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• Is valgrind crazy or is this is a genuine std map iterator memory leak?

  - by Alberto Toglia

  Well, I'm very new to Valgrind and memory leak profilers in general. And I must say it is a bit scary when you start using them cause you can't stop wondering how many leaks you might have left unsolved before! To the point, as I'm not an experienced in c++ programmer, I would like to check if this is certainly a memory leak or is it that Valgrind is doing a false positive? typedef std::vector<int> Vector; typedef std::vector<Vector> VectorVector; typedef std::map<std::string, Vector*> MapVector; typedef std::pair<std::string, Vector*> PairVector; typedef std::map<std::string, Vector*>::iterator IteratorVector; VectorVector vv; MapVector m1; MapVector m2; vv.push_back(Vector()); m1.insert(PairVector("one", &vv.back())); vv.push_back(Vector()); m2.insert(PairVector("two", &vv.back())); IteratorVector i = m1.find("one"); i->second->push_back(10); m2.insert(PairVector("one", i->second)); m2.clear(); m1.clear(); vv.clear(); Why is that? Shouldn't the clear command call the destructor of every object and every vector? Now after doing some tests I found different solutions to the leak: 1) Deleting the line i-second-push_back(10); 2) adding a delete i-second; after it's been used. 3) Deleting the second vv.push_back(Vector()); and m2.insert(PairVector("two", &vv.back())); statements. Using solution 2) makes Valgring print: 10 allocs, 11 frees Is that OK? As I'm not using new why should I delete? Thanks, for any help!

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• c# video equivalent to image.fromstream? Or changing the scope of the following script to allow vide

  - by Daniel

  The following is a part of an upload class in a c# script. I'm a php programmer, I've never messed with c# much but I'm trying to learn. This upload script will not handle anything except images, I need to adapt this class to handle other types of media also, or rewrite it all together. If I'm correct, I realize that using (Image image = Image.FromStream(file.InputStream)) basically says that the scope of the following is Image, only an image can be used or the object is discarded? And also that the variable image is being created from an Image from the file stream, which I understand to be, like... the $_FILES array in php? I dunno, I don't really care about making thumbnails right now either way, so if this can be taken out and still process the upload I'm totally cool with that, I just haven't had any luck getting this thing to take anything but images, even when commenting out that whole part of the class... protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { string dir = Path.Combine(Request.PhysicalApplicationPath, "files"); if (Request.Files.Count == 0) { // No files were posted Response.StatusCode = 500; } else { try { // Only one file at a time is posted HttpPostedFile file = Request.Files[0]; // Size limit 100MB if (file.ContentLength > 102400000) { // File too large Response.StatusCode = 500; } else { string id = Request.QueryString["userId"]; string[] folders = userDir(id); foreach (string folder in folders) { dir = Path.Combine(dir, folder); if (!Directory.Exists(dir)) Directory.CreateDirectory(dir); } string path = Path.Combine(dir, String.Concat(Request.QueryString["batchId"], "_", file.FileName)); file.SaveAs(path); // Create thumbnail int dot = path.LastIndexOf('.'); string thumbpath = String.Concat(path.Substring(0, dot), "_thumb", path.Substring(dot)); using (Image image = Image.FromStream(file.InputStream)) { // Find the ratio that will create maximum height or width of 100px. double ratio = Math.Max(image.Width / 100.0, image.Height / 100.0); using (Image thumb = new Bitmap(image, new Size((int)Math.Round(image.Width / ratio), (int)Math.Round(image.Height / ratio)))) { using (Graphics graphic = Graphics.FromImage(thumb)) { // Make sure thumbnail is not crappy graphic.SmoothingMode = SmoothingMode.HighQuality; graphic.InterpolationMode = InterpolationMode.High; graphic.CompositingQuality = CompositingQuality.HighQuality; // JPEG ImageCodecInfo codec = ImageCodecInfo.GetImageEncoders()[1]; // 90% quality EncoderParameters encode = new EncoderParameters(1); encode.Param[0] = new EncoderParameter(Encoder.Quality, 90L); // Resize graphic.DrawImage(image, new Rectangle(0, 0, thumb.Width, thumb.Height)); // Save thumb.Save(thumbpath, codec, encode); } } } // Success Response.StatusCode = 200; } } catch { // Something went wrong Response.StatusCode = 500; } } }

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• Converting this code from ASP to PHP

  - by jethomas

  I'll admit I'm a novice programmer and really the only experience I have is in classic ASP. I'm looking for a way to convert this asp code to PHP. For a customer who only has access to a linux box but also as a learning tool for me. Thanks in advance for the help: Recordset and Function: Function pd(n, totalDigits) if totalDigits > len(n) then pd = String(totalDigits-len(n),"0") & n else pd = n end if End Function 'declare the variables Dim Connection Dim Recordset Dim SQL Dim SQLDate SQLDate = Year(Date)& "-" & pd(Month(Date()),2)& "-" & pd(Day(Date()),2) 'declare the SQL statement that will query the database SQL = "SELECT * FROM tblXYZ WHERE element_8 = 2 AND element_9 > '" & SQLDate &"'" 'create an instance of the ADO connection and recordset objects Set Connection = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection") Set Recordset = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset") 'open the connection to the database Connection.Open "PROVIDER=MSDASQL;DRIVER={MySQL ODBC 5.1 Driver};SERVER=localhost;UID=xxxxx;PWD=xxxxx;database=xxxxx;Option=3;" 'Open the recordset object executing the SQL statement and return records Recordset.Open SQL,Connection Display page/loop: Dim counter counter = 0 While Not Recordset.EOF counter = counter + 1 response.write("<div><td width='200' valign='top' align='center'><a href='" & Recordset("element_6") & "' style='text-decoration: none;'><div id='ad_header'>" & Recordset("element_3") & "</div><div id='store_name' valign='bottom'>" & Recordset("element_5") & "</div><img id='photo-small-img' src='http://xyz.com/files/" & Recordset("element_7") & "' /><br /><div id='ad_details'>"& Recordset("element_4") & "</div></a></td></div>") Recordset.MoveNext If counter = 3 Then Response.Write("</tr><tr>") counter = 0 End If Wend

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• When may I ask a question to fellow developers? (Rules before asking questions).

  - by Zwei Steinen

  I assigned a quite simple task to one junior developer today, and he kept pinging me EVERY 5 minutes for HOURS, asking STEP BY STEP, what to do. Whenever something went wrong, he simply copy&pasted the log and basically wrote, "An exception occurred. What should I do?" So I finally had to tell him, "If you want to be a developer, please start thinking a little bit. Read the error message. That's what they are for!". I also however, tell junior developers to ask questions before spending too much time trying to solve it themselves. This might sound contradictory, but I feel there is some kind of an implicit rule that distinguishes questions that should be asked fairly quickly and that should not (and I try to follow those rules when I ask questions..) So my question is, do you have any rules that you follow, or expect others to follow on asking questions? If so, what are they? Let me start with my own. If you have struggled for more than 90 min, you may ask that question (exceptions exists). If you haven't struggled for more than 15 min, you may not ask that question (if you are sure that the answer can not be found within 15 min, this rule does not have to apply). If it is completely out of your domain and you do not plan to learn that domain, you may ask that question after 15 min (e.g. if I am a java programmer and need to back up the DB, I may ask the DBA what procedure to follow after googling for 15 min). If it is a "local" question, whose answer is difficult to derive or for which resources is difficult to get (e.g. asking an colleague "what method xxx does" etc.), you may ask that question after 15 min. If the answer for it is difficult to derive, and you know that the other person knows the answer, you may ask the question after 15 min (e.g. asking a hibernate expert "What do I need to change else to make this work?". If the process to derive the answer is interesting and is a good learning opportunity, you may ask for hints but you may not ask for answers! What are your rules?

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• Showing div based on filled form field

  - by Fabio

  I have this script where I use a slider to show some elements of a form. So far so good. The way I'm doing it is by having a slider (can't use a multistep form since it uses a plugin not allowing multistep forms, plus some graphic behaviors) and a button that goes to the next slider. So now I need that button (not part of the form) to show only if a certain field is filled. I tried teh following, but it's not working, I assume some error but can't figure what. My code is as follows: $('#clientname').change(function() { var clientVal = $("input").val() == ''; $(".next").hide(); if ($('#clientname').val() != '').show(); else $('.next').hide(); }); and the html as follows: <div class="b40-right"> <h3>The Basics</h3> <div class="label"> Your Name (required)</div> <div class="inputes"> <span class="wpcf7-form-control-wrap your-name"><input id="clientname" type="text" name="your-name" value="" class="wpcf7-form-control wpcf7-text wpcf7-validates-as-required" size="40" /></span> </div> <div class="label">Your Email (required)</div> <div class="inputes"> <span class="wpcf7-form-control-wrap your-email"><input type="text" name="your-email" value="" class="wpcf7-form-control wpcf7-text wpcf7-email wpcf7-validates-as-required wpcf7-validates-as-email" size="40" /></span> </div> <div class="label">Type of Business</div> <div class="inputes"> <span class="wpcf7-form-control-wrap type-of-business"><textarea name="type-of-business" class="wpcf7-form-control wpcf7-textarea" cols="40" rows="10"></textarea></span> </div> </div> <a class="next" href="javascript:stepcarousel.stepBy('mygallery2', 1)"><img id="nextbut1" src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/images/next.png" alt="" /></a> any help on what am I doing wrong? Is there a better approach/solution? (I'm not a programmer as you may figure) Thank you in advance!

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• Achieving C# "readonly" behavior in C++

  - by Tommy Fisk

  Hi guys, this is my first question on stack overflow, so be gentle. Let me first explain the exact behavior I would like to see. If you are familiar with C# then you know that declaring a variable as "readonly" allows a programmer to assign some value to that variable exactly once. Further attempts to modify the variable will result in an error. What I am after: I want to make sure that any and all single-ton classes I define can be predictably instantiated exactly once in my program (more details at the bottom). My approach to realizing my goal is to use extern to declare a global reference to the single-ton (which I will later instantiate at a time I choose. What I have sort of looks like this, namespace Global { extern Singleton& mainInstance; // not defined yet, but it will be later! } int main() { // now that the program has started, go ahead and create the singleton object Singleton& Global::mainInstance = Singleton::GetInstance(); // invalid use of qualified name Global::mainInstance = Singleton::GetInstance(); // doesn't work either :( } class Singleton { /* Some details ommited */ public: Singleton& GetInstance() { static Singleton instance; // exists once for the whole program return instance; } } However this does not really work, and I don't know where to go from here. Some details about what I'm up against: I'm concerned about threading as I am working on code that will deal with game logic while communicating with several third-party processes and other processes I will create. Eventually I would have to implement some kind of synchronization so multiple threads could access the information in the Singleton class without worry. Because I don't know what kinds of optimizations I might like to do, or exactly what threading entails (never done a real project using it), I was thinking that being able to predictably control when Singletons were instantiated would be a Good Thing. Imagine if Process A creates Process B, where B contains several Singletons distributed against multiple files and/or libraries. It could be a real nightmare if I can not reliably ensure the order these singleton objects are instantiated (because they could depend on each other, and calling methods on a NULL object is generally a Bad Thing). If I were in C# I would just use the readonly keyword, but is there any way I can implement this (compiler supported) behavior in C++? Is this even a good idea? Thanks for any feedback.

