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• Customer Reviews on Company Listings [closed]

  - by GSTAR

  I'm not sure if this is the right place but I am after some general advice on a feature I am looking to implement on my website. The website I have is a Wedding Directory. Here, companies can advertise in the form of a directory listing. This listing contains the company details - such as what they do and how you can contact them. There are three packages available - Basic package is free and Silver and Gold packages are charged for. Now in order to further enhance the directory, I want to enable customer reviews for each listing. This is basically whereby customers who have used a particular company's service can write a review (and rate out of 5) of their experience. The dilemma I face is that if customers are to be paying for their listings then surely they will expect to not have content on their listing that would tarnish their reputation (i.e. negative reviews). But at the same time I want to be impartial and help my site visitors to make informed choices on which companies to book when arranging their weddings. Of course I will exercise my ability to remove offensive or fake reviews but I do not want to be removing reviews just to satisfy my clients. Suppose a client pays me a premium fee to have their listing on my front page and at the top of the listings. Now suppose that client gets lost of negative reviews - the fact that they have increased visibility means that they will also get increased bad publicity. This in turn means they won't renew their package and will most likely request the listing to be taken down. So, how can I get the right balance here and keep everyone happy?

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• What are all things that do/can happen when a user enters in a web page's URL?

  - by Job

  Sorry if this is a naive title. I am trying to break into web development, which is so far a foreign world to me. I have taken a basic intro to OS, intro to Networking as part of my bachelors degree several years ago. I cannot say that we went into things deeply, beyond academic assignments. I would like to understand things much better regarding to this specific task (e.g what goes on in at the OS level, at networking level, what are other computers involved, where do proxy servers and hackers come in). Again, at the very basic level this has been covered, but I would like to review this specific thing better. Are there chapter(s) os a specific book, or specific SHORT reading that you recommend? I have nothing against your list of 20 favorite books, but I want to understand this one thing better in 2-3 weeks of reading after work / on the weekends (realistically 5-10 hrs per week, so I am looking for about 15-20 hrs of reading material, NO MORE). I am not a fast reader :) Thanks.

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• Enablement 2.0 Get Specialized!

  - by mseika

  Enablement 2.0 Get Specialized! The Oracle PartnerNetwork Specialized program is releasing new certifications on our latest products, and partners are invited to be the first candidates to get certified. Oracle's Certified Exams go through a rigorous review process called a "beta period". Here are a few advantages of taking a Beta Exam: Certification exams taken during the beta period count towards company Specializations. Most new Certified Specialist Exams have no training requirement. Beta Exams Vouchers are available in limited quantity, so request a voucher today by contacting the Partner Enablement Team and act fast to reserve your test from the list below. FREE Certification Testing Are you attending OPN Exchange @ OpenWorld? Then join us at OPN Specialist Test Fest! October 1st - 4th 2012, Marriott Marquis Hotel Pre-register now! Beta testing period will end on October, 6th, 2012 for the following exams: Oracle E-Business Suite R12 Project Essentials (1Z1-511) Beta testing period will end on October, 13th, 2012 for the following exams: Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Management Essentials (1Z1-588) Beta testing period will end on November, 17th, 2012 for the following exams: Oracle Global Trade Management 6 Essentials (1Z1-589) Exams Coming Soon in Beta Oracle Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration Essentials Exam (1Z1-469) Take the exam(s) now at a near-by Pearson VUE testing center! Contact Us Please direct any inquiries you may have to the Oracle Partner Enablement team at [email protected] For More Information Oracle Certification Program Beta Exams OPN Certified Specialist Exam Study Guides OPN Certified Specialist FAQ

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• Best practice- handling images on website

  - by Steve

  I am porting an old eCommerce site to MVC 3 and would like to take advantage of design improvements. The site currently has product images stored in 3 sizes: thumbnail, medium (for display in a list) and expanded for a zoomed look. Right now we are having to upload 3 separate images that are sized exactly right, provide 3 different names that match what the site expects, etc., it is a pain. I'd like to upload just 1 file, the large one, then let the site reduce it to needed sizes, and I'd like the flexibility to change the thumbnail and list sizes depending on user preferences, form factor (e.g. mobile, iPad, desktop), etc. so might need many copies of the same image. My question is should the image be reduced then saved several times upon upload and if so what is a good storage/naming convention? The other idea is to store just the single image but resize it programmatically before serving it to the client. Has anybody done this and what are the tradeoffs besides a few more machine cycles? How do you pass a temporary image in memory to the client (there is no URL)?

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• Monday at Oracle OpenWorld 2012 - Must See Session: “Using the Right Tools, Techniques, and Technologies for Integration Projects”

  - by Lionel Dubreuil

  Don’t miss this “CON8669 - Using the Right Tools, Techniques, and Technologies for Integration Projects“ session with Timothy Hall - Sr. Director, Oracle: Date: Monday, Oct 1, Time: 3:15 PM - 4:15 PM Location: Moscone South - 308 Every integration project brings its own unique set of challenges. There are many tools and techniques to choose from. How do you ensure that you have a means of consistently and repeatedly making decisions about which tools, techniques, and technologies are used? In working with many customers around the globe, Oracle has developed a set of criteria to help evaluate a variety of common integration questions. This session explores these criteria and how they have been further organized into decision trees that offer a repeatable means for ensuring that project teams are given the same guidance from project to project. Using these techniques, the presentation shows how you can reduce risk and speed productivity for your projects Objectives for this session are to: Discuss common questions that arise at the start of integration projects Review various decision criteria and approaches for getting to a consistent set of answers Explore how these techniques can be used to reduce risk and speed productivity Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";}

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• Composer support

  - by Tomas Mysik

  Hi all, today we would like to introduce you our Composer support which will be present in NetBeans 7.3. If anyone of you does not know Composer yet, please be informed that: "Composer is a tool for dependency management in PHP. It allows you to declare the dependent libraries your project needs and it will install them in your project for you." So, what support do we have in NetBeans? The first step, as usually, is to open the Composer IDE Options panel: Once it is configured properly, it is time to create composer.json file where we can define dependencies (libraries) of our PHP project: The generated file is opened so we can review it and add any libraries:  Now, you are ready to install, update or validate library dependencies of your PHP project: We hope that you enjoy this initial support and that we will be able to improve it in the next version of NetBeans.    That's all for today, as always, please test it and report all the issues or enhancements you find in NetBeans Bugzilla (component php, subcomponent Composer).

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• Is it a good practice to create a list of definitions for all symbols and words in a programming language?

  - by MrDaniel

  After arriving at this point in Learning Python The Hard Way I am wondering if this is a good practice to create a list of symbols and define what they do as noted in bold below, for every programming language. This seems reasonable, and might be very useful to have when jumping between programming languages? Is this something that programmers do or is it just a waste of effort? Exercise 22: What Do You Know So Far? There won't be any code in this exercise or the next one, so there's no WYSS or Extra Credit either. In fact, this exercise is like one giant Extra Credit. I'm going to have you do a form of review what you have learned so far. First, go back through every exercise you have done so far and write down every word and symbol (another name for 'character') that you have used. Make sure your list of symbols is complete. Next to each word or symbol, write its name and what it does. If you can't find a name for a symbol in this book, then look for it online. If you do not know what a word or symbol does, then go read about it again and try using it in some code. You may run into a few things you just can't find out or know, so just keep those on the list and be ready to look them up when you find them. Once you have your list, spend a few days rewriting the list and double checking that it's correct. This may get boring but push through and really nail it down. Once you have memorized the list and what they do, then you should step it up by writing out tables of symbols, their names, and what they do from memory. When you hit some you can't recall from memory, go back and memorize them again.

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• SourceMonitor Beta Test Version 3.3.2.261 now available

  - by TATWORTH

  Source Monitor is a useful independent utility for producing code metrics. Beta Test Version 3.3.2.261 has been released.Download and test Source Monitor beta (Version 3.3.2.261 - 2.30 MBytes)  via HTTP"The Beta page is at http://www.campwoodsw.com/smbeta.htmlHere is the official description of it>The freeware program Source Monitor lets you see inside your software source code to find out how much code you have and to identify the relative complexity of your modules. For example, you can use Source Monitor to identify the code that is most likely to contain defects and thus warrants formal review. Source Monitor, written in C++, runs through your code at high speed. Source Monitor provides the following: Collects metrics in a fast, single pass through source files.Measures metrics for source code written in C++, C, C#, VB.NET, Java, Delphi, Visual Basic (VB6) or HTML.Includes method and function level metrics for C++, C, C#, VB.NET, Java, and Delphi. Offers Modified Complexity metric option. Saves metrics in checkpoints for comparison during software development projects.Displays and prints metrics in tables and charts, including Kiviat diagrams.Operates within a standard Windows GUI or inside your scripts using XML command files.Exports metrics to XML or CSV (comma-separated-value) files for further processing with other tools.

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• New Online Learning Library (OLL) content

  - by Irina

  Looking to brush up on OAM or OVD skills? Want some help with OIM? Well, have you checked our Online Learning Library (OLL) recently? OLL is a great way to pickup new skills in short blocks of time, and there is an enormous selection, on a diverse set of products. Every month these trainings get hundreds or thousands of hits. It would be worth your while to spend some time just poking around the nooks and crannies for items that interest you.A smattering of new OBEs and other content have recently become available, and if you haven't already, you might want to check them out: Identity Management: Business Scenarios Business and IT – Collaborative Access Review Sign Off and Closed Loop Identity Certification Oracle Identity Governance: End to End integration From Oracle Identity Manager to a Target Webservice Oracle Identity Manager: Configuring SOA Composite Oracle Identity Manager: Web Services Connector - Overview How to do a basic Oracle Virtual Directory (OVD) Setup? How to setup a simple Oracle Virtual Directory (OVD) Join? Installing Oracle Access Manager: Identity Server and WebPass  Also new is an Oracle University 5-day class you might want to investigate: Oracle Access Manager R2: Administration Essentials An OAM Advanced Administration class is in the works and should be available late summer or fall, so keep your calendar clear! Be sure to let us know in the Comments if there is a training you would find useful. Happy Trails :)

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• I want to make "stuff" on the web, is a BsC. in Computers necessary/overkill? [on hold]

  - by notypist

  I'm 24 and have a lead role in a major news outlet in my country, with a good pay and public image in the horizon. I hold a job that was previously held by people with 15-20 years of experience and considered one of the top 5 news anchors in my country. My passion though, is computers. The web, to be precise. I was a problogger at a very young age. I hacked my way through CSS and some basic HTML and PHP. But I want to move forward - I want to CREATE not just STRUCTURE things. Giving up the present (and especially the seemingly promising future) in my current industry is hard, my friends raise their eyebrows... I'm considering a BsC. in computer Engineering - but my stats are short of getting into a good university for this discipline. Plus, I'm not the best with math - although I do exceptionally well in statistics and other numbers that are more applicable to real life. I tried learning PHP through online websites, but that just "doesn't cut it" for me. Nope. So what are my options here? if I don't want to build hardware or and deal with overly-complex algorithmic but would like, for example - to build a well functioning iPhone and iPad app, or a SaaS, a startup...do I have to go the BsC. route? I don't see any option to get an "official" education in strictly "web" concepts and languages.. Note: I'm well off financially, so I'm doing this more to be able to create stuff, rather than get a job in a corporations. Although if I land somewhere high, that might be an option. But my main concern is getting the tools.

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• Salary Negotiation; How Best to Broach the Subject? [closed]

  - by Ed S.

  So I have an upcoming performance review / salary increase and I am at a point in which I believe I will need to negotiate a larger raise than what is to be proposed. As I suspect this may be the case I have been reading as much information on the subject (negotiation) as possible. I work for a great company and fortunately I work under some really talented and reasonable managers. Unfortunately, I am not sure how best to bring up the subject. I don't want to sound greedy and I don't want to start off on the wrong foot. For the sake of argument, assume that I am actually worth more than I am being paid at the moment and I would like to make a counter offer for a relatively large increase (say, boss says 4%, I would like to counter with 15%. I know that seems very large, but I believe I have a case for it.) My question to you, those who are/have been on the other side of this scenario, is how should I start the conversation? What approach would make you most receptive to my plea? I've never negotiated before and I just don't want to start off on the wrong foot. My direct manager is a very straightforward individual, so sugarcoating is not necessary here, but at the same time, I don't want to seem overly aggressive or demanding. Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

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• Store scores for players and produce a high score list

  - by zrvan

  This question is derived from an interview question that I got for a job I was declined. I have asked for code review for my solution at the dedicated Stack Exchange site. But I hope this question is sufficiently rephrased and asked with a different motivation not to be a duplicate of the other question. Consider the following scenario: You should store player scores in the server back end of a game. The server is written in Java. Every score should be registered, that is, one player may have any number of scores for any number of levels. A high score list should be produced with the fifteen top scores for a given level, but only one score per user (to the effect that even if player X has the two highest scores for level Y, only the first position is counted and player Z has the second place). No information should be persisted and only Java 1.7+ standard libraries should be used. No third party libraries or frameworks are acceptable. With the number of players as the primary factor, what would be the best data structure in terms of scalability and concurrency? How would you access the structure to register a single score given a level and a player id? How would you access the structure to compile the high score list?

