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  • In Email, Image (img) Source (src) Tags are rewritten as relative links. How to fix?

    - by Noah Goodrich
    I'm working on sending out an html based email, and every time it sends the image src tags and some of the anchor href tags are modified to be relative url's. Update 2: This is happening between when the body of the email is generated and sent and when it arrives in my inbox. Update: I am using Postfix on a LAMPP server. In addition, I am using Zend_Mail to send the emails out. For example, I have a link: src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/header.jpg" And it gets rewritten as: src="../../../../images/email/highpoint_2009_04/header.jpg" What can cause this to occur and how is it corrected? Email headers: Return-Path: <[email protected]> X-Original-To: [email protected] Delivered-To: [email protected] Received: by mail.example.com (Postfix, from userid 0) id 6BF012252; Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:15:20 -0600 (MDT) To: Gabriel <[email protected]> Subject: Free Map to Sales Success From: Somebody <[email protected]> Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:15:20 -0600 Content-Type: text/html; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: multipart/related Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <[email protected]> Original content to be sent out: <table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600"> <tbody> <tr> <td valign="top"> <a href="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com"> <img moz-do-not-send="true" alt="The Furniture Training Company - Know More. Sell More." src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/header.jpg" border="0" height="123" width="600"> </a> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600"> <tbody> <tr> <td valign="top"><img alt="Visit us at High Point to receive your free training poster" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/hero.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true" height="150" width="600"><br> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600"> <tbody> <tr> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><img alt="" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_content_left.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true" height="30" width="30"><br> </td> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><font originaltag="yes" style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" color="#000000" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"><big><big><big><big><small><big><b>See you at Market</b></big><br> </small></big></big></big></big></font> <font originaltag="yes" style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" color="#000000" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"><big><big><big><big><small><br> </small></big></big></big></big></font><small><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Visit our space to get your free Map to Sales Success poster! This unique 24 X 36 color poster is your guide to developing high volume salespeople with larger tickets. Find us in the new NHFA Retailer Resource Center located in the Plaza. <br> <br> Don&#8217;t miss Mark Lacy&#8217;s entertaining seminar "Help Wanted! My Sales Associates Can&#8217;t Sell Water to a Thirsty Camel." He&#8217;ll reveal powerful secrets for turning sales associates into furniture experts that will sell. See him Saturday, April 25th at 11:30 AM in the seminar room of the new NHFA Retail Resource Center in the Plaza. <br> <br> Stop by our space to learn how our ingenious internet-delivered training courses are easy to use, guaranteed to work, and cheaper than the daily donuts. Over 95% report increased sales. <br> <br> Plan to see us at High Point. </font></small> <font originaltag="yes" style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" color="#000000" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"><big><big><big><big><small><small><br> <br> <br> <br> </small></small></big></big></big></big></font><small><font originaltag="yes" style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" color="#000000" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"><big><big><big><small> </small></big></big></big></font></small> <a href="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/map"><img alt="Find out more" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/image_content_left.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true" border="0" height="67" width="326"></a><br> <br> </td> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"> <img alt="" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_content_middle.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true" height="28" width="28"><br> </td> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><img alt="Roadmap to Sales Success poster" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/image_content_right.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true" height="267" width="186"><br> <font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><small><font originaltag="yes" style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" color="#000000" size="1"><big><big><big><small><b>Road Map to Sales Success<br> </b><br> </small></big></big></big></font>This beautiful poster is yours free for simply stopping by and visiting with us at High Point. <span class="moz-txt-slash">Our space is located inside the </span>new NHFA Retailer Resource Center in the Plaza Suites, 222 South Main St, 1st Floor. We will be at market from Sat April 25th until Thur April 30th. </small></font><br> </td> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><img alt="" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_content_right.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true" height="30" width="30"><br> <br> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600"> <tbody> <tr> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><img alt="" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/disclaimer_divider.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true" height="25" width="600"><br> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600"> <tbody> <tr> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><img alt="" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_disclaimer_left.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true"></td> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><img alt="" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_disclaimer_middle.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true"><br> <font originaltag="yes" style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" color="#666666" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"><big><big><big><big><small><small><small>If you are not attending the High Point market in April but would still like to receive a free Road Map to Sales Success poster visit us on the web at <u><a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com">www.furnituretrainingcompany.com</a></u>, or to speak with a Furniture Training Company representative, call toll free (866) 755-5996. We do not offer free shipping outside of the U.S. and Canada. Retailers outside of the U.S. and Canada may call for more information. Limit one free Road Map to Sales Success per company. Other copies of the poster may be purchased on our web site.<br> <br> </small></small></small></big></big></big></big></font> <font color="#666666"><small><font originaltag="yes" style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"><big><big><big><small><small>We hope you found this message to be useful. However, if you'd rather not receive future emails of this sort from The Furniture Training Company, please <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.furnituretraining.com/contact">click here to unsubscribe</a>.<br> <br> </small></small></big></big></big></font></small><small><font originaltag="yes" style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"><big><big><big><small><small>&copy;Copyright 2009 The Furniture Training Company.<br> 1770 North Research Park Way, <br> North Logan, UT 84341. <br> All Rights Reserved.</small></small></big></big></big></font></small></font><br> </td> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><img alt="" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_disclaimer_right.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true"></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600"> <tbody> <tr> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><img alt="" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/footer.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true"> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <br> <br> Content that gets sent: <table border=3D"0" cellspacing=3D"0" cellpadding=3D"0" width=3D"600" al= ign=3D"center">=0D=0A<tbody>=0D=0A<tr>=0D=0A<td valign=3D"top"><a href= =3D"http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com"> <img src=3D"http://www.fur= nituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/header.jpg" bor= der=3D"0" alt=3D"The Furniture Training Company - Know More. Sell More."= width=3D"600" height=3D"123" /> </a></td>=0D=0A</tr>=0D=0A</tbody>=0D= =0A</table>=0D=0A<table border=3D"0" cellspacing=3D"0" cellpadding=3D"0"= width=3D"600" align=3D"center">=0D=0A<tbody>=0D=0A<tr>=0D=0A<td valign= =3D"top"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/emai= l/highpoint_2009_04/hero.jpg" alt=3D"Visit us at High Point to receive y= our free training poster" width=3D"600" height=3D"150" /><br /></td>=0D= =0A</tr>=0D=0A</tbody>=0D=0A</table>=0D=0A<table border=3D"0" cellspacin= g=3D"0" cellpadding=3D"0" width=3D"600" align=3D"center">=0D=0A<tbody>= =0D=0A<tr>=0D=0A<td valign=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><img src=3D"http:= //www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer= _content_left.jpg" alt=3D"" width=3D"30" height=3D"30" /><br /></td>=0D= =0A<td valign=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><span style=3D"font-size: xx-s= mall; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; color: #000000;">= <big><big><big><big><small><big><strong>See you at Market</strong></big>= <br /> </small></big></big></big></big></span> <span style=3D"font-size:= xx-small; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; color: #0000= 00;"><big><big><big><big><small><br /> </small></big></big></big></big><= /span><small><span style=3D"font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;">Vi= sit our space to get your free Map to Sales Success poster! This unique= 24 X 36 color poster is your guide to developing high volume salespeopl= e with larger tickets. Find us in the new NHFA Retailer Resource Center= located in the Plaza. <br /> <br /> Don&rsquo;t miss Mark Lacy&rsquo;s= entertaining seminar "Help Wanted! My Sales Associates Can&rsquo;t Sell= Water to a Thirsty Camel." He&rsquo;ll reveal powerful secrets for turn= ing sales associates into furniture experts that will sell. See him Satu= rday, April 25th at 11:30 AM in the seminar room of the new NHFA Retail= Resource Center in the Plaza. <br /> <br /> Stop by our space to learn= how our ingenious internet-delivered training courses are easy to use,= guaranteed to work, and cheaper than the daily donuts. Over 95% report= increased sales. <br /> <br /> Plan to see us at High Point. </span></s= mall> <span style=3D"font-size: xx-small; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Hel= vetica,sans-serif; color: #000000;"><big><big><big><big><small><small><b= r /> <br /> <br /> <br /> </small></small></big></big></big></big></span= ><small><span style=3D"font-size: xx-small; font-family: Verdana,Arial,H= elvetica,sans-serif; color: #000000;"><big><big><big><small> </small></b= ig></big></big></span></small> <a href=3D"http://www.furnituretrainingco= mpany.com/map"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/image= s/email/highpoint_2009_04/image_content_left.jpg" border=3D"0" alt=3D"Fi= nd out more" width=3D"326" height=3D"67" /></a><br /> <br /></td>=0D=0A<= td valign=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituretr= ainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_content_middle.j= pg" alt=3D"" width=3D"28" height=3D"28" /><br /></td>=0D=0A<td valign=3D= "top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituretrainingcompan= y.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/image_content_right.jpg" alt=3D"Roa= dmap to Sales Success poster" width=3D"186" height=3D"267" /><br /> <spa= n style=3D"font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;"><small><span style= =3D"font-size: xx-small; color: #000000;"><big><big><big><small><strong>= Road Map to Sales Success<br /> </strong><br /> </small></big></big></bi= g></span>This beautiful poster is yours free for simply stopping by and= visiting with us at High Point. <span class=3D"moz-txt-slash">Our space= is located inside the </span>new NHFA Retailer Resource Center in the P= laza Suites, 222 South Main St, 1st Floor. We will be at market from Sat= April 25th until Thur April 30th. </small></span><br /></td>=0D=0A<td v= align=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituretraini= ngcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_content_right.jpg" a= lt=3D"" width=3D"30" height=3D"30" /><br /> <br /></td>=0D=0A</tr>=0D=0A= </tbody>=0D=0A</table>=0D=0A<table border=3D"0" cellspacing=3D"0" cellpa= dding=3D"0" width=3D"600" align=3D"center">=0D=0A<tbody>=0D=0A<tr>=0D=0A= <td valign=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituret= rainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/disclaimer_divider.jpg= " alt=3D"" width=3D"600" height=3D"25" /><br /></td>=0D=0A</tr>=0D=0A</t= body>=0D=0A</table>=0D=0A<table border=3D"0" cellspacing=3D"0" cellpaddi= ng=3D"0" width=3D"600" align=3D"center">=0D=0A<tbody>=0D=0A<tr>=0D=0A<td= valign=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituretrai= ningcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_disclaimer_left.jp= g" alt=3D"" /></td>=0D=0A<td valign=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><img src= =3D"http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_= 04/spacer_disclaimer_middle.jpg" alt=3D"" /><br /> <span style=3D"font-s= ize: xx-small; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; color: #= 666666;"><big><big><big><big><small><small><small>If you are not attendi= ng the High Point market in April but would still like to receive a free= Road Map to Sales Success poster visit us on the web at <span style=3D"= text-decoration: underline;"><a class=3D"moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href= =3D"http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com">www.furnituretrainingcompan= y.com</a></span>, or to speak with a Furniture Training Company represen= tative, call toll free (866) 755-5996. We do not offer free shipping out= side of the U.S. and Canada. Retailers outside of the U.S. and Canada ma= y call for more information. Limit one free Road Map to Sales Success pe= r company. Other copies of the poster may be purchased on our web site.<= br /> <br /> </small></small></small></big></big></big></big></span> <sp= an style=3D"color: #666666;"><small><span style=3D"font-size: xx-small;= font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><big><big><big><small= ><small>We hope you found this message to be useful. However, if you'd r= ather not receive future emails of this sort from The Furniture Training= Company, please <a href=3D"http://www.furnituretraining.com/contact">cl= ick here to unsubscribe</a>.<br /> <br /> </small></small></big></big></= big></span></small><small><span style=3D"font-size: xx-small; font-famil= y: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><big><big><big><small><small>&co= py;Copyright 2009 The Furniture Training Company.<br /> 1770 North Resea= rch Park Way, <br /> North Logan, UT 84341. <br /> All Rights Reserved.<= /small></small></big></big></big></span></small></span><br /></td>=0D=0A= <td valign=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituret= rainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_disclaimer_righ= t.jpg" alt=3D"" /></td>=0D=0A</tr>=0D=0A</tbody>=0D=0A</table>=0D=0A<tab= le border=3D"0" cellspacing=3D"0" cellpadding=3D"0" width=3D"600" align= =3D"center">=0D=0A<tbody>=0D=0A<tr>=0D=0A<td valign=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#= ffffff"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email= /highpoint_2009_04/footer.jpg" alt=3D"" /></td>=0D=0A</tr>=0D=0A</tbody>= =0D=0A</table>=0D=0A<p><br /></p><br><hr><a href=3D'http://localhost/ftc= /app/unsubscribe.php?action=3DoptOut&pid=3D6121&cid=3D19&email=3Dmarkl@f= urnituretrainingcompany.com'>Click to Unsubscribe</a>

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  • Best programming aids for a quadriplegic programmer

