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• How to debug lag using Bluetooth connected mouse and A2DP headset?

  - by gertvdijk

  I own a Logitech M555b mouse (since a week) for use with my HP Elitebook 8570w laptop running Kubuntu 12.04. Works fine right after connecting using the KDE Bluetooth control module. However, after some time (seemingly random), it starts to lag. Movements are being delayed for roughly 500ms for a short period of time. Usually it recovers after some time too, but it can take minutes. All actions are being delayed: movements, click, scrolls. Additionally, the movements can be choppy during these times. A workaround that always works for the same short period of time is to disconnect an re-connect the mouse. This can be done using the same KDE Bluetooth control module. What did I try already? Running this at boot time: echo on > `readlink -f /sys/class/bluetooth/hci0`/../../../power/level To disable any power saving features on the Bluetooth hci0 device. Check the mouse's batteries (it's just a week old, other new batteries: same result) Checking logs and kernel messages about Bluetooth-related entries: none aside the expected messages on connect time. I'm running kernel 3.5.0-13-generic as provided in the xorg-edgers PPA. Booting the regular 3.2 Precise kernel results in the same behaviour. Some other information that may help: It happens when no other Bluetooth connections are active on the machine. Similar symptoms also occur on my Bluetooth stereo (A2DP) headset, but then it's audio lagging and skipping. Swapping Bluetooth profiles as described here then helps. Conclusion: it's not the mouse that's faulty. The headset always worked fine using my now dead Thinkpad T61p with built-in Bluetooth. The bluetooth module in my laptop is connected via USB and shows up as Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0a5c:21e1 Broadcom Corp. I'm mobile and several people around me are using Bluetooth at work (A2DP mostly). It also occurs at home, where my neighbours are probably using Bluetooth as well. It could just be radio interference, but I think Bluetooth connections should just hop to another channel. And, moreover, it just works properly instantly when re-connecting. Therefore I think it's a software driver issue and I'd like to debug it. Is there any way to get more verbose logging on the Bluetooth(-hid) modules?

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• Archbeat Link-O-Rama Top 10 Facebook Faves for October 20-26, 2013

  - by OTN ArchBeat

  What are the 4,460 fans of the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page talking about? The list below represents the Top 10 most popular articles, blog posts, and other content from across the community. Enterprise Grade Deployment Considerations for Oracle Identity Manager AD Connector | Firdaus Fraz Oracle Fusion Middleware solution architect Firdaus Fraz illustrates provides best practice recommendations for setting up an enterprise deployment environment for the OIM connector for Microsoft Active Directory. A Roadmap for SOA Development and Delivery | Mark Nelson Do you know the way to S-O-A? Mark Nelson does. His latest blog post, part of an ongoing series, will help to keep you from getting lost along the way. The road ahead for WebLogic 12c | Edwin Biemond Oracle ACE Edwin Biemond shares his thoughts on announced new features in Oracle WebLogic 12.1.3 & 12.1.4 and compares those upcoming releases to Oracle WebLogic 12.1.2. Oracle GoldenGate 12c - New Release, New Features | Michael Rainey Rittman Mead's Michael Rainey takes you on guided tour through the GoldenGate 12c features that "are relevant to data warehouse and data migration work we typically see in the business intelligence world." Reproducing WebLogic Stuck Threads with ADF CreateInsert Operation and ORDER BY Clause | Andrejus Baranovsikis Another post from Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovsikis on dealing with WebLogic Stuck Threads. This one includes a test case application you can download. The Impact of SaaS - The Times They Are A-Changin' | Floyd Teter Oracle ACE Director Floyd Teter shares some truly interesting insight gained in conversations with three Fortune 500 CIOs. Configure Oracle Identity Manager AD/LDAP Authentication | Arda Eralp A step-by-step how-to from a member of the Fusion Middleware Applications Consultancy team. Java-Powered Robot Named NAO Wows Crowds | Tori Wieldt Tori Wieldt interviews a robot and human. Updated ODI Statement of Direction | Robert Schweighardt Heads up Oracle Data Integrator fans! A new product statement of direction document is available, offering "an overview of the strategic product plans for Oracle’s data integration products for bulk data movement and transformation, specifically Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) and Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB)." Oracle BI Apps 11.1.1.7.1 – GoldenGate Integration - Part 2: Setup and Configuration | Michael Rainey Michael Rainey continues his series with another technical article for you GoldenGate fans. Thought for the Day "Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next." — Jonas Salk, American medical researcher and virologist (October 28, 1914 – June 23, 1995) Source: brainyquote.com

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• Organizing Git repositories with common nested sub-modules

  - by André Caron

  I'm a big fan of Git sub-modules. I like to be able to track a dependency along with its version, so that you can roll-back to a previous version of your project and have the corresponding version of the dependency to build safely and cleanly. Moreover, it's easier to release our libraries as open source projects as the history for libraries is separate from that of the applications that depend on them (and which are not going to be open sourced). I'm setting up workflow for multiple projects at work, and I was wondering how it would be if we took this approach a bit of an extreme instead of having a single monolithic project. I quickly realized there is a potential can of worms in really using sub-modules. Supposing a pair of applications: studio and player, and dependent libraries core, graph and network, where dependencies are as follows: core is standalone graph depends on core (sub-module at ./libs/core) network depdends on core (sub-module at ./libs/core) studio depends on graph and network (sub-modules at ./libs/graph and ./libs/network) player depends on graph and network (sub-modules at ./libs/graph and ./libs/network) Suppose that we're using CMake and that each of these projects has unit tests and all the works. Each project (including studio and player) must be able to be compiled standalone to perform code metrics, unit testing, etc. The thing is, a recursive git submodule fetch, then you get the following directory structure: studio/ studio/libs/ (sub-module depth: 1) studio/libs/graph/ studio/libs/graph/libs/ (sub-module depth: 2) studio/libs/graph/libs/core/ studio/libs/network/ studio/libs/network/libs/ (sub-module depth: 2) studio/libs/network/libs/core/ Notice that core is cloned twice in the studio project. Aside from this wasting disk space, I have a build system problem because I'm building core twice and I potentially get two different versions of core. Question How do I organize sub-modules so that I get the versioned dependency and standalone build without getting multiple copies of common nested sub-modules? Possible solution If the the library dependency is somewhat of a suggestion (i.e. in a "known to work with version X" or "only version X is officially supported" fashion) and potential dependent applications or libraries are responsible for building with whatever version they like, then I could imagine the following scenario: Have the build system for graph and network tell them where to find core (e.g. via a compiler include path). Define two build targets, "standalone" and "dependency", where "standalone" is based on "dependency" and adds the include path to point to the local core sub-module. Introduce an extra dependency: studio on core. Then, studio builds core, sets the include path to its own copy of the core sub-module, then builds graph and network in "dependency" mode. The resulting folder structure looks like: studio/ studio/libs/ (sub-module depth: 1) studio/libs/core/ studio/libs/graph/ studio/libs/graph/libs/ (empty folder, sub-modules not fetched) studio/libs/network/ studio/libs/network/libs/ (empty folder, sub-modules not fetched) However, this requires some build system magic (I'm pretty confident this can be done with CMake) and a bit of manual work on the part of version updates (updating graph might also require updating core and network to get a compatible version of core in all projects). Any thoughts on this?