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• Week in Geek: IPv6 Capable Smartphones Compromise User Privacy Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to “clone a disk, resize static windows, and create system function shortcuts”, use 45 different services, sites, and apps to help read favorite sites, add MP3 support to Audacity (for saving in MP3 format), install a Wii game loader for easy backups and fast load times, create a Blue Screen of Death in any color, and more. Photo by legofenris. Weekly News Links Photo by The H Security. IPv6: Smartphones compromise users’ privacy Since version 4 of the iOS operating system, Apple’s iPhones, iPads and iPods have been capable of handling IPv6, and most Android devices have been capable since version 2.1. However, the operating systems transfer an ID that discloses information about their users. Dumb phones can be attacked too Much of the discussion of security threats to mobile phones revolves around smartphones, but researchers have found that less advanced “feature phones,” still used by the majority of people around the world, also are vulnerable to attack. SCADA exploit – the dragon awakes The recent publication of an exploit for KingView, a software package for visualising industrial process control systems, appears to be having an effect. Threatpost reports that both the Chinese vendor Wellintech and Chinese CERT (CN-CERT) have now reacted. Sophos: Spam to get more malicious Spam is becoming more malicious in nature as trickery tactics change in line with current user interests, according to a new report released Tuesday by Sophos. Global spam traffic rebounds as Rustock wakes Spam is on the rise after the Rustock botnet awoke from its Christmas slumber, according to Symantec. Cracking WPA keys in the cloud At the forthcoming Black Hat conference, blogger Thomas Roth plans to demonstrate how weak WPA PSKs can be cracked quickly and easily using Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service. Microsoft Security Advisory: Vulnerability in Internet Explorer could allow remote code execution Provides a link to more details about the vulnerability and shows a work-around/fix for the problem. Adobe plans to make it easier to delete Flash cookies in web browsers The new API, NPAPI:ClearSiteData, will allow Flash cookies – also known as Local Shared Objects (LSO) – to be deleted directly in the browser’s settings. Firefox beta getting new database standard The ninth beta version of Firefox is set to get support for a standard called IndexedDB that provides a database interface useful for offline data storage and other tasks needing information on a browser’s computer. MetroPCS accused of blocking certain Net content MetroPCS is violating the FCC’s recently approved Net neutrality rules by blocking certain Internet content, say several public interest groups. Server and Tools chief Muglia to leave Microsoft in summer 2011 Microsoft veteran and Server & Tools Business (STB) President Bob Muglia is leaving Microsoft, according to an email that CEO Steve Ballmer sent to employees on January 10. Report: DOJ nearing decision on Google-ITA The U.S. Department of Justice is gearing up for a possible formal antitrust investigation into whether or not Google should be allowed to purchase travel software company ITA Software, according to a report. South Korea says Google Street View broke law Police in South Korea reportedly say Google broke the country’s law when its Street View service captured personal data from unsecure Wi-Fi networks. The backlash over Google’s HTML5 video bet Choosing strategies based on what you believe to be long-term benefits is generally a good idea when running a business, but if you manage to alienate the world in the process, the long term may become irrelevant. Google answers critics on HTML5 Web video move Google responded to critics of its decision to drop support for a popular HTML5 video codec by declaring that a royalty-supported standard for Web video will hold the Web hostage. Random TinyHacker Links A Special GiveAway: a Great Book & Great Security Software The team from 7 Tutorials has a special giveaway running during the month of January. Signed copies of their latest book, full 1-year licenses of BitDefender Internet Security 2011 and free 3-month trials for everyone willing to participate. One Click Rooting For Android Phones Here’s a nice tool that helps you root your Android phone effortlessly. New Angry Birds Free version 1.0 Available in the App Store. Google Code University Learn programming at Google Code University. Capture and Share Your Favorite Part Of a YouTube Video SnipSnip.it lets you share only the part of the video that you like. Super User Questions More great questions and answers from this past week’s popular topics at Super User. What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for? Does OS X support linux-like features? What is the easiest way to make a backup of an entire hard disk? Will shifting from Wireless to Wired network result in better performance? Is it legal to install Windows 7 Home Premium Retail inside VMware virtual machine? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Enjoy reading through our hottest articles from this past week. The 50 Best Ways to Disable Built-in Windows Features You Don’t Want The Best of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 How to Upgrade Windows 7 Easily (And Understand Whether You Should) The Worst of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: Basic Noise Removal One Year Ago on How-To Geek More great articles from one year ago filled with helpful geeky goodness for you to enjoy. Share Text & Images the Easy Way with JustPaste.it Start Portable Firefox in Safe Mode Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate Available, Here’s How to Fix Your Incompatible Extensions Protect Your Computer from “Little Hands” with KidSafe Lock Prying Eyes Out of Your Minimized Windows Custom Crocheted Cylon-Cthulhu Hybrid What happens when you let your Cylon Centurion figure and your crocheted Cthulhu spend too many lonely nights together? A Cylon-Cthulhu hybrid, of course! You can get your own from the Cthulhu Chick store over on Etsy. Note: This is not an ad…Ruth is a friend of ours, and this Cylon-Cthulhu hybrid makes the perfect guard for the new MVP trophy in our office. The Geek Note Whether it is a geeky indoor project or just getting outside, we hope that you and your families have a terrific fun-filled weekend! Remember to keep sending those great tips in to us at [email protected]. Photo by qwrrty. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Upgrade Windows 7 Easily (And Understand Whether You Should) The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: Basic Noise Removal Install a Wii Game Loader for Easy Backups and Fast Load Times The Best of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 The Worst of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy Firefox 4.0 Beta 9 Available for Download – Get Your Copy Now The Frustrations of a Computer Literate Watching a Newbie Use a Computer [Humorous Video] Season0nPass Jailbreaks Current Gen Apple TVs IBM’s Jeopardy Playing Computer Watson Shows The Pros How It’s Done [Video] Tranquil Juice Drop Abstract Wallpaper Pulse Is a Sleek Newsreader for iOS and Android Devices

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• Creating a podcast feed for iTunes & BlackBerry users using WCF Syndication

  - by brian_ritchie

   In my previous post, I showed how to create a RSS feed using WCF Syndication.  Next, I'll show how to add the additional tags needed to turn a RSS feed into an iTunes podcast.   A podcast is merely a RSS feed with some special characteristics: iTunes RSS tags.  These are additional tags beyond the standard RSS spec.  Apple has a good page on the requirements. Audio file enclosure.  This is a link to the audio file (such as mp3) hosted by your site.  Apple doesn't host the audio, they just read the meta-data from the RSS feed into their system. The SyndicationFeed class supports both AttributeExtensions & ElementExtensions to add custom tags to the RSS feeds. A couple of points of interest in the code below: The imageUrl below provides the album cover for iTunes (170px × 170px) Each SyndicationItem corresponds to an audio episode in your podcast So, here's the code: .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: Consolas, "Courier New", Courier, Monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } 1: XNamespace itunesNS = "http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd"; 2: string prefix = "itunes"; 3:   4: var feed = new SyndicationFeed(title, description, new Uri(link)); 5: feed.Categories.Add(new SyndicationCategory(category)); 6: feed.AttributeExtensions.Add(new XmlQualifiedName(prefix, 7: "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/"), itunesNS.NamespaceName); 8: feed.Copyright = new TextSyndicationContent(copyright); 9: feed.Language = "en-us"; 10: feed.Copyright = new TextSyndicationContent(DateTime.Now.Year + " " + ownerName); 11: feed.ImageUrl = new Uri(imageUrl); 12: feed.LastUpdatedTime = DateTime.Now; 13: feed.Authors.Add(new SyndicationPerson() {Name=ownerName, Email=ownerEmail }); 14: var extensions = feed.ElementExtensions; 15: extensions.Add(new XElement(itunesNS + "subtitle", subTitle).CreateReader()); 16: extensions.Add(new XElement(itunesNS + "image", 17: new XAttribute("href", imageUrl)).CreateReader()); 18: extensions.Add(new XElement(itunesNS + "author", ownerName).CreateReader()); 19: extensions.Add(new XElement(itunesNS + "summary", description).CreateReader()); 20: extensions.Add(new XElement(itunesNS + "category", 21: new XAttribute("text", category), 22: new XElement(itunesNS + "category", 23: new XAttribute("text", subCategory))).CreateReader()); 24: extensions.Add(new XElement(itunesNS + "explicit", "no").CreateReader()); 25: extensions.Add(new XDocument( 26: new XElement(itunesNS + "owner", 27: new XElement(itunesNS + "name", ownerName), 28: new XElement(itunesNS + "email", ownerEmail))).CreateReader()); 29:   30: var feedItems = new List<SyndicationItem>(); 31: foreach (var i in Items) 32: { 33: var item = new SyndicationItem(i.title, null, new Uri(link)); 34: item.Summary = new TextSyndicationContent(i.summary); 35: item.Id = i.id; 36: if (i.publishedDate != null) 37: item.PublishDate = (DateTimeOffset)i.publishedDate; 38: item.Links.Add(new SyndicationLink() { 39: Title = i.title, Uri = new Uri(link), 40: Length = i.size, MediaType = i.mediaType }); 41: var itemExt = item.ElementExtensions; 42: itemExt.Add(new XElement(itunesNS + "subtitle", i.subTitle).CreateReader()); 43: itemExt.Add(new XElement(itunesNS + "summary", i.summary).CreateReader()); 44: itemExt.Add(new XElement(itunesNS + "duration", 45: string.Format("{0}:{1:00}:{2:00}", 46: i.duration.Hours, i.duration.Minutes, i.duration.Seconds) 47: ).CreateReader()); 48: itemExt.Add(new XElement(itunesNS + "keywords", i.keywords).CreateReader()); 49: itemExt.Add(new XElement(itunesNS + "explicit", "no").CreateReader()); 50: itemExt.Add(new XElement("enclosure", new XAttribute("url", i.url), 51: new XAttribute("length", i.size), new XAttribute("type", i.mediaType))); 52: feedItems.Add(item); 53: } 54:   55: feed.Items = feedItems; If you're hosting your podcast feed within a MVC project, you can use the code from my previous post to stream it. Once you have created your feed, you can use the Feed Validator tool to make sure it is up to spec.  Or you can use iTunes: Launch iTunes. In the Advanced menu, select Subscribe to Podcast. Enter your feed URL in the text box and click OK. After you've verified your feed is solid & good to go, you can submit it to iTunes.  Launch iTunes. In the left navigation column, click on iTunes Store to open the store. Once the store loads, click on Podcasts along the top navigation bar to go to the Podcasts page. In the right column of the Podcasts page, click on the Submit a Podcast link. Follow the instructions on the Submit a Podcast page. Here are the full instructions.  Once they have approved your podcast, it will be available within iTunes. RIM has also gotten into the podcasting business...which is great for BlackBerry users.  They accept the same enhanced-RSS feed that iTunes uses, so just create an account with them & submit the feed's URL.  It goes through a similar approval process to iTunes.  BlackBerry users must be on BlackBerry 6 OS or download the Podcast App from App World. In my next post, I'll show how to build the podcast feed dynamically from the ID3 tags within the MP3 files.

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: Using &lsquo;default&rsquo; to Get Default Values