    - by Peter Rowell
    Before you jump to conclusions, yes, this is programming related. It covers a situation that comes under the heading of, "There, but for the grace of God, go you or I." This is brand new territory for me so I'm asking for some serious help here. A young man, Honza Ripa, in a nearby town did the classic Dumb Thing two weeks after graduating from High School -- he dove into shallow water in the Russian River and had a C-4/C-5 break, sometimes called a Swimming Pool break. In a matter of seconds he went from an exceptional golfer and wrestler to a quadriplegic. (Read the story ... all of us should have been so lucky as to have a girlfriend like Brianna.) That was 10 months ago and he has regained only tiny amounts of control of his right index finger and a couple of other hand/foot motions, none of them fine-grained. His total control of his computer (currently running Win7, but we can change that as needed) is via voice command. Honza's not dumb. He had a 3.7 GPA with AP math and physics. The Problems: Since all of his input is via voice command, he is concerned that the predominance of special characters in programming will require vast amount of verbose commands. Does anyone know of any well done voice input system specifically designed for programmers? I'm thinking about something that might be modal--e.g. you say "Python input" and it goes into a macro mode for doing class definitions, etc. Given all of the RSI in programmer-land there's got to be something out there. What OS(es) does it run on? I am planning on teaching him Python, which is my preferred language for programming and teaching. Are there any applications / whatevers that are written in Python and would be a particularly good match for engaging him mentally while supporting his disability? One of his expressed interests is in stock investing, but that not might be a good starting point for a brand-new programmer. There are a lot of environments (Flash, JavaScript, etc) that are not particularly friendly to people with accessibility challenges. I vaguely remember (but cannot find) a research project that basically created an overlay system on top of a screen environment and then allowed macro command construction on top of the screen image. If we can get/train this system, we may be able to remove many hurdles to using the net. I am particularly interested in finding open source Python-based robotics and robotic prostheses projects so that he can simultaneously learn advanced programming concepts while learning to solve some of his own immediate problems. I've done a ton of googling on this, but I know there things I'm missing. I'm asking the SO community to step up to the plate here. I know this group has the answers, so let me hear them! Overwhelm me with the opportunities that any of us might have/need to still program after such a life-changing event.

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  • Team Foundation Server Setup/Access

    - by Angel Brighteyes
    What I need: A TFS 2010 Setup that allows 2 application developers to access the TFS from remote locations. How it is setup: Server 2008 Standard 2g Ram 300g HD space SharePoint Server 2007, using SQL Server 2005 SQL Server 2008 Standard Team Foundation Server 2010 IIS 7 Sharepoint Bindings: TFS.DynAccount.Me:80; TFS:80 TFS Bindings: TFS.DynAccount.Me:8080; TFS:8080 Using DynDNS service to account for the dynamic ip address being used, this is a requirement for the moment until I can get a better isp package. Access using Local Accounts Server is not setup on a domain, or as a domain. Consequently I did not setup AD services. Problem: When logged into TFS using my credentials TFS\AdminUser through the DynDNS account TFS.DynAccount.Me I recieve the 'Red X of Death' on the Documents and Reports folder. When logged into the TFS through the local peer to peer network using the same credentials TFS\AdminUser I do not receive the 'Red X of Death' problem. Further Troubleshooting: When users 'Right Click' the 'TeamProject1' Click 'Show Project Portal' it tries to take them to http://TFS:8080 instead of http://TFS.DynAccount.Me:8080, which doing further research I am assuming that it is because team foundation server was setup with a local name of TFS instead of 'TFS.DynAccount.Me' as specified here in Visual Studio Magazines: The Red X of Death. Users can Access the Team Portal for SharePoint via http://TFS.DynAccount.Me/TeamCollection/TeamProject so it is not like we are dead in the water or anything. However, as most employees/staff are prone to do, they have expressed a great distaste for having to do it this way and just be patient until the current project is finished since we are under a very strict deadline. Is there a way to set this up differently, or change some settings someplace, reinstall it, point a CName record for our domain website to the DynAccount (e.g. TFS.OurDomain.com points to TFS.DynAccount.Me, which consequently does allow access to the http site without issues), or something. I really don't feel like after all the time and effort I have spent into, first the cost, second the bloody install, third learning SharePoint well enough, fourth the hours into days spent on this, fifth more troubleshooting, sixth employee headaches to just let it lay where it is at. I figure in my spare/off time I would keep trying to get this to work. So I really appreciate any help any one can give me. I know this is probably something really stupid simple that I will 'Face Palm' over, but at the moment the stress and frustration just has me beat. Thank you again, this community has always been a great help.

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  • Windows Service HTTPListener Memory Issue

    - by crawshaws
    Hi all, Im a complete novice to the "best practices" etc of writing in any code. I tend to just write it an if it works, why fix it. Well, this way of working is landing me in some hot water. I am writing a simple windows service to server a single webpage. (This service will be incorperated in to another project which monitors the services and some folders on a group of servers.) My problem is that whenever a request is recieved, the memory usage jumps up by a few K per request and keeps qoing up on every request. Now ive found that by putting GC.Collect in the mix it stops at a certain number but im sure its not meant to be used this way. I was wondering if i am missing something or not doing something i should to free up memory. Here is the code: Public Class SimpleWebService : Inherits ServiceBase 'Set the values for the different event log types. Public Const EVENT_ERROR As Integer = 1 Public Const EVENT_WARNING As Integer = 2 Public Const EVENT_INFORMATION As Integer = 4 Public listenerThread As Thread Dim HTTPListner As HttpListener Dim blnKeepAlive As Boolean = True Shared Sub Main() Dim ServicesToRun As ServiceBase() ServicesToRun = New ServiceBase() {New SimpleWebService()} ServiceBase.Run(ServicesToRun) End Sub Protected Overrides Sub OnStart(ByVal args As String()) If Not HttpListener.IsSupported Then CreateEventLogEntry("Windows XP SP2, Server 2003, or higher is required to " & "use the HttpListener class.") Me.Stop() End If Try listenerThread = New Thread(AddressOf ListenForConnections) listenerThread.Start() Catch ex As Exception CreateEventLogEntry(ex.Message) End Try End Sub Protected Overrides Sub OnStop() blnKeepAlive = False End Sub Private Sub CreateEventLogEntry(ByRef strEventContent As String) Dim sSource As String Dim sLog As String sSource = "Service1" sLog = "Application" If Not EventLog.SourceExists(sSource) Then EventLog.CreateEventSource(sSource, sLog) End If Dim ELog As New EventLog(sLog, ".", sSource) ELog.WriteEntry(strEventContent) End Sub Public Sub ListenForConnections() HTTPListner = New HttpListener HTTPListner.Prefixes.Add("http://*:1986/") HTTPListner.Start() Do While blnKeepAlive Dim ctx As HttpListenerContext = HTTPListner.GetContext() Dim HandlerThread As Thread = New Thread(AddressOf ProcessRequest) HandlerThread.Start(ctx) HandlerThread = Nothing Loop HTTPListner.Stop() End Sub Private Sub ProcessRequest(ByVal ctx As HttpListenerContext) Dim sb As StringBuilder = New StringBuilder sb.Append("<html><body><h1>Test My Service</h1>") sb.Append("</body></html>") Dim buffer() As Byte = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(sb.ToString) ctx.Response.ContentLength64 = buffer.Length ctx.Response.OutputStream.Write(buffer, 0, buffer.Length) ctx.Response.OutputStream.Close() ctx.Response.Close() sb = Nothing buffer = Nothing ctx = Nothing 'This line seems to keep the mem leak down 'System.GC.Collect() End Sub End Class Please feel free to critisise and tear the code apart but please BE KIND. I have admitted I dont tend to follow the best practice when it comes to coding.

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  • Personal Project - Next practical language/tech to learn

    - by Paul Nathan
    I'm working on a personal project doing some finance analysis. It's a totally new field for me, and I'm really having fun with it so far, plus working in the high-level language arena is a great break from my embedded systems daytime work. I have a MySQL backend on a non-local server with a pile of stock data. My task now is to do some analysis of the stocks and produce something approximating a useful result. There are a couple technical difficulties. (1) I have a lot of records. To be precise, I believe I'm near 100K records right now, and this number grows by 6.1K each weekday. I need to create a way to rummage through these fields and do data analysis - based on a given computation, go look at this other set. Fine and dandy, nothing too outre. But this means I could really use a straightforward API for talking to MySQL. (2) Ideally, it runs on OS X 10.4.11. No Windows/Linux machine at home. (3) I can use PHP, C++, Perl, etc. I even have an R installation. I'm pretty flexible with stuff, so long as it runs on OS X. (Lots of options here, pick water, H20, or dihydrogen monoxide ;-) ) (4)Lack of hassle. While I like clever and fun ways of doing things, I'm trying to get some analysis done, not spend ten hours doing installation work and scratching my head figuring out a theoretical syntax question needed to spout out "hello world". What's the question? I'd like to dig into something different than my usual PHP/C++/C toolset. I'm looking for recommendations for languages/technologies that will assist me and meet the above requirements. In particular, I've heard a lot of buzz about F# and Python on SO. I've used CLISP for small problems before, and kinda liked it. I'm seeking opinions about those in particular. edit:since I rent the DB server and have a limited amount of CPU time online, I'm trying to do the analysis on a local machine.

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  • Should I use Python or Assembly for a super fast copy program

    - by PyNEwbie
    As a maintenance issue I need to routinely (3-5 times per year) copy a repository that is now has over 20 million files and exceeds 1.5 terabytes in total disk space. I am currently using RICHCOPY, but have tried others. RICHCOPY seems the fastest but I do not believe I am getting close to the limits of the capabilities of my XP machine. I am toying around with using what I have read in The Art of Assembly Language to write a program to copy my files. My other thought is to start learning how to multi-thread in Python to do the copies. I am toying around with the idea of doing this in Assembly because it seems interesting, but while my time is not incredibly precious it is precious enough that I am trying to get a sense of whether or not I will see significant enough gains in copy speed. I am assuming that I would but I only started really learning to program 18 months and it is still more or less a hobby. Thus I may be missing some fundamental concept of what happens with interpreted languages. Any observations or experiences would be appreciated. Note, I am not looking for any code. I have already written a basic copy program in Python 2.6 that is no slower than RICHCOPY. I am looking for some observations on which will give me more speed. Right now it takes me over 50 hours to make a copy from a disk to a Drobo and then back from the Drobo to a disk. I have a LogicCube for when I am simply duplicating a disk but sometimes I need to go from a disk to Drobo or the reverse. I am thinking that given that I can sector copy a 3/4 full 2 terabyte drive using the LogicCube in under seven hours I should be able to get close to that using Assembly, but I don't know enough to know if this is valid. (Yes, sometimes ignorance is bliss) The reason I need to speed it up is I have had two or three cycles where something has happened during copy (fifty hours is a long time to expect the world to hold still) that has caused me to have to trash the copy and start over. For example, last week the water main broke under our building and shorted out the power.

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  • Workflow for statistical analysis and report writing

    - by ws
    Does anyone have any wisdom on workflows for data analysis related to custom report writing? The use-case is basically this: Client commissions a report that uses data analysis, e.g. a population estimate and related maps for a water district. The analyst downloads some data, munges the data and saves the result (e.g. adding a column for population per unit, or subsetting the data based on district boundaries). The analyst analyzes the data created in (2), gets close to her goal, but sees that needs more data and so goes back to (1). Rinse repeat until the tables and graphics meet QA/QC and satisfy the client. Write report incorporating tables and graphics. Next year, the happy client comes back and wants an update. This should be as simple as updating the upstream data by a new download (e.g. get the building permits from the last year), and pressing a "RECALCULATE" button, unless specifications change. At the moment, I just start a directory and ad-hoc it the best I can. I would like a more systematic approach, so I am hoping someone has figured this out... I use a mix of spreadsheets, SQL, ARCGIS, R, and Unix tools. Thanks! PS: Below is a basic Makefile that checks for dependencies on various intermediate datasets (w/ ".RData" suffix) and scripts (".R" suffix). Make uses timestamps to check dependencies, so if you 'touch ss07por.csv', it will see that this file is newer than all the files / targets that depend on it, and execute the given scripts in order to update them accordingly. This is still a work in progress, including a step for putting into SQL database, and a step for a templating language like sweave. Note that Make relies on tabs in its syntax, so read the manual before cutting and pasting. Enjoy and give feedback! http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html%5Fnode/index.html#Top R=/home/wsprague/R-2.9.2/bin/R persondata.RData : ImportData.R ../../DATA/ss07por.csv Functions.R $R --slave -f ImportData.R persondata.Munged.RData : MungeData.R persondata.RData Functions.R $R --slave -f MungeData.R report.txt: TabulateAndGraph.R persondata.Munged.RData Functions.R $R --slave -f TabulateAndGraph.R report.txt

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  • Load on page inside another onClick

    - by Robin I Knight
    Hello, I need to include the content, scripts, forms and dynamic abilities of one page in another onClick. Take a look at http://www.divethegap.com/scuba-diving-programmes-dive-the-gap/dahab-master-scuba-diver.html Then follow one of the links that says 'Beginner' 'Open Water Diver' etc.... You will find a PHP page with a series of options. It is an adaption of the wordpress blog system to produce only specific options for specific programmes by considering each type of each diving programme a category and then displaying only results from that category. You will see that each option is also a collapsible panel and there are also several javascripts that calculate durations, quantities and prices. There is also a validating webform at the end. Now go back to the first page. What I would like to do is include all the content from the second page after the main header inside tabbed panels on the first page so that the customers can immidietly see everything that is included. Essentially the options on the first page would become a series of tabs. The only way I can see to do this is with an iFrame as each option would need a unique URL ending (that is .php?cat=26 or .php?cat=27). THe problem is that the collapsible panels will not work with an iFrame as the iFrame will not resize when the panels open. There were also some calculation problems, but I think that was more down to me staring at the screen for the last 3 hours not remembering to include everything. I have tried it with resizing iframe SSI scripts and have got nowhere. I tried actually embedding it in the page better with a ajax script, but that left behind all the scripts that make it work. I checked with full URL's on everything and it would not take work with any scripts. I know that you could just make the whole page reload but then the user would be at the top of the page again, and even if another script was applied to slowly bring them down again it would not be anything near as easy to use as if it was like tabbed panels. Any ideas. Kind Regards,

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  • Please help me debug my SQL query.