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• Library to fake intermittent failures according to tester-defined policy?

  - by crosstalk

  I'm looking for a library that I can use to help mock a program component that works only intermittently - usually, it works fine, but sometimes it fails. For example, suppose I need to read data from a file, and my program has to avoid crashing or hanging when a read fails due to a disk head crash. I'd like to model that by having a mock data reader function that returns mock data 90% of the time, but hangs or returns garbage otherwise. Or, if I'm stress-testing my full program, I could turn on debugging code in my real data reader module to make it return real data 90% of the time and hang otherwise. Now, obviously, in this particular example I could just code up my mock manually to test against a random() routine. However, I was looking for a system that allows implementing any failure policy I want, including: Fail randomly 10% of the time Succeed 10 times, fail 4 times, repeat Fail semi-randomly, such that one failure tends to be followed by a burst of more failures Any policy the tester wants to define Furthermore, I'd like to be able to change the failure policy at runtime, using either code internal to the program under test, or external knobs or switches (though the latter can be implemented with the former). In pig-Java, I'd envision a FailureFaker interface like so: interface FailureFaker { /** Return true if and only if the mocked operation succeeded. Implementors should override this method with versions consistent with their failure policy. */ public boolean attempt(); } And each failure policy would be a class implementing FailureFaker; for example there would be a PatternFailureFaker that would succeed N times, then fail M times, then repeat, and a AlwaysFailFailureFaker that I'd use temporarily when I need to simulate, say, someone removing the external hard drive my data was on. The policy could then be used (and changed) in my mock object code like so: class MyMockComponent { FailureFaker faker; public void doSomething() { if (faker.attempt()) { // ... } else { throw new RuntimeException(); } } void setFailurePolicy (FailureFaker policy) { this.faker = policy; } } Now, this seems like something that would be part of a mocking library, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's been done before. (In fact, I got the idea from Steve Maguire's Writing Solid Code, where he discusses this exact idea on pages 228-231, saying that such facilities were common in Microsoft code of that early-90's era.) However, I'm only familiar with EasyMock and jMockit for Java, and neither AFAIK have this function, or something similar with different syntax. Hence, the question: Do such libraries as I've described above exist? If they do, where have you found them useful? If you haven't found them useful, why not?

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• atkbd.c spamming the logs. How to get rid? what is this?

  - by turbo

  On my Vostro 1000 notebook the following messages spam my dmesg: [18678.728936] atkbd.c: Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0x8d on isa0060/serio0). [18678.728941] atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e00d <keycode>' to make it known. [18679.831109] atkbd.c: Unknown key pressed (translated set 2, code 0x8d on isa0060/serio0). [18679.831119] atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e00d <keycode>' to make it known. [18679.841607] atkbd.c: Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0x8d on isa0060/serio0). [18679.841615] atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e00d <keycode>' to make it known. [18680.901733] atkbd.c: Unknown key pressed (translated set 2, code 0x8d on isa0060/serio0). [18680.901744] atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e00d <keycode>' to make it known. [18680.911536] atkbd.c: Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0x8d on isa0060/serio0). [18680.911546] atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e00d <keycode>' to make it known. It's most probably not from an actual key because it appears in regular intervals. First what is it? It could be my battery since it's nearly dead, as in loadable to 11 % of the initial capacity, but I have no evidence for that. What is this / how can I find out where this comes from? How can I get rid of it? Is there a 'dud' keycode? When I assign a keycode with sudo setkeycode e00d $(random keycode) the key does actually get pressed. That makes it impossible to enter sudo password for example. So any 'real' keycode is not an option. It hasn't been like that half a year ago. Even better than the dud keycode would be a real fix. It happens from 10.04 to 12.04 (before that I don't know). I did read zcat /usr/share/doc/udev/README.keymap.txt.gz |less as suggested in the Ubuntu Wiki. /lib/udev/findkeyboards && sudo /lib/udev/keymap -i input/event5 produces what appears to be newlines in rapid succession. sudo udevadm monitor doesn't show the event.

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• SQL SERVER – DELETE, TRUNCATE and RESEED Identity

  - by pinaldave

  Yesterday I had a headache answering questions to one of the DBA on the subject of Reseting Identity Values for All Tables. After talking to the DBA I realized that he has no clue about how the identity column behaves when there is DELETE, TRUNCATE or RESEED Identity is used. Let us run a small T-SQL Script. Create a temp table with Identity column beginning with value 11. The seed value is 11. USE [TempDB] GO -- Create Table CREATE TABLE [dbo].[TestTable]( [ID] [int] IDENTITY(11,1) NOT NULL, [var] [nchar](10) NULL ) ON [PRIMARY] GO -- Build sample data INSERT INTO [TestTable] VALUES ('val') GO When seed value is 11 the next value which is inserted has the identity column value as 11. – Select Data SELECT * FROM [TestTable] GO Effect of DELETE statement -- Delete Data DELETE FROM [TestTable] GO When the DELETE statement is executed without WHERE clause it will delete all the rows. However, when a new record is inserted the identity value is increased from 11 to 12. It does not reset but keep on increasing. -- Build sample data INSERT INTO [TestTable] VALUES ('val') GO -- Select Data SELECT * FROM [TestTable] Effect of TRUNCATE statement -- Truncate table TRUNCATE TABLE [TestTable] GO When the TRUNCATE statement is executed it will remove all the rows. However, when a new record is inserted the identity value is increased from 11 (which is original value). TRUNCATE resets the identity value to the original seed value of the table. -- Build sample data INSERT INTO [TestTable] VALUES ('val') GO -- Select Data SELECT * FROM [TestTable] GO Effect of RESEED statement If you notice I am using the reseed value as 1. The original seed value when I created table is 11. However, I am reseeding it with value 1. -- Reseed DBCC CHECKIDENT ('TestTable', RESEED, 1) GO When we insert the one more value and check the value it will generate the new value as 2. This new value logic is Reseed Value + Interval Value – in this case it will be 1+1 = 2. -- Build sample data INSERT INTO [TestTable] VALUES ('val') GO -- Select Data SELECT * FROM [TestTable] GO Here is the clean up act. -- Clean up DROP TABLE [TestTable] GO Question for you: If I reseed value with some random number followed by the truncate command on the table what will be the seed value of the table. (Example, if original seed value is 11 and I reseed the value to 1. If I follow up with truncate table what will be the seed value now? Here is the complete script together. You can modify it and find the answer to the above question. Please leave a comment with your answer. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• The JDEdwards EnterpriseOne PreSales University