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. Today’s little wonder is another of those small items that can help a lot in certain situations, especially when writing generics.  In particular, it is useful in determining what the default value of a given type would be. The Problem: what’s the default value for a generic type? There comes a time when you’re writing generic code where you may want to set an item of a given generic type.  Seems simple enough, right?  We’ll let’s see! Let’s say we want to query a Dictionary<TKey, TValue> for a given key and get back the value, but if the key doesn’t exist, we’d like a default value instead of throwing an exception. So, for example, we might have a the following dictionary defined: 1: var lookup = new Dictionary<int, string> 2: { 3: { 1, "Apple" }, 4: { 2, "Orange" }, 5: { 3, "Banana" }, 6: { 4, "Pear" }, 7: { 9, "Peach" } 8: }; And using those definitions, perhaps we want to do something like this: 1: // assume a default 2: string value = "Unknown"; 3:  4: // if the item exists in dictionary, get its value 5: if (lookup.ContainsKey(5)) 6: { 7: value = lookup[5]; 8: } But that’s inefficient, because then we’re double-hashing (once for ContainsKey() and once for the indexer).  Well, to avoid the double-hashing, we could use TryGetValue() instead: 1: string value; 2:  3: // if key exists, value will be put in value, if not default it 4: if (!lookup.TryGetValue(5, out value)) 5: { 6: value = "Unknown"; 7: } But the “flow” of using of TryGetValue() can get clunky at times when you just want to assign either the value or a default to a variable.  Essentially it’s 3-ish lines (depending on formatting) for 1 assignment.  So perhaps instead we’d like to write an extension method to support a cleaner interface that will return a default if the item isn’t found: 1: public static class DictionaryExtensions 2: { 3: public static TValue GetValueOrDefault<TKey, TValue>(this Dictionary<TKey, TValue> dict, 4: TKey key, TValue defaultIfNotFound) 5: { 6: TValue value; 7:  8: // value will be the result or the default for TValue 9: if (!dict.TryGetValue(key, out value)) 10: { 11: value = defaultIfNotFound; 12: } 13:  14: return value; 15: } 16: } 17:  So this creates an extension method on Dictionary<TKey, TValue> that will attempt to get a value using the given key, and will return the defaultIfNotFound as a stand-in if the key does not exist. This code compiles, fine, but what if we would like to go one step further and allow them to specify a default if not found, or accept the default for the type?  Obviously, we could overload the method to take the default or not, but that would be duplicated code and a bit heavy for just specifying a default.  It seems reasonable that we could set the not found value to be either the default for the type, or the specified value. So what if we defaulted the type to null? 1: public static TValue GetValueOrDefault<TKey, TValue>(this Dictionary<TKey, TValue> dict, 2: TKey key, TValue defaultIfNotFound = null) // ... No, this won’t work, because only reference types (and Nullable<T> wrapped types due to syntactical sugar) can be assigned to null.  So what about a calling parameterless constructor? 1: public static TValue GetValueOrDefault<TKey, TValue>(this Dictionary<TKey, TValue> dict, 2: TKey key, TValue defaultIfNotFound = new TValue()) // ... No, this won’t work either for several reasons.  First, we’d expect a reference type to return null, not an “empty” instance.  Secondly, not all reference types have a parameter-less constructor (string for example does not).  And finally, a constructor cannot be determined at compile-time, while default values can. The Solution: default(T) – returns the default value for type T Many of us know the default keyword for its uses in switch statements as the default case.  But it has another use as well: it can return us the default value for a given type.  And since it generates the same defaults that default field initialization uses, it can be determined at compile-time as well. For example: 1: var x = default(int); // x is 0 2:  3: var y = default(bool); // y is false 4:  5: var z = default(string); // z is null 6:  7: var t = default(TimeSpan); // t is a TimeSpan with Ticks == 0 8:  9: var n = default(int?); // n is a Nullable<int> with HasValue == false Notice that for numeric types the default is 0, and for reference types the default is null.  In addition, for struct types, the value is a default-constructed struct – which simply means a struct where every field has their default value (hence 0 Ticks for TimeSpan, etc.). So using this, we could modify our code to this: 1: public static class DictionaryExtensions 2: { 3: public static TValue GetValueOrDefault<TKey, TValue>(this Dictionary<TKey, TValue> dict, 4: TKey key, TValue defaultIfNotFound = default(TValue)) 5: { 6: TValue value; 7:  8: // value will be the result or the default for TValue 9: if (!dict.TryGetValue(key, out value)) 10: { 11: value = defaultIfNotFound; 12: } 13:  14: return value; 15: } 16: } Now, if defaultIfNotFound is unspecified, it will use default(TValue) which will be the default value for whatever value type the dictionary holds.  So let’s consider how we could use this: 1: lookup.GetValueOrDefault(1); // returns “Apple” 2:  3: lookup.GetValueOrDefault(5); // returns null 4:  5: lookup.GetValueOrDefault(5, “Unknown”); // returns “Unknown” 6:  Again, do not confuse a parameter-less constructor with the default value for a type.  Remember that the default value for any type is the compile-time default for any instance of that type (0 for numeric, false for bool, null for reference types, and struct will all default fields for struct).  Consider the difference: 1: // both zero 2: int i1 = default(int); 3: int i2 = new int(); 4:  5: // both “zeroed” structs 6: var dt1 = default(DateTime); 7: var dt2 = new DateTime(); 8:  9: // sb1 is null, sb2 is an “empty” string builder 10: var sb1 = default(StringBuilder()); 11: var sb2 = new StringBuilder(); So in the above code, notice that the value types all resolve the same whether using default or parameter-less construction.  This is because a value type is never null (even Nullable<T> wrapped types are never “null” in a reference sense), they will just by default contain fields with all default values. However, for reference types, the default is null and not a constructed instance.  Also it should be noted that not all classes have parameter-less constructors (string, for instance, doesn’t have one – and doesn’t need one). Summary Whenever you need to get the default value for a type, especially a generic type, consider using the default keyword.  This handy word will give you the default value for the given type at compile-time, which can then be used for initialization, optional parameters, etc. Technorati Tags: C#,CSharp,.NET,Little Wonders,default

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• Windows 8 Launch&ndash;Why OEM and Retailers Should STFU

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  Microsoft has gotten a lot of flack for the Surface from OEM/hardware partners who create Windows-based devices and I’m sure, to an extent, retailers who normally stock and sell Windows-based devices. I mean we all know how this is supposed to work – Microsoft makes the OS, partners make the hardware, retailers sell the hardware. Now Microsoft is breaking the rules by not only offering their own hardware but selling them via online and through their Microsoft branded stores! The thought has been that Microsoft is trying to set a standard for the other hardware companies to reach for. Maybe. I hope, at some level, Microsoft may be covertly responding to frustrations associated with trusting the OEMs and Retailers to deliver on their part of the supply chain. I know as a consumer, I’m very frustrated with the Windows 8 launch. Aside from the Surface sales, there’s nothing happening at the retail level. Let me back up and explain. Over the weekend I visited a number of stores in hopes of trying out various Windows 8 devices. Out of three retailers (Staples, Best Buy, and Future Shop), not *one* met my expectations. Let me be honest with you Staples, I never really have high expectations from your computer department. If I need paper or pens, whatever, but computers – you’re not the top of my list for price or selection. Still, considering you flaunted Win 8 devices in your flyer I expected *something* – some sign of effort that you took the Windows 8 launch seriously. As I entered the 1910 Pembina Highway location in Winnipeg, there was nothing – no signage, no banners – nothing that would suggest Windows 8 had even launched. I made my way to the laptops. I had to play with each machine to determine which ones were running Windows 8. There wasn’t anything on the placards that made it obvious which were Windows 8 machines and which ones were Windows 7. Likewise, there was no easy way to identify the touch screen laptop (the HP model) from the others without physically touching the screen to verify. Horrible experience. In the same mall as the Staples I mentioned above, there’s a Future Shop. Surely they would be more on the ball. I walked in to the 1910 Pembina Highway location and immediately realized I would not get a better experience. Except for the sign by the front door mentioning Windows 8, there was *nothing* in the computer department pointing you to the Windows 8 devices. Like in Staples, the Win 8 laptops were mixed in with the Win 7 ones and there was nothing notable calling out which ones were running Win 8. I happened to hit up the St. James Street location today, thinking since its a busier store they must have more options. To their credit, they did have two staff members decked out in Windows 8 shirts and who were helping a customer understand Windows 8. But otherwise, there was nothing highlighting the Windows 8 devices and they were again mixed in with the rest of the Win 7 machines. Finally, we have the St. James Street Best Buy location here in Winnipeg. I’m sure Best Buy will have their act together. Nope, not even close. Same story as the others: minimal signage (there was a sign as you walked in with a link to this schedule of demo days), Windows 8 hardware mixed with the rest of the PC offerings, and no visible call-outs identifying which were Win 8 based. This meant that, like Future Shop and Staples, if you wanted to know which machine had Windows 8 you had to go and scrutinize each machine. Also, there was nothing identifying which ones were touch based and which were not. Just Another Day… To these retailers, it seemed that the Windows 8 launch was just another day, with another product to add to the showroom floor. Meanwhile, Apple has their dedicated areas *in all three stores*. It was dead simple to find where the Apple products were compared to the Windows 8 products. No wonder Microsoft is starting to push their own retail stores. No wonder Microsoft is trying to funnel orders through them instead of relying on these bloated retail big box stores who obviously can’t manage a product launch. It’s Not Just The Retailers… Remember when the Acer CEO, Founder, and President of Computer Global Operations all weighed in on how Microsoft releasing the Surface would have a “huge negative impact for the ecosystem and other brands may take a negative reaction”? Also remember the CEO stating “[making hardware] is not something you are good at so please think twice”? Well the launch day has come and gone, and so far Microsoft is the only one that delivered on having hardware available on the October 26th date. Oh sure, there are laptops running Windows 8 – but all in one desktop PCs? I’ve only seen one or two! And tablets are *non existent*, with some showing an early to late November availability on Best Buy’s website! So while the retailers could be doing more to make it easier to find Windows 8 devices, the manufacturers could help by *getting devices into stores*! That’s supposedly something that these companies are good at, according to the Acer CEO. So Here’s What the Retailers and Manufacturers Need To Do… Get Product Out The pivotal timeframe will be now to the end of November. We need to start seeing all these fantastic pieces of hardware ship – including the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro, the Acer Iconia, the Asus TAICHI 21, and the sexy Samsung Series 7 27” desktop. It’s not enough to see product announcements, we need to see actual devices. Make It Easy For Customers To Find Win8 Devices You want to make it easy to sell these things? Make it easy for people to find them! Have staff on hand that really know how these devices run and what can be done with them. Don’t just have a single demo day, have people who can demo it every day! Make It Easy to See the Features There’s touch screen desktops, touch screen laptops, tablets, non-touch laptops, etc. People need to easily find the features for each machine. If I’m looking for a touch-laptop, I shouldn’t need to sift through all the non-touch laptops to find them – at the least, I need to quickly be able to see which ones are touch. I feel silly even typing this because this should be retail 101 and I have no retail background (but I do have an extensive background as a customer). In Summary… Microsoft launching the Surface and selling them through their own channels isn’t slapping its OEM and retail partners in the face; its slapping them to wake the hell up and stop coasting through Windows launch events like they don’t matter. Unless I see some improvements from vendors and retailers in November, I may just hold onto my money for a Surface Pro even if I have to wait until early 2013. Your move OEM/Retailers. *Update – While my experience has been in Winnipeg, similar experiences have been voiced from colleagues in Calgary and Edmonton.

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• Reviewing Retail Predictions for 2011

  - by David Dorf

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} I've been busy thinking about what 2012 and beyond will look like for retail, and I have some interesting predictions to share.  But before I go there, let’s first review this year’s predictions before making new ones for 2012. 1. Alternate Payments We've seen several alternate payment schemes emerge over the last two years, and 2011 may be the year one of them takes hold. Any competition that can drive down fees will be good for everyone. I'm betting that Apple will add NFC chips to their next version of the iPhone, then enable payments in stores using iTunes accounts on the backend. Paypal will continue to make inroads, and Isis will announce a pilot. The iPhone 4S did not contain an NFC chip, so we’ll have to continuing waiting for the iPhone 5. PayPal announced its moving into in-store payments, and Google launched its wallet in selected cities.  Overall I think the payment scene is heating up and that trend will continue. 2. Engineered Systems The industry is moving toward purpose-built appliances that are optimized across the entire stack. Oracle calls these "engineered systems" and the first two examples are Exadata and Exalogic, but there are other examples from other vendors. These are particularly important to the retail industry because of the volume of data that must be processed. There should be continued adoption in 2011. Oracle reports that Exadata is its fasting growing product, and at the recent OpenWorld it announced the SuperCluster and Exalytics products, both continuing the engineered systems trend. SAP’s HANA continues to receive attention, and IBM also seems to be moving in this direction. 3. Social Analytics There are lots of tools that provide insight into how a brand is perceived across popular internet sites, but as far as I know, these tools are not industry specific. The next step needs to mine the data and determine how it should influence retail operations. The data needs to help retailers determine how they create promotions, which products to stock, and how to keep consumers engaged. Social data alone does not provide the answers, but its one more data point that will help retailers make better decisions. Look for some vendor consolidation to help make this happen. In March, Salesforce.com acquired leading social monitoring vendor Radian6 and followed up with acquisitions of Heroku and Model Metrics. The notion of Social CRM seems to be going more mainstream now. 4. 2-D Barcodes Look for more QRCodes on shelf-tags, in newspaper circulars, and on billboards. It's a great portal from the physical world into the digital one that buys us time until augmented reality matures further. Nobody wants to type "www", backslash, and ".com" on their phones. QRCodes are everywhere. ‘Nuff said. 5. In the words of Microsoft, "To the Cloud!" My favorite "cloud application" is Evernote. If you take notes on your work laptop, you will inevitably need those notes on your home PC. And if you manage to solve that problem, you'll need to access them from your mobile phone. Evernote stores your notes in the cloud and provides easy ways to access them. Being able to access a service from anywhere and not having to worry about backups, upgrades, etc. is great. Retailers will start to rely on cloud services, both public and private, in the coming year. There were no shortage of announcements in this area: Amazon’s cloud-based Kindle Fire, Apple’s iCloud, Oracle’s Public Cloud, etc. I saw an interesting presentation showing how BevMo moved their systems to the cloud.  Seems like retailers are starting to consider the cloud for specific uses. 6. F-CommerceTop of Form Move over "E" and "M" so we can introduce "F-Commerce," which should go mainstream in 2011. Already several retailers have created small stores on Facebook, and it won't be long before Facebook becomes a full-fledged channel in the omni-channel world of retail. The battle between Facebook and Google will heat up over retail, where both stand to make lots of money. JCPenney and ASOS both put their entire catalogs on Facebook, and lots of other retailers have connected Facebook to their e-commerce site. I still think selling from the newsfeed is the best approach, and several retailers are trying that approach as well. I just don’t see Google+ as a threat to Facebook, so I think that battle is over.  I called 2011 The Year of F-Commerce, and that was probably accurate. Its good to look back at predictions, but we also have to think about what was missed.  I didn't see Amazon entering the tablet business with such a splash, although in hindsight it was obvious. Nor did I think HP would fall so far so fast.  Look for my 2012 predictions coming soon.