    - by bob09
    I have a query: Select n_portions, dish_name from food_order, dish where n_portions= (select max (n_portions) FROM food_order); It's meant to return: fish pie 3 steak and chips 1 pasta bake 2 stuffed peppers 1 But i get: Pasta bake 35 Fish pie 35 Steak and chips 35 Stuffed peppers 35 Ham and rice 35 Lamb curry 35 Why is this happing? table data table data Insert into customer_order values ('00001', '03-Apr-09', '07-apr-09','St. Andrew St'); Insert into customer_order values ('00002', '05-Apr-09', '01-May-09', 'St. Andrew St'); Insert into customer_order values ('00003', '12-Apr-09', '27-Apr-09', 'Union St'); Insert into customer_order values ('00004', '12-Apr-09', '17-Apr-09', 'St. Andrew St'); Insert into Dish values ('D0001', 'Pasta bake', 'yes', '6.00'); Insert into Dish values ('D0002', 'Fish pie', 'no', '9.00'); Insert into Dish values ('D0003', 'Steak and chips', 'no', '14.00'); Insert into Dish values ('D0004', 'Stuffed peppers', 'yes', '11.50'); Insert into Dish values ('D0005', 'Ham and rice' , 'no', '7.25'); Insert into Dish values ('D0006', 'Lamb curry' , 'no', '8.50'); Insert into Drink values ('DR0001', 'Water', 'soft', '1.0'); Insert into Drink values ('DR0002', 'Coffee', 'hot', '1.70'); Insert into Drink values ('DR0003', 'Wine' , 'alcoholic', '3.00'); Insert into Drink values ('DR0004', 'Beer' , 'alcoholic', '2.30'); Insert into Drink values ('DR0005', 'Tea' , 'hot' , '1.50'); Insert into food_order values ('F000001', '000001', 'D0003', '6'); Insert into food_order values ('F000002', '000001', 'D0001', '4'); Insert into food_order values ('F000003', '000001', 'D0004', '3'); Insert into food_order values ('F000004', '000002', 'D0001', '10'); Insert into food_order values ('F000005', '000002', 'D0002', '10'); Insert into food_order values ('F000006', '000003', 'D0002', '35'); Insert into food_order values ('F000007', '000004', 'D0002', '23'); Insert into drink_order values ('D000001', '000001', 'DR0001', '13'); Insert into drink_order values ('D000002', '000001', 'DR0002', '13'); Insert into drink_order values ('D000003', '000001', 'DR0004', '13'); Insert into drink_order values ('D000004', '000002', 'DROOO1', '20'); Insert into drink_order values ('D000005', '000002', 'DR0003', '20'); Insert into drink_order values ('D000006', '000002', 'DR0004', '15'); Insert into drink_order values ('D000007', '000003', 'DR0002', '35'); Insert into drink_order values ('D000008', '000004', 'DR0001', '23'); Insert into drink_order values ('D000009', '000004', 'DR0003', '15'); Insert into drink_order values ('D0000010', '000004', 'DR0004', '15');

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  • Vacuum spread in a tile-based space game (like in Faster Than Light game)

    - by Reeze
    I've a space game with tilemap that looks like this (simplified): Map view - from top (like in SimCity 1) 0 - room space, 1 - some kind of wall, 8 - "lock" beetween rooms public int[,] _layer = new int[,] { { 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 1, 1, 8, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 1, 0, 8, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, }; Each tile contains Air property (100 = air, 0 = vacuum). I made a little helper method to take tiles near tile with vacuum (to "suck air"): Point[] GetNearCells(Point cell, int distance = 1, bool diag = false) { Point topCell = new Point(cell.X, cell.Y - distance); Point botCell = new Point(cell.X, cell.Y + distance); Point leftCell = new Point(cell.X - distance, cell.Y); Point rightCell = new Point(cell.X + distance, cell.Y); if (diag) { return new[] { topCell, botCell, leftCell, rightCell }; } Point topLeftCell = new Point(cell.X - distance, cell.Y - distance); Point topRightCell = new Point(cell.X + distance, cell.Y + distance); Point botLeftCell = new Point(cell.X - distance, cell.Y - distance); Point botRightCell = new Point(cell.X - distance, cell.Y - distance); return new[] { topCell, botCell, leftCell, rightCell, topLeftCell, topRightCell, botLeftCell, botRightCell }; } What is the best practice to fill rooms with vacuum (decrease air) from some point? Should i use some kind of water flow? Thank you for any help!

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  • Flickering Image in Java?

    - by Noah Cagle
    OK so I am coding a game right now to prepair for Ludum Dare SharkJam, and I am using a new method for programming, because the last method I had crashes my PC, so this one should work. Well it does work and all, better too, but the images that I put in it flicker. Here is the whole main class (where the images are drawn) package me.NoahCagle.watermaze; import java.awt.Color; import java.awt.Graphics; import java.awt.Image; import java.awt.image.BufferedImage; import javax.swing.JFrame; import me.NoahCagle.watermaze.entity.EntityShark; import me.NoahCagle.watermaze.entity.Player; import me.NoahCagle.watermaze.input.Keys; import me.NoahCagle.watermaze.map.Map; public class Game extends JFrame { private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L; Map map = new Map(0, 0); Player player = new Player(50, 30); static EntityShark shark = new EntityShark(400, 400); public Image dbImage; public Game() { setSize(800, 600); setDefaultCloseOperation(EXIT_ON_CLOSE); setLocationRelativeTo(null); setVisible(true); setTitle("Water Maze"); setResizable(false); setBackground(Color.blue); addKeyListener(new Keys()); } public static void main(String[] args) { new Game(); Thread s = new Thread(shark); s.start(); } public void paint(Graphics g) { dbImage = new BufferedImage(getWidth(), getHeight(), BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB); g.drawImage(dbImage, map.x, map.y, null); g.drawImage(player.player, player.x, player.y, this); g.drawImage(shark.shark, shark.x, shark.y, this); repaint(); } } What this code does for me is makes the Images work correctly, just flickering, alot. Can anyone help me with my issue? EDIT: I think it has something to do with where I call the repaint method in the paint method, so look there.

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  • Strange Upload Problem on Hyper-V

    - by Ring0
    Hi, This one is driving me totally nuts. I have being trying to upload a file to www.virustotal.com (its a harmless exe I have since found out - DiskWipe.exe from diskwipe.org). Using IE8. From Win 7 and Win 2008 R2 Datacenter (which I select to boot from vhd's) onto my main machine hardware, and also on another Win 7 PC elsewhere on my network, when I upload the file to virustotal.com it works perfectly. So, using my native NIC's everything is fine. Using another machine also perfect. Right. OK, from my boot menu the default is my main development machine - the one I'm typing on now. This runs on the metal and has Hyper-V role and I have some guests. All guests are not running. Amazingly, from my console (root partition to be exact) or any guest OS 2003 /XP / 2008 R2 etc. My upload to virustotal.com slows at 32% then HANGS at 38.something% & never finishes!! Here is the kicker. I have another box (my main server) running Hyper-V on the metal and three live guests. Identical H/W to my main dev machine in another room. (Except OS is Datacenter - Mine is Enterprise). If I try and upload from its bare metal console or any guest this file to virustotal.com using IE8 it stops exactly in the same place!! As for "steps I have tried etc." are kind-of blown out of the water as my server box is doing the precise same thing as the machine in my room here. OK, comonalities: Mobo: Gigabyte GA-X58-UD5, 12GB Kingston RAM, Corei7 920 4 cores hyperthreading = 8 & Realtek RTL8168D/8111D Family PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet NIC's. All 3 machines have this same motherboard - revision F11 Bios, all have 12GB RAM, all have the Realtek Nic's. All x64 by the way as I mentioned before I have a Win 7 box also with the UD5 m/Board, 12 GB RAM - bit of an overkill. :-) All these machines when NOT running Hyper-V can upload this file. Perhaps you may like to try it on a Hyepr-v (2008 R2) yourselves with IE8 and the desktop experience is on. See if it works or fails for you. Root OS or any guest. So, looking like its the NIC + Hyper-V = Cannot upload this file (any file I must add.) Realtek Nic is Ver 7.002.1125.2008. Using IE8 I see in the nic settings there are the usual parameters for Jumbo frames / Checksum offloading etc. several others. Should I fiddle with these? I ran Netmon 3.3 in a guest and the TCP session halted as the upload failed. I suppose I could study that further. I dont have Netmon on the root partition machine (yet)! All OS's fully patched - including todays defender files. My box running Office 2007 - but identical server in another room is not. Also, if I fire up a VPN to a distant client and do the upload it works! Of course its a different network path. Suggestions welcome please. If I left out anything important - please yell at me. Many Thanks,

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  • Ubuntu 14.04, OpenLDAP TLS problems