  - by Julien Haye

  Istanbul NOV 5-9 Wednesday, NOV 7 - It is raining outside and I am sitting in my hotel room (#106) in Istanbul and create my first blog entry. Today this blog was enabled and I am excited to have the ability to share my (first) thoughts with the EMEA JDE Partner Community. I am here in Istanbul because we are currently running the JDEdwards PreSales University Event series. This PreSales University is an established event series which we deliver the fifth time now and the first time in the ECEMEA region. Delegates value the openness and competence from the Product Strategy and Product Development Team from Denver and India. Together with the regional Oracle PreSales team we had very valuable discussions around product features and functions and about the business value of the new delivered applications and tools. Additionally the event provides endless opportunities to exchange ideas with other JD Edwards Partner and the Oracle PreSales Team. With its focus on sharing and learning, best practice, user experience and transforming technologies, delegates will leave this event with an abundance of new ideas and best practices to try for your coming projects and existing customer implementations. A day out of the office gives delegates a chance to gain a new perspective on their business processes. Everybody sees better ways of working just by being immersed in an environment where the focus is on using products more effectively. Apps Track: Highly concentrated participants in Istanbul listening to Jeff Erickson presenting the news about OneView Reporting. Jeff: We believe “The things you said”. The event is organized into two tracks, one for Apps and one for Tech. Everybody was able to learn new features and functions and how to position this products. The focus was on the new Apps release 9.1 and Tools Release 9.1.2 and their Value Propositions. For all topics hands-on exercises has been given to the participants. Even very experienced senior consultants did learn a lot from this event. In total we have 55 people registered and we still have some more content to deliver. By the way: Istanbul is a nice place to be. I already booked my next trip to this beautiful city. In two weeks we deliver the JD Edwards EECIS Executive Forum again in Istanbul. Once again a tough Agenda. I will let you know if I had the ability to have a walk outside and see a bit more of this beautiful city. At least I expect to have a different room number. Many greetings Hartmut WieseOracle Alliances & Channels EMEA

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• Using machine learning to aim mirrors in a solar array?

  - by Buttons840

  I've been thinking about solar collectors where several independent mirrors to focus the light on a solar collector, similar to the following design from Energy Innovations. Because there will be flaws in the assembly of this solar array, I am proceeding with the following assumptions (or lack thereof): The software knows the "position" of each mirror, but doesn't know how this position relates to the real world or to other mirrors. This will account for poor mirror calibration or other environmental factors which may effect one mirror but not the others. If a mirror moves 10 units in one direction, and then 10 units in the opposite direction, it will end up where it originally started. I would like to use machine learning to position the mirrors correctly and focus the light on the collector. I expect I would approach this as an optimization problem, optimizing the mirror positions to maximize the heat inside the collector and the power output. The problem is finding a small target in a noisy high-dimensional space (considering each mirror has 2 axis of rotation). Some of the problems I anticipate are: cloudy days, even if you stumble upon the perfect mirror alignment, it might be cloudy at the time noisy sensor data the sun is a moving target, it moves along a path, and follows a different path every day - although you could calculate the exact position of the sun at any time, you wouldn't know how that position relates to your mirrors My question isn't about the solar array, but possible machine learning techniques that would help in this "small target in a noisy high dimensional-space" problem. I mentioned the solar array because it was the catalyst for this question and a good example. What machine learning techniques can find such a small target in a noisy high-dimensional space? EDIT: A few additional thoughts: Yes, you can calculate the suns position in the real world, but you don't know how the mirrors position is related to the real world (unless you've learned it somehow). You might know the suns azimuth is 220 degrees, and the suns elevation is 60 degrees, and you might know a mirror is at position (-20, 42); now tell me, is that mirror correctly aligned with the sun? You don't know. Lets assume you have some very sophisticated heat measurements, and you know "with this heat level, there must be 2 mirrors correctly aligned". Now the question is, which two mirrors (out of 25 or more) are correctly aligned? One solution I considered was to approximate the correct "alignment function" using a neural network which would take the suns azimuth and elevation as input and output a large array with 2 values for each mirror which correspond to the 2 axis of each mirror. I'm not sure what the best training method is though.

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• Make Browsing Safer for Children in Google Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  If you are worried about the websites that your children could accidentally visit while browsing, then you may want to have a look at the Kid Safe – LinkExtend extension for Google Chrome. Kid Safe – LinkExtend in Action Before going any further you may want to have a quick look at the options. Everything is enabled by default but it is recommended that you disable the “Allow entering unsafe sites Option”. For our first example we visited “chatroulette.com”. As you can see in the screenshot WOT and McAfee SiteAdvisor gave the website a “green rating” but when it came specifically to its’ level of appropriateness for children LinkExtend gave it a “yellow rating”. Our second example was “hotbabes.com”…obviously not a good website for any child to visit. You can see that the entire window area has been totally “blacked out” and the available information for this site from each of the six ratings sources. The “Toolbar Button” is also displaying a “red rating”… Notice the two links at the bottom of the ratings screen…both will be visible if the “Allow entering unsafe sites Option” is not disabled (see Options above). You can see the difference for the links at the bottom of the ratings screen if you have the “Allow entering unsafe sites Option” disabled. Definitely much much better… Clicking on the “Find Kids Sites Link” will navigate the tab to the Yahoo! Kids website. The extension will also place “ratings buttons” beside search results at Google. As you can see in the screenshot below not all of the results had information available for them at this time. But it is certainly a lot better than nothing at all when it comes to keeping your children safe. A close-up look at the ratings for one of the search results. Conclusion While no browser add-in makes for a perfect solution the Kid Safe – LinkExtend extension will definitely be a helpful addition to your family’s Chrome browser. Links Download the Kid Safe – LinkExtend extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to Make Google Chrome Your Default BrowserAccess Browsing History in Google Chrome the Easy WayFocused New Tabs Quick-Fix for Google ChromeVisually Browse Through Your Open Tabs in Google ChromeSubscribe to RSS Feeds in Chrome with a Single Click 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 Awe inspiring, inter-galactic theme (Win 7) Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites Restore Hidden Updates in Windows 7 & Vista Iceland an Insurance Job? Find Downloads and Add-ins for Outlook Recycle !