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• I Clobbered a Leopard with a Window Last Night

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  I’ve had my 15” Mac Book Pro for a little over a year now, and its hands-down the best laptop I’ve ever owned…hardware wise. And I tried, I really really tried, to like OSX. I even bought Parallels so I could run Windows 7 and all my development tools while still trying to live in an OSX world. But in the end, I missed Windows too much. There were just too many shortcomings with OSX that kept me from being productive. For one thing, Office for Mac is *not* Office for Windows. The applications are written by different teams, and Excel on the Mac is just different enough to be painful. The VM experience was adequate, but my MBP would heat up like crazy when running it and the experience trying to get Windows apps to interact with an OSX file system was awkward. And I found I was in the VM more than I thought I’d be. iMovie is not as easy to use for doing simple movie editing as Windows Movie Maker. There’s no free blog editing software for OSX that’s on par with Windows Live Writer. And really, all I was using OSX for was Twitter (which I can use a Windows client for) and web browsing (also something Windows can provide obviously). So I had to ask myself – why am I forcing myself to use an operating system I don’t like, on a laptop that can support Windows 7? And so I paved my MBP and am happily running Windows 7 on it…and its fantastic! All the good stuff with the hardware is still there with the goodness of Win 7. Happy happy. I did run into some snags doing this though, and that’s really what this blog post is about – things to be aware of if you want to install Win 7 directly on your MBP metal. First, Ensure You Have Your Original Mac Install Disk This was a warning my buddy Dylan, who’s been running Win 7 on his MBP for a while now, gave me early on. The reason you need that original disk is that the hardware drivers you need are all located there. Apparently you can’t easily download them, so make sure you have them ahead of time. Second, Forget BootCamp The only reason you need BootCamp is if you still want the option to boot into OSX. If you don’t, then you don’t need BootCamp. In fact, you don’t even need BootCamp to install Win 7. What you *will* need though is a DVD with Win 7 burnt on it. Apple doesn’t support bootable USB drives. Well, actually they do for Mac Book Airs which don’t come with optical drives…but to get it working you’ll need to edit a system file of BootCamp so your make of MBP is included in an XML document, and even then you *still* are using BootCamp meaning you’ll be making an OSX partition. So don’t worry about BootCamp, just burn a Windows 7 disc, put it into the DVD drive, and restart your MBP. Third, Know The Secret Commands So after putting in the Windows 7 DVD and restarting your MBP, you’ll want to hold down the ‘C’ key during boot up. This tells the MBP that it should boot from the DVD drive instead of the hard drive. Interestingly, it appears you don’t have to do this if its the Mac OSX install disc (more on that in a second), but regardless – hold down C and Windows will start the install process. Next up is the partition process. You’ll notice that there’s a partition called ETI or something like that. This has to do with the drive format that Apple uses and how they partition their system drives. What I did – I blew it away! At first I didn’t, but I was told I couldn’t install Windows on the remaining space due to the different drive format. Blowing away the ETI partition (and all other partitions) allowed me to continue the Windows install. *REMEMBER –  No warranty is provided or implied, just telling you what I did and how I got it to work. Ok, so now Windows is installed and I’m rebooting. Everything looks good, but I need drivers! So I put in the OSX install DVD and run the BootCamp assistant which installs all the Windows drivers I need. Fantastic! Oh, I need to restart – no problem. OH NO, PROBLEM! I left the OSX install DVD in the drive and now the MBP wants to boot from the drive and install OSX! I’m not holding down the C key, what the heck?! Ok, well there must be a way to eject this disk…hmm…no physical button on the side…the eject button doesn’t seem to work on the keyboard…no little pin hole to insert something to force the disc out…well what the…?! It turns out, if you want to eject a disc at boot up, you need (and I kid you not) to plug a mouse into the laptop and hold down the right-click button while its booting. This ejected the disc for me. Seriously. Finally, Things You Should Be Aware Of Once you have Windows up and running there’s a few things you need to be aware of, mainly new keyboard shortcuts. For instance, on the Mac keyboard there is no Home, End, PageUp or PageDown. There’s also no obvious way to do something like select large amounts of text (like you would by holding Shift-Home at the end of a line of text for instance). So here’s some shortcuts you need to know: Home – fn + left arrow End – fn + right arrow Select a line of text as you would with the Home key – Shift + fn + left arrow Select a line of text as you would with the End key – Shift + fn + right arrow Page Up – fn + up arrow Page Down – fn + down arrow Also, you’ll notice that the awesome Mac track pad doesn’t respond to taps as clicks. No fear, this is just a setting that needs to be altered in the BootCamp control panel (that controls the Mac Hardware-specific settings within Windows, you can access it easily from the system tray icon) One other thing, battery life seems a bit lower than with OSX, but then again I’m also doing more than Twitter or web browsing on this thing now. Conclusion My laptop runs awesome now that I have Windows 7 on there. It’s obviously up to individual taste, but for me I just didn’t see benefits to living in an OSX world when everything I needed lived in Windows. And also, I finally am back to an operating system that doesn’t require me to eject a USB drive before physically removing it! It’s 2012 folks, how has this not been fixed?! D

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• HTG Explains: Should You Buy Extended Warranties?

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Buy something at an electronics store and you’ll be confronted by a pushy salesperson who insists you need an extended warranty. You’ll also see extended warranties pushed hard when shopping online. But are they worth it? There’s a reason stores push extended warranties so hard. They’re almost always pure profit for the store involved. An electronics store may live on razor-thin product margins and make big profits on extended warranties and overpriced HDMI cables. You’re Already Getting Multiple Warranties First, back up. The product you’re buying already includes a warranty. In fact, you’re probably getting several different types of warranties. Store Return and Exchange: Most electronics stores allow you to return a malfunctioning product within the first 15 or 30 days and they’ll provide you with a new one. The exact period of time will vary from store to store. If you walk out of the store with a defective product and have to swap it for a new one within the first few weeks, this should be easy. Manufacturer Warranty: A device’s manufacturer — whether the device is a laptop, a television, or a graphics card — offers their own warranty period. The manufacturer warranty covers you after the store refuses to take the product back and exchange it. The length of this warranty depends on the type of product. For example, a cheap laptop may only offer a one-year manufacturer warranty, while a more expensive laptop may offer a two-year warranty. Credit Card Warranty Extension: Many credit cards offer free extended warranties on products you buy with that credit card. Credit card companies will often give you an additional year of warranty. For example, if you buy a laptop with a two year warranty and it fails in the third year, you could then contact your credit card company and they’d cover the cost of fixing or replacing it. Check your credit card’s benefits and fine print for more information. Why Extended Warranties Are Bad You’re already getting a fairly long warranty period, especially if you have a credit card that offers you a free extended warranty — these are fairly common. If the product you get is a “lemon” and has a manufacturing error, it will likely fail pretty soon — well within your warranty period. The extended warranty matters after all your other warranties are exhausted. In the case of a laptop with a two-year warranty that you purchase with a credit card giving you a one-year warranty extension, your extended warranty will kick in three years after you purchase the laptop. In that many years, your current laptop will likely feel pretty old and laptops that are as good — or better — will likely be pretty cheap. If it’s a television, better television displays will be available at a lower price point. You’ll either want to upgrade to a newer model or you’ll be able to buy a new, just-as-good product for very cheap. You’ll only have to pay out-of-pocket if your device fails after the normal warranty period — in over two or three years for typical laptops purchased with a decent credit card. Save the money you would have spent on the warranty and put it towards a future upgrade. How Much Do Extended Warranties Cost? Let’s look at an example from a typical pushy retail outlet, Best Buy. We went to Best Buy’s website and found a pretty standard $600 Samsung laptop. This laptop comes with a one-year warranty period. If purchased with a fairly common credit card, you can easily get a two-year warranty period on this laptop without spending an additional penny. (Yes, such credit cards are available with no yearly fees.) During the check-out process, Best Buy tries to sell you a Geek Squad “Accidental Protection Plan.” To get an additional year of Best Buy’s extended warranty, you’d have to pay $324.98 for a “3-Year Accidental Protection Plan”. You’d basically be paying more than half the price of your laptop for an additional year of warranty — remember, the standard warranties would cover you anyway for the first two years. If this laptop did break sometime between two and three years from now, we wouldn’t be surprised if you could purchase a comparable laptop for about $325 anyway. And, if you don’t need to replace it, you’ve saved that money. Best Buy would object that this isn’t a standard extended warranty. It’s a supercharged warranty plan that will also provide coverage if you spill something on your laptop or drop it and break it. You just have to ask yourself a question. What are the odds that you’ll drop your laptop or spill something on it? They’re probably pretty low if you’re a typical human being. Is it worth spending more than half the price of the laptop just in case you’ll make an uncommon mistake? Probably not. There may be occasional exceptions to this — some Apple users swear by Apple’s AppleCare, for example — but you should generally avoid buying these things. There’s a reason stores are so pushy about extended warranties, and it’s not because they want to help protect you. It’s because they’re making lots of profit from these plans, and they’re making so much profit because they’re not a good deal for customers. Image Credit: Philip Taylor on Flickr     