    - by larsemil
    So i have set up an openldap server using this guide here. It worked fine. But as i want to use sssd i also need TLS to be working for ldap. So i looked into and followed the TLS part of the guide. And i never got any errors and slapd started fine again. BUT. It does not seem to work when i try to use ldap over tls. root@server:~# ldapsearch -x -ZZ -H ldap://83.209.243.253 -b dc=daladevelop,dc=se ldap_start_tls: Protocol error (2) additional info: unsupported extended operation Ganking up the debug level some notches returns some more information: root@server:~# ldapsearch -x -ZZ -H ldap://83.209.243.253 -b dc=daladevelop,dc=se -d 5 ldap_url_parse_ext(ldap://83.209.243.253) ldap_create ldap_url_parse_ext(ldap://83.209.243.253:389/??base) ldap_extended_operation_s ldap_extended_operation ldap_send_initial_request ldap_new_connection 1 1 0 ldap_int_open_connection ldap_connect_to_host: TCP 83.209.243.253:389 ldap_new_socket: 3 ldap_prepare_socket: 3 ldap_connect_to_host: Trying 83.209.243.253:389 ldap_pvt_connect: fd: 3 tm: -1 async: 0 ldap_open_defconn: successful ldap_send_server_request ber_scanf fmt ({it) ber: ber_scanf fmt ({) ber: ber_flush2: 31 bytes to sd 3 ldap_result ld 0x7f25df51e220 msgid 1 wait4msg ld 0x7f25df51e220 msgid 1 (infinite timeout) wait4msg continue ld 0x7f25df51e220 msgid 1 all 1 ** ld 0x7f25df51e220 Connections: * host: 83.209.243.253 port: 389 (default) refcnt: 2 status: Connected last used: Fri Jun 6 08:52:16 2014 ** ld 0x7f25df51e220 Outstanding Requests: * msgid 1, origid 1, status InProgress outstanding referrals 0, parent count 0 ld 0x7f25df51e220 request count 1 (abandoned 0) ** ld 0x7f25df51e220 Response Queue: Empty ld 0x7f25df51e220 response count 0 ldap_chkResponseList ld 0x7f25df51e220 msgid 1 all 1 ldap_chkResponseList returns ld 0x7f25df51e220 NULL ldap_int_select read1msg: ld 0x7f25df51e220 msgid 1 all 1 ber_get_next ber_get_next: tag 0x30 len 42 contents: read1msg: ld 0x7f25df51e220 msgid 1 message type extended-result ber_scanf fmt ({eAA) ber: read1msg: ld 0x7f25df51e220 0 new referrals read1msg: mark request completed, ld 0x7f25df51e220 msgid 1 request done: ld 0x7f25df51e220 msgid 1 res_errno: 2, res_error: <unsupported extended operation>, res_matched: <> ldap_free_request (origid 1, msgid 1) ldap_parse_extended_result ber_scanf fmt ({eAA) ber: ldap_parse_result ber_scanf fmt ({iAA) ber: ber_scanf fmt (}) ber: ldap_msgfree ldap_err2string ldap_start_tls: Protocol error (2) additional info: unsupported extended operation ldap_free_connection 1 1 ldap_send_unbind ber_flush2: 7 bytes to sd 3 ldap_free_connection: actually freed So no good information there neither. In /var/log/syslog i get: Jun 6 08:55:42 master slapd[21383]: conn=1008 fd=23 ACCEPT from IP=83.209.243.253:56440 (IP=0.0.0.0:389) Jun 6 08:55:42 master slapd[21383]: conn=1008 op=0 EXT oid=1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.20037 Jun 6 08:55:42 master slapd[21383]: conn=1008 op=0 do_extended: unsupported operation "1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.20037" Jun 6 08:55:42 master slapd[21383]: conn=1008 op=0 RESULT tag=120 err=2 text=unsupported extended operation Jun 6 08:55:42 master slapd[21383]: conn=1008 op=1 UNBIND Jun 6 08:55:42 master slapd[21383]: conn=1008 fd=23 closed If i portscan the host i get the following: Starting Nmap 6.40 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2014-06-06 08:56 CEST Nmap scan report for h83-209-243-253.static.se.alltele.net (83.209.243.253) Host is up (0.0072s latency). Not shown: 996 closed ports PORT STATE SERVICE 22/tcp open ssh 80/tcp open http 389/tcp open ldap 636/tcp open ldapssl But when i check certs root@master:~# openssl s_client -connect daladevelop.se:636 -showcerts -state CONNECTED(00000003) SSL_connect:before/connect initialization SSL_connect:unknown state 140244859233952:error:140790E5:SSL routines:SSL23_WRITE:ssl handshake failure:s23_lib.c:177: --- no peer certificate available --- No client certificate CA names sent --- SSL handshake has read 0 bytes and written 317 bytes --- New, (NONE), Cipher is (NONE) Secure Renegotiation IS NOT supported Compression: NONE Expansion: NONE --- And i feel like i am clearly out in deep water not knowing at all where to go from here. Anny hints appreciated on what to do or to get better debug logging... EDIT: This is my config slapcated from cn=config and it does not mention at all anything about TLS. I have inserted my certinfo.ldif: root@master:~# cat certinfo.ldif dn: cn=config add: olcTLSCACertificateFile olcTLSCACertificateFile: /etc/ssl/certs/cacert.pem - add: olcTLSCertificateFile olcTLSCertificateFile: /etc/ssl/certs/daladevelop_slapd_cert.pem - add: olcTLSCertificateKeyFile olcTLSCertificateKeyFile: /etc/ssl/private/daladevelop_slapd_key.pem and when doing that i only got this as an answer. root@master:~# sudo ldapmodify -Y EXTERNAL -H ldapi:/// -f certinfo.ldif SASL/EXTERNAL authentication started SASL username: gidNumber=0+uidNumber=0,cn=peercred,cn=external,cn=auth SASL SSF: 0 modifying entry "cn=config" So still no wiser.

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  • Thursday Community Keynote: "By the Community, For the Community"

    - by Janice J. Heiss
    Sharat Chander, JavaOne Community Chairperson, began Thursday's Community Keynote. As part of the morning’s theme of "By the Community, For the Community," Chander noted that 60% of the material at the 2012 JavaOne conference was presented by Java Community members. "So next year, when the call for papers starts, put-in your submissions," he urged.From there, Gary Frost, Principal Member of Technical Staff, AMD, expanded upon Sunday's Strategy Keynote exploration of Project Sumatra, an OpenJDK project targeted at bringing Java to heterogeneous computing platforms (which combine the CPU and the parallel processor of the GPU into a single piece of silicon). Sumatra entails enhancing the JVM to make maximum use of these advanced platforms. Within this development space, AMD created the Aparapi API, which converts Java bytecode into OpenCL for execution on such GPU devices. The Aparapi API was open sourced in September 2011.Whether it was zooming-in on a Mandelbrot set, "the game of life," or a swarm of 10,000 Dukes in a space-bound gravitational dance, Frost's demos, using an Aparapi/OpenCL implementation, produced stunningly faster display results. He indicated that the Java 9 timeframe is where they see Project Sumatra coming to ultimate fruition, employing the Lamdas of Java 8.Returning to the theme of the keynote, Donald Smith, Director, Java Product Management, Oracle, explored a mind map graphic demonstrating the importance of Community in terms of fostering innovation. "It's the sharing and mixing of culture, the diversity, and the rapid prototyping," he said. Within this topic, Smith, brought up a panel of representatives from Cloudera, Eclipse, Eucalyptus, Perrone Robotics, and Twitter--ideal manifestations of community and innovation in the world of Java.Marten Mickos, CEO, Eucalyptus Systems, explored his company's open source cloud software platform, written in Java, and used by gaming companies, technology companies, media companies, and more. Chris Aniszczyk, Operations Engineering,Twitter, noted the importance of the JVM in terms of their multiple-language development environment. Mike Olson, CEO, Cloudera, described his company's Apache Hadoop-based software, support, and training. Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director, Eclipse Foundation, noted that they have about 270 tools projects at Eclipse, with 267 of them written in Java. Milinkovich added that Eclipse will even be going into space in 2013, as part of the control software on various experiments aboard the International Space Station. Lastly, Paul Perrone, CEO, Perrone Robotics, detailed his company's robotics and automation software platform built 100% on Java, including Java SE and Java ME--"on rat, to cat, to elephant-sized systems." Milinkovic noted that communities are by nature so good at innovation because of their very openness--"The more open you make your innovation process, the more ideas are challenged, and the more developers are focused on justifying their choices all the way through the process."From there, Georges Saab, VP Development Java SE OpenJDK, continued the topic of innovation and helping the Java Community to "Make the Future Java." Martijn Verburg, representing the London Java Community (winner of a Duke's Choice Award 2012 for their activity in OpenJDK and JCP), soon joined Saab onstage. Verburg detailed the LJC's "Adopt a JSR" program--"to get day-to-day developers more involved in the innovation that's happening around them."  From its London launching pad, the innovative program has spread to Brazil, Morocco, Latvia, India, and more.Other active participants in the program joined Verburg onstage--Ben Evans, London Java Community; James Gough, Stackthread; Bruno Souza, SOUJava; Richard Warburton, jClarity; and Cecelia Borg, Oracle--OpenJDK Onboarding. Together, the group explored the goals and tasks inherent in the Adopt a JSR program--from organizing hack days (testing prototype implementations), to managing mailing lists and forums, to triaging issues, to evangelism—all with the goal of fostering greater community/developer involvement, but equally importantly, building better open standards. “Come join us, and make your ecosystem better!" urged Verburg.Paul Perrone returned to profile the latest in his company's robotics work around Java--including the AARDBOTS family of smaller robotic vehicles, running the Perrone MAX platform on top of the Java JVM. Perrone took his "Rumbles" four-wheeled robot out for a spin onstage--a roaming, ARM-based security-bot vehicle, complete with IR, ultrasonic, and "cliff" sensors (the latter, for the raised stage at JavaOne). As an ultimate window into the future of robotics, Perrone displayed a "head-set" controller--a sensor directed at the forehead to monitor brainwaves, for the someday-implementation of brain-to-robot control.Then, just when it seemed this might be the end of the day's futuristic offerings, a mystery voice from offstage pronounced "I've got some toys"--proving to be guest-visitor James Gosling, there to explore his cutting-edge work with Liquid Robotics. While most think of robots as something with wheels or arms or lasers, Gosling explained, the Liquid Robotics vehicle is an entirely new and innovative ocean-going 'bot. Looking like a floating surfboard, with an attached set of underwater wings, the autonomous devices roam the oceans using only the energy of ocean waves to propel them, and a single actuated rudder to steer. "We have to accomplish all guidance just by wiggling the rudder," Gosling said. The devices offer applications from self-installing weather buoy, to pollution monitoring station, to marine mammal monitoring device, to climate change data gathering, to even ocean life genomic sampling. The early versions of the vehicle used C code on very tiny industrial micro controllers, where they had to "count the bytes one at a time."  But the latest generation vehicles, which just hit the water a week or so ago, employ an ARM processor running Linux and the ARM version of JDK 7. Gosling explained that vehicle communication from remote locations is achieved via the Iridium satellite network. But because of the costs of this communication path, the data must be sent in very small bursts--using SBD short burst data. "It costs $1/kb, so that rules everything in the software design,” said Gosling. “If you were trying to stream a Netflix video over this, it would cost a million dollars a movie. …We don't have a 'big data' problem," he quipped. There are currently about 150 Liquid Robotics vehicles out traversing the oceans. Gosling demonstrated real time satellite tracking of several vehicles currently at sea, noting that Java is actually particularly good at AI applications--due to the language having garbage collection, which facilitates complex data structures. To close-out his time onstage, Gosling of course participated in the ceremonial Java tee-shirt toss out to the audience…In parting, Chander passed the JavaOne Community Chairperson baton to Stephen Chin, Java Technology Evangelist, Oracle. Onstage in full motorcycle gear, Chin noted that he'll soon be touring Europe by motorcycle, meeting Java Community Members and streaming live via UStream--the ultimate manifestation of community and technology!  He also reminded attendees of the upcoming JavaOne Latin America 2012, São Paulo, Brazil (December 4-6, 2012), and stated that the CFP (call for papers) at the conference has been extended for one more week. "Remember, December is summer in Brazil!" Chin said.

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  • South Florida Code Camp 2010 &ndash; VI &ndash; 2010-02-27