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• Numpy/Python performing terribly vs. Matlab

  - by Nissl

  Novice programmer here. I'm writing a program that analyzes the relative spatial locations of points (cells). The program gets boundaries and cell type off an array with the x coordinate in column 1, y coordinate in column 2, and cell type in column 3. It then checks each cell for cell type and appropriate distance from the bounds. If it passes, it then calculates its distance from each other cell in the array and if the distance is within a specified analysis range it adds it to an output array at that distance. My cell marking program is in wxpython so I was hoping to develop this program in python as well and eventually stick it into the GUI. Unfortunately right now python takes ~20 seconds to run the core loop on my machine while MATLAB can do ~15 loops/second. Since I'm planning on doing 1000 loops (with a randomized comparison condition) on ~30 cases times several exploratory analysis types this is not a trivial difference. I tried running a profiler and array calls are 1/4 of the time, almost all of the rest is unspecified loop time. Here is the python code for the main loop: for basecell in range (0, cellnumber-1): if firstcelltype == np.array((cellrecord[basecell,2])): xloc=np.array((cellrecord[basecell,0])) yloc=np.array((cellrecord[basecell,1])) xedgedist=(xbound-xloc) yedgedist=(ybound-yloc) if xloc>excludedist and xedgedist>excludedist and yloc>excludedist and yedgedist>excludedist: for comparecell in range (0, cellnumber-1): if secondcelltype==np.array((cellrecord[comparecell,2])): xcomploc=np.array((cellrecord[comparecell,0])) ycomploc=np.array((cellrecord[comparecell,1])) dist=math.sqrt((xcomploc-xloc)**2+(ycomploc-yloc)**2) dist=round(dist) if dist>=1 and dist<=analysisdist: arraytarget=round(dist*analysisdist/intervalnumber) addone=np.array((spatialraw[arraytarget-1])) addone=addone+1 targetcell=arraytarget-1 np.put(spatialraw,[targetcell,targetcell],addone) Here is the matlab code for the main loop: for basecell = 1:cellnumber; if firstcelltype==cellrecord(basecell,3); xloc=cellrecord(basecell,1); yloc=cellrecord(basecell,2); xedgedist=(xbound-xloc); yedgedist=(ybound-yloc); if (xloc>excludedist) && (yloc>excludedist) && (xedgedist>excludedist) && (yedgedist>excludedist); for comparecell = 1:cellnumber; if secondcelltype==cellrecord(comparecell,3); xcomploc=cellrecord(comparecell,1); ycomploc=cellrecord(comparecell,2); dist=sqrt((xcomploc-xloc)^2+(ycomploc-yloc)^2); if (dist>=1) && (dist<=100.4999); arraytarget=round(dist*analysisdist/intervalnumber); spatialsum(1,arraytarget)=spatialsum(1,arraytarget)+1; end end end end end end Thanks!

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• How to Automatically Refresh Data on Page Using Ajax on an Interval?

  - by Karnak

  I would like to load an XML file every 30 seconds and display its contents inside an HTML page. So far I know how to load the file, but I don't know how to automatically refresh it and display its updated contents. It would also be great if it did some error checking and if it displayed error.png image when it's not able to load data.xml file. Here is my code: <head> <script> window.XMLHttpRequest { xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest(); } xmlhttp.open("GET", "data.xml", false); xmlhttp.send(); loadXMLDoc = xmlhttp.responseXML; f = loadXMLDoc.getElementsByTagName("foo") function buildBar(i) { qux = (f[i].getElementsByTagName("qux")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue); document.getElementById("displayBar").innerHTML = qux; } </script> </head> <body> <script> document.write("<ul>"); for (var i = 0; i < f.length; i++) { document.write("<li onclick='buildBar(" + i + ")'>"); document.write(f[i].getElementsByTagName("bar")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue); document.write("</li>"); } document.write("</ul>"); </script> <div id="displayBar"> </div> </body> After searching the internet for a few hours I found many examples on how to do this, but I didn't know how to implement it in my particular case. I am not a programmer, so please be kind. I would really appriciate any help. It would mean a lot.

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• Advice needed: stay with Java team or move to C++ team?

  - by user68759

  Some background - I have been programming in Java as a professional for the last few years. This is mainly using Java SE. I have also touched bits and pieces of other various Java technologies and have some basic knowledge about them. I consider my self as an intermediate Java programmer. I like Java very much. I think it is only going to get bigger. Recently, my manager asked my opinion on whether I would like to be transferred to another team within the company that is developing a product in C++. This is mainly because my current Java team simply didn't make enough money due to poor sales and the economic downturn. Now, I have never had any experience with C++ nor have I ever coded a single line of code in C++. I have always wanted to learn it and now is my chance. But I really want to make sure I get benefit out of it in the future, in the sense that I will have the skills that will still be on-demand in the future. So, what do you experts think? Is C++ still the language to learn these days to secure yourself for the future? What will I learn more in C++ but not in Java? And are they worthy to learn considering the current and possible future demands in IT industry? (Apart from the obvious more control over memory management and something along that line.) What is a good excuse to refuse the offer in order to stay with the Java team? I don't want to blatantly refuse it because you can never predict the future and I could possibly come back to my manager in the future and ask him to transfer me to the C++ team. How do I say it nicely that I am taking the offer but I would like to still be involved with Java one way or another, such as when there is a new Java project I would like to be considered. I have to admit that I am kind of 50-50 at the moment. I want to learn C++ for the sake of improving my skills and also helping my company to reduce the fund required for the Java team. But it is also hard for me to leave Java because I know Java is going to get bigger, so I am afraid of getting behind when I start concentrating on C++. I could, of course, decide to just join the C++ team, and then spend my free time reading about Java to keep in touch with it, but I thought I would ask anyway in case some people can point out the strong points of either over the other given the current and possibly future circumstances.

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• Boost MultiIndex - objects or pointers (and how to use them?)?

  - by Sarah

  I'm programming an agent-based simulation and have decided that Boost's MultiIndex is probably the most efficient container for my agents. I'm not a professional programmer, and my background is very spotty. I've two questions: Is it better to have the container contain the agents (of class Host) themselves, or is it more efficient for the container to hold Host *? Hosts will sometimes be deleted from memory (that's my plan, anyway... need to read up on new and delete). Hosts' private variables will get updated occasionally, which I hope to do through the modify function in MultiIndex. There will be no other copies of Hosts in the simulation, i.e., they will not be used in any other containers. If I use pointers to Hosts, how do I set up the key extraction properly? My code below doesn't compile. // main.cpp - ATTEMPTED POINTER VERSION ... #include <boost/multi_index_container.hpp> #include <boost/multi_index/hashed_index.hpp> #include <boost/multi_index/member.hpp> #include <boost/multi_index/ordered_index.hpp> #include <boost/multi_index/mem_fun.hpp> #include <boost/tokenizer.hpp> typedef multi_index_container< Host *, indexed_by< // hash by Host::id hashed_unique< BOOST_MULTI_INDEX_MEM_FUN(Host,int,Host::getID) > // arg errors here > // end indexed_by > HostContainer; ... int main() { ... HostContainer testHosts; Host * newHostPtr; newHostPtr = new Host( t, DOB, idCtr, 0, currentEvents ); testHosts.insert( newHostPtr ); ... } I can't find a precisely analogous example in the Boost documentation, and my knowledge of C++ syntax is still very weak. The code does appear to work when I replace all the pointer references with the class objects themselves. As best I can read it, the Boost documentation (see summary table at bottom) implies I should be able to use member functions with pointer elements.

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• Apache outputs all urls of a second domain as a subfolder of the primary domain name

  - by s_rathbone

  Hi all, would anyone be able to possibly give me some guidance.. Basically, i have a 'shared hosting' account with a large internet hosting provider, and my account lets me have multiple seperate domains within this folder structure.(note: not aliased domains and not sub domains). so, my goal is to have 2 domains set up. i have already purchased the two domain names i need: The first domain is the 'primary' domain name for the root folder(eg. www.example1.com) and the second domain name is set for one of its sub folders(eg. www.example2.com is set to the folder www.example1.com/sites/music). The problem is that when apache returns a page of the second domain back to the browser, apache writes the hyperlinks as if it's a sub folder of the first domain ( eg. www.example2.com/index.html. comes out as http://www.example1.com/sites/music/index.html). Now, I have done some reading on this, looking though "Apache: the definitive guide"(o'reilly), and although it was useful, couldn't really find the answer. i'm guessing this issue is most likely an apache setup issue in http.conf, rather than an issue with the hosting company itself (which is why im posting it here) and I have also been to the official documentation for apache site, and i am guessing i might need to use something like the rewritebase directive in htaccess files.. but im really not sure, im more of a java programmer guy, and have been struggling with this for a couple of days. Any guidance would be REALLY appreciated. If it helps, my hosting company is godaddy, and my sites are hosted on linux. My problem was originally with wordpress which i reinstalled a number of times in various ways to correct the problem, but ive just done a test with a very simple static html, and it still has the same issue with relative urls like this: <html> <head></head><body><a href="images/dog.html">Pictures of Dogs</a></body> </html> However, it is fine if i hardcode the urls like this: <html> <head></head><body><a href="http://www.example2.com/images/dog.html">Pictures of Dogs</a></body> </html> Thanks heaps, Steve R NOW FIXED Ok, the problem has now been fixed, and i didn't need to modify any .conf or .htaccess files. The problem was, that when I went to install the second application into a second domain from the godaddy site, one of the setup questions is that it asks you which site you want it installed to. after that it asks for the desired folder path. However, the problem was that the second domain name was already pointing to the correct subfolder of the primary domain. So when I started installing wordpress again and came to the menu to select which site it was for, and it listed only the primary domain as an option, i assumed that this was like a label of "which hosting account?", or "which primary domain will your application will be installed under?" because I already knew that in the next step i was specifiying the folder. In order to correct this, you must make sure that your second domain is added to your domain list so that it will be listed as an option during the installation process. For further details please read tystips.com/archives/52/how2-save-money-host-multiple-wordpress-blogs-on-a-single-godaddy-hosting-account/

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• squid3 auth thru samba using ntlm to AD doesn't work

