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  • Developer Training – Importance and Significance – Part 1

    - by pinaldave
    Developer Training - Importance and Significance - Part 1 Developer Training – Employee Morals and Ethics – Part 2 Developer Training – Difficult Questions and Alternative Perspective - Part 3 Developer Training – Various Options for Developer Training – Part 4 Developer Training – A Conclusive Summary- Part 5 Can anyone remember their final day of schooling?  This is probably a silly question because – of course you can!  Many people mark this as the most exciting, happiest day of their life.  It marks the end of testing, the end of following rules set by teachers, and the beginning of finally being able to earn money and work in your chosen field. Beginning in Real World However, many former-students will be disappointed to find out that once they become employees, learning is not over.  Many companies are discovering the importance and benefits to training their employees.  You can breathe a sigh of relief, though, because much for this kind of training there are not usually tests! We often think that we go to school for our younger years so that we do all our learning all at once, and then for the rest of our lives we use that knowledge.  But in so many cases, but especially for developers, the opposite is true.  It takes many years of schools to learn the basics of a field, and then our careers are spent learning to become experts. For this, and so many other reasons, training is very important.  Example one: developer training leads to better employees.  A company is only as good as the people it employs, and one way to ensure that you have employed the right candidate is through training.  Training can take a regular “stone” and polish it into a “diamond.”  Employees who have been well-trained will be better at their jobs and produce a better product. Most Expensive Resource Did you know that one of the most expensive operating costs for any company is not buying goods, or advertising, but its employees – especially having to hire new employees.  Bringing in new people, getting them up to speed, and providing them with perks to attract them to a company is a huge cost for companies.  So employee retention – keep the employees you already have, and keeping them happy – is incredibly important from a business aspect.  And research shows that a well-trained employee is a happy employee.  They feel more confident in their job, happier with their position, and more cared-about – and therefore less likely to leave in search of a better job.  Employee training leads to better retention. Good Moral On the subject of keeping employees happy in order to keep them at a company, the complement to that research shows that happier employees are more efficient and overall better at their jobs.  You don’t have to be a scientist to figure out why this is true.  An employee who feel that his company cares about him and his educational future will work harder for the company.  He or she will put in that extra hour during the busy season that makes all the difference in the end.  Good morale is good for the company. If good morale is better for the company, you know that it goes hand-in-hand with something even better – better efficiency.  An employee who is well trained obviously knows more about their job and all the technical aspects.  That means when a problem crops up – and they inevitably do – this employee will be well-equipped to deal with that problem with fewer problems, and no need to go searching for help from higher up.  When employees are well trained, companies run more smoothly. A Better Product Of course, all of these “pros” for employee training are leading up to the one thing that companies truly care about – a better product.  We have shown that employees who have been trained to be competitive in the market are happier at the company, they are more efficient, and their morale is better.  The overall result is that the company’s product – whether it is a database, piece of equipment, or even a physical good – is better.  And a better product will always be more competitive on the market. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Developer Training, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • More SQL Smells

    - by Nick Harrison
    Let's continue exploring some of the SQL Smells from Phil's list. He has been putting together. Datatype mis-matches in predicates that rely on implicit conversion.(Plamen Ratchev) This is a great example poking holes in the whole theory of "If it works it's not broken" Queries will this probably will generally work and give the correct response. In fact, without careful analysis, you probably may be completely oblivious that there is even a problem. This subtle little problem will needlessly complicate queries and slow them down regardless of the indexes applied. Consider this example: CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Page](     [PageId] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,     [Title] [varchar](75) NOT NULL,     [Sequence] [int] NOT NULL,     [ThemeId] [int] NOT NULL,     [CustomCss] [text] NOT NULL,     [CustomScript] [text] NOT NULL,     [PageGroupId] [int] NOT NULL;  CREATE PROCEDURE PageSelectBySequence ( @sequenceMin smallint , @sequenceMax smallint ) AS BEGIN SELECT [PageId] , [Title] , [Sequence] , [ThemeId] , [CustomCss] , [CustomScript] , [PageGroupId] FROM [CMS].[dbo].[Page] WHERE Sequence BETWEEN @sequenceMin AND @SequenceMax END  Note that the Sequence column is defined as int while the sequence parameter is defined as a small int. The problem is that the database may have to do a lot of type conversions to evaluate the query. In some cases, this may even negate the indexes that you have in place. Using Correlated subqueries instead of a join   (Dave_Levy/ Plamen Ratchev) There are two main problems here. The first is a little subjective, since this is a non-standard way of expressing the query, it is harder to understand. The other problem is much more objective and potentially problematic. You are taking much of the control away from the optimizer. Written properly, such a query may well out perform a corresponding query written with traditional joins. More likely than not, performance will degrade. Whenever you assume that you know better than the optimizer, you will most likely be wrong. This is the fundmental problem with any hint. Consider a query like this:  SELECT Page.Title , Page.Sequence , Page.ThemeId , Page.CustomCss , Page.CustomScript , PageEffectParams.Name , PageEffectParams.Value , ( SELECT EffectName FROM dbo.Effect WHERE EffectId = dbo.PageEffects.EffectId ) AS EffectName FROM Page INNER JOIN PageEffect ON Page.PageId = PageEffects.PageId INNER JOIN PageEffectParam ON PageEffects.PageEffectId = PageEffectParams.PageEffectId  This can and should be written as:  SELECT Page.Title , Page.Sequence , Page.ThemeId , Page.CustomCss , Page.CustomScript , PageEffectParams.Name , PageEffectParams.Value , EffectName FROM Page INNER JOIN PageEffect ON Page.PageId = PageEffects.PageId INNER JOIN PageEffectParam ON PageEffects.PageEffectId = PageEffectParams.PageEffectId INNER JOIN dbo.Effect ON dbo.Effects.EffectId = dbo.PageEffects.EffectId  The correlated query may just as easily show up in the where clause. It's not a good idea in the select clause or the where clause. Few or No comments. This one is a bit more complicated and controversial. All comments are not created equal. Some comments are helpful and need to be included. Other comments are not necessary and may indicate a problem. I tend to follow the rule of thumb that comments that explain why are good. Comments that explain how are bad. Many people may be shocked to hear the idea of a bad comment, but hear me out. If a comment is needed to explain what is going on or how it works, the logic is too complex and needs to be simplified. Comments that explain why are good. Comments may explain why the sql is needed are good. Comments that explain where the sql is used are good. Comments that explain how tables are related should not be needed if the sql is well written. If they are needed, you need to consider reworking the sql or simplify your data model. Use of functions in a WHERE clause. (Anil Das) Calling a function in the where clause will often negate the indexing strategy. The function will be called for every record considered. This will often a force a full table scan on the tables affected. Calling a function will not guarantee that there is a full table scan, but there is a good chance that it will. If you find that you often need to write queries using a particular function, you may need to add a column to the table that has the function already applied.

