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ namespace Flocking open System open System.Collections.Generic open Microsoft.Xna.Framework open Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics open Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input module Rendering = [<AllowNullLiteral>] type DrawingManager (graphicsDevice : GraphicsDevice) = member this.GraphicsDevice = graphicsDevice member this.Effect = new BasicEffect(this.GraphicsDevice, VertexColorEnabled = true, Projection = Matrix.CreateOrthographicOffCenter(0.0f, float32 this.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width, float32 this.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f)) let private GetRectangleVertices (center:Vector2, size:Vector2, radians:float32, color:Color) = let halfSize = size / 2.0f let mutable topLeft = -halfSize let mutable bottomRight = halfSize let mutable topRight = new Vector2(bottomRight.X, topLeft.Y) let mutable bottomLeft = new Vector2(topLeft.X, bottomRight.Y) topLeft <- Vector2.Transform(topLeft, Matrix.CreateRotationZ(radians)) + center topRight <- Vector2.Transform(topRight, Matrix.CreateRotationZ(radians)) + center bottomRight <- Vector2.Transform(bottomRight, Matrix.CreateRotationZ(radians)) + center bottomLeft <- Vector2.Transform(bottomLeft, Matrix.CreateRotationZ(radians)) + center [| new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(topLeft, 0.0f), color) new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(topRight, 0.0f), color) new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(topRight, 0.0f), color) new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(bottomRight, 0.0f), color) new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(bottomRight, 0.0f), color) new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(bottomLeft, 0.0f), color) new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(bottomLeft, 0.0f), color) new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(topLeft, 0.0f), color) |] let DrawRectangle (drawingManager:DrawingManager, center:Vector2, size:Vector2, radians:float32, color:Color) = let vertices = GetRectangleVertices(center, size, radians, color) for pass in drawingManager.Effect.CurrentTechnique.Passes do pass.Apply() drawingManager.GraphicsDevice.DrawUserPrimitives(PrimitiveType.LineList, vertices, 0, vertices.Length/2)

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