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• ruby regex, parsing html

  - by danwoods

  Hello all, I'm trying to parse some returned html to look for currently playing movies. The pattern I'm trying to match looks like: <span dir=ltr>Clash of the Titans</span> Of which there are several in the returned html. (the html is huge, I've posted a sample at the bottom) I'm trying get an array of the movie titles with the following command: titles = listings_html.split(/(<span dir=ltr>).*(<\/span>)/) But I'm not getting the results I'm expecting. Can anyone see a problem with my approach or regex? Returned html (I believe the 'markdown'formating will render the some of the html, but this is just an example): <script>window.gbar={};(function(){function h(a,b,d){var c="on"+b;if(a.addEventListener)a.addEventListener(b,d,false);else if(a.attachEvent)a.attachEvent(c,d);else{var f=a[c];a[c]=function(){var e=f.apply(this,arguments),g=d.apply(this,arguments);return e==undefined?g:g==undefined?e:g&&e}}};var i=window.gbar,k,l,m;function n(a){var b=window.encodeURIComponent&&(document.forms[0].q||"").value;if(b)a.href=a.href.replace(/([?&])q=[^&]*|$/,function(d,c){return(c||"&")+"q="+encodeURIComponent(b)})}i.qs=n;function o(a,b,d,c,f,e){var g=document.getElementById(a);if(g){var j=g.style;j.left=c?"auto":b+"px";j.right=c?b+"px":"auto";j.top=d+"px";j.visibility=l?"hidden":"visible";if(f&&e){j.width=f+"px";j.height=e+"px"}else{o(k,b,d,c,g.offsetWidth,g.offsetHeight);l=l?"":a}}}i.tg=function(a){a=a||window.event;var b,d=a.target||a.srcElement;a.cancelBubble=true;if(k!=null)p(d);else{b=document.createElement(Array.every||window.createPopup?"iframe":"div");b.frameBorder="0";k=b.id="gbs";b.src="javascript:''";d.parentNode.appendChild(b);h(document,"click",i.close);p(d);i.alld&&i.alld(function(){var c=document.getElementById("gbli");if(c){var f=c.parentNode;q(f,c);var e=c.prevSibling;f.removeChild(c);i.removeExtraDelimiters(f,e);b.style.height=f.offsetHeight+"px"}})}};function r(a){var b,d=document.defaultView;if(d&&d.getComputedStyle){if(a=d.getComputedStyle(a,""))b=a.direction}else b=a.currentStyle?a.currentStyle.direction:a.style.direction;return b=="rtl"}function p(a){var b=0;if(a.className!="gb3")a=a.parentNode;var d=a.getAttribute("aria-owns")||"gbi",c=a.offsetWidth,f=a.offsetTop>20?46:24,e=false;do b+=a.offsetLeft||0;while(a=a.offsetParent);a=(document.documentElement.clientWidth||document.body.clientWidth)-b-c;c=r(document.body);if(d=="gbi"){var g=document.getElementById("gbi");q(g,document.getElementById("gbli")||g.firstChild);if(c){b=a;e=true}}else if(!c){b=a;e=true}l!=d&&i.close();o(d,b,f,e)}i.close=function(){l&&o(l,0,0)};function s(a,b,d){if(!m){m="gb2";if(i.alld){var c=i.findClassName(a);if(c)m=c}}a.insertBefore(b,d).className=m}function q(a,b){for(var d,c=window.navExtra;c&&(d=c.pop());)s(a,d,b)}i.addLink=function(a,b,d){if((b=document.getElementById(b))&&a){a.className="gb4";var c=document.createElement("span");c.appendChild(a);c.appendChild(document.createTextNode(" | "));c.id=d;b.appendChild(c)}}})();if(!window.google)window.google={};if(!window.google.movies)window.google.movies={};window.google.movies.registerFixdir=function(){var c="[\u0000- !-@[-{-\u00bf\u00d7\u00f7\u02b9-\u02ff\u2000-\u2bff]",g=new RegExp("^"+c+"([0-9]"+c+"$|[A-Za-z\u00c0-\u00d6\u00d8-\u00f6\u00f8-\u02b8\u0300-\u0590\u0800-\u1fff\u2c00-\ufb1c\ufdfe-\ufe6f\ufefd-\uffff])"),h=new RegExp("^"+c+"$");function e(d,a){if(!a)a=d&&d.target?d.target:window.event.srcElement;a.dir=g.test(a.value)?"ltr":(h.test(a.value)?"":"rtl")} var i=[document.getElementsByName("q")[0],document.getElementById("mtq")];for(var f=0,b;b=i[f];f++)if(b){b.onkeyup=e;e(null,b)}}; Movie Showtimes - Google Search.fl:link{}a:link,.w,a.w:link,.w a:link{color:#00c}a:visited{color:#551a8b}a:active{color:red}.t a:link,.t a:active,.t a:visited,.t{color:#000}.left{width:12em}.box{background:#fff}.nopadding{padding:0}.k{background:#36c}.z{display:none}.x{width:3em}.y{width:23em}.b{color:#00c;font-size:12pt;font-weight:bold}.i,.i:link{color:#a90a08}.n a{color:#000;font-size:10pt}.n .b a{color:#00c}.n .i{font-size:10pt;font-weight:bold}.h{cursor:pointer}body{background:#fff;font:82% Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;margin:3px 0 0;padding:0}table{border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:0}img{border:0}td,th{vertical-align:top}h1,h2{font-size:100%;margin:0}a{color:#00c}/ CSS for page */#title_bar{background:#f0f7f9;border-top:1px solid #6b90da;padding-bottom:4px;padding-left:8px;padding-top:4px}#google_bar{margin:3px 10px}#search_form{margin:3px 10px}#left_nav{border-right:1px solid #c9d7f1;margin-top:11px;position:absolute;left:9px;width:13.4em}#left_nav .section{margin-bottom:1.2em}.hidden{visibility:hidden}#results{height:auto !important;height:350px;margin-left:15em;min-height:350px;min-width:800px;width:expression(document.body.clientWidth<1000?"800px":"99.9%")}.name{font-size:124%;margin:0}.times{clear:both;margin:0}.address{margin:0}#movie_results{overflow:auto}.movie_results{margin-top:11px}.movie{clear:both;margin-bottom:40px}.movie .header{padding-left:8px}.movie .img{border:1px solid #ccc;float:left;margin-bottom:10px}.movie .desc{margin-bottom:15px;max-width:42em}.movie h2{font-size:124%;margin-bottom:2px}.movie .info{margin-bottom:10px}.movie .syn{margin-bottom:10px}.movie .section_title{background:#f0f7f9;clear:both;font-size:108%;margin-bottom:11px;margin-top:11px;padding-bottom:4px;padding-left:8px;padding-top:5px}.movie .showtimes{margin-bottom:8px;padding-left:8px}.movie .show_left{width:49%}.movie .show_right{width:49%}.movie .theater{padding-bottom:15px}.theater{clear:both;padding-bottom:1px}.theater_after_icon{padding-left:25px}.theater .show_left{width:49%}.theater .show_right{width:49%}.theater h2{font-size:124%;margin-bottom:2px}.theater .icon{float:left;height:3em;margin-right:5px}.theater .closure{font-size:100%}.theater .info{font-size:100%;padding-bottom:5px;padding-top:5px}.theater .movie{margin-bottom:8px;margin-right:8px;max-width:42em}.theater .movie .desc{margin-bottom:5px;margin-left:0}.theater .movie .info{margin-top:0}.theater .showtimes{margin-bottom:40px;margin-top:8px}#theater_map{right:0;left:0;position:relative;top:0}#theater_static_map{border:1px solid #c9d7f1;margin:10px}.map_marker .name{margin-top:10px}.photo{border:1px solid #ccc;margin-bottom:20px;margin-left:8px}.show_left{float:left;margin:0;width:49.999%}.show_right{float:right;margin:0;width:50%}.show_more{clear:both;font-size:124%;margin:0}.show_more a{color:#77c}.reviews{margin-bottom:8px;padding-left:8px}.review{margin-bottom:5px}.review .publisher{color:green}.review .date{color:#6f6f6f}.trailer{margin-bottom:8px;padding-left:8px}.clear{clear:both}.iconA{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_A_J.png) repeat 0 0}.iconB{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_A_J.png) repeat 0 -38px}.iconC{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_A_J.png) repeat 0 -76px}.iconD{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_A_J.png) repeat 0 -114px}.iconE{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_A_J.png) repeat 0 -152px}.iconF{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_A_J.png) repeat 0 -190px}.iconG{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_A_J.png) repeat 0 -228px}.iconH{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_A_J.png) repeat 0 -266px}.iconI{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_A_J.png) repeat 0 -304px}.iconJ{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_A_J.png) repeat 0 -342px}.iconK{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_K_Z.png) repeat 0 0}.iconL{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_K_Z.png) repeat 0 -38px}.iconM{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_K_Z.png) repeat 0 -76px}.iconN{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_K_Z.png) repeat 0 -114px}.iconO{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_K_Z.png) repeat 0 -152px}.iconP{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_K_Z.png) repeat 0 -190px}.iconQ{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_K_Z.png) repeat 0 -228px}.iconR{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_K_Z.png) repeat 0 -266px}.iconS{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_K_Z.png) repeat 0 -304px}.iconT{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_K_Z.png) repeat 0 -342px}.iconU{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_K_Z.png) repeat 0 -380px}.iconV{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_K_Z.png) repeat 0 -418px}.iconW{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_K_Z.png) repeat 0 -456px}.iconX{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_K_Z.png) repeat 0 -494px}.iconY{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_K_Z.png) repeat 0 -532px}.iconZ{background:url(http://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/red_icons_K_Z.png) repeat 0 -570px}#gbar,#guser{font-size:13px;padding-top:1px !important}#gbar{float:left;height:22px}#guser{padding-bottom:7px !important;text-align:right}.gbh,.gbd{border-top:1px solid #c9d7f1;font-size:1px}.gbh{height:0;position:absolute;top:24px;width:100%}#gbs,.gbm{background:#fff;left:0;position:absolute;text-align:left;visibility:hidden;z-index:1000}.gbm{border:1px solid;border-color:#c9d7f1 #36c #36c #a2bae7;z-index:1001}.gb1{margin-right:.5em}.gb1,.gb3{zoom:1}.gb2{display:block;padding:.2em .5em;}.gb2,.gb3{text-decoration:none;border-bottom:none}a.gb1,a.gb2,a.gb3,a.gb4{color:#00c !important}.gbi .gb3,.gbi .gb2,.gbi .gb4{color:#dd8e27 !important}.gbf .gb3,.gbf .gb2,.gbf .gb4{color:#900 !important}a.gb2:hover{background:#36c;color:#fff !important}Web Images Videos Maps News Shopping Gmail more ▼Books Finance Translate Scholar Blogs YouTube Calendar Photos Documents Reader Sites Groups even more » [email protected] | Google Account settings | Sign out     Advanced Search  PreferencesShowtimes for Murfreesboro, TN 37130Change Location› Today › Tomorrow › Monday › Tuesday› Theaters › Movies› Show list view › Show map viewPremiere 6 Theater810 Northwest Broad Street, Murfreesboro, TN - (615) 896-4100Clash of the Titans? - 1hr 50min?? - Rated PG-13?? - Action/Adventure? - Trailer - IMDb2:10  4:15  6:15  8:20  10:25pmDiary of a Wimpy Kid? - 1hr 33min?? - Rated PG?? - Comedy/Drama? - Trailer - IMDb2:00  3:50  6:00  7:50  9:40pmHow to Train Your Dragon?1hr 38min?? - Rated PG?? - Family/Animation? - IMDb2:00  3:55  6:00  7:55  9:50pmThe Bounty Hunter? - 1hr 46min?? - Rated PG-13?? - Action/Adventure/Comedy/Romance? - Trailer - IMDb2:15  4:15  6:25  8:25  10:30pmThe Last Song? - 1hr 47min?? - Rated PG?? - Drama? - Trailer - IMDb2:20  4:15  6:30  8:35  10:35pmTyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married Too?2hr 1min?? - Rated PG-13?? - Comedy?2:20  4:35  7:30  9:45pmContinental Cinema 5450 US Highway 231 N, Troy, AL - (334) 808-4225Clash of the Titans 3D? - 1hr 50min?? - Rated PG-13?? - Action/Adventure? - IMDb1:00  4:00  7:00  9:30pmHow to Train Your Dragon 3D? - 1hr 38min?? - Rated PG?? - Family/Animation? - IMDb1:05  4:05  7:05  9:25pmThe Bounty Hunter? - 1hr 46min?? - Rated PG-13?? - Action/Adventure/Comedy/Romance? - Trailer - IMDb1:00  4:00  7:00  9:30pmThe Last Song? - 1hr 47min?? - Rated PG?? - Drama? - Trailer - IMDb1:05  4:05  7:05  9:25pmTyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married Too?2hr 1min?? - Rated PG-13?? - Comedy?12:55  3:55  6:55  9:35pmMall Cinema - Hartford KYUS Hwy 231 South 62 East, Hartford, KY - (270) 298-3315Clash of the Titans? - 1hr 50min?? - Rated PG-13?? - Action/Adventure? - Trailer - IMDb5:00  7:00  9:00pmHow to Train Your Dragon?1hr 38min?? - Rated PG?? - Family/Animation? - IMDb5:00  7:00  9:00pmCarmike Wynnsong 16 - Murfreesboro2626 Cason Square Boulevard, Murfreesboro, TN - (615) 893-2253The Last Song? - 1hr 47min?? - Rated PG?? - Drama? - Trailer - IMDb12:15  1:00  2:45  4:00  5:15  7:00  7:45 

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• Can't build pyxpcom on OS X 10.6

  - by Gj

  I've been following these instructions at https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Building_PyXPCOM but getting this: $ make make export make[2]: Nothing to be done for `export'. make[4]: Nothing to be done for `export'. make[4]: Nothing to be done for `export'. /opt/local/bin/python2.5 ../../../src/config/nsinstall.py -L /usr/local/pyxpcom/build/xpcom/src -m 644 ../../../src/xpcom/src/PyXPCOM.h ../../dist/include make[3]: Nothing to be done for `export'. /opt/local/bin/python2.5 ../../../../src/config/nsinstall.py -D ../../../dist/idl /opt/local/bin/python2.5 ../../../../src/config/nsinstall.py -D ../../../dist/idl make[4]: *** No rule to make target `_xpidlgen/py_test_component.h', needed by `export'. Stop. make[3]: *** [export] Error 2 make[2]: *** [export] Error 2 make[1]: *** [export] Error 2 make: *** [default] Error 2 Any ideas? An interesting anomaly is that despite me setting the PYTHON env variable to Python 2.6, the configure and make both seem to go after the 2.5... Thanks for any advice! PS here's the configure output: $ ../src/configure --with-libxul-sdk=/Users/me/xulrunner-sdk/ loading cache ./config.cache checking host system type... i386-apple-darwin10.3.0 checking target system type... i386-apple-darwin10.3.0 checking build system type... i386-apple-darwin10.3.0 checking for mawk... (cached) gawk checking for perl5... (cached) /opt/local/bin/perl5 checking for gcc... (cached) gcc checking whether the C compiler (gcc ) works... yes checking whether the C compiler (gcc ) is a cross-compiler... no checking whether we are using GNU C... (cached) yes checking whether gcc accepts -g... (cached) yes checking for c++... (cached) c++ checking whether the C++ compiler (c++ ) works... yes checking whether the C++ compiler (c++ ) is a cross-compiler... no checking whether we are using GNU C++... (cached) yes checking whether c++ accepts -g... (cached) yes checking for ranlib... (cached) ranlib checking for as... (cached) /usr/bin/as checking for ar... (cached) ar checking for ld... (cached) ld checking for strip... (cached) strip checking for windres... no checking whether gcc and cc understand -c and -o together... (cached) yes checking how to run the C preprocessor... (cached) gcc -E checking how to run the C++ preprocessor... (cached) c++ -E checking for a BSD compatible install... (cached) /usr/bin/install -c checking whether ln -s works... (cached) yes checking for minimum required perl version >= 5.006... 5.008009 checking for full perl installation... yes checking for /opt/local/bin/python... (cached) /opt/local/bin/python2.5 checking for doxygen... (cached) : checking for whoami... (cached) /usr/bin/whoami checking for autoconf... (cached) /opt/local/bin/autoconf checking for unzip... (cached) /usr/bin/unzip checking for zip... (cached) /usr/bin/zip checking for makedepend... (cached) /opt/local/bin/makedepend checking for xargs... (cached) /usr/bin/xargs checking for pbbuild... (cached) /usr/bin/xcodebuild checking for sdp... (cached) /usr/bin/sdp checking for gmake... (cached) /opt/local/bin/gmake checking for X... (cached) no checking whether the compiler supports -Wno-invalid-offsetof... yes checking whether ld has archive extraction flags... (cached) no checking that static assertion macros used in autoconf tests work... (cached) yes checking for 64-bit OS... yes checking for minimum required Python version >= 2.4... yes checking for -dead_strip option to ld... yes checking for ANSI C header files... (cached) yes checking for working const... (cached) yes checking for mode_t... (cached) yes checking for off_t... (cached) yes checking for pid_t... (cached) yes checking for size_t... (cached) yes checking for st_blksize in struct stat... (cached) yes checking for siginfo_t... (cached) yes checking for int16_t... (cached) yes checking for int32_t... (cached) yes checking for int64_t... (cached) yes checking for int64... (cached) no checking for uint... (cached) yes checking for uint_t... (cached) no checking for uint16_t... (cached) no checking for uname.domainname... (cached) no checking for uname.__domainname... (cached) no checking for usable char16_t (2 bytes, unsigned)... (cached) no checking for usable wchar_t (2 bytes, unsigned)... (cached) no checking for compiler -fshort-wchar option... (cached) yes checking for visibility(hidden) attribute... (cached) yes checking for visibility(default) attribute... (cached) yes checking for visibility pragma support... (cached) yes checking For gcc visibility bug with class-level attributes (GCC bug 26905)... (cached) yes checking For x86_64 gcc visibility bug with builtins (GCC bug 20297)... (cached) no checking for dirent.h that defines DIR... (cached) yes checking for opendir in -ldir... (cached) no checking for sys/byteorder.h... (cached) no checking for compat.h... (cached) no checking for getopt.h... (cached) yes checking for sys/bitypes.h... (cached) no checking for memory.h... (cached) yes checking for unistd.h... (cached) yes checking for gnu/libc-version.h... (cached) no checking for nl_types.h... (cached) yes checking for malloc.h... (cached) no checking for X11/XKBlib.h... (cached) yes checking for io.h... (cached) no checking for sys/statvfs.h... (cached) yes checking for sys/statfs.h... (cached) no checking for sys/vfs.h... (cached) no checking for sys/mount.h... (cached) yes checking for sys/quota.h... (cached) yes checking for mmintrin.h... (cached) yes checking for new... (cached) yes checking for sys/cdefs.h... (cached) yes checking for gethostbyname_r in -lc_r... (cached) no checking for dladdr... (cached) yes checking for socket in -lsocket... (cached) no checking whether mmap() sees write()s... yes checking whether gcc needs -traditional... (cached) no checking for 8-bit clean memcmp... (cached) yes checking for random... (cached) yes checking for strerror... (cached) yes checking for lchown... (cached) yes checking for fchmod... (cached) yes checking for snprintf... (cached) yes checking for statvfs... (cached) yes checking for memmove... (cached) yes checking for rint... (cached) yes checking for stat64... (cached) yes checking for lstat64... (cached) yes checking for truncate64... (cached) no checking for statvfs64... (cached) no checking for setbuf... (cached) yes checking for isatty... (cached) yes checking for flockfile... (cached) yes checking for getpagesize... (cached) yes checking for localtime_r... (cached) yes checking for strtok_r... (cached) yes checking for wcrtomb... (cached) yes checking for mbrtowc... (cached) yes checking for res_ninit()... (cached) no checking for gnu_get_libc_version()... (cached) no ../src/configure: line 9881: AM_LANGINFO_CODESET: command not found checking for an implementation of va_copy()... (cached) yes checking for an implementation of __va_copy()... (cached) yes checking whether va_lists can be copied by value... (cached) no checking for C++ exceptions flag... (cached) -fno-exceptions checking for gcc 3.0 ABI... (cached) yes checking for C++ "explicit" keyword... (cached) yes checking for C++ "typename" keyword... (cached) yes checking for modern C++ template specialization syntax support... (cached) yes checking whether partial template specialization works... (cached) yes checking whether operators must be re-defined for templates derived from templates... (cached) no checking whether we need to cast a derived template to pass as its base class... (cached) no checking whether the compiler can resolve const ambiguities for templates... (cached) yes checking whether the C++ "using" keyword can change access... (cached) yes checking whether the C++ "using" keyword resolves ambiguity... (cached) yes checking for "std::" namespace... (cached) yes checking whether standard template operator!=() is ambiguous... (cached) unambiguous checking for C++ reinterpret_cast... (cached) yes checking for C++ dynamic_cast to void*... (cached) yes checking whether C++ requires implementation of unused virtual methods... (cached) yes checking for trouble comparing to zero near std::operator!=()... (cached) no checking for LC_MESSAGES... (cached) yes checking for tar archiver... checking for gnutar... (cached) gnutar gnutar checking for wget... checking for wget... (cached) wget wget checking for valid optimization flags... yes checking for gcc -pipe support... yes checking whether compiler supports -Wno-long-long... yes checking whether C compiler supports -fprofile-generate... yes checking for correct temporary object destruction order... yes checking for correct overload resolution with const and templates... no Building Python extensions using python-2.5 from /opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5 creating ./config.status creating config/autoconf.mk creating Makefile creating xpcom/Makefile creating xpcom/src/Makefile creating xpcom/src/loader/Makefile creating xpcom/src/module/Makefile creating xpcom/components/Makefile creating xpcom/test/Makefile creating xpcom/test/test_component/Makefile creating dom/Makefile creating dom/src/Makefile creating dom/test/Makefile creating dom/test/pyxultest/Makefile creating dom/nsdom/Makefile creating dom/nsdom/test/Makefile