  - by derty

  some users here are spending to much time exploring the WWW. So big boss whats to get this under control. We use a squid3 just for some security reason and chace benefits. and now i'm trying to set up a new proxy on a different server (Debian 6) Permissions are defined in AC and the squid3 should get the auth thru samba/winbind by using the ntlm protocol. but i'll get all the time Access, denited. it only works by using LDAP but thats not the way i need it. here some log and confs squid access.log 1326878095.784 1 192.168.15.27 TCP_DENIED/407 4049 GET http://at.msn.com/? -NONE/- text/html 1326878095.791 1 192.168.15.27 TCP_DENIED/407 4294 GET http://at.msn.com/? - NONE/- text/html 1326878095.803 9 192.168.15.27 TCP_DENIED/403 4028 GET http://at.msn.com/? kavan NONE/- text/html 1326878095.848 0 192.168.15.27 TCP_DENIED/403 3881 GET http://www.squid-cache.org/Artwork/SN.png kavan NONE/- text/html 1326878100.279 0 192.168.15.27 TCP_DENIED/403 3735 GET http://www.google.at/ kavan NONE/- text/html 1326878100.296 0 192.168.15.27 TCP_DENIED/403 3870 GET http://www.squid-cache.org/Artwork/SN.png kavan NONE/- text/html 1326878155.700 0 192.168.15.27 TCP_DENIED/407 4072 GET http://ie9cvlist.ie.microsoft.com/IE9CompatViewList.xml - NONE/- text/html 1326878155.705 2 192.168.15.27 TCP_DENIED/407 4317 GET http://ie9cvlist.ie.microsoft.com/IE9CompatViewList.xml - NONE/- text/html 1326878155.709 3 192.168.15.27 TCP_DENIED/403 4026 GET http://ie9cvlist.ie.microsoft.com/IE9CompatViewList.xml kavan NONE/- text/html squid chace 2012/01/18 10:12:49| Creating Swap Directories 2012/01/18 10:12:49| Starting Squid Cache version 3.1.6 for x86_64-pc-linux-gnu... 2012/01/18 10:12:49| Process ID 17236 2012/01/18 10:12:49| With 65535 file descriptors available 2012/01/18 10:12:49| Initializing IP Cache... 2012/01/18 10:12:49| DNS Socket created at [::], FD 7 2012/01/18 10:12:49| DNS Socket created at 0.0.0.0, FD 8 2012/01/18 10:12:49| Adding nameserver 192.168.15.2 from /etc/resolv.conf 2012/01/18 10:12:49| Adding nameserver 192.168.15.19 from /etc/resolv.conf 2012/01/18 10:12:49| Adding nameserver 192.168.15.1 from /etc/resolv.conf 2012/01/18 10:12:49| Adding domain schoenbrunn.local from /etc/resolv.conf 2012/01/18 10:12:49| helperOpenServers: Starting 5/5 'squid_ldap_auth' processes 2012/01/18 10:12:49| helperOpenServers: Starting 10/10 'ntlm_auth' processes 2012/01/18 10:12:49| helperOpenServers: Starting 10/10 'squid_kerb_auth' processes 2012/01/18 10:12:49| squid_kerb_auth: INFO: Starting version 1.0.5 2012/01/18 10:12:49| squid_kerb_auth: INFO: Starting version 1.0.5 2012/01/18 10:12:49| squid_kerb_auth: INFO: Starting version 1.0.5 2012/01/18 10:12:49| squid_kerb_auth: INFO: Starting version 1.0.5 2012/01/18 10:12:49| squid_kerb_auth: INFO: Starting version 1.0.5 2012/01/18 10:12:49| squid_kerb_auth: INFO: Starting version 1.0.5 2012/01/18 10:12:49| squid_kerb_auth: INFO: Starting version 1.0.5 2012/01/18 10:12:49| squid_kerb_auth: INFO: Starting version 1.0.5 2012/01/18 10:12:49| helperOpenServers: Starting 5/5 'squid_ldap_group' processes 2012/01/18 10:12:49| squid_kerb_auth: INFO: Starting version 1.0.5 2012/01/18 10:12:49| squid_kerb_auth: INFO: Starting version 1.0.5 2012/01/18 10:12:49| Unlinkd pipe opened on FD 73 2012/01/18 10:12:49| Local cache digest enabled; rebuild/rewrite every 3600/3600 sec 2012/01/18 10:12:49| Store logging disabled 2012/01/18 10:12:49| Swap maxSize 0 + 262144 KB, estimated 20164 objects 2012/01/18 10:12:49| Target number of buckets: 1008 2012/01/18 10:12:49| Using 8192 Store buckets 2012/01/18 10:12:49| Max Mem size: 262144 KB 2012/01/18 10:12:49| Max Swap size: 0 KB 2012/01/18 10:12:49| Using Least Load store dir selection 2012/01/18 10:12:49| Set Current Directory to /var/spool/squid3 2012/01/18 10:12:49| Loaded Icons. 2012/01/18 10:12:49| Accepting HTTP connections at [::]:3128, FD 74. 2012/01/18 10:12:49| HTCP Disabled. 2012/01/18 10:12:49| Squid modules loaded: 0 2012/01/18 10:12:49| Adaptation support is off. 2012/01/18 10:12:49| Ready to serve requests. 2012/01/18 10:12:50| storeLateRelease: released 0 objects smb.conf # Domain Authntication Settings workgroup = <WORKGROUP> security = ads password server = <DOMAINNAME>.LOCAL realm = <DOMAINNAME>.LOCAL ldap ssl = no # logging log level = 5 max log size = 50 # logs split per machine log file = /var/log/samba/%m.log # max 50KB per log file, then rotate ; max log size = 50 # User settings username map = /etc/samba/smbusers idmap uid = 10000-20000000 idmap gid = 10000-20000000 idmap backend = ad ; template primary group = <ad group> template shell = /sbin/nologin # Winbind Settings winbind separator = + winbind enum users = Yes winbind enum groups = Yes winbind netsted groups = Yes winbind nested groups = Yes winbind cache time = 10 winbind use default domain = Yes #Other Globals unix charset = LOCALE server string = <SERVERNAME> load printers = no printing = cups cups options = raw ; printcap name = /etc/printcap #obtain list of printers automatically on SystemV ; printcap name = lpstat ; printing = cups squid.conf auth_param ntlm program /usr/bin/ntlm_auth --require-membership-of=<DOMAINNAME>\\INTERNETZ --helper-protocol=squid-2.5-ntlmssp auth_param ntlm children 10 auth_param basic program /usr/lib/squid3/squid_ldap_auth -R -b "dc=<dcname>,dc=local" -D "cn=administrator,cn=Users,dc=<domainname>,dc=local" -w "******" -f sAMAccountName=%s -h 192.168.15.19:3268 auth_param basic realm "Proxy Authentifizierung. Bitte geben Sie Ihren Benutzername und Ihr Passwort ein!" #means insert you PW in an other language - # external_acl_type InetGroup %LOGIN /usr/lib/squid3/squid_ldap_group -R -b "dc=<domainname>,dc=local" -D "cn=administrator,cn=Users,dc=<domainname>,dc=local" -w "******" -f "(&(objectclass=person)(sAMAccountName=%v) (memberof=cn=%a,cn=internetz,dc=<domainname>,dc=local))" -h 192.168.15.19:3268 auth_param negotiate program /usr/lib/squid3/squid_kerb_auth -d auth_param negotiate children 10 auth_param negotiate keep_alive on acl localnet proxy_auth REQUIRED acl InetAccess external InetGroup Internetz http_access allow InetAccess http_access deny all acl auth proxy_auth REQUIRED http_access allow auth and a very suspicious is that by adding the proxy server to the Domain i see 2 new entries in the PC one with the original computer-name leopoldine and one with leopoldine CNF:f8efa4c4-ff0e-4217-939d-f1523b43464d ?!? I tried a lot, really... but i stuck on this problem... i actually i even reinstalled all dependent programs and reconfigured them from default. Group exists and has me in it. Firefox running on the old proxy and i use IE for testing the new one. But i'll get all the time Access-Denited and to be honest i'm quite a beginner, so please don't be to prude. I'll interested in improving, i'll get the information we need to fix this but i started working 2 month ago and got only 1 1/2 year's training and not a single sec. in linux ;)

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• How to set up a centralized backup server with lots of offsite workstations, intermittent internet connectivity, and stubborn users?

  - by Zac B

  This might be an impossible question. Context: We have a bunch of computers across around 1000 users. We have a centralized office where 900 of the users work, most of the time. Most of the computers are laptops. They are very frequently coming on and off the network for hours at a time. Users often take their computers home and do lots of work from home. In addition, there are a handful of users who work elsewhere in the country, who are offline (no internet connection whatsoever) for more than half of the time they use their machines. All of the machines are Windows 7/XP. Problem: People are always losing data. One day someone accidentally deletes a bunch of files. The next day someone else installs a bad driver or tries to mess with something in system32 and needs a personal data backup/reinstall of Windows. Because of how many of our business operations are done without an internet connection, and how frequently computers come on- and offline, it's unfeasible to make users use network storage for all of their data. We tried giving them Dropboxes, and they stored their files elsewhere. We bought and deployed Altiris, and they uninstalled it and blamed us when they couldn't get files back that they accidentally deleted while they were offline and hadn't taken a backup in months. We tried teaching them backup best-practices, and using scheduled sync tools to upload things to the network drives, and they turned them off because they "looked like viruses". It doesn't help that many of these users are pretty high up in the business and are not amicable to any sort of "you need to do something regularly because we say so" solution. Question: Other than finding another job where IT is treated differently and users are willing to follow best practices, how would people recommend I implement a file backup solution that supports the following: Backs up to a centralized server over LAN or WAN whenever a network link becomes available, or on a schedule. Supports interrupted/resumed backups (and hopefully file-delta only backups), since connections to the network (WAN or LAN) are often slow and only open for half an hour or so. Supports relatively rapid, "I accidentally deleted the TPS reports! Oh no!" single-file recovery, ideally administered from the central backup server rather than the client PC. Supports local-to-local file delta backup on a schedule, so that users without a network connection for a few days can still retrieve accidental deletions or whatnot. Ideally, the local stored backups would be pushed up to the server whenever network link is available. Isn't configurable on the clients without certain credentials. Because the CFOs (who won't give up their admin rights on the domain) will disable it if they can. Backs up the entire hard drive. There are people who are self-righteous about storing things in C:\, or in the recycle bin, or in the C:\Windows dir (yes, I know). I'm fine integrating multiple products/solutions, or scripting different programs together myself (I'm a somewhat competent programmer), but I've been drawing a blank on where to start. Dropbox is folder-specific, Altiris doesn't cope with LAN outages or interrupted/resumed backups, Volume Shadow Copy is awesome for a local-to-local solution, but I don't know how to push days of stored shadow copies up to a server in a 2 hour window of network access. The company is fine with spending decent money on this, thousands (USD) on a server, and hundreds on clients, if necessary. I want to emphasize that this isn't a shopping list request. While I wish there was a program out there that did what I want, I've looked pretty hard, and not found anything that fits the bill. Instead, I'm hoping for ideas on where to start hacking things together from scratch/from different technologies to make something stable that works. Cheers!