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  • Travelling MVP #4: DevReach 2012

    - by DigiMortal
    Our next stop after Varna was Sofia where DevReach happens. DevReach is one of my favorite conferences in Europe because of sensible prices and strong speakers line-up. Also they have VIP-party after conference and this is good event to meet people you don’t see every day, have some discussion with speakers and find new friends. Our trip from Varna to Sofia took about 6.5 hours on bus. As I was tired from last evening it wasn’t problem for me as I slept half the trip. After smoking pause in Velike Tarnovo I watched movies from bus TV. We had supper later in city center Happy’s – place with good meat dishes and nice service. And next day it begun…. :) DevReach 2012 DevReach is held usually in Arena Mladost. It’s near airport and Telerik office. The event is organized by local MVP Martin Kulov together with Telerik. Two days of sessions with strong speakers is good reason enough for me to go to visit some event. Some topics covered by sessions: Windows 8 development web development SharePoint Windows Azure Windows Phone architecture Visual Studio Practically everybody can find some interesting session in every time slot. As the Arena is not huge it is very easy to go from one sessions to another if selected session for time slot is not what you expected. On the second floor of Arena there are many places where you can eat. There are simple chunk-food places like Burger King and also some restaurants. If you are hungry you will find something for your taste for sure. Also you can buy beer if it is too hot outside :) Weather was very good for October – practically Estonian summer – 25C and over. Sessions I visited Here is the list of sessions I visited at DevReach 2012: DevReach 2012 Opening & Welcome Messsage with Martin Kulov and Stephen Forte Principled N-Tier Solution Design with Steve Smith Data Patterns for the Cloud with Brian Randell .NET Garbage Collection Performance Tips with Sasha Goldshtein Building Secured, Scalable, Low-latency Web Applications with the Windows Azure Platform with Ido Flatow It’s a Knockout! MVVM Style Web Applications with Charles Nurse Web Application Architecture – Lessons Learned from Adobe Brackets with Brian Rinaldi Demystifying Visual Studio 2012 Performance Tools with Martin Kulov SPvNext – A Look At All the Exciting And New Features In SharePoint with Sahil Malik Portable Libraries – Why You Should Care with Lino Tadros I missed some sessions because of some death march projects that are going and that I have to coordinate but it was not big loss as I had time to walk around in session venue neighborhood and see Sofia Business Park. Next year again! I will be there again next year and hopefully more guys from Estonia will join me. I think it’s good idea to take short vacation for DevReach time and do things like we did this time – Bucharest, Varna, Sofia. It’s only good idea to plan some more free time so we are not very much in hurry and also we have no work stuff to do on the trip. This far this trip has been one of best trips I have organized and I will go and meet all those guys in this region again! :)

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  • The theory of evolution applied to software