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• Jolicloud is a Nifty New OS for Your Netbook

  - by Matthew Guay

  Want to breathe new life into your netbook?  Here’s a quick look at Jolicloud, a unique new Linux based OS that lets you use your netbook in a whole new way. Netbooks have been an interesting category of computers.  When they were first released, most netbooks came with a stripped down Linux based operating system designed to let you easily access the internet first and foremost.  Consumers wanted more from their netbooks, so full OSes such as Windows XP and Ubuntu became the standard on netbooks.  Microsoft worked hard to get Windows 7 working great on netbooks, and today most netbooks run Windows 7 great.  But the Linux community hasn’t stood still either, and Jolicloud is proof of that.  Jolicloud is a unique OS designed to bring the best of both webapps and standard programs to your netbook.   Keep reading to see if this is the perfect netbook OS for you. Getting Started Installing Jolicloud on your netbook is easy thanks to a the Jolicloud Express installer for Windows.  Since many netbooks run Windows by default, this makes it easy to install Jolicloud.  Plus, your Windows install is left untouched, so you can still easily access all your Windows files and programs. Download and run the roughly 700Mb installer (link below) just as a normal installer in Windows. This will first extract the needed files. Click Get started to install Jolicloud on your netbook. Enter a username, password, and nickname for your computer.  Please note that the username must be all lowercase, and the nickname should not contain spaces or special characters.   Now you can review the default installation settings.  By default it will take up 39Gb and install on your C:\ drive in English.  If you wish to change this, click Change. We chose to install it on the D: drive on this netbook, as its harddrive was already partitioned into two parts.  Click Save when your settings are all correct, and then click Next in the previous window. Jolicloud will prepare for the installation.  This took about 5 minutes in our test.  Click Next when this is finished. Click Restart now to install and run Jolicloud. When your netbook reboots, it will initialize the Jolicloud setup. It will then automatically finish the installation.  Just sit back and wait; there’s nothing for you to do right now.  The installation took about 20 minutes in our test. Jolicloud will automatically reboot when the setup is finished. Once it’s rebooted, you’re ready to go!  Enter the username, then the password, that you chose earlier when you were installing Jolicloud from Windows. Welcome to your Jolicloud desktop! Hardware Support We installed Jolicloud on a Samsung N150 netbook with an Atom N450 processor, 1Gb Ram, 250Gb harddrive, and WiFi b/g/n with Bluetooth.  Amazingly, once Jolicloud was installed, everything was ready to use.  No drivers to install, no settings to hassle with, it was all installed and set up perfectly.  Power settings worked great, and closing the netbook put it to sleep just like in Windows. WiFi drivers have typically been difficult to find and install on Linux, but Jolicloud had our netbook’s wifi working immediately.  To get online, simply click the Wireless icon on the top right, and select the wireless network you want to connect to. Jolicloud will let you know when it is signed on. Wired Lan networking was also seamless; simply connect your cable and you’re ready to go.  The webcam and touchpad also worked perfectly directly.  The only thing missing was multitouch; this touchpad has two finger scroll, pinch zoom, and other nice multitouch features in Windows, but in Julicloud it only functioned as a standard touchpad.  It did have tap to click activated by default, as well as right-side scrolling, which is nice. Jolicloud also supported our video card without any extra work.  The native resolution was already selected, and the only problem we had with the screen was that there was no apparent way to change the brightness.  This is not a major problem, but would be nice to have.  The Samsung N150 has Intel GMA3150 integrated graphics, and Jolicloud promises 1080p HD video on it.  It did playback 720p H.264 video flawlessly without installing anything extra, but it stuttered on full 1080p HD (which is the exact same as this netbook’s video playback in Windows 7 – 720p works great, but it stutters on 1080p).  We would be excited to see full HD on this netbook, but 720p is definitely fine for most stuff.   Jolicloud supports a wide range of netbooks, and based on our experience we would expect it to work as good on any supported hardware.  Check out the list of supported netbooks to see if your netbook is supported; if not, it still may work but you may have to install special drivers. Jolicloud’s performance was very similar to Windows 7 on our netbook.  It boots in about 30 seconds, and apps load fairly quickly.  In general, we couldn’t tell much difference in performance between Jolicloud and Windows 7, though this isn’t a problem since Windows 7 runs great on the current generation of netbooks. Using Jolicloud Ready to start putting Jolicloud to use?  Your fresh Jolicloud install you can run several built-in apps, such as Firefox, a calculator, and the chat client Pidgin.  It also has a media player and file viewer installed, so you can play MP3s or MPG videos, or read PDF ebooks without installing anything extra.  It also has Flash player installed so you can watch videos online easily. You can also directly access all of your files from the right side of your home screen.  You can even access your Windows files; in our test, the 116.9 GB Media was C: from Windows.  Select it to browse and open any file you had saved in Windows. You may need to enter your password to access it. Once you’re authenticated it, you’ll see all of your Windows files and folders.  Your User files (Documents, Music, Videos, etc.) will be in the Users folder. And, you can easily add files from removable media such as USB flash drives and memory cards.  Jolicloud recognized a flash drive we tested with no trouble at all. Add new apps But, the best part about Jolicloud is that it makes it very easy to install new apps.  Click the Get Started button on your homescreen. You’ll first need to create an account.  You can then use this same account on another netbook if you wish, and your settings will automatically be synced between the two. You can either signup using your Facebook account, …or you can sign up the traditional way with your email address, name, and password.  If you sign up this way, you will need to confirm your email address before your account will be finished. Now, choose your netbook model from the list, and enter a name for your computer. And that’s it!  You’ll now see the Jolicloud dashboard, which will show you updates and notifications from friends who also use Jolicloud. Click the App directory to find new apps for your netbook.  Here you will find a variety of webapps, such as Gmail, along with native applications, such as Skype, that you can install on your netbook.  Simply click the Install button on the right to add the app to your netbook. You will be prompted to enter your system password, and then the app will install without any further input.   Once an app is installed, a check mark will appear beside its name.  You can remove it by clicking the Remove button, and it will uninstall seamlessly. Webapps, such as Gmail, actually run in in a Chrome-powered window that lets the webapp run full screen.  This gives the webapps a native feel, but actually they’re just running the same as they would in a standard web browser.   The Jolicloud Interface Most apps run maximized, and there is no way to run them smaller.  This in general works good, since with small screens most apps need to run full-screen anyhow. Smaller apps, such as a calculator or the Pidgin chat client, run in a window just like they do on other operating systems. You can switch to another app that’s running by selecting it’s icon on the top left, or you can go back to the home screen by clicking the home screen.  If you’re finished with an program, simply click the red X button on the top right of the window when you’re running it. Or, you can switch between programs using standard keyboard shortcuts such as Alt-tab. The default page on the home screen is the favorites page, and all of your other programs are orginized in their own sections on the left hand side.  But, if you want to add one of these to your favorites page, simply right-click on it and select Add to Favorites. When you’re done for the day, you can simply close your netbook to put it to sleep.  Or, if you want to shut down, just press the Quit button on the bottom right of the home screen and then select Shut Down. Booting Jolicloud When you install Jolicloud, it will set itself as the default operating system.  Now, when you boot your netbook, it will show you a list of installed operating systems.  You can select either Windows or Jolicloud, but if you don’t make a selection it will boot into Jolicloud after waiting 10 seconds. If you’d perfer to boot into Windows by default, you can easily change this.  First, boot your netbook in to Windows.  Open the start menu, right-click on the Computer button, and select Properties.   Click the “Advanced system settings” link on the left side. Click the Settings button in the Startup and Recovery section. Now, select Windows as the default operating system, and click Ok.  Your netbook will now boot into Windows by default, but will give you 10 seconds to choose to boot into Jolicloud when you start your computer. Or, if you decided you don’t want Jolicloud, you can easily uninstall it from within Windows. Please note that this will also remove any files you may have saved in Jolicloud, so be sure to copy them to your Windows drive before uninstalling. To uninstall Jolicloud from within Windows, open Control Panel, and select Uninstall a Program. Scroll down to select Jolicloud, and click Uninstall/Change. Click Yes to confirm that you want to uninstall Jolicloud. After a few moments, it will let you know that Jolicloud has been uninstalled.  You’re netbook is now back the same as it was before you installed Jolicloud, with only Windows installed. Closing Whether you’re wanting to replace your current OS on your netbook or would simply like to try out a fresh new Linux version on your netbook, Jolicloud is a great option for you.  We were very impressed by it’s solid hardware support and the ease of installing new apps in Jolicloud.  Rather than simply giving us a standard OS, Jolicloud offers a unique way to use your netbook with native programs and webapps.  And whether you’re an IT pro or are a new computer user, Jolicloud was easy enough to use that anyone can do it.  Give it a try, and let us know what your favorite netbook OS is! Link Download Jolicloud for your netbook Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Change XSplash Themes in Ubuntu 9.10Verify the Integrity of Windows Vista System FilesMonitor Multiple Logs in a Single Shell with MultiTail for LinuxHide Some or All of the GUI Bars in FirefoxAsk the Readers: Do You Use a Laptop, Desktop, or Both? TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Stop In The Name Of Love (Firefox addon) Chitika iPad Labs Gives Live iPad Sale Stats Heaven & Hell Finder Icon Using TrueCrypt to Secure Your Data Quickly Schedule Meetings With NeedtoMeet Share Flickr Photos On Facebook Automatically

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• What's up with OCFS2?