    - by Dave Noderer
    Catching up after our sixth code camp here in the Ft Lauderdale, FL area. Website at: http://www.fladotnet.com/codecamp. For the 5th time, DeVry University hosted the event which makes everything else really easy! Statistics from 2010 South Florida Code Camp: 848 registered (we use Microsoft Group Events) ~ 600 attended (516 took name badges) 64 speakers (including speaker idol) 72 sessions 12 parallel tracks Food 400 waters 600 sodas 900 cups of coffee (it was cold!) 200 pounds of ice 200 pizza's 10 large salad trays 900 mouse pads Photos on facebook Dave Noderer: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/album.php?aid=190812&id=693530361 Joe Healy: http://www.facebook.com/devfish?ref=mf#!/album.php?aid=202787&id=720054950 Will Strohl:http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/album.php?aid=2045553&id=1046966128&ref=mf Veronica Gonzalez: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/album.php?aid=150954&id=672439484 Florida Speaker Idol One of the sessions at code camp was the South Florida Regional speaker idol competition. After user group level competitions there are five competitors. I acted as MC and score keeper while Ed Hill, Bob O’Connell, John Dunagan and Shervin Shakibi were judges. This statewide competition is being run by Roy Lawsen in Lakeland and the winner, Jeff Truman from Naples will move on to the state finals to be held at the Orlando Code Camp on 3/27/2010: http://www.orlandocodecamp.com/. Each speaker has 10 minutes. The participants were: Alex Koval Jeff Truman Jared Nielsen Chris Catto Venkat Narayanasamy They all did a great job and I’m working with each to make sure they don’t stop there and start speaking at meetings. Thanks to everyone involved! Volunteers As always events like this don’t happen without a lot of help! The key people were: Ed Hill, Bob O’Connell – DeVry For the months leading up to the event, Ed collects all of the swag, books, etc and stores them. He holds meeting with various DeVry departments to coordinate the day, he works with the students in the days  before code camp to stuff bags, print signs, arrange tables and visit BJ’s for our supplies (I go and pay but have a small car!). And of course the day of the event he is there at 5:30 am!! We took two SUV’s to BJ’s, i was really worried that the 36 cases of water were going to break his rear axle! He also helps with the students and works very hard before and after the event. Rainer Haberman – Speakers and Volunteer of the Year Rainer has helped over the past couple of years but this time he took full control of arranging the tracks. I did some preliminary work solicitation speakers but he took over all communications after that. We have tried various organizations around speakers, chair per track, central team but having someone paying attention to the details is definitely the way to go! This was the first year I did not have to jump in at the last minute and re-arrange everything. There were lots of kudo’s from the speakers too saying they felt it was more organized than they have experienced in the past from any code camp. Thanks Rainer! Ray Alamonte – Book Swap We saw the idea of a book swap from the Alabama Code Camp and thought we would give it a try. Ray jumped in and took control. The idea was to get people to bring their old technical books to swap or for others to buy. You got a ticket for each book you brought that you could then turn in to buy another book. If you did not have a ticket you could buy a book for $1. Net proceeds were $153 which I rounded up and donated to the Red Cross. There is plenty going on in Haiti and Chile! I don’t think we really got a count of how many books came in. I many cases the books barely hit the table before being picked up again. At the end we were left with a dozen books which we donated to the DeVry library. A great success we will definitely do again! Jace Weiss / Ratchelen Hut – Coffee and Snacks Wow, this was an eye opener. In past years a few of us would struggle to give some attention to coffee, snacks, etc. But it was always tenuous and always ended up running out of coffee. In the past we have tried buying Dunkin Donuts coffee, renting urns, borrowing urns, etc. This year I actually purchased 2 – 100 cup Westbend commercial brewers plus a couple of small urns (30 and 60 cup we used for decaf). We got them both started early (although i forgot to push the on button on one!) and primed it with 10 boxes of Joe from Dunkin. then Jace and Rachelen took over.. once a batch was brewed they would refill the boxes, keep the area clean and at one point were filling cups. We never ran out of coffee and served a few hundred more than last  year. We did look but next year I’ll get a large insulated (like gatorade) dispensing container. It all went very smoothly and having help focused on that one area was a big win. Thanks Jace and Rachelen! Ken & Shirley Golding / Roberta Barbosa – Registration Ken & Shirley showed up and took over registration. This year we printed small name tags for everyone registered which was great because it is much easier to remember someone’s name when they are labeled! In any case it went the smoothest it has ever gone. All three were actively pulling people through the registration, answering questions, directing them to bags and information very quickly. I did not see that there was too big a line at any time. Thanks!! Scott Katarincic / Vishal Shukla – Website For the 3rd?? year in a row, Scott was in charge of the website starting in August or September when I start on code camp. He handles all the requests, makes changes to the site and admin. I think two years ago he wrote all the backend administration and tunes it and the website a bit but things are pretty stable. The only thing I do is put up the sponsors. It is a big pressure off of me!! Thanks Scott! Vishal jumped into the web end this year and created a new Silverlight agenda page to replace the old ajax page. We will continue to enhance this but it is definitely a good step forward! Thanks! Alex Funkhouser – T-shirts/Mouse pads/tables/sponsors Alex helps in many areas. He helps me bring in sponsors and handles all the logistics for t-shirts, sponsor tables and this year the mouse pads. He is also a key person to help promote the event as well not to mention the after after party which I did not attend and don’t want to know much about! Students There were a number of student volunteers but don’t have all of their names. But thanks to them, they stuffed bags, patrolled pizza and helped with moving things around. Sponsors We had a bunch of great sponsors which allowed us to feed people and give a way a lot of great swag. Our major sponsors of DeVry, Microsoft (both DPE and UGSS), Infragistics, Telerik, SQL Share (End to End, SQL Saturdays), and Interclick are very much appreciated. The other sponsors Applied Innovations (also supply code camp hosting), Ultimate Software (a great local SW company), Linxter (reliable cloud messaging we are lucky to have here!), Mediascend (a media startup), SoftwareFX (another local SW company we are happy to have back participating in CC), CozyRoc (if you do SSIS, check them out), Arrow Design (local DNN and Silverlight experts),Boxes and Arrows (a local SW consulting company) and Robert Half. One thing we did this year besides a t-shirt was a mouse pad. I like it because it will be around for a long time on many desks. After much investigation and years of using mouse pad’s I’ve determined that the 1/8” fabric top is the best and that is what we got!   So now I get a break for a few months before starting again!

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  • A Look Back at 2010 Predictions

    - by David Dorf
    Now is the time of year people make their predictions for next year, but before I start thinking about 2011 it's worth a look back to see how my predictions for 2010 fared. 1. Borders and Blockbuster bite the dust. I would have never predicted a strong brand such as Circuit City could die, but now I know it can happen to anyone. Borders has lost the battle with Barnes & Noble and Blockbuster has lost to Netflix. And just to be sure, Amazon put an extra nail in each coffin. Borders received additional investment from Bennett LeBow to keep it afloat, but the stock is down around $1.25 with no profits in sight. Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy back in September. 2. Every retailer finally has a page on Facebook... but very few figure out how to keep fans engaged. Retailer postings become noise, and fans start to unsubscribe. Twitter goes in the same direction. A few standout retailers will figure out how to use social media, and the rest will remain dumbfounded. Most retailers are on the Facebook bandwagon, and their fan bases seem to be increasing thanks to promotions like The Gap's logo redesign, Lowes' black Friday sneak peak, and Walmart's Crowd Savers. There are several examples of f-commerce advancements, including some interesting integrations from Amazon.3. Smartphones consolidate and grow. More and more people will step-up to smartphones, most of which will choose iPhone, Blackberry, and Android phones. Other smartphones will vanish, and networks will start to strain. But retailers will finally embrace mobile as the next big channel. Retail marketing departments will build mobile apps without the help of their IT department, and eventually they will get into a bind. Android has been on a tear lately stealing market share from Blackberry. Palm and Microsoft are trending down, and Apple is holding steady. Smartphone sales are up 15% and expected to continue. Retailers understand the importance of mobile, and some innovative applications have been produced this year. 4. Google helps the little guys. Google will push its Favorite Places project to help give exposure to small retailers and restaurants. They will enable small retailers to act like big ones by providing storefronts, detailed product information, and coupons for consumers. Google will find a way to bring augmented reality to the masses. I can't say I've seen much new from Google regarding Favorite Places, but they've continued to push local product search. From the PC or smartphone, consumers can search for products and see which nearby stores have it stock. Oracle Retail even productized an integration to Google to support this effort. I suppose if Google ever buys Groupon then it will bring them even closer to local shopping. Google talked about augmented humanity, but that has nothing to do with augmented reality. 5. Steve Jobs Is Bugs Bunny and Steve Ballmer is Elmer Fudd. (OK, I stole that headline from an InformationWeek article. I couldn't resist.) Both Apple and Microsoft will continue to open new stores, but only Apple will show real growth. POSReady 2009 (formerly WEPOS) will continue to share the POS market with Linux. The iPhone and iPod will continue to capture market share, but there won't be an Apple tablet. There won't be an Apple tablet? What was I thinking? While Apple has well over 300 stores, there are less than 10 Microsoft stores. Initial impressions show that even though Microsoft is locating its store near Apple Stores, they are not converting customers, with shoppers citing a lack of assortment and high prices. 6. Consolidation of e-commerce software providers. Software vendors in the areas of search, reviews, online call-centers, payments, and e-commerce will consolidate, partly driven by the success of m-commerce and SaaS. Amazon will find someone else to buy, and eBay will continue to lose momentum. Consolidation of e-commerce providers continued with IBM acquiring Sterling Commerce and CoreMetrics, and Oracle recently announcing the acquisition of ATG. Amazon grabbed Zappos, Woot, and Diapers.com to continue its dominance of online selling. While eBay's Marketplace growth may have slowed, its PayPal division is doing quite well, fueled in part by demand for mobile payments. 7. Book publishers mirror music labels. Just as the iPod brought digital downloads to the masses, the Kindle and Nook will power the e-book revolution. Books will continue to use DRM for a few more years before following the path of music. Publishers will try to preserve the margins of hardbacks by associating e-book releases with paperbacks. Amazon has done a good job providing e-reader clients for smartphones, PCs, and tablets. Competition from Barnes & Noble has forced Amazon to support book loaning, and both companies are making it easier for people to publish ebooks (with or without DRM). Progress is slow but steady. 8. NFC makes inroads, RFID treads water. Near Field Communications start to appear in mobile phones, and retailers beta test its use for payments and loyalty programs. RFID tag costs come down a bit, but not enough to spur accelerated adoption.Nokia announced plans to offer NFC-enabled phones in 2011, and rumors are swirling about NFC in the upcoming iPhone.  I think NFC is heading in the right direction, and I've heard more interest from retailers about specialized uses for RFID.9. Digital Signage goes the way of augmented reality. People use their camera phones to leave geo-tagged notes all over cities, rating stores and restaurants, and "painting" graffiti. But people get tired of holding their phones in front of their faces, so AR glasses are offered in much the same way bluetooth headsets emerged. Retailers experiement with in-store advertising using AR. Several retailers like Pizza Hut, Benetton, and Target have experimented with AR but its still somewhat of a gimmick used by marketing.  I think this prediction is a year or two too early. 10. JDA flip-flops again. After announcing their embracing of the .Net architecture, then switching to J2EE after the Manugistics acquisition, JDA will finally decide to standardize on Apple's Objective C. Everything will be ported to the iPhone and be available on the AppStore. After all, there's not much left to try. This was, of course, a joke but the sentiment is still valid.  JDA seems more supply-chain focused than retail focused, which is a an outcrop if their i2 acquisition.  Of the 10 predictions, I'm going to say I got 6 somewhat correct.  (Don't you just love grading your own paper?)  Soon I'll post my predictions for 2011 so be on the lookout.  Until then here's one more prediction:  Va Tech beats Stanford in the Orange Bowl -- count on it!

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  • Life Technologies: Making Life Easier to Manage

    - by Michael Snow
    12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} When we’re thinking about customer engagement, we’re acutely aware of all the forces at play competing for our customer’s attention. Solutions that make life easier for our customers draw attention to themselves. We tend to engage more when there is a distinct benefit and we can take a deep breath and accept that there is hope in the world and everything isn’t designed to frustrate us and make our lives miserable. (sigh…) When products are designed to automate processes that were consuming hours of our time with no relief in sight, they deserve to be recognized. One of our recent Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Award Winners in the WebCenter category, Life Technologies, has recently posted a video promoting their “award winning” solution. The Oracle Innovation Awards are part of the overall Oracle Excellence awards given to customers for innovation with Oracle products. More info here. Their award nomination included this description: Life Technologies delivered the My Life Service Portal as part of a larger Digital Hub strategy. This Portal is the first of its kind in the biotechnology service providing industry. The Portal provides access to Life Technologies cloud based service monitoring system where all customer deployed instruments can be remotely monitored and proactively repaired. The portal provides alerts from these cloud based monitoring services directly to the customer and to Life Technologies Field Engineers. The Portal provides insight into the instruments and services customers purchased for the purpose of analyzing and anticipating future customer needs and creating targeted sales and service programs. This portal not only provides benefits for Life Technologies internal sales and service teams but provides customers a central place to track all pertinent instrument information including: instrument service history instrument status and previous activities instrument performance analytics planned service visits warranty/contract information discussion forums social networks for lab management and collaboration alerts and notifications on all of the above team scheduling for instrument usage promote optional reagents required to keep instruments performing From their website The Life Technologies Instruments & Services Portal Helps You Save Time and Gain Peace of Mind Introducing the new, award-winning, free online tool that enables easier management of your instrument use and care, faster response to requests for service or service quotes, and instant sharing of key instrument and service information with your colleagues. Now – this unto itself is obviously beneficial for their customers who were previously burdened with having to do all of these tasks separately, manually and inconsistently by nature. Now – all in one place and free to their customers – a portal that ties it all together. They now have built the platform to give their customers yet another reason to do business with them – Their headline on their product page says it all: “Life is now easier to manage - All your instrument use and care in one place – the no-cost, no-hassle Instruments and Services Portal.” Of course – it’s very convenient that the company name includes “Life” and now can also promote to their clients and prospects that doing business with them is easy and their sophisticated lab equipment is easy to manage. In an industry full of PhD’s – “Easy” isn’t usually the first word that comes to mind, but Life Technologies has now tied the word to their brand in a very eloquent way. Between our work lives and family or personal lives, getting any mono-focused minutes of dedicated attention has become such a rare occurrence in our current era of multi-tasking that those moments of focus are highly prized. So – when something is done really well – so well that it becomes captivating and urges sharing impulses – I take notice and dig deeper and most of the time I discover other gems not so hidden below the surface. And then I share with those I know would enjoy and understand. In the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit here that the first person I shared the videos below with was my daughter. She’s in her senior year of high school in the midst of her college search. She’s passionate about her academics and has already decided that she wants to study Neuroscience in college and like her mother will be in for the long haul to a PhD eventually. In a summer science program at Smith College 2 summers ago – she sent the family famous text to me – “I just dissected a sheep’s brain – wicked cool!” – This was followed by an equally memorable text this past summer in a research mentorship in Neuroscience at UConn – “Just sliced up some rat brain. Reminded me of a deli slicer at the supermarket… sorry I forgot to call last night…” So… needless to say – I knew I had an audience that would enjoy and understand these videos below and are now being shared among her science classmates and faculty. And evidently - so does Life Technologies! They’ve done a great job on these making them fun and something that will easily be shared among their customers social networks. They’ve created a neuro-archetypal character, “Ph.Diddy” and know that their world of clients in academics, research, and other institutions would understand and enjoy the “edutainment” value in this series of videos on their YouTube channel that pokes fun at the stereotypes while also promoting their products at the same time. They use their Facebook page for additional engagement with their clients and as another venue to promote these videos. Enjoy this one as well! More to be found here: http://www.youtube.com/lifetechnologies Stay tuned to this Oracle WebCenter blog channel. Tomorrow we'll be taking a look at another winner of the Innovation Awards, LADWP - helping to keep the citizens of Los Angeles engaged with their Water and Power provider.