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• Issues Converting Plain Text Into Microsoft Word Bulleted Lists

  - by user787832

  I'm a programmer. I hate status reports. I found a way to live with it. While I am working in my IDE ( Visual Slickedit ) I keep a plain text file open in one of the file/buffer tabs. As I finish things I just jot down a quick note into that file. At the end of the week that becomes my weekly status report. Example entries: The Datatables.net plugin runs very slowly in IE 8 with more than 2,000 records. I changed the way I did the server side code to process the data to make less work for the plugin to get decent performance for the IE 8 users. I made a class to wrap data from the new data collection objects into the legacy data holder objects. This will let the new database code be backward compatible with the legacy code until we can replace it. I found the bug reported by Jane. The software is fine. The database we use for the test site has data that is corrupted in a way it wouldn't be for production site At the end of the month I go back to each weekly *.txt file and paste all of the entries into a MS Word file for a monthly report. I give the monthly report to a liason to the contracting company who has to compile everyone's monthly reports into a single MS Word 2007 document. His problem, soon to be my problem, comes when he highlights my paragraphs like the ones above to put bullets in front of my paragraphs. When he highlights my notes to put bullets in front of them with MS Word 2007, Word rearranges the text a bit and the new line chars/carriage returns stagger the text so the text is no longer in neat chunks. This: I found the bug reported by Jane. The software is fine. The database we use for the test site has data that is corrupted in a way it wouldn't be for production site Becomes This: I found the bug reported by Jane. The software is fine. The database we use for the test site has data that is corrupted in a way it wouldn't be for production site I tried turning word wrap on in my IDE for the text files I put my status notes in. It just puts some kind of newline character in anyway. Searching/Replacing those chars in the text files has the result of destroying the paragraphs. Once my notes are pasted into MS Word, Word automatically translates them into paragraph breaks. Searching/Replacing them there has similar results. Blank lines separating the notes disappears. One big mess. What I would like is to be able to keep adding my status notes to a text file as I am now, but do something different when I paste the notes into MS Word such that my liason can select the text, hit the bulleting command and NOT have the staggered text as shown above. Any ideas? Thanks much in advance Steve

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• Capistrano + Nginx + Passenger = 403

  - by slimchrisp

  I asked this over at stackoverflow as well, but still haven't received any answers that have helped me to solve this problem. I have spent almost a week at this point trying to solve the issue, and I'm just not making any headway. It seems that this issue is pretty common, but none of the solutions I found online work for me. A buddy of mine is actually creating the same setup, and he is having the same issue. After a few days stuck with the 403 error I started over using this tutorial: http://blog.ninjahideout.com/posts/a-guide-to-a-nginx-passenger-and-rvm-server I had hoped starting from scratch using this tutorial would work, but no dice. Either way, if you view the tutorial you can see what steps I have taken. Here is essentially what I have going on. I have a VPS account on linode.com Server OS is Ubuntu 10.04 Local OS (shouldn't matter, but just so you know) used to deploy with Capistrano is Snow Leopard 10.6.6 I use RVM on the server. Version is 1.2.2 I was previously on ruby-1.9.2-p0 [ i386 ], but per the tutorial listed above I switched to ree-1.8.7-2010.02 [ i386 ]. Running 'which ruby' from the command line verifies that I am using 1.8.7 with the following output: /usr/local/rvm/rubies/ree-1.8.7-2010.02/bin/ruby passenger -v prints the following: Phusion Passenger version 3.0.2 Running 'nginx -v' gives me a message that the command nginx could not be found. The server is definitely there and running as I can use nginx to serve static files, but this could have something to do with my problem. I have two users dealing with the install. root which I used to install everything, and deployer which is a user I created specifically to for deploying my applications My web app directory is in the deployer user's home directory as follows: /home/deployer/webapps/mysite.com/public Per Capistrano default deploy, a symbolic link called current is created in the public folder, and points to /home/deployer/webapps/mysite.com/public/releases/most_current_release I have chmodded the deployer directory recursively to 777 /opt/nginx permissions: rwxr-xr-x /usr/local/rvm/gems/ree-1.8.7-2010.02/gems/passenger-3.0.2 permissions: rwxrwsrwx My nginx config file has gone through just short of eternity variations, but currently looks like this: ================================================================================== worker_processes 1; events { worker_connections 1024; } http { passenger_root /usr/local/rvm/gems/ree-1.8.7-2010.02/gems/passenger-3.0.2; passenger_ruby /usr/local/rvm/bin/passenger_ruby; include mime.types; default_type application/octet-stream; sendfile on; keepalive_timeout 65; server { # listen *:80; server_name mysite.com www.mysite.com; root /home/deployer/webapps/mysite.com/public/current; passenger_enabled on; passenger_friendly_error_pages on; access_log logs/mysite.com/server.log; error_log logs/mysite.com/error.log info; error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html; location = /50x.html { root html; } } } ================================================================================== I bounce nginx, hit the site, and boom. 403, and logs say directory index of /home/deployer... is forbidden As others with a similar problem have said, you can drop an index.html into the public/releases/current_release and it will render. But rails no worky. That's basically it. At this point I have just about completely exhausted every possible solution attempt I can think of. I am a programmer and definitely not a sysadmin, so I am 99% sure this has something to do with permissions that I have hosed, but for the life of me I just can't figure out where. If anyone can help I would really really appreciate it. If there's any specific permission things you want me to check (ie groups/permissions), can you please include the commands to do so as well. Hopefully this will help others in the future who read this post. Let me know if there is any other information I can provide, and thanks in advance!!!

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• What *exactly* gets screwed when I kill -9 or pull the power?

  - by Mike

  Set-Up I've been a programmer for quite some time now but I'm still a bit fuzzy on deep, internal stuff. Now. I am well aware that it's not a good idea to either: kill -9 a process (bad) spontaneously pull the power plug on a running computer or server (worse) However, sometimes you just plain have to. Sometimes a process just won't respond no matter what you do, and sometimes a computer just won't respond, no matter what you do. Let's assume a system running Apache 2, MySQL 5, PHP 5, and Python 2.6.5 through mod_wsgi. Note: I'm most interested about Mac OS X here, but an answer that pertains to any UNIX system would help me out. My Concern Each time I have to do either one of these, especially the second, I'm very worried for a period of time that something has been broken. Some file somewhere could be corrupt -- who knows which file? There are over 1,000,000 files on the computer. I'm often using OS X, so I'll run a "Verify Disk" operation through the Disk Utility. It will report no problems, but I'm still concerned about this. What if some configuration file somewhere got screwed up. Or even worse, what if a binary file somewhere is corrupt. Or a script file somewhere is corrupt now. What if some hardware is damaged? What if I don't find out about it until next month, in a critical scenario, when the corruption or damage causes a catastrophe? Or, what if valuable data is already lost? My Hope My hope is that these concerns and worries are unfounded. After all, after doing this many times before, nothing truly bad has happened yet. The worst is I've had to repair some MySQL tables, but I don't seem to have lost any data. But, if my worries are not unfounded, and real damage could happen in either situation 1 or 2, then my hope is that there is a way to detect it and prevent against it. My Question(s) Could this be because modern operating systems are designed to ensure that nothing is lost in these scenarios? Could this be because modern software is designed to ensure that nothing lost? What about modern hardware design? What measures are in place when you pull the power plug? My question is, for both of these scenarios, what exactly can go wrong, and what steps should be taken to fix it? I'm under the impression that one thing that can go wrong is some programs might not have flushed their data to the disk, so any highly recent data that was supposed to be written to the disk (say, a few seconds before the power pull) might be lost. But what about beyond that? And can this very issue of 5-second data loss screw up a system? What about corruption of random files hiding somewhere in the huge forest of files on my hard drives? What about hardware damage? What Would Help Me Most Detailed descriptions about what goes on internally when you either kill -9 a process or pull the power on the whole system. (it seems instant, but can someone slow it down for me?) Explanations of all things that could go wrong in these scenarios, along with (rough of course) probabilities (i.e., this is very unlikely, but this is likely)... Descriptions of measures in place in modern hardware, operating systems, and software, to prevent damage or corruption when these scenarios occur. (to comfort me) Instructions for what to do after a kill -9 or a power pull, beyond "verifying the disk", in order to truly make sure nothing is corrupt or damaged somewhere on the drive. Measures that can be taken to fortify a computer setup so that if something has to be killed or the power has to be pulled, any potential damage is mitigated. Thanks so much!