    - by Michel Grootjans
    I recently realized the many parallels you can draw between the theory of evolution and evolving software. Evolution is not the proverbial million monkeys typing on a million typewriters, where one of them comes up with the complete works of Shakespeare. We would have noticed by now, since the proverbial monkeys are now blogging on the Internet ;-) One of the main ideas of the theory of evolution is the balance between random mutations and natural selection. Random mutations happen all the time: millions of mutations over millions of years. Most of them are totally useless. Some of them are beneficial to the evolved species. Natural selection favors the beneficially mutated species. Less beneficial mutations die off. The mutated rabbit doesn't have to be faster than the fox. It just has to be faster than the other rabbits.   Theory of evolution Evolving software Random mutations happen all the time. Most of these mutations are so bad, the new species dies off, or cannot reproduce. Developers write new code all the time. New ideas come up during the act of writing software. The really bad ones don't get past the stage of idea. The bad ones don't get committed to source control. Natural selection favors the beneficial mutated species Good ideas and new code gets discussed in group during informal peer review. Less than good code gets refactored. Enhanced code makes it more readable, maintainable... A good set of traits makes the species superior to others. It becomes widespread A good design tends to make it easier to add new features, easier to understand the current implementations, easier to optimize for performance...thus superior. The best designs get carried over from project to project. They appear in blogs, articles and books about principles, patterns and practices.   Of course the act of writing software is deliberate. This can hardly be called random mutations. Though it sometimes might seem that code evolves through a will of its own ;-) Does this mean that evolving software (evolution) is better than a big design up front (creationism)? Not necessarily. It's a false idea to think that a project starts from scratch and everything evolves from there. Everyone carries his experience of what works and what doesn't. Up front design is necessary, but is best kept simple and minimal, just enough to get you started. Let the good experiences and ideas help to drive the process, whether they come from you or from others, from past experience or from the most junior developer on your team. Once again, balance is the keyword. Balance design up front with evolution on a daily basis. How do you know what balance is right? Through your own experience of what worked and what didn't (here's evolution again). Notes: The evolution of software can quickly degenerate without discipline. TDD is a discipline that leaves little to chance on that part. Write your test to describe the new behavior. Write just enough code to make it behave as specified. Refactor to evolve the code to a higher standard. The responsibility of good design rests continuously on each developers' shoulders. Promiscuous pair programming helps quickly spreading the design to the whole team.

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  • WiX, MSDeploy and an appealing configuration/deployment paradigm

    - by alexhildyard
    I do a lot of application and server configuration; I've done this for many years and have tended to view the complexity of this strictly in terms of the complexity of the ultimate configuration to be deployed. For example, specific APIs aside, I would tend to regard installing a server certificate as a more complex activity than, say, copying a file or adding a Registry entry.My prejudice revolved around the idea of a sequential deployment script that not only had the explicit prescription to apply a specific server configuration, but also made the implicit presumption that the server in question was in a good known state. Scripts like this fail for hundreds of reasons -- the Default Website didn't exist; the application had already been deployed; the application had already been partially deployed and failed to rollback fully, and so on. And so the problem is that the more complex the configuration activity, the more scope for error in any individual part of that activity, and therefore the greater the chance the server in question will not end up at exactly the desired configuration level.Recently I was introduced to a completely different mindset, which, for want of a better turn of phrase, I will call the "make it so" mindset. It's extremely simple both to explain and to implement. In place of the head-down, imperative script you used to use, you substitute a set of checks -- much like exception handlers -- around each configuration activity, starting with a check of the current system state. Thus the configuration logic becomes: "IF these services aren't started then start them, and IF XYZ website doesn't exist then create it, and IF these shares don't exist then create them, and IF these shares aren't permissioned in some particular way, then permission them so." This works. Really well, in my experience. Scenario 1: You want to get a system into a good known state; it's already in a good known state; you quickly realise there is nothing to do.Scenario 2: You want to get the system into a good known state; your script is flawed or the system is bust; it cannot be put into that state. You know exactly where (at least part of) the problem is and why.Scenario 3: You want to get the system into a good known state; people are fiddling around with the system just now. That's fine. You do what you can, and later you come back and try it againScenario 4: No one wants to deploy anything; they want you to prove that the previous deployment was successful. So you re-run the deployment script with the "-WhatIf" flag. It reports that there was nothing to change. There's your proof.I mentioned two technologies in the title -- MSI and MSDeploy. I am thinking specifically of the conversation that took place here. Having worked with both technologies, I think Rob Mensching's response is appropriately nuanced, and in essence the difference is this: sometimes your target is either to achieve a specific new server state, or to rollback to a known good one. Then again, your target may be to configure what you can, and to understand what you can't. Implicitly MSDeploy's "rollback" is simply to redeploy the previous version, whereas a well-crafted MSI will actively put your system into that state without further intervention. Either way, if all goes well it will leave you with a system in one of two states, whereas MSDeploy could leave your system in one of many states. The key is that MSDeploy and MSI are complementary technologies; which suits you best depends as much on Operational guidance as your Configuration remit.What I wanted to say was that I have always been for atomic, transactional-based configuration, but having worked with the "make it so" paradigm, I have been favourably impressed by the actual results. I'm tempted to put a more technical post up on this in due course.