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  • Building KPIs to monitor your business Its not really about the Technology

    When I have discussions with people about Business Intelligence, one of the questions the inevitably come up is about building KPIs and how to accomplish that. From a technical level the concept of a KPI is very simple, almost too simple in that it is like the tip of an iceberg floating above the water. The key to that iceberg is not really the tip, but the mass of the iceberg that is hidden beneath the surface upon which the tip sits. The analogy of the iceberg is not meant to indicate that the foundation of the KPI is overly difficult or complex. The disparity in size in meant to indicate that the larger thing that needs to be defined is not the technical tip, but the underlying business definition of what the KPI means. From a technical perspective the KPI consists of primarily the following items: Actual Value This is the actual value data point that is being measured. An example would be something like the amount of sales. Target Value This is the target goal for the KPI. This is a number that can be measured against Actual Value. An example would be $10,000 in monthly sales. Target Indicator Range This is the definition of ranges that define what type of indicator the user will see comparing the Actual Value to the Target Value. Most often this is defined by stoplight, but can be any indicator that is going to show a status in a quick fashion to the user. Typically this would be something like: Red Light = Actual Value more than 5% below target; Yellow Light = Within 5% of target either direction; Green Light = More than 5% higher than Target Value Status\Trend Indicator This is an optional attribute of a KPI that is typically used to show some kind of trend. The vast majority of these indicators are used to show some type of progress against a previous period. As an example, the status indicator might be used to show how the monthly sales compare to last month. With this type of indicator there needs to be not only a definition of what the ranges are for your status indictor, but then also what value the number needs to be compared against. So now we have an idea of what data points a KPI consists of from a technical perspective lets talk a bit about tools. As you can see technically there is not a whole lot to them and the choice of technology is not as important as the definition of the KPIs, which we will get to in a minute. There are many different types of tools in the Microsoft BI stack that you can use to expose your KPI to the business. These include Performance Point, SharePoint, Excel, and SQL Reporting Services. There are pluses and minuses to each technology and the right technology is based a lot on your goals and how you want to deliver the information to the users. Additionally, there are other non-Microsoft tools that can be used to expose KPI indicators to your business users. Regardless of the technology used as your front end, the heavy lifting of KPI is in the business definition of the values and benchmarks for that KPI. The discussion about KPIs is very dependent on the history of an organization and how much they are exposed to the attributes of a KPI. Often times when discussing KPIs with a business contact who has not been exposed to KPIs the discussion tends to also be a session educating the business user about what a KPI is and what goes into the definition of a KPI. The majority of times the business user has an idea of what their actual values are and they have been tracking those numbers for some time, generally in Excel and all manually. So they will know the amount of sales last month along with sales two years ago in the same month. Where the conversation tends to get stuck is when you start discussing what the target value should be. The actual value is answering the What and How much questions. When you are talking about the Target values you are asking the question Is this number good or bad. Typically, the user will know whether or not the value is good or bad, but most of the time they are not able to quantify what is good or bad. Their response is usually something like I just know. Because they have been watching the sales quantity for years now, they can tell you that a 5% decrease in sales this month might actually be a good thing, maybe because the salespeople are all waiting until next month when the new versions come out. It can sometimes be very hard to break the business people of this habit. One of the fears generally is that the status indicator is not subjective. Thus, in the scenario above, the business user is going to be fearful that their boss, just looking at a negative red indicator, is going to haul them out to the woodshed for a bad month. But, on the flip side, if all you are displaying is the amount of sales, only a person with knowledge of last month sales and the target amount for this month would have any idea if $10,000 in sales is good or not. Here is where a key point about KPIs needs to be communicated to both the business user and any user who might be viewing the results of that KPI. The KPI is just one tool that is used to report on business performance. The KPI is meant as a quick indicator of one business statistic. It is not meant to tell the entire story. It does not answer the question Why. Its primary purpose is to objectively and quickly expose an area of the business that might warrant more review. There is always going to be the need to do further analysis on any potential negative or neutral KPI. So, hopefully, once you have convinced your business user to come up with some target numbers and ranges for status indicators, you then need to take the next step and help them answer the Why question. The main question here to ask is, Okay, you see the indicator and you need to discover why the number is what is, where do you go?. The answer is usually a combination of sources. A sales manager might have some of the following items at their disposal (Marketing report showing a decrease in the promotional discounts for the month, Pricing Report showing the reduction of prices of older models, an Inventory Report showing the discontinuation of a particular product line, or a memo showing the ending of a large affiliate partnership. The answers to the question Why are never as simple as a single indicator value. Bring able to quickly get to this information is all about designing how a user accesses the KPIs and then also how easily they can get to the additional information they need. This is where a Dashboard mentality can come in handy. For example, the business user can have a dashboard that shows their KPIs, but also has links to some of the common reports that they run regarding Sales Data. The users boss may have the same KPIs on their dashboard, but instead of links to individual reports they are going to have a link to a status report that was created by the user that pulls together all the data about the KPI in a summary format the users boss can review. So some of the key things to think about when building or evaluating KPIs for your organization: Technology should not be the driving factor KPIs are of little value without some indicator for whether a value is good, bad or neutral. KPIs only give an answer to the Is this number good\bad? question Make sure the ability to drill into the Why of a KPI is close at hand and relevant to the user who is viewing the KPI. The KPI is a key business tool when defined properly to help monitor business performance across the enterprise in an objective and consistent manner. At times it might feel like the process of defining the business aspects of a KPI can sometimes be arduous, the payoff in the end can far outweigh the costs. Some of the benefits of going through this process are a better understanding of the key metrics for an organization and the measure of those metrics and a consistent snapshot of business performance that can be utilized across the organization. And I think that these are benefits to any organization regardless of the technology or the implementation.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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  • Cloud Computing = Elasticity * Availability

    - by Herve Roggero
    What is cloud computing? Is hosting the same thing as cloud computing? Are you running a cloud if you already use virtual machines? What is the difference between Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and a cloud provider? And the list goes on… these questions keep coming up and all try to fundamentally explain what “cloud” means relative to other concepts. At the risk of over simplification, answering these questions becomes simpler once you understand the primary foundations of cloud computing: Elasticity and Availability.   Elasticity The basic value proposition of cloud computing is to pay as you go, and to pay for what you use. This implies that an application can expand and contract on demand, across all its tiers (presentation layer, services, database, security…).  This also implies that application components can grow independently from each other. So if you need more storage for your database, you should be able to grow that tier without affecting, reconfiguring or changing the other tiers. Basically, cloud applications behave like a sponge; when you add water to a sponge, it grows in size; in the application world, the more customers you add, the more it grows. Pure IaaS providers will provide certain benefits, specifically in terms of operating costs, but an IaaS provider will not help you in making your applications elastic; neither will Virtual Machines. The smallest elasticity unit of an IaaS provider and a Virtual Machine environment is a server (physical or virtual). While adding servers in a datacenter helps in achieving scale, it is hardly enough. The application has yet to use this hardware.  If the process of adding computing resources is not transparent to the application, the application is not elastic.   As you can see from the above description, designing for the cloud is not about more servers; it is about designing an application for elasticity regardless of the underlying server farm.   Availability The fact of the matter is that making applications highly available is hard. It requires highly specialized tools and trained staff. On top of it, it's expensive. Many companies are required to run multiple data centers due to high availability requirements. In some organizations, some data centers are simply on standby, waiting to be used in a case of a failover. Other organizations are able to achieve a certain level of success with active/active data centers, in which all available data centers serve incoming user requests. While achieving high availability for services is relatively simple, establishing a highly available database farm is far more complex. In fact it is so complex that many companies establish yearly tests to validate failover procedures.   To a certain degree certain IaaS provides can assist with complex disaster recovery planning and setting up data centers that can achieve successful failover. However the burden is still on the corporation to manage and maintain such an environment, including regular hardware and software upgrades. Cloud computing on the other hand removes most of the disaster recovery requirements by hiding many of the underlying complexities.   Cloud Providers A cloud provider is an infrastructure provider offering additional tools to achieve application elasticity and availability that are not usually available on-premise. For example Microsoft Azure provides a simple configuration screen that makes it possible to run 1 or 100 web sites by clicking a button or two on a screen (simplifying provisioning), and soon SQL Azure will offer Data Federation to allow database sharding (which allows you to scale the database tier seamlessly and automatically). Other cloud providers offer certain features that are not available on-premise as well, such as the Amazon SC3 (Simple Storage Service) which gives you virtually unlimited storage capabilities for simple data stores, which is somewhat equivalent to the Microsoft Azure Table offering (offering a server-independent data storage model). Unlike IaaS providers, cloud providers give you the necessary tools to adopt elasticity as part of your application architecture.    Some cloud providers offer built-in high availability that get you out of the business of configuring clustered solutions, or running multiple data centers. Some cloud providers will give you more control (which puts some of that burden back on the customers' shoulder) and others will tend to make high availability totally transparent. For example, SQL Azure provides high availability automatically which would be very difficult to achieve (and very costly) on premise.   Keep in mind that each cloud provider has its strengths and weaknesses; some are better at achieving transparent scalability and server independence than others.    Not for Everyone Note however that it is up to you to leverage the elasticity capabilities of a cloud provider, as discussed previously; if you build a website that does not need to scale, for which elasticity is not important, then you can use a traditional host provider unless you also need high availability. Leveraging the technologies of cloud providers can be difficult and can become a journey for companies that build their solutions in a scale up fashion. Cloud computing promises to address cost containment and scalability of applications with built-in high availability. If your application does not need to scale or you do not need high availability, then cloud computing may not be for you. In fact, you may pay a premium to run your applications with cloud providers due to the underlying technologies built specifically for scalability and availability requirements. And as such, the cloud is not for everyone.   Consistent Customer Experience, Predictable Cost With all its complexities, buzz and foggy definition, cloud computing boils down to a simple objective: consistent customer experience at a predictable cost.  The objective of a cloud solution is to provide the same user experience to your last customer than the first, while keeping your operating costs directly proportional to the number of customers you have. Making your applications elastic and highly available across all its tiers, with as much automation as possible, achieves the first objective of a consistent customer experience. And the ability to expand and contract the infrastructure footprint of your application dynamically achieves the cost containment objectives.     Herve Roggero is a SQL Azure MVP and co-author of Pro SQL Azure (APress).  He is the co-founder of Blue Syntax Consulting (www.bluesyntax.net), a company focusing on cloud computing technologies helping customers understand and adopt cloud computing technologies. For more information contact herve at hroggero @ bluesyntax.net .

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  • HTG Explains: Should You Build Your Own PC?

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

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  • H1 Visa interview tips–What you must know before attending the interview?