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• Week in Geek: US Govt E-card Scam Siphons Confidential Data Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to “back up photos to Flickr, automate repetitive tasks, & normalize MP3 volume”, enable “stereo mix” in Windows 7 to record audio, create custom papercraft toys, read up on three alternatives to Apple’s flaky iOS alarm clock, decorated our desktops & app docks with Google icon packs, and more. Photo by alexschlegel. Random Geek Links It has been a busy week on the security & malware fronts and we have a roundup of the latest news to help keep you updated. Photo by TopTechWriter.US. US govt e-card scam hits confidential data A fake U.S. government Christmas e-card has managed to siphon off gigabytes of sensitive data from a number of law enforcement and military staff who work on cybersecurity matters, many of whom are involved in computer crime investigations. Security tool uncovers multiple bugs in every browser Michal Zalewski reports that he discovered the vulnerability in Internet Explorer a while ago using his cross_fuzz fuzzing tool and reported it to Microsoft in July 2010. Zalewski also used cross_fuzz to discover bugs in other browsers, which he also reported to the relevant organisations. Microsoft to fix Windows holes, but not ones in IE Microsoft said that it will release two security bulletins next week fixing three holes in Windows, but it is still investigating or working on fixing holes in Internet Explorer that have been reportedly exploited in attacks. Microsoft warns of Windows flaw affecting image rendering Microsoft has warned of a Windows vulnerability that could allow an attacker to take control of a computer if the user is logged on with administrative rights. Windows 7 Not Affected by Critical 0-Day in the Windows Graphics Rendering Engine While confirming that details on a Critical zero-day vulnerability have made their way into the wild, Microsoft noted that customers running the latest iteration of Windows client and server platforms are not exposed to any risks. Microsoft warns of Office-related malware Microsoft’s Malware Protection Center issued a warning this week that it has spotted malicious code on the Internet that can take advantage of a flaw in Word and infect computers after a user does nothing more than read an e-mail. *Refers to a flaw that was addressed in the November security patch releases. Make sure you have all of the latest security updates installed. Unpatched hole in ImgBurn disk burning application According to security specialist Secunia, a highly critical vulnerability in ImgBurn, a lightweight disk burning application, can be used to remotely compromise a user’s system. Hole in VLC Media Player Virtual Security Research (VSR) has identified a vulnerability in VLC Media Player. In versions up to and including 1.1.5 of the VLC Media Player. Flash Player sandbox can be bypassed Flash applications run locally can read local files and send them to an online server – something which the sandbox is supposed to prevent. Chinese auction site touts hacked iTunes accounts Tens of thousands of reportedly hacked iTunes accounts have been found on Chinese auction site Taobao, but the company claims it is unable to take action unless there are direct complaints. What happened in the recent Hotmail outage Mike Schackwitz explains the cause of the recent Hotmail outage. DOJ sends order to Twitter for Wikileaks-related account info The U.S. Justice Department has obtained a court order directing Twitter to turn over information about the accounts of activists with ties to Wikileaks, including an Icelandic politician, a legendary Dutch hacker, and a U.S. computer programmer. Google gets court to block Microsoft Interior Department e-mail win The U.S. Federal Claims Court has temporarily blocked Microsoft from proceeding with the $49.3 million, five-year DOI contract that it won this past November. Google Apps customers get email lockdown Companies and organisations using Google Apps are now able to restrict the email access of selected users. LibreOffice Is the Default Office Suite for Ubuntu 11.04 Matthias Klose has announced some details regarding the replacement of the old OpenOffice.org 3.2.1 packages with the new LibreOffice 3.3 ones, starting with the upcoming Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) Alpha 2 release. Sysadmin Geek Tips Photo by Filomena Scalise. How to Setup Software RAID for a Simple File Server on Ubuntu Do you need a file server that is cheap and easy to setup, “rock solid” reliable, and has Email Alerting? This tutorial shows you how to use Ubuntu, software RAID, and SaMBa to accomplish just that. How to Control the Order of Startup Programs in Windows While you can specify the applications you want to launch when Windows starts, the ability to control the order in which they start is not available. However, there are a couple of ways you can easily overcome this limitation and control the startup order of applications. Random TinyHacker Links Using Opera Unite to Send Large Files A tutorial on using Opera Unite to easily send huge files from your computer. WorkFlowy is a Useful To-do List Tool A cool to-do list tool that lets you integrate multiple tasks in one single list easily. Playing Flash Videos on iOS Devices Yes, you can play flash videos on jailbroken iPhones. Here’s a tutorial. Clear Safari History and Cookies On iPhone A tutorial on clearing your browser history on iPhone and other iOS devices. Monitor Your Internet Usage Here’s a cool, cross-platform tool to monitor your internet bandwidth. Super User Questions See what the community had to say on these popular questions from Super User this week. Why is my upload speed much less than my download speed? Where should I find drivers for my laptop if it didn’t come with a driver disk? OEM Office 2010 without media – how to reinstall? Is there a point to using theft tracking software like Prey on my laptop, if you have login security? Moving an “all-in-one” PC when turned on/off How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Get caught up on your HTG reading with our hottest articles from this past week. How to Combine Rescue Disks to Create the Ultimate Windows Repair Disk How To Boot 10 Different Live CDs From 1 USB Flash Drive What is Camera Raw, and Why Would a Professional Prefer it to JPG? Did You Know Facebook Has Built-In Shortcut Keys? The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: The Basics One Year Ago on How-To Geek Enjoy looking through our latest gathering of retro article goodness. Learning Windows 7: Create a Homegroup & Join a New Computer To It How To Disconnect a Machine from a Homegroup Use Remote Desktop To Access Other Computers On a Small Office or Home Network How To Share Files and Printers Between Windows 7 and Vista Allow Users To Run Only Specified Programs in Windows 7 The Geek Note That is all we have for you this week and we hope your first week back at work or school has gone very well now that the holidays are over. Know a great tip? Send it in to us at [email protected]. Photo by Pamela Machado. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy How to Combine Rescue Disks to Create the Ultimate Windows Repair Disk What is Camera Raw, and Why Would a Professional Prefer it to JPG? The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: The Basics How To Boot 10 Different Live CDs From 1 USB Flash Drive The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 Arctic Theme for Windows 7 Gives Your Desktop an Icy Touch Install LibreOffice via PPA and Receive Auto-Updates in Ubuntu Creative Portraits Peek Inside the Guts of Modern Electronics Scenic Winter Lane Wallpaper to Create a Relaxing Mood Access Your Web Apps Directly Using the Context Menu in Chrome The Deep – Awesome Use of Metal Objects as Deep Sea Creatures [Video]

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• Twitter traffic might not be what it seems

  - by Piet

  Are you using bit.ly stats to measure interest in the links you post on twitter? I’ve been hearing for a while about people claiming to get the majority of their traffic originating from twitter these days. Now, I’ve been playing with the twitter ruby gem recently, doing various experiments which I’ll not go into detail here because they could be regarded as spamming… if I’d conduct them on a large scale, that is. It’s scary to see people actually engaging with @replies crafted with some regular expressions and eliza-like trickery on status updates found using the twitter api. I’m wondering how Twitter is going to contain the coming spam-flood. When posting links I used bit.ly as url shortener, since this one seems to be the de-facto standard on twitter. A nice thing about bit.ly is that it shows some basic stats about the redirects it performs for your shortened links. To my surprise, most links posted almost immediately resulted in several visitors. Now, seeing that I was posting the links together with some information concerning what the link is about, I concluded that the people who were actually clicking the links should be very targeted visitors. This felt a bit like free adwords, and I suddenly started to understand why everyone was raving about getting traffic from twitter. How wrong I was! (and I think several 1000 online marketers with me) On the destination site I used a traffic logging solution that works by including a little javascript snippet in your pages. It seemed that somehow all visitors disappeared after the bit.ly redirect and before getting to the site, because I was hardly seeing any visitors there. So I started investigating what was happening: by looking at the logfiles of the destination site, and by making my own ’shortened’ urls by doing redirects using a very short domain name I own. This way, I could check the apache access_log before the redirects. Most user agents turned out to be bots without a doubt. Here’s an excerpt of user-agents awk’ed from apache’s access_log for a time period of about one hour, right after posting some links: AideRSS 2.0 (postrank.com) Java/1.6.0_13 Java/1.6.0_14 libwww-perl/5.816 MLBot (www.metadatalabs.com/mlbot) Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;MSIE 5.01; Windows -NT 5.0 - real-url.org) Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Twitturls; +http://twitturls.com) Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Viralheat Bot/1.0; +http://www.viralheat.com/) Mozilla/5.0 (Danger hiptop 4.6; U; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050920 Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-us; rv:1.9.0.2) Gecko/2008092313 Ubuntu/9.04 (jaunty) Firefox/3.5 OpenCalaisSemanticProxy PycURL/7.18.2 PycURL/7.19.3 Python-urllib/1.17 Twingly Recon twitmatic Twitturly / v0.6 Wget/1.10.2 (Red Hat modified) Wget/1.11.1 (Red Hat modified) Of the few user-agents that seem ‘real’ at first, half are originating from an ip-address used by Amazon EC2. And I doubt people are setting op proxies on there. Oh yeah, Googlebot (the real deal, from a legit google owned address) is sucking up posted links like fresh oysters. I guess google is trying to make sure in advance to never be beaten by twitter in the ‘realtime search’ department. Actually, I think it’d be almost stupid NOT to post any new pages/posts/websites on Twitter, it must be one of the fastest ways to get a Googlebot visit. Same experiment with a real, established twitter account Now, because I was posting the url’s either as ’status’ messages or directed @people, on a test-account with hardly any (human) followers, I checked again using the twitter accounts from a commercial site I’m involved with. These accounts all have between 500 and 1000 targeted (I think) followers. I checked the destination access_logs and also added ‘my’ redirect after the bit.ly redirect: same results, although seemingly a bit higher real visitor/bot ratio. Btw: one of these account was ‘punished’ with a 1 week lock recently because the same (1 one!) status update was sent that was sent right before using another account. They got an email explaining the lock because the account didn’t act according to their TOS. I can’t find anything in their TOS about it, can you? I don’t think Twitter is on the right track punishing a legit account, knowing the trickery I had been doing with it’s api went totally unpunished. I might be wrong though, I often am. On the other hand: this commercial site reported targeted traffic and actual signups from visitors coming from Twitter. The ones that are really real visitors are also very targeted. I’m just not sure if the amount of work involved could hold up against an adwords campaign. Reposting the same link over and over again helps On thing I noticed: It helps to keep on reposting the same links with regular intervals. I guess most people only look at their first page when checking out recent posts of the ones they’re following, or don’t look too far back when performing a search. Now, this probably isn’t according to the twitter TOS. Actually, it might be spamming but no-one is obligated to follow anyone else of course. This way, I was getting more real visitors and less bots. To my surprise (when my programmer’s hat is on) there were still repeated visits from the same bots coming from the same ip-addresses. Did they expect to find something else when visiting for a 2nd or 3rd time? (actually,this gave me an idea: you can’t change a link once it’s posted, but you can change where it redirects to) Most bots were smart enough not to follow the same link again though. Are you successful in getting real visitors from Twitter? Are you only relying on bit.ly to provide traffic stats?

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• SQLAuthority Book Review – DBA Survivor: Become a Rock Star DBA