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• Friday Fun: Destroy the Web

  - by Mysticgeek

  Another Friday has arrived and it’s time to screw off on company time. Today we take a look at a unique game Add-on for Firefox called Destroy the Web. Destroy the Web Once you install the Add-on and restart Firefox, you’ll see the Destroy the Web icon on the toolbar. Click on it to destroy whatever webpage you’re on.   The game starts up and gives you a 3 second countdown… Now move the target over different elements of the page to destroy them. You have 30 seconds to destroy the site contents. If you are angry at a particular company or the one you work for, this can give you some fun stress relief by destroying it’s website. After you’ve destroyed as much of the page as possible, you’re given a score. You get different amounts of points for destroying certain elements on the page. Basically destroy as much as possible to get the most points. You can submit your score and check out some of the scoreboard leaders as well.  There are some cool sound effects and arcade sounding background music, so make sure to turn the volume down while playing. Or you can go into the Add-on options and disable it. If you want a unique way to let off some steam before the weekend starts, this is a fun way of doing it. Install Destroy the Web for Firefox Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Friday Fun: Destroy Everything with Indestructo TankWeekend Fun: Easter Egg in Spybot Search & DestroyFriday Fun: BoombotSecure Computing: Create Scheduled Scans With Spybot Search & DestroyFriday Fun: Castle Game Collection 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 HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Dual Boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 What is HTML5? Default Programs Editor – One great tool for Setting Defaults Convert BMP, TIFF, PCX to Vector files with RasterVect Free Identify Fonts using WhatFontis.com Windows 7’s WordPad is Actually Good

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• Remove Clutter from the Opera Speed Dial Page

  - by Asian Angel

  Do you want to clean up the Speed Dial page in Opera so that only the thumbnails are visible? Today we show you a couple of tweaks that will make it happen. Speed Dial Page The search bar and text at the bottom take up room and add clutter to the look and feel of Opera’s Speed Dial page. Changing the Settings Two small tweaks to the config settings will clean it all up. To get started type opera:config into the address bar and press enter. Type “speed” into the quick find bar and look for the Speed Dial State entry. Change the 1 to 2 and click save. You will see the following message concerning the changes…click OK. Next type “search” into the quick find bar and look for the Speed Dial Search Type entry. Remove all of the text in the blank and click save. Once again you will see a message about the latest change that you have made. At this point you may need to restart Opera for both changes to take full effect. There will be a noticeable difference in how the Speed Dial page looks afterwards and is much cleaner without the Search bar and text field. You will also still be able to access the right click context menu just like before. Conclusion If you have been looking to get a cleaner and less cluttered Speed Dial page in Opera, then these two little hacks will get the job done! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Set the Speed Dial as the Opera Startup PageReplace Google Chrome’s New Tab Page with Speed DialSpeed up Windows Vista Start Menu Search By Limiting ResultsBlank New Tab Quick-Fix for Google ChromeMonitor and Control Memory Usage in Google Chrome TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Backup Outlook 2010 Daily Motivator (Firefox) FetchMp3 Can Download Videos & Convert Them to Mp3 Use Flixtime To Create Video Slideshows Creating a Password Reset Disk in Windows Bypass Waiting Time On Customer Service Calls With Lucyphone

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• Are You an IT Geek? Why Not Write for How-To Geek?

  - by The Geek

  Are you a geek in the IT field that wants to share your skills with the world? We’re looking for an experienced Sysadmin / IT Admin / Webmaster geek with writing skills that wants to join our team on a part-time basis. Please apply if you have the following qualities: You must be a geek at heart, willing to try and make the boring world of IT sound glamorous and sexy. If that’s not possible, at least be willing to share your wisdom and skills to help other IT geeks save time and become better at what they do. You must be able to write articles that are easy to understand. Either Windows or Linux writers are welcome to apply. You must be able to follow our style guide. You must be creative. You must generate ideas for articles on your own, and take suggestions like a pro. You’re ambitious, looking to build your skills and your name, and are prepared to work hard. If you aren’t willing to work hard, put some dedication and pride into your work, or aren’t really interested in the topic, this job might not be for you. We’re looking for serious individuals that want to grow with us, and as we grow, you’ll grow as well. How To Apply If you think this job is a good fit for you, send an email to [email protected] and include some background information about yourself, why you’d be a good fit, some topic areas you are familiar with, and hopefully some examples of your work. Bonus points if you have a ninja costume and a keyboard strapped to your back. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips What Topics Should The How-To Geek Write About?Got Awesome Skills? Why Not Write for How-To Geek?Got Awesome Geek Skills? The How-To Geek is Looking for WritersAbout the GeekThe How-To Geek Bounty Program 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 QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff Download Free MP3s from Amazon Awe inspiring, inter-galactic theme (Win 7) Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites Restore Hidden Updates in Windows 7 & Vista Iceland an Insurance Job?

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• Can I prevent an IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE command to a specific device at boot?