  - by wcoekaer

  On Linux there are many filesystem choices and even from Oracle we provide a number of filesystems, all with their own advantages and use cases. Customers often confuse ACFS with OCFS or OCFS2 which then causes assumptions to be made such as one replacing the other etc... I thought it would be good to write up a summary of how OCFS2 got to where it is, what we're up to still, how it is different from other options and how this really is a cool native Linux cluster filesystem that we worked on for many years and is still widely used. Work on a cluster filesystem at Oracle started many years ago, in the early 2000's when the Oracle Database Cluster development team wrote a cluster filesystem for Windows that was primarily focused on providing an alternative to raw disk devices and help customers with the deployment of Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC). Oracle RAC is a cluster technology that lets us make a cluster of Oracle Database servers look like one big database. The RDBMS runs on many nodes and they all work on the same data. It's a Shared Disk database design. There are many advantages doing this but I will not go into detail as that is not the purpose of my write up. Suffice it to say that Oracle RAC expects all the database data to be visible in a consistent, coherent way, across all the nodes in the cluster. To do that, there were/are a few options : 1) use raw disk devices that are shared, through SCSI, FC, or iSCSI 2) use a network filesystem (NFS) 3) use a cluster filesystem(CFS) which basically gives you a filesystem that's coherent across all nodes using shared disks. It is sort of (but not quite) combining option 1 and 2 except that you don't do network access to the files, the files are effectively locally visible as if it was a local filesystem. So OCFS (Oracle Cluster FileSystem) on Windows was born. Since Linux was becoming a very important and popular platform, we decided that we would also make this available on Linux and thus the porting of OCFS/Windows started. The first version of OCFS was really primarily focused on replacing the use of Raw devices with a simple filesystem that lets you create files and provide direct IO to these files to get basically native raw disk performance. The filesystem was not designed to be fully POSIX compliant and it did not have any where near good/decent performance for regular file create/delete/access operations. Cache coherency was easy since it was basically always direct IO down to the disk device and this ensured that any time one issues a write() command it would go directly down to the disk, and not return until the write() was completed. Same for read() any sort of read from a datafile would be a read() operation that went all the way to disk and return. We did not cache any data when it came down to Oracle data files. So while OCFS worked well for that, since it did not have much of a normal filesystem feel, it was not something that could be submitted to the kernel mail list for inclusion into Linux as another native linux filesystem (setting aside the Windows porting code ...) it did its job well, it was very easy to configure, node membership was simple, locking was disk based (so very slow but it existed), you could create regular files and do regular filesystem operations to a certain extend but anything that was not database data file related was just not very useful in general. Logfiles ok, standard filesystem use, not so much. Up to this point, all the work was done, at Oracle, by Oracle developers. Once OCFS (1) was out for a while and there was a lot of use in the database RAC world, many customers wanted to do more and were asking for features that you'd expect in a normal native filesystem, a real "general purposes cluster filesystem". So the team sat down and basically started from scratch to implement what's now known as OCFS2 (Oracle Cluster FileSystem release 2). Some basic criteria were : Design it with a real Distributed Lock Manager and use the network for lock negotiation instead of the disk Make it a Linux native filesystem instead of a native shim layer and a portable core Support standard Posix compliancy and be fully cache coherent with all operations Support all the filesystem features Linux offers (ACL, extended Attributes, quotas, sparse files,...) Be modern, support large files, 32/64bit, journaling, data ordered journaling, endian neutral, we can mount on both endian /cross architecture,.. Needless to say, this was a huge development effort that took many years to complete. A few big milestones happened along the way... OCFS2 was development in the open, we did not have a private tree that we worked on without external code review from the Linux Filesystem maintainers, great folks like Christopher Hellwig reviewed the code regularly to make sure we were not doing anything out of line, we submitted the code for review on lkml a number of times to see if we were getting close for it to be included into the mainline kernel. Using this development model is standard practice for anyone that wants to write code that goes into the kernel and having any chance of doing so without a complete rewrite or.. shall I say flamefest when submitted. It saved us a tremendous amount of time by not having to re-fit code for it to be in a Linus acceptable state. Some other filesystems that were trying to get into the kernel that didn't follow an open development model had a lot harder time and a lot harsher criticism. March 2006, when Linus released 2.6.16, OCFS2 officially became part of the mainline kernel, it was accepted a little earlier in the release candidates but in 2.6.16. OCFS2 became officially part of the mainline Linux kernel tree as one of the many filesystems. It was the first cluster filesystem to make it into the kernel tree. Our hope was that it would then end up getting picked up by the distribution vendors to make it easy for everyone to have access to a CFS. Today the source code for OCFS2 is approximately 85000 lines of code. We made OCFS2 production with full support for customers that ran Oracle database on Linux, no extra or separate support contract needed. OCFS2 1.0.0 started being built for RHEL4 for x86, x86-64, ppc, s390x and ia64. For RHEL5 starting with OCFS2 1.2. SuSE was very interested in high availability and clustering and decided to build and include OCFS2 with SLES9 for their customers and was, next to Oracle, the main contributor to the filesystem for both new features and bug fixes. Source code was always available even prior to inclusion into mainline and as of 2.6.16, source code was just part of a Linux kernel download from kernel.org, which it still is, today. So the latest OCFS2 code is always the upstream mainline Linux kernel. OCFS2 is the cluster filesystem used in Oracle VM 2 and Oracle VM 3 as the virtual disk repository filesystem. Since the filesystem is in the Linux kernel it's released under the GPL v2 The release model has always been that new feature development happened in the mainline kernel and we then built consistent, well tested, snapshots that had versions, 1.2, 1.4, 1.6, 1.8. But these releases were effectively just snapshots in time that were tested for stability and release quality. OCFS2 is very easy to use, there's a simple text file that contains the node information (hostname, node number, cluster name) and a file that contains the cluster heartbeat timeouts. It is very small, and very efficient. As Sunil Mushran wrote in the manual : OCFS2 is an efficient, easily configured, quickly installed, fully integrated and compatible, feature-rich, architecture and endian neutral, cache coherent, ordered data journaling, POSIX-compliant, shared disk cluster file system. Here is a list of some of the important features that are included : Variable Block and Cluster sizes Supports block sizes ranging from 512 bytes to 4 KB and cluster sizes ranging from 4 KB to 1 MB (increments in power of 2). Extent-based Allocations Tracks the allocated space in ranges of clusters making it especially efficient for storing very large files. Optimized Allocations Supports sparse files, inline-data, unwritten extents, hole punching and allocation reservation for higher performance and efficient storage. File Cloning/snapshots REFLINK is a feature which introduces copy-on-write clones of files in a cluster coherent way. Indexed Directories Allows efficient access to millions of objects in a directory. Metadata Checksums Detects silent corruption in inodes and directories. Extended Attributes Supports attaching an unlimited number of name:value pairs to the file system objects like regular files, directories, symbolic links, etc. Advanced Security Supports POSIX ACLs and SELinux in addition to the traditional file access permission model. Quotas Supports user and group quotas. Journaling Supports both ordered and writeback data journaling modes to provide file system consistency in the event of power failure or system crash. Endian and Architecture neutral Supports a cluster of nodes with mixed architectures. Allows concurrent mounts on nodes running 32-bit and 64-bit, little-endian (x86, x86_64, ia64) and big-endian (ppc64) architectures. In-built Cluster-stack with DLM Includes an easy to configure, in-kernel cluster-stack with a distributed lock manager. Buffered, Direct, Asynchronous, Splice and Memory Mapped I/Os Supports all modes of I/Os for maximum flexibility and performance. Comprehensive Tools Support Provides a familiar EXT3-style tool-set that uses similar parameters for ease-of-use. The filesystem was distributed for Linux distributions in separate RPM form and this had to be built for every single kernel errata release or every updated kernel provided by the vendor. We provided builds from Oracle for Oracle Linux and all kernels released by Oracle and for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. SuSE provided the modules directly for every kernel they shipped. With the introduction of the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel for Oracle Linux and our interest in reducing the overhead of building filesystem modules for every minor release, we decide to make OCFS2 available as part of UEK. There was no more need for separate kernel modules, everything was built-in and a kernel upgrade automatically updated the filesystem, as it should. UEK allowed us to not having to backport new upstream filesystem code into an older kernel version, backporting features into older versions introduces risk and requires extra testing because the code is basically partially rewritten. The UEK model works really well for continuing to provide OCFS2 without that extra overhead. Because the RHEL kernel did not contain OCFS2 as a kernel module (it is in the source tree but it is not built by the vendor in kernel module form) we stopped adding the extra packages to Oracle Linux and its RHEL compatible kernel and for RHEL. Oracle Linux customers/users obviously get OCFS2 included as part of the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel, SuSE customers get it by SuSE distributed with SLES and Red Hat can decide to distribute OCFS2 to their customers if they chose to as it's just a matter of compiling the module and making it available. OCFS2 today, in the mainline kernel is pretty much feature complete in terms of integration with every filesystem feature Linux offers and it is still actively maintained with Joel Becker being the primary maintainer. Since we use OCFS2 as part of Oracle VM, we continue to look at interesting new functionality to add, REFLINK was a good example, and as such we continue to enhance the filesystem where it makes sense. Bugfixes and any sort of code that goes into the mainline Linux kernel that affects filesystems, automatically also modifies OCFS2 so it's in kernel, actively maintained but not a lot of new development happening at this time. We continue to fully support OCFS2 as part of Oracle Linux and the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel and other vendors make their own decisions on support as it's really a Linux cluster filesystem now more than something that we provide to customers. It really just is part of Linux like EXT3 or BTRFS etc, the OS distribution vendors decide. Do not confuse OCFS2 with ACFS (ASM cluster Filesystem) also known as Oracle Cloud Filesystem. ACFS is a filesystem that's provided by Oracle on various OS platforms and really integrates into Oracle ASM (Automatic Storage Management). It's a very powerful Cluster Filesystem but it's not distributed as part of the Operating System, it's distributed with the Oracle Database product and installs with and lives inside Oracle ASM. ACFS obviously is fully supported on Linux (Oracle Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux) but OCFS2 independently as a native Linux filesystem is also, and continues to also be supported. ACFS is very much tied into the Oracle RDBMS, OCFS2 is just a standard native Linux filesystem with no ties into Oracle products. Customers running the Oracle database and ASM really should consider using ACFS as it also provides storage/clustered volume management. Customers wanting to use a simple, easy to use generic Linux cluster filesystem should consider using OCFS2. To learn more about OCFS2 in detail, you can find good documentation on http://oss.oracle.com/projects/ocfs2 in the Documentation area, or get the latest mainline kernel from http://kernel.org and read the source. One final, unrelated note - since I am not always able to publicly answer or respond to comments, I do not want to selectively publish comments from readers. Sometimes I forget to publish comments, sometime I publish them and sometimes I would publish them but if for some reason I cannot publicly comment on them, it becomes a very one-sided stream. So for now I am going to not publish comments from anyone, to be fair to all sides. You are always welcome to email me and I will do my best to respond to technical questions, questions about strategy or direction are sometimes not possible to answer for obvious reasons.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, April 14, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, April 14, 2012Popular ReleasesJson.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 3: Change - DefaultContractResolver.IgnoreSerializableAttribute is now true by default Fix - Fixed MaxDepth on JsonReader recursively throwing an error Fix - Fixed SerializationBinder.BindToName not being called with full assembly namesVisual Studio Team Foundation Server Branching and Merging Guide: v2 - For Visual Studio 11: Welcome to the BETA of the Branching and Merging Guide preview As this is a BETA release and the quality bar for the final Release has not been achieved, we value your candid feedback and recommend that you do not use or deploy these BETA artifacts in a production environment. Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has not been through an independent technical review Documentation has been reviewed by the quality and recording te...Media Companion: MC 3.435b Release: This release should be the last beta for 3.4xx. A handful of problems have been sorted out since last weeks release. If there are no major problems this time, it will upgraded to 3.500 Stable at the end of the week! General The .NET Framework has been modified to use the Client profile, as provided by normal Windows updates; no longer is there a requirement to download and install the Full profile! mc_com.exe has been worked on to mimic proper Media Companion output (a big thanks to vbat99...THE NVL Maker: The NVL Maker Ver 3.12: SIM??????，TRA??????，ZIP????。 ????????????????，??????~（??????????????????） ??????? simpatch1440x900 trapatch1440x900 ?????1400x900??1440x900，?????????????Data.xp3。 ???? ?????3.12?EXE????????????????， ??????????????，??Tool/krkrconf.exe，??Editor.exe， ???????????????「??????」。 ?????Editor.exe??????。 ???? ???? http://etale.us/gameupload/THE_NVL_Maker_ver3.12_sim.zip ???? http://www.mediafire.com/?je51683g22bz8vo ??Infinite Creation?? http://bbs.etale.us/forum.php ?????? ???? 3.12 ??? ???、????...SnmpMessenger: 0.1.1.1: Project Description SnmpMessenger, a messenger. Using the SNMP protocol to exchange messages. It's developed in C#. SnmpMessenger For .Net 4.0, Mono 2.8. Support SNMP V1, V2, V3. Features Send get, set and other requests and get the response. Send and receive traps. Handle requests and return the response. Note This library is compliant with the Common Language Specification(CLS). The latest version is 0.1.1.1. It is only a messenger, does not involve VACM. Any problems, Please mailto: wa...Python Tools for Visual Studio: 1.1.1: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 1.1.1. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including: • Supports CPython and IronPython • Python editor with advanced member and signature intellisense • Code navigation: “Find all refs”, goto definition, and object browser • Local and remote debugging • Profiling with multiple view...Supporting Guidance and Whitepapers: v1 - Team Foundation Service Whitepapers: Welcome to the BETA release of the Team Foundation Service Whitepapers preview As this is a BETA release and the quality bar for the final Release has not been achieved, we value your candid feedback and recommend that you do not use or deploy these BETA artifacts in a production environment. Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has been through an independent technical review All critical bugs have been resolved Known Issue...Microsoft .NET Gadgeteer: .NET Gadgeteer Core 2.42.550 (BETA): Microsoft .NET Gadgeteer Core RELEASE NOTES Version 2.42.550 11 April 2012 BETA VERSION WARNING: This is a beta version! Please note: - API changes may be made before the next version (2.42.600) - The designer will not show modules/mainboards for NETMF 4.2 until you get upgraded libraries from the module/mainboard vendors - Install NETMF 4.2 (see link below) to use the new features of this release That warning aside, this version should continue to sup...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter Beta v2.0.24: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, and Client Profile. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also available via NuGet.Kendo UI ASP.NET Sample Applications: Sample Applications (2012-04-11): Sample application(s) demonstrating the use of Kendo UI in ASP.NET applications.SCCM Client Actions Tool: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.12: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.12 is the latest version. It comes with following changes since last version: Improved WMI date conversion to be aware of timezone differences and DST. Fixed new version check. The tool is downloadable as a ZIP file that contains four files: ClientActionsTool.hta – The tool itself. Cmdkey.exe – command line tool for managing cached credentials. This is needed for alternate credentials feature when running the HTA on Windows XP. Cmdkey.exe is natively availab...Dual Browsing: Dual Browser: Please note the following: I setup the address bar temporarily to only accepts http:// .com addresses. Just type in the name of the website excluding: http://, www., and .com; (Ex: for www.youtube.com just type: youtube then click OK). The page splitter can be grabbed by holding down your left mouse button and move left or right. By right clicking on the page background, you can choose to refresh, go back a page and so on. Demo video: http://youtu.be/L7NTFVM3JUYCslaGenFork: Rules sample v.1.1.0: On projects for CSLA v.4.2.2, added 5 new Business Rules: - DependencyFrom - RequiredWhenCanWrite - RequiredWhenIsNotNew - RequiredWhenNew - StopIfNotFieldExists Added new projects for CSLA v.4.3.10 with 6 new Business Rules: - DependencyFrom - FieldExists - RequiredWhenCanWrite - RequiredWhenIsNotNew - RequiredWhenNew - StopIfNotFieldExists Following CSLA convention, SL stands for Silverligth 5 and SL4 stands for Silverlight 4. NOTE - Although the projects for CSLA v.4.1.0 still exist, thi...Multiwfn: Multiwfn 2.3.3: Multiwfn 2.3.3Liberty: v3.2.0.1 Release 9th April 2012: Change Log-Fixed -Reach Fixed a bug where the object editor did not work on non-English operating systemsCommonData - Common Functions for ASP.NET projects: CommonData 0.3L: Common Data has been updated to the latest NUnit (2.6.0) The demo project has been updated with an example on how to correctly compare a floating point value.ASP.Net MVC Dynamic JS/CSS Script Compression Framework: Initial Stable: Initial Stable Version Contains Source for Compression Library and example for usage in web application.Path Copy Copy: 10.1: This release addresses the following work items: 11357 11358 11359 This release is a recommended upgrade, especially for users who didn't install the 10.0.1 version.ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.3: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://extasp.net/ ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-04-08 v3.1.3 -??Language="zh_TW"?JS???BUG（??）。 +?D...Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.5.5: New Controls ChatBubble ChatBubbleTextBox OpacityToggleButton New Stuff TimeSpan languages added: RU, SK, CS Expose the physics math from TimeSpanPicker Image Stretch now on buttons Bug Fixes Layout fix so RoundToggleButton and RoundButton are exactly the same Fix for ColorPicker when set via code behind ToastPrompt bug fix with OnNavigatedTo Toast now adjusts its layout if the SIP is up Fixed some issues with Expression Blend supportNew ProjectsArkadia Operating System: This operating system is based on Cosmos Project and C# Programming Langage.Copy Microsoft Online User Attributes from one domain user to another: CopyMSOLAttributes copies MSOL-specific user attributes from source user to target user (legacyExchangeDN, mail, msExchMailboxGuid, proxyAddresses, targetAddress). This assists in migrating to Office 365 in a multi-domain, multi-forest environment.DevChat: DevChat is a small secure chat for dev groups or teams inside of an organisation that wish to control their information.Dynamic UI Framework: Dynamic UI FrameworkEjemploAndroid: Prueba Trabajar con eclipse y codeplexElfos vs Orcos: videojuego xna elfos vs orcosFacebook Suite Rules Orchard module: Part of the Facebook Suite Orchard module that provides various rules for the Rules engine to interact with Facebook.FakeMail: FakeMail makes testing of email enabled applications easier for DEVs and QAs. You no longer need to have multiple "real" email addresses to test and validate registration and notification features. Written in C# this ASP.Net MVC application uses RavenDB Embedded as a document store and hosts a custom SMTP server. Configure FakeMail and update your existing email-enabled application's SMTP server settings are you are ready to go. FakeMail mail server will accept email sent to ANY addre...FIM Object Visualizer: The FIM Object Visualizer is a tool to display and document configurable FIM objects such as Synchronization Rules, Workflows and Management Policy Rules. FXIB: ThisGoogle Places Autocomplete API for WP7: The Google Places Autocomplete API for WP7 is a project for WP7 developers to use when implementing an autocomplete box in their application. This project provides an easy non-blocking way to get fast results from the Google Places Autocomplete API. hook send/recv function with CreateRemoteThread: this sample is hooking send/recv function with CreateRemoteThread api.Infinity Music: Entertainment center, music player, youtube player, Internet radio, Facebook, Twitter ... All in one application ...! Centro de entretenimiento, reproductor de música, reproductor videos you tube, radio por internet, Facebook, Twitter... Todo en una misma aplicación...! Centre de divertissement, lecteur de musique, lecteur YouTube, la radio sur Internet, Facebook, Twitter ... Tout dans une seule application ...!Library Guard: Library Guard helps you maintain your media library(primarily audio) by correcting tags, maintaining location of your files, etc.MVVM Source Control Monitor: An exercise in MVVM with Wpf to create a useful and unobtrusive source control notification tool that lives in the system tray, and can also be viewed in a window. This is meant to provide a 'real world' application to provide examples of MVVM implementation without understanding any other frameworks that can blur the lines about what MVVM really is (it's a pattern, folks). The application will use as little 3rd party code as possible (Wpf Toolkit, some other goodies) that are all unrel...Orchard Calendar: Module provides calendar capabilities in Orchard. This is accomplished by a new calendar content part and content type along with new calendar layout for Projector module. PaidRanks: PaidRanks makes it easier for minecraft admins to mangae user rights and rewards donators. You'll no longer have to manually change nick names again. It's developed in Java 7.Perritos Project: Practice of the subject projectPython Pygame Sprites Example: This project example uses Python and Pygame to create a game environment. This code requires major refactoring and there is no warranty. Reversi.NET: Reversi is a board game involving abstract strategy and played by two players on a board with 8 rows and 8 columns and a set of distinct pieces for each side.SharePoint Social Tag Counters: The SharePoint Social Tag Counter project takes the social features from SharePoint 2010 to another level. It allows you to immediately show your SharePoint visitors how popular the content is with the help of Social "I like it" and "Tag" counters.Shop systems1: dddddddddddSource Block - Data Access Components: Source Block - Data Access Components Contains two components. 1. DBHandler 2. DBSchemaHandler DBHandler : Pure ADO.Net based Data access layer DBSchemaHandler : Pure ADO.Net based Database schema handlerSource Block - Domain Driven Development Framework: A framework which promotes domain pattern based development. This promotes patterns such as : Repository, Unit of work, Dependency injection and Inversion of control. Built on MS E.F 4.2 using code first approach. Includes features such as code generationSuperSocket Proxy Server: A .NET proxy server based on SuperSocketTestC-Q: This project is on working with KDB database and fetching data from open market data providers. This will do rigorous analysis. Don't try to find any code till Oct 2012.tofinish: tofinishUse National Geographic Photo of the Day as Wallpaper: I used to watch National Geographic Photo of the day everyday. http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day So I thought it might be helpful for people like me if a software synchronise the wallpaper with national geographic photo of the day. It also archives photo of the day along with publication date and photo title.VAMP: Projet industriel MBDS 2012?????: ???????Model???????: ????：??Model??????? ???：??? ??：?????????python?SDK: ??python??????SDK。????