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  • what is the best way to stream a audio file to website users/listners

    - by Naveen Chamikara Gamage
    I'm developing a music site which will stream audio files stored in a server to users, audio files will be played through flash player placed in a webpage.. As I heard I need to use a streaming media server for streaming audio files ( like 2mb to 3mb in size).. Do I need to use one? I found some streaming media server softwares like http://www.icecast.org - but as in their documentation, It is used for streaming radio stations and live streaming purposes, but I just need to stream audio files faster and in low size (low bandwidth) with good quality.. I heard I need to encode the audio files first and then send them to listeners and in their end audio files need to be decoded again. Is that true? How can I do that? if I need to use a special web server, where should I host my files? Any good hosting providers? if I host audio files in a normal web server, they will use HTTP or TCP to deliver my audio files to users/ listners but I found that HTTP and TCP are not good ways to use for multi media purposes like streaming audio and video files, and they are used for delivering HTML and stuff. I found I should use RSTP or UDP for streaming audio files.. What should I use? I know that .MP3 files has much better quality than the other formats but it also gives huge size to the audio files.. which format should I use for audio files? Most of the best quality audio files are more than 7mb so I'm planning to convert them my self using a software so I could get low size files with some level of good quality. If I'm converting my audio files what is the good BITRATE I should use for my files? Any known best softwares for converting audio files while keeping quality in a good level? Note** - I know that I will not need complex requirements at the beginning of the site but I wanted to what are the best ways like they are using for soundcloud.com

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  • Finding out the windows group by virtue of which a user is able to access a database in sql server?

    - by Raghu Dodda
    There is a SQL Server 2005 database with mixed-mode authentication. Among others, we have the following logins on the server: our-domain\developers-group-1, and our-domain\developers-group-2 which are AD groups. The our-domain\developer-group-2 is added to the sysadmin role on the server, by virture of which all domain users of that group can access any database as SQL Server implictly maps the sysadmin role to the dbo user in each database. There are two users our-domain\good-user and our-domain\bad-user The issue is the following: Both the good-user and the bad-user have the exact same AD group memberships. They are both members of our-domain\developers-group-1 and our-domain\developers-group-2. The good-user is able to access all the databases, and the bad-user is not. The bad-user is able to login, but he is unable access any databases. By the way, I am the good-user. How do I go about finding out why? Here's what I tried so far: When I do print current_user, I get dbo When I do print system_user, I get my-domain\good-user When I do select * from fn_my_permissions(NULL, 'SERVER'), I see permissions. But if do execute as user='my-domain\good-user'; select * from fn_my_permissions(NULL, 'SERVER'), I dont see any permisisons. And When I do, execute as user='my-domain\bad-user'; select * from fn_my_permissions(NULL, 'SERVER'), I dont see any permisisons. Also, I was wondering if there is a sql command that will tell me, "hey! the current database user is able to access this database because he is a member such-and-such ad-group, which is a login that is mapped to such-and-such user in this database".

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  • C++ IDE for Linux?

    - by Sven
    I want to expand my programming horizons to Linux. A good, dependable basic toolset is important, and what is more basic than an IDE? I could find these SO topics: Lightweight IDE for linux and What tools do you use to develop C++ applications on Linux? I'm not looking for a lightweight IDE. If an IDE is worth the money, then I will pay for it, so it need not be free. My question, then: What good, C++ programming IDE is available for Linux? The minimums are fairly standard: syntax highlighting, code completion (like intellisense or its Eclipse counterpart) and integrated debugging (e.g., basic breakpoints). I have searched for it myself, but there are so many that it is almost impossible to separate the good from the bads by hand, especially for someone like me who has little C++ coding experience in Linux. I know that Eclipse supports C++, and I really like that IDE for Java, but is it any good for C++ and is there something better? The second post actually has some good suggestions, but what I am missing is what exactly makes the sugested IDE so good for the user, what are its (dis)advantages? Maybe my question should therefore be: What IDE do you propose (given your experiences), and why?

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  • Imperative Programming v/s Declarative Programming v/s Functional Programming

    - by kaleidoscope
    Imperative Programming :: Imperative programming is a programming paradigm that describes computation in terms of statements that change a program state. In much the same way as the imperative mood in natural languages expresses commands to take action, imperative programs define sequences of commands for the computer to perform. The focus is on what steps the computer should take rather than what the computer will do (ex. C, C++, Java). Declarative Programming :: Declarative programming is a programming paradigm that expresses the logic of a computation without describing its control flow. It attempts to minimize or eliminate side effects by describing what the program should accomplish, rather than describing how to go about accomplishing it. The focus is on what the computer should do rather than how it should do it (ex. SQL). A  C# example of declarative v/s. imperative programming is LINQ. With imperative programming, you tell the compiler what you want to happen, step by step. For example, let's start with this collection, and choose the odd numbers: List<int> collection = new List<int> { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 }; With imperative programming, we'd step through this, and decide what we want: List<int> results = new List<int>(); foreach(var num in collection) {     if (num % 2 != 0)           results.Add(num); } Here’s what we are doing: *Create a result collection *Step through each number in the collection *Check the number, if it's odd, add it to the results With declarative programming, on the other hand, we write the code that describes what you want, but not necessarily how to get it var results = collection.Where( num => num % 2 != 0); Here, we're saying "Give us everything where it's odd", not "Step through the collection. Check this item, if it's odd, add it to a result collection." Functional Programming :: Functional programming is a programming paradigm that treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions and avoids state and mutable data. It emphasizes the application of functions.Functional programming has its roots in the lambda calculus. It is a subset of declarative languages that has heavy focus on recursion. Functional programming can be a mind-bender, which is one reason why Lisp, Scheme, and Haskell have never really surpassed C, C++, Java and COBOL in commercial popularity. But there are benefits to the functional way. For one, if you can get the logic correct, functional programming requires orders of magnitude less code than imperative programming. That means fewer points of failure, less code to test, and a more productive (and, many would say, happier) programming life. As systems get bigger, this has become more and more important. To know more : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/602444/what-is-functional-declarative-and-imperative-programming http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb669144.aspx http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperative_programming   Technorati Tags: Ranjit,Imperative Programming,Declarative programming,Functional Programming