  - by Brian Spisak

  This is related to a previous question related to installation that is now resolved. I'm opening a new question, because I still need to get my DVD drive working. Problem: Failed boot when my ASUS DRW-24B1/ST DVD drive is attached to my asmedia ASM1061. Symptom: ata8.00: exception Emask 0x52 Sact 0x0 SErr 0xffffffff action 0xe frozen ata8: SError: { blah blah } ata8.00: failed command: IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE ata8.00: cmd blah blah res blah blah (ATA bus error) ata8.00: status: { DRDY } ata8: hard resetting link Background: The ASM1061 is a PCIe to SATA bridge providing 2 x 6Gb/s ports and is supposed to be fully compliant to SATA specs. I just discovered in the fine print of my ASUS P8Z77-V pro motherboard that "These SATA ports are for data hard drivers only. ATAPI devices are not supported." However, I have already installed Windows 7 using this drive and I can run the Ubuntu 12.04 installer from it as well. The only time I have a problem is during Ubuntu boot when it tries an IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE which seems to be an ATAPI command. I can't simply switch this device to another SATA port because they are already allocated to other devices. (My chipset's 2 x 6Gb/s are connected to my boot SSD and a fast HDD while the 4 x 3Gb/s ports are running a RAID 5 array.) If this can't be fixed or worked around, I suppose I'll have to go buy SATA add-in card. Blech. Thoughts: If indeed this is a device specific issue (that it doesn't support ATAPI discovery) then I can't expect - is it udev? - to work with it. But, it seems that Windows and even the Ubuntu installer work just fine. So why does udev have a problem? At the end of the day, it would be nice to have the DVD working under Ubuntu, but I can live without it. But, as this is a dual-boot machine, I can't physically disconnect it because I want it to work with Windows. (And physically disconnecting it every time I want to boot Ubuntu is NOT an option. ;-) Questions: Should this be considered a bug? My feelings are that if it works with other OS that it should probably work with Ubuntu as well. How can I work around this problem? I have a limited knowledge of linux internals, but it seems I should be able to somehow tell udev (or whatever is doing the discovery) to ignore that device. Is there a way?

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• Turn Chrome’s New Tab Page into an Ubuntu Forums Powerhouse

  - by Asian Angel

  There’s a lot of start page plug-ins for Google Chrome, but if you’re an Ubuntu Forums enthusiast, you might be interested in the powerful UbuntuForums.org Start Page extension. Using the Ubuntu Forums Chrome Start Page Once you’ve installed the extension and opened a new tab, you’ll notice quite a difference from the boring default “New Tab Page”. While you may look at this and wonder if what you see is all that there is to it, there’s actually a lot of hidden customization and functionality. The upper left corner is where you will control the content displayed in the “Ubuntu New Tab Page”. The “Buttons Toolbar” that you see at the top lets you shift between the types of content viewed, from RSS feeds to bookmarks and more. This entire set of links provides direct links to the appropriate section in the Ubuntu Forums. As with the set of links pictured above each of these will open in a new tab when clicked on. There’s even a feature to browse wallpapers from DesktopNexus with categories on the left and pictures to the right. If you want to return to the regular layout you should use the “Start Page Link” highlighted here. Options The options will allow you to customize the colors shown in the “Ubuntu New Tab Page” to create a very nice match to your current browser and/or system theme if desired. You can also do some customization to the fonts, “Bookmark Shortcuts”, and populate the “Custom Links Section” in the main page. Conclusion If you are an Ubuntu enthusiast then this will be a very useful extension to add to your browser. The wealth of direct links and built-in functionality make this extension worth trying. Links Download the Ubuntuforums.org Start Page extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Turn Off Auto-Play of Audio and Video CDs and DVDs in UbuntuScroll Backwards From the Ubuntu Server Command LineAnnouncing the How-To Geek ForumsDisable the System Beep on Ubuntu EdgyEnable Smooth fonts on Ubuntu Linux 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 Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow

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• Commerce, Anyway You Want It

  - by David Dorf

  I believe our industry is finally starting to realize the importance of letting consumers determine how, when, and where to interact with retailers.  Over the last few months I've seen several articles discussing the importance of removing the barriers between existing channels. Paula Rosenblum of RSR first brought the term omni-channel to my attention back in September. She stated, "omni-channel retail isn’t the merging of channels – rather, it’s the use of all possible channels (present and future) to enhance the customer experience in a profitable way." I added to her thoughts in this blog posting in which I said, "For retailers to provide an omni-channel experience, there needs to be one logical representation of products, prices, promotions, and customers across all channels. The only thing that varies is the presentation of the content based on the delivery mechanism (e.g. shelf labels, mobile phone, web site, print, etc.) and often these mechanisms can be combined in various ways." More recently Brian Walker of Gartner suggested we stop using the term multi-channel and begin thinking more about consumer touch-points. "It is time for organizations to leave their channel-oriented ways behind, and enter the era of agile commerce--optimizing their people, processes and technology to serve today's empowered, ever-connected customers across this rapidly evolving set of customer touch points." Now Jason Goldberg, better known as RetailGeek, says we should start breaking down the channel silos by re-casting the VP of E-Commerce as the VP of Digital Marketing, and change his/her focus to driving sales across all channels using digital media. This logic is based on the fact that consumers switch between channels, or touch-points as Brian prefers, as part of their larger buying process. Today's smart consumer leverages the Web, mobile, and stores to provide the best shopping experience, so retailers need to make this easier. Regardless of what we call it, the key take-away is that "multi-channel" is not only an antiquated term but also an idea who's time has passed.  Today, retailers must look at e-commerce, m-commerce, f-commerce, catalogs, and traditional store sales collectively and through the consumers' eyes.  The goal is not to drive sales through each channel but rather to just drive sales -- using whatever method the customer prefers.  There really should be just one cart.

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• Misadventures at Radio Shack

  - by Chris Williams

  While I'm waiting for my Arduino kits to show up, I started reading the Getting Started With Arduino book from O'Reilly (review coming later) and I'm about 40 pages in when I get to a parts list for one of the first projects. Looks pretty straightforward, and even has Radio Shack part numbers next to almost everything. So on my lunch today, I decided to run out to "The Shack" (seriously, that's their rebranding?) to pick up some basics, like a couple resistors, a breadboard, a momentary switch and a pack of pre-cut jumper wires. I found the resistors without any difficulty, and while they didn't have the exact switch I wanted, it was easy enough to find one that would do. That's where my good luck abruptly ended. I was surprised that I couldn't find a breadboard or any jumper wires, so while I was looking around, a guy came up and asked me if I needed some help. I told him I did, explained what I needed and even gave him the Radio Shack part number for the pack of jumper wires. After a couple minutes he says he can't find anything in the system, which was unfortunate but not the end of the world.  So then I asked him about the breadboard, and he pointed me to some blank circuitboards (which are not the same thing) and I said (nicely) that those weren't breadboards and attempted to explain (again) what I needed, at which point he says to me "I don't even know what the hell you're looking for!" I stood there for a moment and tried to process his words. About that time, another salesperson came up and asked what I was trying to find. I told her I needed a breadboard, and she pointed to the blank circuit boards and said "they're right in front of you..." After seeing the look on my face, she thought for a minute and said... "OH! you mean those white things. We don't have those anymore." I thanked her, set everything down on the counter and left. (I wasn't going to buy only half the stuff I needed.. and I was pretty sure I was never going to be buying ANYTHING at that particular location ever again.) Guess I'll be ordering more stuff online at this point. It's a shame really, because I used to LOVE going to Radio Shack as a kid, and looking through all the cool electronics components and stuff, even if I didnt understand what most of them were at the time. Seems like the only thing they carry in any quantity/variety now is cell phones and random stereo connectors.