    - by Gopinath
    USA’s H1 visa allows highly qualified professionals from other countries to work in America. Many IT professionals in India aspire to go to USA on H1 and work for their clients. Recently I had a chance to study H1 visa process to help one of my friends and I would like to share what I learned. With the assumption that your H1 petition is approved and you got an interview scheduled at US Embassy for your visa stamping, here are tips you must know before attending the interview Dress Code – Formals Say no to casuals or any fancy dress when you attend the interview. It’s not a party or friends home you are visiting. Consider H1 Visa interview as your job interview and dress up in formals. There is no option B for your, you must be in formals. A plain formal shirt with a matching pant is suggested for men. Tie and Suit would not be required, but if you are a professional at management level you can consider wearing suit. Women can wear either formal Salwar or formal pant-shirt. Avoid heavy jewellery, wear what is must as per your tradition or culture. Body Language -  Smile on your face Your body language reflects what you are and what’s going on in your mind. Don’t be nervous or restless, be relaxed and wear a beautiful smile on your face. A smile is a curve that sets everything straight. When you are called for the interview, greet the interviewer with a beautiful smile. Say Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening depending on time you are visiting them. Whenever appropriate say Thank You. Generally American professionals are very friendly people and they reciprocate for your greetings. Make sure that you make them comfortable to start the interview. Carry original documents in a separate folder I don’t want to talk much about the documents that are required for your H1B interview as it’s big subject on it’s own and it requires a separate post. I assume that your consultant or employer helped you in gathering all the required documents like – petition, DS 160 forms, education & job related documents, resume, interview call letters, client letters, etc. For all the documents you are going to submit at the interview make sure that you have originals in a separate folder.  If required interviewer may ask you show the originals of any of the document you submitted for visa processing. Don’t mix the original documents with the documents you need to submit for interview. Have a separate folder for them. For those who are going to stamping along with their spouse and children, they need to carry few extra original documents like – marriage certificate, marriage photos(30 numbers)/album, birth certificates, passports, education and profession related certificates of the spouse and children. Know your role & responsibilities The interviewer will ask you questions on your roles and responsibilities at client location. Be clear what is your day to day tasks at client place and prepared to face detailed questions on the same. When asked explain clearly and also make sure what you say is inline with what is mentioned in your petition and client invitation letter. At times they may ask you questions specific to the project/technology you are going to work. So doing some homework in this area will help you easily answer the questions. Failing to answer basic questions on your role & responsibilities may result in rejection. You work for your Employer at Client location but NOT FOR CLIENT One of the important things to keep in mind that you work for your employer and you are being deputed to client location on a work visa.  Your employer is going to be solely responsible for your salary, work, promotion, pay hikes or what so ever during your stay at USA. Your client will not be responsible for anything. Lets say you are employed with Company X in India and they are applying for H1B to work at your client(ex: Microsoft) in USA, you must keep in my mind that Microsoft is not your employer. Microsoft will not pay your salaries or responsible for any employment related activities. Company X will be solely responsible for all your employer related activities. If you don’t get this correctly and say to Visa interviewer that your client is responsible, then you may get into troubles. Know your client It’s always good to know the clients with whom you are going to work in USA and their business. If your client is a well know organisation then you may not get many questions from interviewer else you need to be well prepared to provide details like – nature of business, location, size of the organisation, etc.  Get to know the basic details about your client and be confident while providing those details to the interviewer. Also make sure that you never talk about any confidential details of your client projects and business. Revealing confidential details of your client may land your job itself in soup. Make sure that your spouse is also in sync with you If you’ve applied a H4 visa for your spouse along with your H1, make sure that spouse is in sync with you. Your spouse also should know the basic details of your job, your employer, client and location where you will be travelling. Your spouse should also be prepared to answers questions related to marriage, their profession(if working), kids, education, etc. Interviewers will try to asses your spouse communication skills, whereabouts while staying in USA and would they prefer to work USA or not. On H4, which is a dependent visa, your spouse is not allowed to work in USA and at any point your spouse should not show the intentions to search for work in USA. Less luggage more comfort You would have definitely heard that there are lot of restrictions on what you can carry along with you to an US Embassy while attending the interview. To be frank it’s not good to say there are many restrictions, but there are a hell a lot of restrictions. There are unbelievable restrictions and it’s for the safety of everyone. You are not allowed to carry mobile phones, CD/DVDs, USBs, bank cards, cameras, cosmetics, food(except baby food), water, wallets, backpacks, sealed covers, etc. Trust me most of the things we carry with us regularly every day are not allowed inside. As there are 100s of restrictions, it would be easier if you understand what you can carry along with you and just carry them alone. Ask your employer/consultant to provide you a checklist of items that you can carry. Most what you would require are H1B related documents provided by the employer/consultant Photographs All original documents supporting your H1B Passports Some cash for your travel expenses (avoid coins) Any important phone number / details written in a paper(like your cab driver number, etc.) If you carry restricted stuff then you will be stopped at security checks, you have to find people who can safely keep all the restricted items. Due to heavy restrictions in and around the US Embassy you will not find any  place to keep your luggage. So just carry the bare minimum things required so that you feel more comfortable. Useful Links THE U.S. NON IMMIGRANT VISA APPLICATION PROCESS U.S VISA SECURITY REGULATIONS GENERAL FAQS Hope this information is helpful to you and best of luck for your interview. Creative commons Image credit: Flickr/ alexfrance, vinothchandar. hughelectronic, architratan, striatic

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  • first install for windows eight.....da beta

    - by raysmithequip
    The W8 preview is now installed and I am enjoying it.  I remember the learning curve of my first unix machine back in the eighties, this ain't that.It is normal for me to do the first os install with a keyboard and low end monitor...you never know what you'll encounter out in the field.  The OS took like a fish to water.  I used a low end INTEL motherboard dp55w I gathered on the cheap, an 1157 i5 from the used bin a pair of 6 gig ddr3 sticks, a rosewell 550 watt power supply a cheap used twenty buck sub 200g wd sata drive, a half working dvd burner and an asus fanless nvidia vid card, not a great one but Sub 50.00 on newey eggey...I did have to hunt the ms forums for a key and of course to activate the thing, if dos would of needed this outmoded ritual, we would still be on cpm and osborne would be a household name, of course little do people know that this ritual was common as far back as the seventies on att unix installs....not, but it was possible, I used to joke about when I ran a bbs, what hell would of been wrought had dos 3.2 machines been required to dial into my bbs to send fido mail to ms and wait for an acknowledgement.  All in all the thing was pushing a seven on the ms richter scale, not including the vid card, sadly it came in at just a tad over three....I wanted to evaluate it for a possible replacement on critical machines that in the past went down due to a vid card fan failure....you have no idea what a customer thinks when you show them a failed vid card fan..."you mean that little plastic piece of junk caused all this!!??!!!"...yea man.  Some production machines don't need any sort of vid, I will at least keep it on the maybe list for those, MTBF is a very important factor, some big box stores should put percentage of failure rate within 24 month estimates on the outside of the carton for sure.  And a warning that the power supplies are already at their limit.  Let's face it, today even 550w can be iffy.A few neat eye candy improvements over the earlier windows is nice, the metro screen is nice, anyone who has used a newer phone recently will intuitively drag their fingers across the screen....lot of good that was with no mouse or touch screen though.  Lucky me, I have been using windows since day one, I still have a copy of win 2.0 (and every other version) for no good reason.  Still the old ix collection of disks is much larger, recompiling any kernal is another silly ritual, same machine, different day, same recompile...argh. Rh is my all time fav, mandrake was always missing something, like it rewrote the init file or something, novell is ok as long as you stay on the beaten path and of course ubuntu normally recompiles with the same errors consistantly....makes life easy that way....no errors on windows eight, just a screen that did not match the installed hardware, natuarally I alt tabbed right out of it, then hit the flag key to find the start menu....no start button. I miss the start button already. Keyboard cowboy funnin and I was browsing the harddrive, nothing stunning there, I like that, means I can find stuff. Only I can't find what I want, the start button....the start menu is that first screen for touch tablets. No biggie for useruser, that is where they will want to be, I can see that. Admins won't want to be there, it is easy enough to get the control panel a bazzilion other ways though, just not the start button. (see a pattern here?). Personally, from the keyboard I find it fun to hit the carets along the location bar at the top of the explorer screen with tabs and arrows and choose SHOW ALL CONTROL PANEL ITEMS, or thereabouts. Bottom line, I love seven and I'll love eight even more!...very happy I did not have to follow the normal rule of thumb (a customer watching me build a system and asking questions said "oh I get it, so every piece you put in there is basically a hundred bucks, right?)...ok, sure, pretty much, more or less, well, ya dude.  It will be WAY past october till I get a real touch screen but I did pick up a pair of cheap tatungs so I can try the NEW main start screen, I parse a lot of folders and have a vision of how a pair of touch screens will be easier than landing a rover on mars.  Ok.  fine, they are way smallish, and I don't expect multitouch to work but we are talking a few percent of a new 21 inch viewsonic touch screen.  Will this OS be a game changer?  I don't know.  Bottom line with all the pads and droids in the world, it is more of a catch up move at first glance.  Not something ms is used to.  An app store?  I can see ms's motivation, the others have it.  I gather there will not be gadgets there, go ahead and see what ms did  to the once populated gadget page...go ahead, google gadgets and take a gander, used to hundreds of gadgets, they are already gone.  They replaced gadgets?  sort of, I'll drop that, it's a bit of a sore point for me.  More of interest was what happened when I downloaded stuff off codeplex and some other normal programs that I like, like orbitron, top o' my list!!...cardware it is...anyways, click on the exe, get a screen, normal for windows, this one indicated that I was not running a normal windows program and had a button for  exit the install, naw, I hit details, a hidden run program anyways came into view....great, my path to the normal windows has detected a program tha.....yea ok, acl is on, fine, moving along I got orbitron installed in record time and was tracking the iss on the newest Microsoft OS, beta of course, felt like the first time I setup bsd all those year ago...FUN!!...I suppose I gotta start to think about budgeting for the real os when it comes out in october, by then I should have a rasberry pi and be done with fedora remixed.  Of course that sounds like fun too!!  I would use this OS on a tablet or phone.  I don't like the idea of being hearded to an app store, don't like that on anything, we are americans and want real choices not marketed hype, lest you are younger with opm (other peoples money).   This os would be neat on a zune, but I suspect the zune is a gonner, I am rooting for microsoft, after all their default password is not admin anymore, nor alpine,  it's blank. Others force a password, my first fawn password was so long I could not even log into it with the password in front of me, who the heck uses %$# anyways, and if I was writing a brute force attack what the heck kinda impasse is that anyways at .00001 microseconds of a code execution cycle (just a non qualified number, not a real clock speed)....AI is where it will be before too long, MS is on that path, perhaps soon someone will sit down and write an app for the kinect that watches your eyes while you scan the new main start screen, clicking on the big E icon when you blink.....boy is that going to be fun!!!! sure. Blink,dammit,blink,dammit...... OPM no doubt.I like windows eight, we are moving forwards, better keep a close eye on ubuntu.  The real clinch comes when open source becomes paid source......don't blink, I already see plenty of very expensive 'ix apps, some even in app stores already.  more to come.......

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  • 5 Ways Android Still Disappoints (Me)

    - by TStewartDev
    Let me make this clear: I'm annoyed with Apple. I don't like their current policies and I don't like where Steve Jobs is taking the company. In general, I don't like it when any one company gets too much control in a market. When that happens, the leading company dictates the game and as consumers, our options all but disappear. That said, I'm still going to buy a new iPhone next week. My Apple-hating friends seem to desperately want me to go Android instead, but frankly, it's not good enough for me, and here are the reasons why. The Modern WinMo One of the reasons that Microsoft has identified for Windows Mobile's rapid decline is the breadth of hardware. They exercised little control over manufacturer's implementations. In theory, that sounds great. We as consumers have lots of choice. In practice, though, it meant among other things that updates to the devices were left up to the manufacturers. As a result, that rarely happened. (I'm still bitter at Toshiba for leaving me hanging back in 2002.) And now, Google is doing the same thing with Android. Case in point: my wife has a Motorola Backflip that we bought in April. It was released in March. Motorola says it will get Android 2.1 "sometime in Q3". Great. Meanwhile, I pull down the latest version of iPhone OS (now iOS) and install it the same day it's released. You may say that I can't judge Android by one lazy manufacturer. Yup, I sure can. With Apple, my original iPhone has been supported perfectly for 3 years. With Android, I will have to wait for upgrades after Google releases them, possibly indefinitely. Not cool. AT&T We signed a new contract with AT&T in April to get my wife's phone. I've had a reasonable experience with them. I don't imagine my experience with Verizon would be any better, and I'm relatively confident that Sprint doesn't have the coverage it takes to work well for us. The fact is, AT&T, for whatever reason, doesn't have jack for Android phones. May not be Android's fault, but it's still a shortcoming that prevents me from having it just like the iPhone's exclusivity keeps some folks on other networks from having it. Innovation? What Innovation? Android has a nice dashboard and a great notification system and… nothing else original. I keep reading about how disappointing the iPhone is nowadays. "It has no innovation," people say. Who does? Android has modeled its behavior after the iPhone. That's fine, but if all you've got is a similar product and I'm invested both skill-wise and app-wise in my current platform, why should I change? Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 looks somewhat innovative, and I'm pretty excited to see what they'll bring to the table, but that's another six months away, at least. I've got a 3 year old phone that has some annoying issues now (thanks to recent encounters with water). I need a new phone now. Is This Going to Work? There's no shortage of criticism of Apple over its App Store policies, and I've vented my own anger about it. However, I will give them credit: their screening of apps has done a great job of weeding out the crap and gives an excellent indication that the app will work on my device. How about Android? Nope. It might work on your phone. Maybe. You'll have to try it to see. Get burned by it? Well, write a nasty review to try to keep others from making the mistake you did. If you don't mind doing that stuff, then Android is the platform for you. Personally, I'd rather have a receptionist screening out the telemarketing and survey calls than hang up on them myself, but that's your call. Slow, Slowing, Slower All this yapping about multitasking. This is an area I've been on Apple's side from the beginning. Sorry folks, but this is the number one reason I hated Windows Mobile: the longer you use it, the slower it gets because it doesn't kill apps. I'm with Steve Jobs on this one: if you see a task manager, we're doing it wrong. I don't want to have to manually kill apps. I hate doing that on Windows let alone on a mobile device. To me, priority one should be keeping the device speedy. Waiting for your device to respond is unacceptable. Bonus! Taken from iPhone Letdown? 8 Things Apple Didn't Announce, here are my responses: 4G Yeah, let me know if your area actually has it. I live in Lincoln, Nebraska. No carrier is going to have 4G here for at least 3 years. Meanwhile, you still get to pay for it. Yay! Cloud iTunes/OTA Sync You got me here. Of course, whether or not your Android device will be able to do it is always a good question. 3G Video Chat You got me here, too. I'm sure you spent countless hours in front of your phone with video chat. Also, I can't wait for the "No Video Chat While Driving" laws. Mobile Hotspot This is a neat feature, but as the author points out, it's left up to the carrier whether to implement it or not. Pretty sure any Android phones that come to AT&T won't have this enabled in the foreseeable future. Is Verizon even allowing this? I just figured Sprint was because they're failing so hard at keeping customers. Free MobileMe I use Google's services with my iPhone. The only people I know who use MobileMe are Apple fanboys and fangirls. If you choose to pay for a service that you can get for free, that's your decision, not Apple's. Voice Input Voice input has been available on phones (even "dumb" phones) for years now. iPhone does have the ability, though limited. Why don't I hear people telling their phones what to do? Maybe because it's still easier to use your fingers than talk to it. Get back to me when this becomes an important feature. Free Navigation Maybe this will be a bigger deal to me now that I'm getting a phone with GPS, but when using my buddy's 3gs, Google maps has worked just fine. Maybe I just don't trust turn-by-turn navigation enough to want it. Dashboard The only legitimate complaint on this list, to me. iPhone's home screen is pathetic, doubly so for the iPad. What a waste of perfectly usable space. I also want to add notifications to this list. Android's notification panel is far superior to the iPhone's. I don't want to hunt all over my screen to find little red dots. Put 'em in one place, Apple.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 26, 2014