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  • Restore Files from Backups on Windows Home Server

    - by Mysticgeek
    If you use Windows Home Server to backup the machines on your network, your in luck if you accidentally delete important files or they become corrupted. Today we take a look at getting your data back from backups on your home server. Open Windows Home Server Console and click select the Computers and Backup tab. Right-click on the computer you need to restore files for and select View Backups. This will open a list of your recent backups. Highlight the one you want to open, then click the Open button in the Restore or View Files section. If this is the first time you’re restoring a file, you’ll be asked to verify installation of the device software. Check the box next to Always trust software from Microsoft Corporation and click Install. Now wait while the backup data is retrieved. After the backup data has been retrieved, an explorer windows opens up to drive (Z:) which is the backup data. It’s just like if you were opening a drive on your local machine. Now you can browse through the backup and find the files your missing. You can open the files directly, or drag them onto your machine to the location you want to restore them.   Restoring your data is actually a very easy process with Windows Home Server. Of course you’ll want to make sure the computers on your network are being backed up to WHS. if you need help with that, check out our article on how to configure your computer to backup to WHS. If you want to backup your home server shares, check out our article on how to backup WHS folder to an external drive. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips GMedia Blog: Setting Up a Windows Home ServerRestore Your PC from Windows Home ServerCreate A Windows Home Server Home Computer Restore DiscInstalling Windows Home ServerConfigure Your Computer to Backup to Windows Home Server TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet How to Find Your Mac Address Use My TextTools to Edit and Organize Text

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  • How do I fix “Ubuntu is running in low-graphics mode?” for NVIDIA GeForce GT555M

    - by David Chen
    As title, I'm using Ubuntu 10.04, and my ubuntu kept showing the sign “Ubuntu is running in low-graphics mode”. I've read another question with same topic (http://askubuntu.com/questions/10664/how-do-i-fix-ubuntu-is-running-in-low-graphics-mode ), but the other one is using ATI Radeon X1200. How can I fix the problem? I'm running Ubuntu on a 200GB partition, and the rest of my computer is Windows7. My graphic card is NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M, and my computer is ACER ASPIRE 5951G.

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  • So What The Hell Is SpyWare Anyway...?

    According to SoftwareReviews365.com, who specialize in anti spyware software reviews of the best products on the market; spyware is ?computer software that obtains information from a user';s computer ... [Author: Jay Stamford - Computers and Internet - March 29, 2010]

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  • Use Autoruns to Manually Clean an Infected PC