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• What can I do to make sure my code gets maintained in a developer light environment?

  - by asjohnson

  I am a contract data analyst, so I bounce between jobs every 3-6 months, which I find to be a good fit for me, but it leads to some problems when it comes to coding. I mostly do statistics (I've asked a similar question on cross validated, but the answers there are not relevant here), but I have also found out that the business world loves excel and loves copying and pasting the same thing over and over again even more. This led me to learn how to write VBA scripts and then VB.NET programs to automate as many of these reports as I can. I am certain my programs are not the most elegant, but I put a good bit of effort into making sure they work under as many cases as I can test, I add in exceptions and try to code so the program can handle changes in the files that it processes, but there is a limit, if you remove a huge portion of the data, there is a good chance my program is going to trip up, which I accept will inevitably happen. Usually a pretty minor change in the code fixes the problem and I do try and comment my code and make it readable under the assumption that some other person will have to read it some day. My problem is that I generally get put on teams of folks with essentially no experience with programming (like VBA would be a huge stretch for anyone I work directly with). I am wondering what I should be doing as the person that wrote the code to do my best to keep it maintained. I have two approaches in mind (outlined next), but would be very happy to get any advice. Solution 1: Find the more tech savvy coworkers and run them through the programs and what basic changes can be made. Honestly automating excel is about as easy as it can get when it comes to programming, so I feel like I could teach someone the basics of maintaining it pretty quick. Solution 2: Get in touch with the IT department and show them what is going on and maybe they will be able to help. The problem here is that the IT department is constantly swamped (as I'm sure many of you know) and I feel like kind of a jerk for dumping more things on them. I do leave my personal email address with places and am willing to answer quick questions via email, but I view the need for more exhaustive maintenance as something of an inevitability and would like to make sure I do my due diligence to make sure it gets done. I imagine some combination of the two approaches outlined there, but is there any kind of heads up I should give IT? I feel like I would be annoyed if I started getting requests to fix a program that I had never seen from some random guy that is no longer there.

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• Data Generator Source Adapter

  This component needs little explanation. It generates random integer (DT_I4) and string (DT_WSTR) data and places them in the pipeline. You specify how many columns of each you would like and for any string columns you pass a fixed length value. You then need to specify how many rows in total you require to be generated. This component is used by us to do testing of the pipeline and components downstream. Previously we would have used a script component (as a source) to generate the rows but found ourselves rewriting the code too often so created this component. Screenshots SQL Server 2005 Integration Services SQL Server 2008/2012 Integration Services The component is provided as an MSI file, however to complete the installation, you will have to add the transformation to the Visual Studio toolbox manually. Right-click the toolbox, and select Choose Items.... Select the SSIS Data Flow Items tab, and then check the Data Generator Source from the list. Downloads The Data Generator Source Adapter is available for SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008 (includes R2) and SQL Server 2012. Please choose the version to match your SQL Server version, or you can install multiple versions and use them side by side if you have more than one version of SQL Server installed. Data Generator Source Adapter for SQL Server 2005 Data Generator Source Adapter for SQL Server 2008 Data Generator Source Adapter for SQL Server 2012 Version History SQL Server 2012 Version 3.0.0.30 - SQL Server 2012 release. Includes upgrade support for both 2005 and 2008 packages to 2012. (5 Jun 2012) SQL Server 2008 Version 2.0.0.29 - SQL Server 2008 February 2008 CTP. Includes support for upgrade of 2005 packages. Simplified user interface. (4 Mar 2008) Version 2.0.0.27 - SQL Server 2008 November 2007 CTP. String columns will now use the default system code page. Previously string columns always used 1252. (15 Feb 2008) SQL Server 2005 Version 1.1.0.23 - SQL Server 2005 RTM Refresh. SP1 Compatibility Testing. (12 Jun 2006) Version 1.0.0.0 - SQL Server 2005 IDW 16 Sept CTP. Public release. (6 Oct 2005)

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• Send an E-mail Quickly with the GmailThis! Bookmarklet

  - by Asian Angel

  Sometimes you need to send out a quick e-mail for a project that you are working on, something really important that you just remembered, or perhaps just a note to yourself. If you use Gmail and like keeping things simple then join us as we look at the GmailThis! Bookmarklet. GmailThis! in Action To get set up all that you need to do is visit the webpage (link provided below) and drag the bookmarklet to your “Bookmarks Toolbar”. For our example we decided to go with the “personal note” approach. As you can see here we selected/highlighted a portion of the text and then clicked on our new bookmarklet. The bookmarklet will automatically copy and paste the name of the webpage, the URL, and any text that you selected/highlighted into the new e-mail. A nice feature that we liked was that it opened in a new temporary window to help focus on composing our letter. This is what you will see when you have finished your letter and clicked “Send”. The window will automatically close itself after a few seconds so that you do not even have to worry with it afterwards. Looking at our “Inbox” there is our new e-mail looking oh so nice. Conclusion If you need to send out a quick e-mail using your Gmail account then this bookmarklet makes it as quick and simple as possible. This is definitely one to add to your bookmarklets collection. Links Get the GmailThis! Bookmarklet for your browser Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to Send and Receive Hotmail from Your Gmail AccountShare Your Favorite Webpages with the AddThis BookmarkletPower Up and Manage Your Windows Send To Menu with Send To ToysTurn off New Mail Notification for PocoMail Junk Mail FolderCreate an Email Template in Outlook 2003 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 Monitor Applications With Kiwi LocPDF is a Visual PDF Search Tool Download Free iPad Wallpapers at iPad Decor Get Your Delicious Bookmarks In Firefox’s Awesome Bar Manage Photos Across Different Social Sites With Dropico Test Drive Windows 7 Online

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• Stuff I learned at Innovate 2011