  - by pinaldave

  DBA Survivor: Become a Rock Star DBA – Thomas LaRock Link to Amazon Link to Flipkart First of all, I thank all my readers when I wrote that I could not get this book in any local book stores, because they offered me to send a copy of this good book. A very special mention goes to Sripada and Jayesh for they gave so much effort in finding my home address and sending me the hard copy. Before, I did not have the copy of the book, but now I have two of it already! It surprises me how my readers were able to find my home address, which I have not publicly shared. Quick Review: This is indeed a one easy-to-read and fun book. We all work day and night with technology yet we should not forget to show our love and care for our family at home. For our souls that starve for peace and guidance, this one book is the “it” book for all the technology enthusiasts. Though this book was specifically written for DBAs, the reach is not limited to DBAs only because the lessons incorporated in it actually applies to all. This is one of the most motivating technical books I have read. Detailed Review: Let us go over a few questions first: Who wants to be as famous as rockstars in the field of Database Administration? How can one learn what it takes to become a top notch software developer? If you are a beginner in your field, how will you go to next level? Your boss may be very kind or like Dilbert’s Boss, what will you do? How do you keep growing when Eco-system around you does not support you? You are almost at top but there is someone else at the TOP, what do you do and how do you avoid office politics? As a database developer what should be your basic responsibility? and many more… I was able to completely read book in one sitting and I loved it. Before I continue with my opinion, I want to echo the opinion of Kevin Kline who has written the Forward of the book. He has truly suggested that “You hold in your hands a collection of insights and wisdom on the topic of database administration gained through many years of hard-won experience, long nights of study, and direct mentorship under some of the industry’s most talented database professionals and information technology (IT) experts.” Today, IT field is getting bigger and better, while talking about terabytes of the database becomes “more” normal every single day. The gods and demigods of database professionals are taking care of these large scale databases and are carefully maintaining them. In this world, there are only a few beginnings on the first step. There are many experts in different technology fields who are asked to address the issues with databases. There is YOU and ME, who is just new to this work. So we ask ourselves WHERE to begin and HOW to begin. We adore and follow the religion of our rockstars, but oftentimes we really have no idea about their background and their struggles. Every rockstar has his success story which needs to be digested before learning his tricks and tips. This book starts with the same note and teaches the two most important lessons for anybody who wants to be a DBA Rockstar –  to focus on their single goal of learning and to excel the technology. The story starts with three simple guidelines – Get Prepared, Get Trained, Get Certified. Once a person learns the skills, and then, it would be about time that he needs to enrich or to improve those skills you have learned. I am sure that the right opportunity will come finding themselves and they will not have to go run behind it. However, the real challenge for any person is the first day or first week. A new employee, no matter how much experienced he is, sometimes has no clue about what should one do at new job. Chapter 2 and chapter 3 precisely talk about what one should do as soon as the new job begins. It is also written with keeping the fact in focus that each job can be very much different but there are few infrastructure setups and programming concepts are the same. Learning basics of database was really interesting. I like to focus on the roots of any technology. It is important to understand the structure of the database before suggesting what indexes needs to be created, the same way this book covers the most essential knowledge one must learn by most database developers. I think the title of the fourth chapter is my favorite sentence in this book. I can see that I will be saying this again and again in the future – “A Development Server Is a Production Server to a Developer“. I have worked in the software industry for almost 8 years now and I have seen so many developers sitting on their chairs and waiting for instructions from their lead about how to improve the code or what to do the next. When I talk to them, I suggest that the experiment with their server and try various techniques. I think they all should understand that for them, a development server is their production server and needs to pay proper attention to the code from the beginning. There should be NO any inappropriate code from the beginning. One has to fully focus and give their best, if they are not sure they should ask but should do something and stay active. Chapter 5 and 6 talks about two essential skills for any developer and database administration – what are the ethics of developers when they are working with production server and how to support software which is running on the production server. I have met many people who know the theory by heart but when put in front of keyboard they do not know where to start. The first thing they do opening the browser and searching online, instead of opening SQL Server Management Studio. This can very well happen to anybody who is experienced as well. Chapter 5 and 6 addresses that situation as well includes the handy scripts which can solve almost all the basic trouble shooting issues. “Where’s the Buffet?” By far, this is the best chapter in this book. If you have ever met me, you would know that I love food. I think after reading this chapter, I felt Thomas has written this just keeping me in mind. I think there will be many other people who feel the same way, too. Even my wife who read this chapter thought this was specifically written for me. I will not talk any more about this chapter as this is one must read chapter. And of course this is about real ‘FOOD‘. I am an SQL Server Trainer and Consultant and I totally agree with the point made in the chapter 8 of this book. Yes, it says here that what is necessary to train employees and people. Millions of dollars worth the labor is continuously done in the world which has faults and incorrect. Once something goes wrong, very expensive consultant comes in and fixes the problem. This whole cycle which can be stopped and improved if proper training is done. There is plenty of free trainings available as well, if one cannot afford paid training. “Connect. Learn. Share” – I think this is a great summary and bird’s eye view of this book. Networking is the key. Everything which is discussed in this book can be taken to next level if one properly uses this tips and continuously grow with it. Connecting with others, helping learn each other and building the good knowledge sharing environment should be the goal of everyone. Before I end the review I want to share a real experience. I have personally met one DBA who has worked in a single department in a company for so long that when he was put in a different department in his company due to closing that department, he could not adjust and quit the job despite the same people and company around him. Adjusting in the new environment gets much tougher as one person gets more and more experienced. This book precisely addresses the same issue along with their solutions. I just cannot stop comparing the book with my personal journey. I found so many things which are coincidently in the book is written as how we developer and DBA think. I must express special thanks to Thomas for taking time in his personal life and write this book for us. This book is indeed a book for everybody who wants to grow healthy in the tough and competitive environment. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Book Review, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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• mysql-connector-c++ - ‘get_driver_instance’ is not a member of ‘sql::mysql’

  - by rizzo0917

  I am a beginner at c++ and figured the only way I am going to learn is to get dirty with some code. I am trying to build a program that connects to a mysql database. I am using g++, on linux. With no ide. I run "make" and this is my error: hello.cpp:38: error: ‘get_driver_instance’ is not a member of ‘sql::mysql’ make: *** [hello.o] Error 1 Here is my code including makefile. Any Help would be great! Thanks in advance ###BEGIN hello.cpp### #include <stdlib.h> #include <iostream> #include <sstream> #include <stdexcept> #include "mysql_connection.h" #include <cppconn/driver.h> #include <cppconn/exception.h> #include <cppconn/resultset.h> #include <cppconn/statement.h> #include <cppconn/prepared_statement.h> #define EXAMPLE_HOST "localhost" #define EXAMPLE_USER "root" #define EXAMPLE_PASS "" #define EXAMPLE_DB "world" using namespace std; using namespace sql::mysql; int main(int argc, const char **argv) { string url(argc >= 2 ? argv[1] : EXAMPLE_HOST); const string user(argc >= 3 ? argv[2] : EXAMPLE_USER); const string pass(argc >= 4 ? argv[3] : EXAMPLE_PASS); const string database(argc >= 5 ? argv[4] : EXAMPLE_DB); cout << "Connector/C++ tutorial framework..." << endl; cout << endl; try { sql::Driver *driver; sql::Connection *con; sql::Statement *stmt; driver = sql::mysql::get_driver_instance(); con = driver->connect("tcp://127.0.0.1:3306", "user", "password"); stmt = con->createStatement(); stmt->execute("USE " EXAMPLE_DB); stmt->execute("DROP TABLE IF EXISTS test"); stmt->execute("CREATE TABLE test(id INT, label CHAR(1))"); stmt->execute("INSERT INTO test(id, label) VALUES (1, 'a')"); delete stmt; delete con; } catch (sql::SQLException &e) { /* The MySQL Connector/C++ throws three different exceptions: - sql::MethodNotImplementedException (derived from sql::SQLException) - sql::InvalidArgumentException (derived from sql::SQLException) - sql::SQLException (derived from std::runtime_error) */ cout << "# ERR: SQLException in " << __FILE__; cout << "(" << __FUNCTION__ << ") on line " << __LINE__ << endl; /* Use what() (derived from std::runtime_error) to fetch the error message */ cout << "# ERR: " << e.what(); cout << " (MySQL error code: " << e.getErrorCode(); cout << ", SQLState: " << e.getSQLState() << " )" << endl; return EXIT_FAILURE; } cout << "Done." << endl; return EXIT_SUCCESS; } ###END hello.cpp### ###BEGIN Make File### SRCS := hello.cpp OBJS := $(SRCS:.cpp=.o) CXXFLAGS := -Wall -pedantic INCPATHS := -I/home/user/mysql-connector/include/ LIBPATHS := -L/home/user/mysql-connector/lib/ -L/home/user/mysql-connector-c/lib/ LIBS := -static -lmysqlclient -mysqlcppconn-static EXE := MyExecutable $(EXE): $(OBJS) $(CXX) $(OBJS) $(LIBPATHS) $(LIBS) -o $@ .cpp.o: $(CXX) $(CXXFLAGS) $(INCPATHS) -c $< -o $@ ###End Makefile###

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• Who IS Brian Solis?

  - by Michael Snow

  Q: Brian, Welcome to the WebCenter Blog. Can you tell our readers your current role and what career path brought you here? A: I’m proudly serving as a principal analyst at Altimeter Group, a research based advisory firm in Silicon Valley. My career path, well, let’s just say it’s a long and winding road. As a kid, I was fascinated with technology. I learned programming at an early age and found myself naturally drawn to all things tech. I started my career as a database programmer at a technology marketing agency in Southern California. When I saw the chance to work with tech companies and help them better market their capabilities to businesses and consumers, I switched focus from programming to marketing and advertising. As technologist, my approach to marketing was different. I didn’t believe in hype, fluff or buzz words. I believed in translating features into benefits and specifications and capabilities into solutions for real world problems and opportunities. In the mid 90’s I experimented with direct to consumer/customer engagement in dedicated technology forums and boards. I quickly realized that the entire approach to do so would need to change. Therefore, I learned and developed new methods for a more social and informed way of engaging people in ways that helped them, marketed the company, and also tied to tangible benefits for the company. This work would lead me to start an agency in 1999 dedicated to interactive marketing. As I continued to experiment with interactive platforms, I developed interesting methods for converting one-to-many forms of media into one-to-one-to-many programs. I ran that company until joining Altimeter Group. Along the way, in the early 2000s, I realized that everything was changing and that there were others like me finding success in what would become a more social form of media. I dedicated a significant amount of my time to sharing everything that I learned in the form of articles, blogs, and eventually books. My mission became to share my experience with anyone who’d listen. It would later become much bigger than marketing, this would lead to a decade of work, that still continues, in business transformation. Then and now, I find myself always assuming the role of a student. Q: As an industry analyst & technology change evangelist, what are you primarily focused on these days? A: As a digital analyst, I study how disruptive technology impacts business. As an aspiring social scientist, I study how technology affects human behavior. I explore both horizons professionally and personally to better understand the future of popular culture and also the opportunities that exist for organizations to improve relationships and experiences with customers and the people that are important to them. Q: People cite that the line between work and life is getting more and more blurred. Do you see your personal life influencing your professional work? A: The line between work and life isn’t blurred it’s been overtly crossed and erased. We live in an always on society. The digital lifestyle keeps us connected to one another it keeps us connected all the time. Whether your sending or checking email, trying to catch up, or simply trying to get ahead, people are spending the equivalent of an extra day at work in the time they spend out of work…working. That’s absurd. It’s a matter of survival. It’s also a matter of unintended, subconscious self-causation. We brought this on ourselves and continue to do so. Think about your day. You’re in meetings for the better part of each day. You probably spend evenings and weekends catching up on email and actually doing the work you couldn’t get to during the day. And, your co-workers and executives are doing the same thing. So if you try to slow down, you find yourself at a disadvantage as you’re willfully pulling yourself out of an unfortunate culture of whenever wherever business dynamics. If you’re unresponsive or unreachable, someone within your organization or on your team is accessible. Over time, this could contribute to unfavorable impressions. I choose to steer my life balance in ways that complement one another. But, I don’t pretend to have this figured out by any means. In fact, I find myself swimming upstream like those around me. It’s essentially a competition for relevance and at some point I’ll learn how to earn attention and relevance while redrawing the line between work and life. Q: How can people keep up with what you’re working on? A: The easy answer is that people can keep up with me at briansolis.com. But, I also try to reach people where their attention is focused. Whether it’s Facebook (facebook.com/briansolis), Twitter (@briansolis), Google+ (+briansolis), Youtube (briansolis.tv) or through books and conferences, people can usually find me in a place of their choosing. Q: Recently, you’ve been working with us here at Oracle on something exciting coming up later this week. What’s on the horizon? A: I spent some time with the Oracle team reviewing the idea of Digital Darwinism and how technology and society are evolving faster than many organizations can adapt. Digital Darwinism: How Brands Can Survive the Rapid Evolution of Society and Technology Thursday, December 13, 2012, 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET Q: You’ve been very actively pursued for media interviews and conference and company speaking engagements – anything you’d like to share to give us a sneak peak of what to expect on Thursday’s webcast? A: We’re inviting guests to join us online as we dive into the future of business and how the convergence of technology and connected consumerism would ultimately impact how business is done. It’ll be an exciting and revealing conversation that explores just how much everything is changing. We’ll also review the importance of adapting to emergent trends and how to compete for the future. It’s important to recognize that change is not happening to us, it’s happening because of us. We are part of the revolution and therefore we need to help organizations adapt from the inside out. Watch the Entire Oracle Social Business Thought Leaders Webcast Series On-Demand and Stay Tuned for More to Come in 2013!