    - by Mark Virtue
    There are many anti-malware programs out there that will clean your system of nasties, but what happens if you’re not able to use such a program?  Autoruns, from SysInternals (recently acquired by Microsoft), is indispensable when removing malware manually. There are a few reasons why you may need to remove viruses and spyware manually: Perhaps you can’t abide running resource-hungry and invasive anti-malware programs on your PC You might need to clean your mom’s computer (or someone else who doesn’t understand that a big flashing sign on a website that says “Your computer is infected with a virus – click HERE to remove it” is not a message that can necessarily be trusted) The malware is so aggressive that it resists all attempts to automatically remove it, or won’t even allow you to install anti-malware software Part of your geek credo is the belief that anti-spyware utilities are for wimps Autoruns is an invaluable addition to any geek’s software toolkit.  It allows you to track and control all programs (and program components) that start automatically with Windows (or with Internet Explorer).  Virtually all malware is designed to start automatically, so there’s a very strong chance that it can be detected and removed with the help of Autoruns. We have covered how to use Autoruns in an earlier article, which you should read if you need to first familiarize yourself with the program. Autoruns is a standalone utility that does not need to be installed on your computer.  It can be simply downloaded, unzipped and run (link below).  This makes is ideally suited for adding to your portable utility collection on your flash drive. When you start Autoruns for the first time on a computer, you are presented with the license agreement: After agreeing to the terms, the main Autoruns window opens, showing you the complete list of all software that will run when your computer starts, when you log in, or when you open Internet Explorer: To temporarily disable a program from launching, uncheck the box next to it’s entry.  Note:  This does not terminate the program if it is running at the time – it merely prevents it from starting next time.  To permanently prevent a program from launching, delete the entry altogether (use the Delete key, or right-click and choose Delete from the context-menu)).  Note:  This does not remove the program from your computer – to remove it completely you need to uninstall the program (or otherwise delete it from your hard disk). Suspicious Software It can take a fair bit of experience (read “trial and error”) to become adept at identifying what is malware and what is not.  Most of the entries presented in Autoruns are legitimate programs, even if their names are unfamiliar to you.  Here are some tips to help you differentiate the malware from the legitimate software: If an entry is digitally signed by a software publisher (i.e. there’s an entry in the Publisher column) or has a “Description”, then there’s a good chance that it’s legitimate If you recognize the software’s name, then it’s usually okay.  Note that occasionally malware will “impersonate” legitimate software, but adopting a name that’s identical or similar to software you’re familiar with (e.g. “AcrobatLauncher” or “PhotoshopBrowser”).  Also, be aware that many malware programs adopt generic or innocuous-sounding names, such as “Diskfix” or “SearchHelper” (both mentioned below). Malware entries usually appear on the Logon tab of Autoruns (but not always!) If you open up the folder that contains the EXE or DLL file (more on this below), an examine the “last modified” date, the dates are often from the last few days (assuming that your infection is fairly recent) Malware is often located in the C:\Windows folder or the C:\Windows\System32 folder Malware often only has a generic icon (to the left of the name of the entry) If in doubt, right-click the entry and select Search Online… The list below shows two suspicious looking entries:  Diskfix and SearchHelper These entries, highlighted above, are fairly typical of malware infections: They have neither descriptions nor publishers They have generic names The files are located in C:\Windows\System32 They have generic icons The filenames are random strings of characters If you look in the C:\Windows\System32 folder and locate the files, you’ll see that they are some of the most recently modified files in the folder (see below) Double-clicking on the items will take you to their corresponding registry keys: Removing the Malware Once you’ve identified the entries you believe to be suspicious, you now need to decide what you want to do with them.  Your choices include: Temporarily disable the Autorun entry Permanently delete the Autorun entry Locate the running process (using Task Manager or similar) and terminating it Delete the EXE or DLL file from your disk (or at least move it to a folder where it won’t be automatically started) or all of the above, depending upon how certain you are that the program is malware. To see if your changes succeeded, you will need to reboot your machine, and check any or all of the following: Autoruns – to see if the entry has returned Task Manager (or similar) – to see if the program was started again after the reboot Check the behavior that led you to believe that your PC was infected in the first place.  If it’s no longer happening, chances are that your PC is now clean Conclusion This solution isn’t for everyone and is most likely geared to advanced users. Usually using a quality Antivirus application does the trick, but if not Autoruns is a valuable tool in your Anti-Malware kit. Keep in mind that some malware is harder to remove than others.  Sometimes you need several iterations of the steps above, with each iteration requiring you to look more carefully at each Autorun entry.  Sometimes the instant that you remove the Autorun entry, the malware that is running replaces the entry.  When this happens, we need to become more aggressive in our assassination of the malware, including terminating programs (even legitimate programs like Explorer.exe) that are infected with malware DLLs. Shortly we will be publishing an article on how to identify, locate and terminate processes that represent legitimate programs but are running infected DLLs, in order that those DLLs can be deleted from the system. Download Autoruns from SysInternals Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Autoruns Tool to Track Startup Applications and Add-onsHow To Get Detailed Information About Your PCSUPERAntiSpyware Portable is the Must-Have Spyware Removal Tool You NeedQuick Tip: Windows Vista Temp Files DirectoryClear Recent Commands From the Run Dialog in Windows XP TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional 15 Great Illustrations by Chow Hon Lam Easily Sync Files & Folders with Friends & Family Amazon Free Kindle for PC Download Stretch popurls.com with a Stylish Script (Firefox) OldTvShows.org – Find episodes of Hitchcock, Soaps, Game Shows and more Download Microsoft Office Help tab

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  • Silverlight Cream for June 06, 2010 -- #876