  - by David Dorf

  After returning from the NRF Innovate 2011 conference, I picked up few nuggets I thought I'd share here.  These thoughts are a bit random, but I hope they're useful nonetheless.Kevin Kelly opened the conference with six verbs that represent the future.  They were Screening, Interacting, Sharing, Accessing, Flowing, and Generating.  It struck me that these are all ways in which we merge the digital and physical worlds.  The internet of things continues to gain momentum.Some buzzwords:  deal economy, subscription commerce, discovery (instead of search), curationThat last one, curation, came up over and over.  Retailers, especially those in fashion, are finding value in helping their customers organize and present their own collections.  Social media has made sharing such collections easy, and mobile lets them take those ideas into the stores.  Mannequins are becoming less relevant.I heard from both HauteLook and Gilt Groupe (flash sale retailers) that a large percentage of their visits come from mobile devices, and most of those are iOS devices.  I find it interesting that even though Android has passed iPhone in units shipped (and will eventually pass iOS as a whole), its still the Apple crowd that leads the way.RadioShack mentioned their Holiday Heroes campaigned was very successful.  They asked their Foursquare users to check-in at a gym, coffee shop, and transportation hub as part of being a hero.  For this feat, customers were awarded a special badge that was worth 20% off at their next store visit. They claim a 3.5x increase in ticket size vs. regular check-in customers, and a 5x increase vs those that don't check-in at all.I also learned of RadioShack's #28 campaign, which is apparently one of the largest Twitter trends ever.  Their partnership with LIVESTRONG has gotten them followers, impressions, and credit for supporting the fight against cancer.The guys at Invodo showed the importance of video to e-commerce.  They gave compelling examples of how video can show customers the value of products better than just words.The highlight of the show was Guy Kawasaki's talk on innovation, which was not only informative but also peppered with humor and personality.  Back in the early days of the internet boom, Guy turned down the CEO position at Yahoo! because the commute was too long.  By his calculation, that was a $2B mistake.There are other good accounts of the conference at the NRF Blog.

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• RPG Monster-Area, Spawn, Loot table Design

  - by daemonfire300

  I currently struggle with creating the database structure for my RPG. I got so far: tables: area (id) monster (id, area.id, monster.id, hp, attack, defense, name) item (id, some other values) loot (id = monster.id, item = item.id, chance) spawn (id = area.id, monster = monster.id, count) It is a browser-based game like e.g. Castle Age. The player can move from area to area. If a player enters an area the system spawns, based on the area.id and using the spawn table data, new monsters into the monster table. If a player kills a monster, the system picks the monster.id looks up the items via the the loot table and adds those items to the player's inventory. First, is this smart? Second, I need some kind of "monster_instance"-table and "area_instance"-table, since each player enters his very own "area" and does damage to his very own "monsters". Another approach would be adding the / a player.id to the monster table, so each monster spawned, has it's own "player", but I still need to assign them to an area, and I think this would overload the monster table if I put in the player.id and the area.id into the monster table. What are your thoughts? Temporary Solution monster (id, attackDamage, defense, hp, exp, etc.) monster_instance (id, player.id, area_instance.id, hp, attackDamage, defense, monster.id, etc.) area (id, name, area.id access, restriction) area_instance (id, area.id, last_visited) spawn (id, area.id, monster.id) loot (id, monster.id, chance, amount, ?area.id?) An example system-flow would be: Player enters area 1: system creates area_instance of type area.id = 1 and sets player.location to area.id = 1 If Player wants to battle monsters in the current area: system fetches all spawn entries matching area.id == player.location and creates a new monster_instance for each spawn by fetching the according monster-base data from table monster. If a monster is fetched more than once it may be cached. If Player actually attacks a monster: system updates the according monster_instance, if monster dies the instance if removed after creating the loot If Player leaves the area: area_instance.last_visited is set to NOW(), if player doesn't return to data area within a certain amount of time area_instance including all its monster_instances are deleted.

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• Phone number in meta description bad or good for local rankings NAP

  - by bybe

  Once again I'm at it with increasing people's local rankings and I've learnt so much about local rankings in the past 2 weeks it feels like my brain is gonna pop anyway, question is fairly simple for someone who engages in local rankings and I appreciate the question may be a little guess work but isn't SEO mostly guessing anyway? From what I've read and learned that Google works of a system called nap for local rankings (With many other factors but this question is purely based on NAP). For people who care about local rankings NAP stands for Name of Business / Address of Business / Phone Number for Business. Now what what I've read you don't need the whole NAP to be on one website, a P or just a N can help towards your local rankings. It's believed that NAP rewards more than just P and N for example but knowing Google they might have a diversity checker which is my concern what your get to in a moment. Now of course sites weight differently where your business is posted, it's certainly going to be more credible if your NAP details are on your national phone book than say a blog site, so taking in this consideration too. Pure Guess (Not apart of the question but none the less makes a good read on my belief). Now my guess work would make me believe that the formula would look something like (N)+(A)+(P)x(T) So (N)name would be 1 or 0 to indicate present or not So (A)dress would be 1 or 0 to indicate present or not So (P)hone would be 1 or 0 to indicate present or not So (T)rust would be 1-100 to indicate level of trust So a phone number appearing on youtube might look something like 0+0+1x95= 95 and a NAP appearing on your national phone book might look something like 1+1+1x100= 300 Please note that I'm not saying this is the sole factor and I'm sure its way more complex that this with things like other factors on the page, off the page (Reviews, Links, Clicks) and so on but its still a contributor). The Question My question is fairly simple and I'd imagine hard to impossible to have an actual definite answer to this but maybe someone has seen official wording else where on this, is it bad to include address or phone number in the Meta Description? The reason I ask is that one of my competitors has these elements in the meta descriptions and their local rankings are absolutely superb, the problem I have with this is scrap bot sites like 'Similar Too' 'Seo Rankings' and 1,000's of the other scrap box networks that scrap site and then make urls with your site information are mostly limited to your meta description what this means that your phone number, address and sometimes even your company name if the domain is exact will appear as AP, and even NAP on thousands of websites. So, is it a bad strategy to include phone number and address in meta description, everything I read into would suggest its good of course with the downside of maybe lowering quality of description for click thoughts but top rankings would increase this 10 folds anyhow..