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• C# in Depth, Third Edition by Jon Skeet, Manning Publications Co. Book Review

  - by Compudicted

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Compudicted/archive/2013/10/24/c-in-depth-third-edition-by-jon-skeet-manning-publications.aspx I started reading this ebook on September 28, 2013, the same day it was sent my way by Manning Publications Co. for review while it still being fresh off the press. So 1st thing – thanks to Manning for this opportunity and a free copy of this must have on every C# developer’s desk book! Several hours ago I finished reading this book (well, except a for a large portion of its quite lengthy appendix). I jumped writing this review right away while still being full of emotions and impressions from reading it thoroughly and running code examples. Before I go any further I would like say that I used to program on various platforms using various languages starting with the Mainframe and ending on Windows, and I gradually shifted toward dealing with databases more than anything, however it happened with me to program in C# 1 a lot when it was first released and then some C# 2 with a big leap in between to C# 5. So my perception and experience reading this book may differ from yours. Also what I want to tell is somewhat funny that back then, knowing some Java and seeing C# 1 released, initially made me drawing a parallel that it is a copycat language, how wrong was I… Interestingly, Jon programs in Java full time, but how little it was mentioned in the book! So more on the book: Be informed, this is not a typical “Recipes”, “Cookbook” or any set of ready solutions, it is rather targeting mature, advanced developers who do not only know how to use a number of features, but are willing to understand how the language is operating “under the hood”. I must state immediately, at the same time I am glad the author did not go into the murky depths of the MSIL, so this is a very welcome decision on covering a modern language as C# for me, thank you Jon! Frankly, not all was that rosy regarding the tone and structure of the book, especially the the first half or so filled me with several negative and positive emotions overpowering each other. To expand more on that, some statements in the book appeared to be bias to me, or filled with pre-justice, it started to look like it had some PR-sole in it, but thankfully this was all gone toward the end of the 1st third of the book. Specifically, the mention on the C# language popularity, Java is the #1 language as per https://sites.google.com/site/pydatalog/pypl/PyPL-PopularitY-of-Programming-Language (many other sources put C at the top which I highly doubt), also many interesting functional languages as Clojure and Groovy appeared and gained huge traction which run on top of Java/JVM whereas C# does not enjoy such a situation. If we want to discuss the popularity in general and say how fast a developer can find a new job that pays well it would be indeed the very Java, C++ or PHP, never C#. Or that phrase on language preference as a personal issue? We choose where to work or we are chosen because of a technology used at a given software shop, not vice versa. The book though it technically very accurate with valid code, concise examples, but I wish the author would give more concrete, real-life examples on where each feature should be used, not how. Another point to realize before you get the book is that it is almost a live book which started to be written when even C# 3 wasn’t around so a lot of ground is covered (nearly half of the book) on the pre-C# 3 feature releases so if you already have a solid background in the previous releases and do not plan to upgrade, perhaps half of the book can be skipped, otherwise this book is surely highly recommended. Alas, for me it was a hard read, most of it. It was not boring (well, only may be two times), it was just hard to grasp some concepts, but do not get me wrong, it did made me pause, on several occasions, and made me read and re-read a page or two. At times I even wondered if I have any IQ at all (LOL). Be prepared to read A LOT on generics, not that they are widely used in the field (I happen to work as a consultant and went thru a lot of code at many places) I can tell my impression is the developers today in best case program using examples found at OpenStack.com. Also unlike the Java world where having the most recent version is nearly mandated by the OSS most companies on the Microsoft platform almost never tempted to upgrade the .Net version very soon and very often. As a side note, I was glad to see code recently that included a nullable variable (myvariable? notation) and this made me smile, besides, I recommended that person this book to expand her knowledge. The good things about this book is that Jon maintains an active forum, prepared code snippets and even a small program (Snippy) that is happy to run the sample code saving you from writing any plumbing code. A tad now on the C# language itself – it sure enjoyed a wonderful road toward perfection and a very high adoption, especially for ASP development. But to me all the recent features that made this statically typed language more dynamic look strange. Don’t we have F#? Which supposed to be the dynamic language? Why do we need to have a hybrid language? Now the developers live their lives in dualism of the static and dynamic variables! And LINQ to SQL, it is covered in depth, but wasn’t it supposed to be dropped? Also it seems that very little is being added, and at a slower pace, e.g. Roslyn will come in late 2014 perhaps, and will be probably the only main feature. Again, it is quite hard to read this book as various chapters, C# versions mentioned every so often only if I only could remember what was covered exactly where! So the fact it has so many jumps/links back and forth I recommend the ebook format to make the navigations easier to perform and I do recommend using software that allows bookmarking, also make sure you have access to plenty of coffee and pizza (hey, you probably know this joke – who a programmer is) ! In terms of closing, if you stuck at C# 1 or 2 level, it is time to embrace the power of C# 5! Finally, to compliment Manning, this book unlike from any other publisher so far, was the only one as well readable (put it formatted) on my tablet as in Adobe Reader on a laptop.

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• How to get SQL Railroad Diagrams from MSDN BNF syntax notation.

  - by Phil Factor

  pre {margin-bottom:.0001pt; font-size:8.0pt; font-family:"Courier New"; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; } On SQL Server Books-On-Line, in the Transact-SQL Reference (database Engine), every SQL Statement has its syntax represented in  ‘Backus–Naur Form’ notation (BNF)  syntax. For a programmer in a hurry, this should be ideal because It is the only quick way to understand and appreciate all the permutations of the syntax. It is a great feature once you get your eye in. It isn’t the only way to get the information;  You can, of course, reverse-engineer an understanding of the syntax from the examples, but your understanding won’t be complete, and you’ll have wasted time doing it. BNF is a good start in representing the syntax:  Oracle and SQLite go one step further, and have proper railroad diagrams for their syntax, which is a far more accessible way of doing it. There are three problems with the BNF on MSDN. Firstly, it is isn’t a standard version of  BNF, but an ancient fork from EBNF, inherited from Sybase. Secondly, it is excruciatingly difficult to understand, and thirdly it has a number of syntactic and semantic errors. The page describing DML triggers, for example, currently has the absurd BNF error that makes it state that all statements in the body of the trigger must be separated by commas.  There are a few other detail problems too. Here is the offending syntax for a DML trigger, pasted from MSDN. Trigger on an INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE statement to a table or view (DML Trigger) CREATE TRIGGER [ schema_name . ]trigger_name ON { table | view } [ WITH <dml_trigger_option> [ ,...n ] ] { FOR | AFTER | INSTEAD OF } { [ INSERT ] [ , ] [ UPDATE ] [ , ] [ DELETE ] } [ NOT FOR REPLICATION ] AS { sql_statement [ ; ] [ ,...n ] | EXTERNAL NAME <method specifier [ ; ] > }   <dml_trigger_option> ::=     [ ENCRYPTION ]     [ EXECUTE AS Clause ]   <method_specifier> ::=  This should, of course, be /* Trigger on an INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE statement to a table or view (DML Trigger) */ CREATE TRIGGER [ schema_name . ]trigger_name ON { table | view } [ WITH <dml_trigger_option> [ ,...n ] ] { FOR | AFTER | INSTEAD OF } { [ INSERT ] [ , ] [ UPDATE ] [ , ] [ DELETE ] } [ NOT FOR REPLICATION ] AS { {sql_statement [ ; ]} [ ...n ] | EXTERNAL NAME <method_specifier> [ ; ] }   <dml_trigger_option> ::=     [ ENCRYPTION ]     [ EXECUTE AS CLAUSE ]   <method_specifier> ::=     assembly_name.class_name.method_name I’d love to tell Microsoft when I spot errors like this so they can correct them but I can’t. Obviously, there is a mechanism on MSDN to get errors corrected by using comments, but that doesn’t work for me (*Error occurred while saving your data.”), and when I report that the comment system doesn’t work to MSDN, I get no reply. I’ve been trying to create railroad diagrams for all the important SQL Server SQL statements, as good as you’d find for Oracle, and have so far published the CREATE TABLE and ALTER TABLE railroad diagrams based on the BNF. Although I’ve been aware of them, I’ve never realised until recently how many errors there are. Then, Colin Daley created a translator for the SQL Server dialect of  BNF which outputs standard EBNF notation used by the W3C. The example MSDN BNF for the trigger would be rendered as … /* Trigger on an INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE statement to a table or view (DML Trigger) */ create_trigger ::= 'CREATE TRIGGER' ( schema_name '.' ) ? trigger_name 'ON' ( table | view ) ( 'WITH' dml_trigger_option ( ',' dml_trigger_option ) * ) ? ( 'FOR' | 'AFTER' | 'INSTEAD OF' ) ( ( 'INSERT' ) ? ( ',' ) ? ( 'UPDATE' ) ? ( ',' ) ? ( 'DELETE' ) ? ) ( 'NOT FOR REPLICATION' ) ? 'AS' ( ( sql_statement ( ';' ) ? ) + | 'EXTERNAL NAME' method_specifier ( ';' ) ? )   dml_trigger_option ::= ( 'ENCRYPTION' ) ? ( 'EXECUTE AS CLAUSE' ) ?   method_specifier ::= assembly_name '.' class_name '.' method_name Colin’s intention was to allow anyone to paste SQL Server’s BNF notation into his website-based parser, and from this generate classic railroad diagrams via Gunther Rademacher's Railroad Diagram Generator.  Colin's application does this for you: you're not aware that you are moving to a different site.  Because Colin's 'translator' it is a parser, it will pick up syntax errors. Once you’ve fixed the syntax errors, you will get the syntax in the form of a human-readable railroad diagram and, in this form, the semantic mistakes become flamingly obvious. Gunter’s Railroad Diagram Generator is brilliant. To be able, after correcting the MSDN dialect of BNF, to generate a standard EBNF, and from thence to create railroad diagrams for SQL Server’s syntax that are as good as Oracle’s, is a great boon, and many thanks to Colin for the idea. Here is the result of the W3C EBNF from Colin’s application then being run through the Railroad diagram generator. create_trigger: dml_trigger_option: method_specifier:   Now that’s much better, you’ll agree. This is pretty easy to understand, and at this point any error is immediately obvious. This should be seriously useful, and it is to me. However  there is that snag. The BNF is generally incorrect, and you can’t expect the average visitor to mess about with it. The answer is, of course, to correct the BNF on MSDN and maybe even add railroad diagrams for the syntax. Stop giggling! I agree it won’t happen. In the meantime, we need to collaboratively store and publish these corrected syntaxes ourselves as we do them. How? GitHub?  SQL Server Central?  Simple-Talk? What should those of us who use the system  do with our corrected EBNF so that anyone can use them without hassle?