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 26, 2014Popular ReleasesClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.71.1: More performance improvements. It's faster and consumes less memory.Role Based Views in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Role Based Views in CRM 2011 and 2013 - 1.1.0.0: Issues fixed in this build: 1. Works for CRM 2013 2. Lookup view not getting blockedSimCityPak: SimCityPak 0.3.1.0: Main New Features: Fixed Importing of Instance Names (get rid of the Dutch translations) Added advanced editor for Decal Dictionaries Added possibility to import .PNG to generate new decals Added advanced editor for Path display entriesSimple Connect To Db: SimpleConnectToDb_v1: SimpleConnectToDb_v1CRM 2011 / CRM 2013 Form Helper: v2014.05.25: v2014.05.25 Added PhoneFormat & PhoneFormatAreaCode v2014.05.24 Initial ReleaseCreate Word documents without MS Word: Release 3.0: Add support for Sections, Sections Headers and Footers and right to left languages.Corporate News App for SharePoint 2013: CorporateNewsApp v1.6.2.0: Important note This version contains a major bug fix about the generic error "Request failed. Unexpected response data from server null" This error occurs on SharePoint Online only, following an update of the Javascript API after May 2014. If you have installed this application manually in your applications company catalog, you can download the CorporateNewsApp.app file in the zip archive and update it manually. If you have installed this application directly from the SharePoint Store, it ...DevOS: DevOS: Plugin-system added Including:DevOS.exe DevOS API.dll Files must be in the some folderTiny Deduplicator: Tiny Deduplicator 1.0.1.0: Increased version number to 1.0.1.0 Moved all options to a separate 'Options' dialog window. Allows the user to specify a selection strategy which will help when dealing with large numbers of duplicate files. Available options are "None," "Keep First," and "Keep Last"C64 Studio: 3.5: Add: BASIC renumber function Add: !PET pseudo op Add: elseif for !if, } else { pseudo op Add: !TRACE pseudo op Add: Watches are saved/restored with a solution Add: Ctrl-A works now in export assembly controls Add: Preliminary graphic import dialog (not fully functional yet) Add: range and block selection in sprite/charset editor (Shift-Click = range, Alt-Click = block) Fix: Expression evaluator could miscalculate when both division and multiplication were in an expression without parenthesisSEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.031.009 Release 1: Added mirroring of ConveyorTubeCurved. Updated Ship cube rotation to rotate ship back to original location (cubes are reoriented but ship appears no different to outsider), and to rotate Grouped items. Repair now fixes the loss of Grouped controls due to changes in Space Engineers 01.030. Added export asteroids. Rejoin ships will merge grouping and conveyor systems (even though broken ships currently only maintain the Grouping on one part of the ship). Installation of this version wi...Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows and WP v2.0: Support for new Universal and Windows Phone 8.1 projects for both Xaml and JavaScript projects. See a detailed list of improvements, breaking changes and a general overview of version 2 ADDITIONAL DOWNLOADSSmooth Streaming Client SDK for Windows 8 Applications Smooth Streaming Client SDK for Windows 8.1 Applications Smooth Streaming Client SDK for Windows Phone 8.1 Applications Microsoft PlayReady Client SDK for Windows 8 Applications Microsoft PlayReady Client SDK for Windows 8.1 Applicat...TerraMap (Terraria World Map Viewer): TerraMap 1.0.6: Added support for the new Terraria v1.2.4 update. New items, walls, and tiles Added the ability to select multiple highlighted block types. Added a dynamic, interactive highlight opacity slider, making it easier to find highlighted tiles with dark colors (and fixed blurriness from 1.0.5 alpha). Added ability to find Enchanted Swords (in the stone) and Water Bolt books Fixed Issue 35206: Hightlight/Find doesn't work for Demon Altars Fixed finding Demon Hearts/Shadow Orbs Fixed inst...DotNet.Highcharts: DotNet.Highcharts 4.0 with Examples: DotNet.Highcharts 4.0 Tested and adapted to the latest version of Highcharts 4.0.1 Added new chart type: Heatmap Added new type PointPlacement which represents enumeration or number for the padding of the X axis. Changed target framework from .NET Framework 4 to .NET Framework 4.5. Closed issues: 974: Add 'overflow' property to PlotOptionsColumnDataLabels class 997: Split container from JS 1006: Series/Categories with numeric names don't render DotNet.Highcharts.Samples Updated s...ConEmu - Windows console with tabs: ConEmu 140523 [Alpha]: ConEmu - developer build x86 and x64 versions. Written in C++, no additional packages required. Run "ConEmu.exe" or "ConEmu64.exe". Some useful information you may found: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/conemu http://code.google.com/p/conemu-maximus5/wiki/ConEmuFAQ http://code.google.com/p/conemu-maximus5/wiki/TableOfContents If you want to use ConEmu in portable mode, just create empty "ConEmu.xml" file near to "ConEmu.exe" Aspose for Apache POI: Missing Features of Apache POI SL - v 1.1: Release contain the Missing Features in Apache POI SL SDK in Comparison with Aspose.Slides for dealing with Microsoft Power Point. What's New ?Following Examples: Managing Slide Transitions Manage Smart Art Adding Media Player Adding Audio Frame to Slide Feedback and Suggestions Many more examples are yet to come here. Keep visiting us. Raise your queries and suggest more examples via Aspose Forums or via this social coding site.PowerShell App Deployment Toolkit: PowerShell App Deployment Toolkit v3.1.3: Added CompressLogs option to the config file. Each Install / Uninstall creates a timestamped zip file with all MSI and PSAppDeployToolkit logs contained within Added variable expansion to all paths in the configuration file Added documentation for each of the Toolkit internal variables that can be used Changed Install-MSUpdates to continue if any errors are encountered when installing updates Implement /Force parameter on Update-GroupPolicy (ensure that any logoff message is ignored) ...WordMat: WordMat v. 1.07: A quick fix because scientific notation was broken in v. 1.06 read more at http://wordmat.blogspot.com????: 《????》: 《????》(c???)??“????”???????,???????????????C?????????。???????,???????????????????????. ??????????????????????????????????;????????????????????????????。Mini SQL Query: Mini SQL Query (1.0.72.457): Apologies for the previous update! FK issue fixed and also a template data cache issue.New ProjectsASP.Net MCV4 Simplified Code Samples: This project intended to simplify the same. In this project each task is implemented with minimum lines of code to reduces complicity.Calvin: net???CodeLatino by Latinosoft: A Modified version for codeShow -- Probably taking more than a month.freeasyBackup: A free and easy to use Backup Tool for everyone. Without any cloud restrictions. freeasyExplorer: A free and easy to use File Explorer for everyone.openPDFspeedreader: #spritz #pdfreader #speedreader PDF Editor to Edit PDF Files in your ASP.NET Applications: This sample application allows the users to edit PDF files online using Aspose.Pdf for .NET.SharePoint World Cup 2013: world cup 2014SSAS Long Running Query Performance Helper: This utility helps investigate long running multidimensional or mining queries in discovery, de-parameterization and re-parameterization back to source format.

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  • I Know What I Did This Summer: Put Down Trex Decking

    - by thatjeffsmith
    If you’re wondering why I would bore everyone with my pictures and frequent status updates/tweets from the past week – it’s so I could document the process of refurbishing my deck, or what some would call a porch. When we go to take a vacation, buy a car, do anything – we also read personal blogs to get the real story. So, if you’re curious about what it takes to tackle this sort of project, read on. Skills/Equipment/Manpower We Possessed I took the old decking out by myself. I’m about 230 lbs, more than 6′ tall, and I’m pretty healthy. This took about 8 hours over two afternoons. Three of us put the deck back together. My wife has two engineering degrees. Her father also has two engineering degrees. Lots of brainpower available here. Also, her dad ran the public works department for a country for more than 20 years – so lots and lots of practical experience on hand. We had a compound mitre saw, a skilsaw, 2-3 crowbars, a framing hammer, 3 cordless drills, a corded drill, lots of sawhorses, a power sander, an angle grinder, a 10×10 Coleman canopy tent, a Ford F-150 pickup truck, outdoor speakers and lots of iTunes playlists, plenty of water and cold beer. Why We Did This Our deck was relatively young – it was built in 2005. However, the pressure treated boards must not have been adequately maintained before we bought the house. I had powerwashed the deck every other year and had it stained a few times. The boards just rotted. We’re going to be in the house for a long time, and we wanted something that would look nice and require little maintenance. More bad deck boards The deck boards were in bad shape Things We Learned The two most important things: The hidden fasteners have to be put in JUST right. Wedge them into the grooved board, then bend down the bit that is screwed down. We didn’t do this on the first board and couldn’t get the second board to fit nearly close enough. Watching the official TREX YouTube video helped immensely, and we should have watched that first. When pre-drilling holes for the boards that need screwed down – DO NOT pre-drill through the underlying framing wood. ONLY pre-drill through the TREX itself. The screw won’t seat in the board properly. Instead of sitting down flush with the board, it will stop at the top of the board and just spin. I had to call the the place that sold me the screws to find this out. So about a third of our screws look like crap. If it doesn’t look or feel right – stop everything and pick up your computer or your phone. It’s not right, and it will be much easier to stop and find out why. We didn’t do this, and now I’m going to see every screw that’s not flush with the boards and get upset. Oh well. The Process How much time did it take? Well I spent about 8 hours taking the deck apart. And then the 3 of use spent 8 hours the first day, 10 hours the second day, 8 hours the third, and another 6 hours on the fourth day. That’s like 104 man-hours. We supposedly saved four or five thousand dollars in labor, but don’t do the math here or you might get a bit upset. The main thing is that we got what we wanted, and there won’t be any surprises later. Now for some pictures… This 6”+ pry bar made the destruction of the old deck much easier Most of the joists, once exposed, were OK. This joist wasn’t sitting on ANYTHING before. We think a lazy gas person cut the board to sneak a gas line in. Awesome… These monster lag bolts had to be accounted for when putting in the additional framing The border pattern Sheri wanted to put in required a lot more framing. These were the first boards to go down – we screwed them in as there was no way to attach clips I sat, kicked in the boards, and then drilled these clips in – but my wife was able to go MUCH faster by using her hands to lock the boards in and drill on her knees. I liked locking the board in with my feet when they needed to be ‘encouraged’ to go straight. The first board took FOREVER to go in, but then when we got rolling, we were able to put in a 20′ board in less than 10 minutes. This was end of construction day #2 – we got much further than we thought we would. Ah, the dreaded last 10% – what to do here? Remember those ‘floating’ stringers? Yeah, we fixed that up a bit, too. My wife used a website (and her brain) to calculate exactly how to cut the stringers to give us the rise/run we needed with the proper clearance and all that jazz. The stairs with stringers and toe kicks – this was worth the effort It started raining on us as I screwed down the steps – this we managed to get our shade tent up on the deck to protect us from the rain too The stairs, finished Finished, mostly Good corner shot The top of the stairs Stairs, looking down Celebratory beer In Summary There are a few things we’re not happy with. I think we can fix them up – but later. I have a few things left to finish, rewire the lighting, get the gas grille put back in, and rehang some screen doors. I was expecting this to be a lot worse than it was. If I didn’t have the help, I would have never done it myself. But I’m glad that I did have that help and did do that project. It’s not often you get to spend that kind of qualify time with family and building cool stuff.

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