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Brian Genisio, Michael Washington, Fons Sonnemans , Don Burnett, Xianzhong Zhu, Mike Snow, Jesse Liberty, Victor Gaudioso, David Kelley(-2-), and Matias Bonaventura . Shoutout: Anoop has a good post up: MEF or Managed Extensibility Framework and Lazy – Being Lazy with MEF, Custom Export Attributes etc Jesse Liberty's got a good post up if you are just Getting Started With Silverlight: A Path Through The Learning Material John Papa reports Updates and New Home for Sticky Plugin Tim Heuer announced Silverlight 4 Theme refresh including RIA Services templates From SilverlightCream.com: Adventures in MVVM – ViewModel Location and Creation Brian Genisio has a post up about ViewModels and how he attaches them to his views. Some discssion of MVVMLight, and other external links plus the code for the project. Simplified MEF: Dynamically Loading a Silverlight .xap Michael Washington has a good tutorial up on MEF, Silverlight, and ViewModel. In Michael's words: The goal here is to give you a quick easy win. You will be able to understand this one. You will come away with something you can use, and you will be able to tell your fellow colleagues, "MEF? yeah I'm using that, good stuff Touch Gesture Triggers for Windows Phone 7 projects in Blend 4.0 Fons Sonnemans has a post up about touch gestures for WP7 -- he's got 3 of them implemented using triggers, plus an external link to another, and the source. What the Heck is “MEF” for, and what Silverlight designers need to know about it? Don Burnett is also talking MEF... he does a good job of introducing MEF if you're not acquainted yet, plus some external information. Write Your Custom Effect Components in Silverlight 3 Xianzhong Zhu has a post up walking you through creating your own Custom Effect for Blend and Silverlight 3 ... lots of external links and the source project. Silverlight Tip of the Day #28 – Text Trimming Mike Snow's Tip #28 is about Text Trimming... what it does, and how it differs from WPF Windows Phone 7: Lists, Page Animation and oData Jesse Liberty called this a mini-tutorial, but it's not so mini... great tutorial on WP7, data, lists, and page transitions... oh, and the data is OData too... New Silveright Video Tutorial: How to Do Hit Detection Victor Gaudioso's latest video tutorial is up and he's demonstrating how to do Silverlight HitTesting via code from Andy Beaulieu Dependency Properties Made Easy Need a quick pick-up on Dependency Properties? David Kelley has a short post about them on his blog. Isolated Storage Made Easy David Kelley also has a quick post up about Isolated Storage ... going to keep an eye out for more of these quick "Made Easy" posts from David. Prism 4.0 First Drop – MVVM Matias Bonaventura has a post up about the recent Prism 4.0 drop and highlights a bunch of the features/enhancements in this... some code snippets and a linnk out to the CodePlex drop. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • Dell XPS L502Xnot detecting monitor-TV

    - by Guilherme Z. Santos
    I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on a Dell XPS L502X and when I connect the HDMI cable from the TV to the computer Ubuntu detects nothing at all, It works perfectly fine in Windows 7 though. I've already went to the Display control, plugged and unplugged the TV, clicked the Detect Displays button, and nothing. Do I have to activate the HDMI output or something? Because I used another computer with a VGA output and it worked perfectly.

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  • Exam 70-541 - TS: Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 - Application Development

    - by DigiMortal
    Today I passed Microsoft exam 70-541: Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 - Application Development. This exam gives you MCTS certificate. In this posting I will talk about the exam and also give some suggestions about books to read when preparing for exam. About exam This exam was good one I think. The questions were not hard and also not too easy. Just enough to make sure you really know what you do when working with SharePoint. Or at least to make sure you how things work. After couple of years active SharePoint coding this exam needs no additional preparation. The questions covered very different topics like alerts, features, web parts, site definitions, event receivers, workflows, web services and deployments. There are 59 questions in the exam (this information is available in internet) and you have time a little bit more than two hours. It took me about 40 minutes to get questions answered and reviewed. I strongly suggest you to study the parts of WSS 3.0 you don’t know yet and write some code to find out how to use these things through SharePoint API. Good reading For guys with less experience there are some good books to suggest. Take one or both of these books because there are no official study materials or training kits available for this exam. One of my colleagues who is less experienced than me suggested Inside Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 by Ted Pattison and Daniel Larson. He told me that he found this book most useful for him to pass this exam.   When I started with SharePoint Services 3.0 my first book was Developer’s Guide To The Windows SharePoint Services v3 Platform by Todd C. Bleeker. It helped me getting started and later it was my main handbook for some time. Of course, there are many other good books and I suggest you to take what you find. Of course, before buying something I suggest you to discuss with guys who have read the book before. And make sure you mention that you are preparing for exam.   Conclusion If you are experienced SharePoint developer then this exam needs no preparation. Okay, some preparation is always good but if you don’t have time you are still able to pass this exam. If you are not experienced SharePoint developer then study before taking this exam – it is not easy stuff for novices. But if you pass this exam you can proudly say – yes, I know something about SharePoint! :)

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  • ubuntu wont boot,, frozen at boot manager

    - by user93417
    im running ubuntu desktop 12.04, and well, i have no idea what happened. my computer lost power and died, and when i plugged it in and powered back on it took me to the sign in page and froze. i turned the computer off again and powered back on, this time hitting f2 and going to boot options, and the boot options page is frozen. ive powered up and down and tried a few times, all i get is a frozen boot options screen any ideas?