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• The hidden cost of interrupting knowledge workers

  - by Piet

  The November issue of pragpub has an interesting article on interruptions. The article is written by Brian Tarbox, who also mentions the article on his blog. I like the subtitle: ‘Simple Strategies for Avoiding Dumping Your Mental Stack’. Brian talks about the effective cost of interrupting a ‘knowledge worker’, often with trivial questions or distractions. In the eyes of the interruptor, the interruption only costs the time the interrupted had to listen to the question and give an answer. However, depending on what the interrupted was doing at the time, getting fully immersed in their task again might take up to 15-20 minutes. Enough interruptions might even cause a knowledge worker to mentally call it a day. According to this article interruptions can consume about 28% of a knowledge worker’s time, translating in a $588 billion loss for US companies each year. Looking for a new developer to join your team? Ever thought about optimizing your team’s environment and the way they work instead? Making non knowledge workers aware You can’t. Well, I haven’t succeeded yet. And believe me: I’ve tried. When you’ve got a simple way to really increase your productivity (’give me 2 hours of uninterrupted time a day’) it wouldn’t be right not to tell your boss or team-leader about it. The problem is: only productive knowledge workers seem to understand this. People who don’t fall into this category just seem to think you’re joking, being arrogant or anti-social when you tell them the interruptions can really have an impact on your productivity. Also, knowledge workers often work in a very concentrated mental state which is described here as: It is the same mindfulness as ecstatic lovemaking, the merging of two into a fluidly harmonious one. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task. Yes, coding can be addictive and if you’re interrupting a programmer at the wrong moment, you’re effectively bringing down a junkie from his high in just a few seconds. This can result in seemingly arrogant, almost aggressive reactions. How to make people aware of the production-cost they’re inflicting: I’ve been often pondering that question myself. The article suggests that solutions based on that question never seem to work. To be honest: I’ve never even been able to find a half decent solution for this question. People who are not in this situations just don’t understand the issue, no matter how you try to explain it. Fun (?) thing I’ve noticed: Programmers or IT people in general who don’t get this are often the kind of people who just don’t get anything done. Interrupt handling (interruption management?) IRL Have non-urgent questions handled in a non-interruptive way It helps a bit to educate people into using non-interruptive ways to ask questions: “duh, I have no idea, but I’m a bit busy here now could you put it in an email so I don’t forget?”. Eventually, a considerable amount of people will skip interrupting you and just send an email right away. Some stubborn-headed people however will continue to just interrupt you, saying “you’re 10 meters from my desk, why can’t we just talk?”. Just remember to disable your email notifications, it can be hard to resist opening your email client when you know a new email just arrived. Use Do Not Disturb signals When working in a group of programmers, often the unofficial sign you can only be interrupted for something important is to put on headphones. And when the environment is quiet enough, often people aren’t even listening to music. Otherwise music can help to block the indirect distractions (someone else talking on the phone or tapping their feet). You might get a “they’re all just surfing and listening to music”-reaction from outsiders though. Peopleware talks about a team where the no-interruption sign was placing a shawl on the desk. If I remember correctly, I am unable to locate my copy of this really excellent must-read book. If you have all standardized on the same IM tool, maybe that tool has a ‘do not disturb’ setting. Also some phone-systems have a ‘DND’ (do not disturb) setting. Hide Brian offers a number of good suggestions, some obvious like: hide away somewhere they can’t find you. Not sure how long it’ll be till someone thinks you’re just taking a nap somewhere though. Also, this often isn’t possible or your boss might not understand this. And if you really get caught taking a nap, make sure to explain that your were powernapping. Counter-act interruptions Another suggestion he offers is when you’re being interrupted to just hold up your hand, blocking the interruption, and at least giving you time to finish your sentence or your block/line of code. The last suggestion works more as a way to make it obvious to the interruptor that they really are interrupting your work and to offload some of the cost on the interruptor. In practice, this can also helps you cool down a bit so you don’t start saying nasty things to the interruptor. Unfortunately I’ve sometimes been confronted with people who just ignore this signal and keep talking, as if they’re sure that whatever they’ve got to say is really worth listening to and without a doubt more important than anything you might be doing. This behaviour usually leaves me speechless (not good when someone just asked a question). I’ve noticed that these people are usually also the first to complain when being interrupted themselves. They’re generally not very liked as colleagues, so try not to imitate their behaviour. TDD as a way to minimize recovery time I don’t like Test Driven Development. Mainly for only one reason: It interrupts flow. At least, that’s what it does for me, but maybe I’m just not grown used to TDD yet. BUT a positive effect TDD has on me when I have to work in an interruptive environment and can’t really get into the ‘flow’ (also supposedly called ‘the zone’ by software developers, although I’ve never heard it 1st hand), TDD helps me to concentrate on the tasks at hand and helps me to get back at work after an interruption. I feel when using TDD, I can get by without the need for being totally ‘in’ the project and I can be reasonably productive without obtaining ‘flow’. Do you have a suggestion on how to make people aware of the concept of ‘flow’ and the cost of interruptions? (without looking like an arrogant ass or a weirdo)

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• 24+ Coda Alternatives for Windows and Linux

  - by Matt

  Coda plays an important role in designing layout on Mac. There are numerous coda alternatives for windows and Linux too. It is not possible to describe each and everyone so some of the coda alternatives, which work on both windows and Linux platforms, are discussed below. EditPlus $35.00 Good thing about EditPlus is that it highlights URLs and email addresses, activating them when you ‘crtl + double-click’. It also has a built in browser for previewing HTML, and FTP and SFTP support. Also supports Macros and RegEx find and replace. UltraEdit $49.99 It is another good coda alternative for windows and Linux. It is the best suited editor for text, HTML and HEX. It also plays an advanced PHP, Perl, Java and JavaScript editor for programmers. It supports disk-based 64-bit or standard file handling on 32-bit Windows platforms or window 2000 and later versions. HippoEdit $39.95 HippoEDIT has the best autocomplete it gives pop a ‘tooltip’ above your cursor as you type, suggesting words you’ve already typed. It does syntax highlighting for over 2 dozen language. Sublime Text $59.00 Sublime Text awesome ‘zoomed out’ view of the file lets you focus on the area you want. It lets you open a local file when you right-click on its link, and there are a few automation features, so this would make a solid choice of a text editor. Textpad $24.70 TextPad is simple editor with nifty features such as column select, drag-and-drop text between files, and hyperlink support. It also supports large files. Aptana Free Aptana Studio is one of the best editors working on both windows and Linux. It is a complete web development setting that has a nice blend of powerful authoring tools with a collection of online hosting and collaboration services. It is quite helpful as it support for PHP, CSS, FTP, and more. SciTE Free It is a SCIntilla based Text Editor. It has gradually developed as a generally useful editor. It provides for building and running programs. It is best to be used for jobs with simple configurations. SciTE is currently available for Intel Win32 and Linux compatible operating systems with GTK+. It has been run on Windows XP and on Fedora 8 and Ubuntu 7.10 with GTK+ 2.12 E Text Editor $34.96 E Text Editor is a new text editor for Windows, which also works on Linux as well. It has powerful editing features and also some unique abilities. It makes text manipulation quite fast and easy, and makes user focus on his writing as it automatically does all the manual work. It can be extend it in any language. It supports Text Mate bundles, thus allows the user to tap into a huge and active community. Editra Free Editra is an upcoming editor, with some fantastic features such as user profiles, auto-completion, session saving, and syntax highlighing for 60+ languages. Plugins can extend the feature set, offering an integrated python console, FTP client, file browser, and calculator, among others. PSPad Free PSPad is a good Template for writing CSS, as it an internal web browser, and a macro recorder to the table. It also supports hex editing, and some degree of code compiling. JEdit Free It is a mature programmer’s text editor and has taken a good deal of time to be developed as it is today. It is better than many costlier development tools due to its features and simplicity of use. It has been released as free software with full source code, provided under the terms of the GPL 2.0. Which also adds to its attractiveness. NEdit Free It is a multi-purpose text editor for the X Window System, which also works on Linux. It combines a standard, easy to use, graphical user interface with the full functionality and stability required by users who edit text for long period a day. It also provides for thorough support for development in various languages. It also facilitates the use of text processors, and other tools at the same time. It can be used productively by anyone who needs to edit text. It is quite a user-friendly tool. Its salient features include syntax highlighting with built in pattern, auto indent, tab emulation, block indentation adjustment etc. As of version 5.1, NEdit may be freely distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. MadEdit Free Mad Edit is an Open-Source and Cross-Platform Text/Hex Editor. It is written in C++ and wxWidgets. MadEdit can edit files in Text/Column/Hex modes. It also supports many useful functions, such as Syntax Highlighting, Word Wrap, Encoding for UTF8/16/32,and others. It also supports word count, which makes it quite a useful text editor for both windows and Linux. It has been recently modified on 10/09/2010. KompoZer Free Kompozer is a complete web authoring system that has a combination of web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing. KompoZer has been designed to be completely and extensively easy to use. It is thus an ideal tool for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive, professional-looking web site without knowing HTML or web coding. It is based on the NVU source code. Vim Free Vim or “Vi IMproved” is an advanced text editor. Its salient features are syntax highlighting, word completion and it also has a huge amount of contributed content. Vim has several “modes” on offer for editing, which adds to the efficiency in editing. Thus it becomes a non-user-friendly application but it is also strength for its users. The normal mode binds alphanumeric keys to task-oriented commands. The visual mode highlights text. More tools for search & replace, defining functions, etc. are offered through command line mode. Vim comes with complete help. NotePad ++ Free One of the the best free text editor for Windows out there; with support for simple things—like syntax highlighting and folding—all the way up to FTP, Notepad++ should tick most of the boxes Notepad2 Free Notepad2 is also based on the Scintilla editing engine, but it’s much simpler than Notepad++. It bills itself as being fast, light-weight, and Notepad-like. Crimson Editor Free Crimson Editor has the ability to edit remote files, using a built-in FTP client; there’s also a spell checker. TotalEdit Free TotalEdit allows file comparison, RegEx search and replace, and has multiple options for file backup / versioning. For cleanup, it offers (X)HTML and XML customizable formatting, and a spell checker. In-Type Free ConTEXT Free SourceEdit Free SourceEdit includes features such as clipboard history, syntax highlighting and autocompletion for a decent set of languages. A hex editor and FTP client. RJ TextED Free RJ TextED supports integration with TopStyle Lite. Provides HTML validation and formatting. It includes an FTP client, a file browser, and a code browser, as well as a character map and support for email. GEDIT Free It is one of the best coda alternatives for windows and Linux. It has syntax highlighting and is best suitable for programming. It has many attractive features such as full support for UTF-8, undo/redo, and clipboard support, search and replace, configurable syntax highlighting for various languages and many more supportive features. It is extensible with plug ins. Other important coda alternatives for windows and Linux are Redcar, Bluefish Editor, NVU, Ruby Mine, Slick Edit, Geany, Editra, txt2html and CSSED. There are many more. Its up to user to decide which one suits best to his requirements. Related posts:10 Useful Text Editor For Developer Applications to Install & Run Windows on Linux Open Source WYSIWYG Text Editors

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