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• Make the Taskbar Buttons Switch to the Last Active Window in Windows 7

  - by The Geek

  The new Windows 7 taskbar’s Aero Peek feature, with the live thumbnails of every window, is awesome… but sometimes you just want to be able to click the taskbar button and have the last open window show up instead. Here’s a quick hack to make it work better. To better understand the problem, imagine having nine windows of the same type open on your screen, but you are primarily working in just one of the windows at a time. So every time you want to switch back, you have to click the taskbar button, and then choose the one you are using from the list, which can be pretty annoying… Now if you know your Windows 7 shortcuts, you’d know that you can simply hold down the Ctrl key while clicking on the taskbar button, and the last window will show up. In fact, you can keep holding down the Ctrl key and keep clicking, and Windows will cycle through the open windows. It’s a useful shortcut, but hardly something you want to do every single time. Instead, we’ll use a quick registry hack to make the normal click switch to the last open window—if you still want to see the thumbnail list, just hover your mouse over the button for half a second to see the full list. Manual Registry Hack for Last Active Window Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, and then head down to the following registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced Once you’re there, create a new 32-bit DWORD value on the right hand side, give it the name LastActiveClick, and set the value to 1. Once you are done, it should look something like this: Once you are done, you’ll have to log off and back on, or you can kill Explorer.exe through Task Manager and re-open it. Download the Registry Hack Instead Since you probably don’t feel like registry hacking, we’ve provided you an easy downloadable version. You can simply download the file, extract it, and then double-click on the LastActiveClick.reg file. Once you are done, you’ll have to log off and back on, just like with the manual registry hack. Download LastActiveClick Registry Hack from howtogeek.com Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Make the Windows 7 Taskbar Work More Like Windows XP or VistaStupid Geek Tricks: Select Multiple Windows on the TaskbarReorganize Your Taskbar Buttons and Tray Icons in XP/VistaKeyboard Ninja: Create a Hotkey to Switch to Your Open Outlook WindowTaskbar Eliminator Does What the Name Implies: Hides Your Windows Taskbar 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 Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow

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• Set iPhone Style Location Based Alerts On Your Android Device With Google Now

  - by Gopinath

  Location based alerts of iPhone are very useful. You can set an alert to popup as soon as you reach a specific location like “Pickup milk and eggs” when I’m near a grocery store. This feature was missing in Android for a long time, but last week at Google I/O conference Google released an update to Google Now which supports location based alerts. To setup a location based alert 1. Launch Google Now 2. Type or say add reminder 3. By default it shows time based alert interface, switch it location based by touching Location icon 4. Set reminder text, choose a location and touch Set reminder 5. Your alert is set now and as soon as you are close by the specified location, you’ll see an alert on your device. This is a nice feature and I’m using it quite often for the past couple of days.  There are couple of things missing from the current version of Google Now location based alerts– recurring alerts and ability to set alerts on leaving a specific location. It is not possible to recur location based alerts. You will be alerted only once as soon as you reach the location and it is not possible to repeat the alert next time you visit the location. Lets say you want to be reminded to say hi to friend’s parents whenever you are travelling close by their home. It does not work. The second missing feature is something basic and some how Google did not incorporate in their first iteration. Lets say you are at office now and you want to set up alert to pickup flowers when you leave office. Sounds like a simple use case for location based alerts right? But there is no way to set this type of alerts. Google Now alerts you as soon as you reach a location, but not when you leave a location. Do you have an Android that supports Google Now? If so what are your thoughts on location based alerts?

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• ConsumeStructuredBuffer, what am I doing wrong?

  - by John

  I'm trying to implement the 3rd exercise in chapter 12 of Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX 11, that is: Implement a Compute Shader to calculate the length of 64 vectors. Previous exercises ask you to do the same with typed buffers and regular structured buffers and I had no problems with them. For what I've read, [Consume|Append]StructuredBuffers are bound to the pipeline using UnorderedAccessViews (as long as they use the D3D11_BUFFER_UAV_FLAG_APPEND, and the buffers have both D3D11_BIND_SHADER_RESOURCE and D3D11_BIND_UNORDERED_ACCESS bind flags). Problem is: my AppendStructuredBuffer works, since I can append data to it and retrieve it from the application to write to a results file, but the ConsumeStructuredBuffer always returns zeroed data. Data is in the buffer, since if I change the UAV to a ShaderResourceView and to a StructuredBuffer in the HLSL side it works. I don't know what I am missing: Should I initialize the ConsumeStructuredBuffer on the GPU, or can I do it when I create the buffer (as I amb currently doing). Is it OK to bind the buffer with a UAV as described above? Do I need to bind it as a ShaderResourceView somehow? Maybe I am missing some step? This is the declaration of buffers in the Compute Shader: struct Data { float3 v; }; struct Result { float l; }; ConsumeStructuredBuffer<Data> gInput; AppendStructuredBuffer<Result> gOutput; And here the creation of the buffer and UAV for input data: D3D11_BUFFER_DESC inputDesc; inputDesc.Usage = D3D11_USAGE_DEFAULT; inputDesc.ByteWidth = sizeof(Data) * mNumElements; inputDesc.BindFlags = D3D11_BIND_SHADER_RESOURCE | D3D11_BIND_UNORDERED_ACCESS; inputDesc.CPUAccessFlags = 0; inputDesc.StructureByteStride = sizeof(Data); inputDesc.MiscFlags = D3D11_RESOURCE_MISC_BUFFER_STRUCTURED; D3D11_SUBRESOURCE_DATA vinitData; vinitData.pSysMem = &data[0]; HR(md3dDevice->CreateBuffer(&inputDesc, &vinitData, &mInputBuffer)); D3D11_UNORDERED_ACCESS_VIEW_DESC uavDesc; uavDesc.Format = DXGI_FORMAT_UNKNOWN; uavDesc.ViewDimension = D3D11_UAV_DIMENSION_BUFFER; uavDesc.Buffer.FirstElement = 0; uavDesc.Buffer.Flags = D3D11_BUFFER_UAV_FLAG_APPEND; uavDesc.Buffer.NumElements = mNumElements; md3dDevice->CreateUnorderedAccessView(mInputBuffer, &uavDesc, &mInputUAV); Initial data is an array of Data structs, which contain a XMFLOAT3 with random data. I bind the UAV to the shader using the Effects framework: ID3DX11EffectUnorderedAccessViewVariable* Input = mFX->GetVariableByName("gInput")->AsUnorderedAccessView(); Input->SetUnorderedAccessView(uav); // uav is mInputUAV Any ideas? Thank you.

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