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  • Speed Up the Help Dialog in Windows and Office

    - by Matthew Guay
    When you click help, you don’t want to wait for your computer to bring it to you.  Here’s how you can speed up the help dialog in Windows and Office. If you have a slow internet connection, chances are you’ve been frustrated by the Help dialog in Windows and Office trying to download fresh content every time you open them. This can be great if the updated help files contain better content, but sometimes you just want to find what you were looking for without waiting.  Here’s how you can turn off the automatic online help. Use Local Help in Windows Windows 7 and Vista’s help dialog usually tries to load the latest content from the net, but this can take a long time on slow connections. If you’re seeing the above screen a lot, you may want to switch to offline help.  Click the “Online Help” button at the bottom, and select “Get offline Help”. Now your computer will just load the pre-installed help files.  And don’t worry; if there’s a major update to your help files, Windows will download and install it through Windows Update.   Stupid Geek Tip: An easy way to open Windows Help is to click on your desktop or Start Menu and press F1 on your keyboard. Use Local Help in Office This same trick works in Office 2007 and 2010.  We’ve actually had more problems with Office’s help being tardy. Solve this the same way as with Windows help.  Click on the “Connected to Office.com” or “Connected to Office Online” button, depending on your version of Office, and select “Show content only from this computer”. This will automatically change the settings for Help in all of your Office applications. While this may not be a major trick, it can be helpful especially if you have a slow internet connection and want to get things done quickly.  Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to See the About Dialog and Version Information in Office 2007Speed Up SATA Hard Drives in Windows VistaMake Mouse Navigation Faster in WindowsSpeed up Your Windows Vista Computer with ReadyBoostSet the Speed Dial as the Opera Startup Page TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos

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  • Does The College Matter?

    - by Jonathon
    Does it matter all that much about what college you go to, to get a degree in computer programming/computer science? I didn't do all that well in high school, I actually barely graduated with a general High School Diploma. So getting into a decent college could be difficult. Companies won't deny you just because you got your degree at a college they have never heard of or a community college will they?

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  • Automatic login vs. manual login and screensaver lock

    - by Erik Johansson
    Is there a way to prevent a command from running when I login manually, but having it run when the computer starts up and GDM automatically logs me in. This is the setup: in the Gnome "on start programs" settings I have a command that locks the screen gnome-screensaver-command -l I have automatic login turned on. That means that the screen will be locked when I turn on the computer, but it will also be locked when I manually login from GDM, is there a way to prevent this?

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  • Is an undergraduate degree in CS required?

    - by Girish
    I will complete my undergrad in Material Science this spring. I am not interested in the subject but I am very interested in Computer Science and programming and have decided to make the shift. Do you think I should first get an undergraduate degree in Computer Science or should I apply for a master's program? My programming skills are pretty decent, but I lack a lot of concrete knowledge in algorithms and data structures? Will a master's degree help me with the basics?

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  • 99 Life Hacks to Make Your Life Easier!

    - by Asian Angel
    We have featured some awesome life hacks, tips, and tricks here before on HTG ETC, but today we are back with a super compilation full of geeky ingenuity! Get ready to increase your problem solving repertoire with this terrific collection of 99 life hacks. 99 Life Hacks to make your life easier! [via BoingBoing] How Hackers Can Disguise Malicious Programs With Fake File Extensions Can Dust Actually Damage My Computer? What To Do If You Get a Virus on Your Computer

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  • When do you call yourself a programmer

    - by benhowdle89
    "A programmer, computer programmer or coder is someone who writes computer software" from Wikipedia If you do frontend development using jQuery/CSS/HTML do you call yourself a programmer? If you develop PHP applications that deal with databases, do you call yourself a programmer? Are you only a programmer if you write applications for desktops and mobiles? Is the web a place where the line between developer and programmer stops?

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  • The Red Gate Guide to SQL Server Team based Development Free e-book

    - by Mladen Prajdic
    After about 6 months of work, the new book I've coauthored with Grant Fritchey (Blog|Twitter), Phil Factor (Blog|Twitter) and Alex Kuznetsov (Blog|Twitter) is out. They're all smart folks I talk to online and this book is packed with good ideas backed by years of experience. The book contains a good deal of information about things you need to think of when doing any kind of multi person database development. Although it's meant for SQL Server, the principles can be applied to any database platform out there. In the book you will find information on: writing readable code, documenting code, source control and change management, deploying code between environments, unit testing, reusing code, searching and refactoring your code base. I've written chapter 5 about Database testing and chapter 11 about SQL Refactoring. In the database testing chapter (chapter 5) I cover why you should test your database, why it is a good idea to have a database access interface composed of stored procedures, views and user defined functions, what and how to test. I talk about how there are many testing methods like black and white box testing, unit and integration testing, error and stress testing and why and how you should do all those. Sometimes you have to convince management to go for testing in the development lifecycle so I give some pointers and tips how to do that. Testing databases is a bit different from testing object oriented code in a way that to have independent unit tests you need to rollback your code after each test. The chapter shows you ways to do this and also how to avoid it. At the end I show how to test various database objects and how to test access to them. In the SQL Refactoring chapter (chapter 11) I cover why refactor and where to even begin refactoring. I also who you a way to achieve a set based mindset to solve SQL problems which is crucial to good SQL set based programming and a few commonly seen problems to refactor. These problems include: using functions on columns in the where clause, SELECT * problems, long stored procedure with many input parameters, one subquery per condition in the select statement, cursors are good for anything problem, using too large data types everywhere and using your data in code for business logic anti-pattern. You can read more about it and download it here: The Red Gate Guide to SQL Server Team-based Development Hope you like it and send me feedback if you wish too.

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