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, November 19, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, November 19, 2012Popular ReleasesmojoPortal: 2.3.9.4: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2394-released Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0, but we recommend you to use .NET 4, we will probably drop support for .NET 3.5 once .NET 4.5 is available The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code and are not intended for use in Visual Studio. To download the source code see getting the lates...VidCoder: 1.4.6 Beta: Brought back the x264 advanced options panel due to popular demand. Thank you for all the feedback. x264 Preset/Profile/Tune/Level has been moved back to the Video tab, along with a copy of the "extra options" string. Added Fast Decode and Zero Latency checkboxes to support multiple Tunes. Added cropping option "None". Audio bitrates that are incompatible with the encoder (such as MP3 > 320 kbps) are no longer preset on the list. Fixed crash on opening VidCoder after de-selecting "re...Metodología General Ajustada - MGA: 03.05.02: Cambios Parmenio: Correcciones al formato F03 de programación, se deja en comentarios la validación de la unidad de la actividad sea igul a la del indicador. Cambios John: Integración de código con cambios enviados por Parmenio Bonilla. Generación de instaladores. Soporte técnico por correo electrónico, telefónico y en sitio.SPListViewFilter: Version 1.8: Fixed some bugsDotNetNuke® Store: 03.01.07: What's New in this release? IMPORTANT: this version requires DotNetNuke 04.06.02 or higher! DO NOT REPORT BUGS HERE IN THE ISSUE TRACKER, INSTEAD USE THE DotNetNuke Store Forum! Bugs corrected: - Replaced some hard coded references to the default address provider classes by the corresponding interfaces to allow the creation of another address provider with a different name. New Features: - Added the 'pickup' delivery option at checkout. - Added the 'no delivery' option in the Store Admin ...Bundle Transformer - a modular extension for ASP.NET Web Optimization Framework: Bundle Transformer 1.6.10: Version: 1.6.10 Published: 11/18/2012 Now almost all of the Bundle Transformer's assemblies is signed (except BundleTransformer.Yui.dll); In BundleTransformer.SassAndScss the SassAndCoffee.Ruby library was replaced by my own implementation of the Sass- and SCSS-compiler (based on code of the SassAndCoffee.Ruby library version 2.0.2.0); In BundleTransformer.CoffeeScript added support of CoffeeScript version 1.4.0-3; In BundleTransformer.TypeScript added support of TypeScript version 0....ExtJS based ASP.NET 2.0 Controls: FineUI v3.2.0: +2012-11-18 v3.2.0 -?????????????????SelectedValueArray????????（◇?◆:）。 -???????????????????RecoverPropertiesFromJObject????（〓?〓、????、??、Vian_Pan）。 -????????????，?????????????，???SelectedValueArray???????（sam.chang）。 -??Alert.Show???????????（swtseaman）。 -???????????????，??Icon??IconUrl????（swtseaman）。 -?????????TimePicker（??）。 -?????????，??/res.axd?css=blue.css&v=1。 -????????，?????????????，???????。 -????MenuCheckBox（???????）。 -?RadioButton??AutoPostBack??。 -???????FCKEditor?????????...BugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 1.2: Please read our release notes for BugNET 1.2: http://blog.bugnetproject.com/bugnet-1-2-has-been-released Please do not post questions as reviews. Questions should be posted in the Discussions tab, where they will usually get promptly responded to. If you post a question as a review, you will pollute the rating, and you won't get an answer.Paint.NET PSD Plugin: 2.2.0: Changes: Layer group visibility is now applied to all layers within the group. This greatly improves the visual fidelity of complex PSD files that have hidden layer groups. Layer group names are prefixed so that users can get an indication of the layer group hierarchy. (Paint.NET has a flat list of layers, so the hierarchy is flattened out on load.) The progress bar now reports status when saving PSD files, instead of showing an indeterminate rolling bar. Performance improvement of 1...CRM 2011 Visual Ribbon Editor: Visual Ribbon Editor (1.3.1116.7): [IMPROVED] Detailed error message descriptions for FaultException [FIX] Fixed bug in rule CrmOfflineAccessStateRule which had incorrect State attribute name [FIX] Fixed bug in rule EntityPropertyRule which was missing PropertyValue attribute [FIX] Current connection information was not displayed in status bar while refreshing list of entitiesSuper Metroid Randomizer: Super Metroid Randomizer v5: v5 -Added command line functionality for automation purposes. -Implented Krankdud's change to randomize the Etecoon's item. NOTE: this version will not accept seeds from a previous version. The seed format has changed by necessity. v4 -Started putting version numbers at the top of the form. -Added a warning when suitless Maridia is required in a parsed seed. v3 -Changed seed to only generate filename-legal characters. Using old seeds will still work exactly the same. -Files can now be saved...Caliburn Micro: WPF, Silverlight, WP7 and WinRT/Metro made easy.: Caliburn.Micro v1.4: Changes This version includes many bug fixes across all platforms, improvements to nuget support and...the biggest news of all...full support for both WinRT and WP8. Download Contents Debug and Release Assemblies Samples Readme.txt License.txt Packages Available on Nuget Caliburn.Micro – The full framework compiled into an assembly. Caliburn.Micro.Start - Includes Caliburn.Micro plus a starting bootstrapper, view model and view. Caliburn.Micro.Container – The Caliburn.Micro invers...DirectX Tool Kit: November 15, 2012: November 15, 2012 Added support for WIC2 when available on Windows 8 and Windows 7 with KB 2670838 Cleaned up warning level 4 warningsDotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.02.05: Major Highlights Updated the system so that it supports nested folders in the App_Code folder Updated the Global Error Handling so that when errors within the global.asax handler happen, they are caught and shown in a page displaying the original HTTP error code Fixed issue that stopped users from specifying Link URLs that open on a new window Security FixesFixed issue in the Member Directory module that could show members to non authenticated users Fixed issue in the Lists modul...fastJSON: v2.0.10: - added MonoDroid projectxUnit.net Contrib: xunitcontrib-resharper 0.7 (RS 7.1, 6.1.1): xunitcontrib release 0.6.1 (ReSharper runner) This release provides a test runner plugin for Resharper 7.1 RTM and 6.1.1, targetting all versions of xUnit.net. (See the xUnit.net project to download xUnit.net itself.) This release drops 7.0 support and targets the latest revisions of the last two major versions of ReSharper (namely 7.0 and 6.1.1). Copies of the plugin that support previous verions of ReSharper can be downloaded from this release. Also note that all builds work against ALL ...OnTopReplica: Release 3.4: Update to the 3 version with major fixes and improvements. Compatible with Windows 8. Now runs (and requires) .NET Framework v.4.0. Added relative mode for region selection (allows the user to select regions as margins from the borders of the thumbnail, useful for windows which have a variable size but fixed size controls, like video players). Improved window seeking when restoring cloned thumbnail or cloning a window by title or by class. Improved settings persistence. Improved co...DotSpatial: DotSpatial 1.4: This is a Minor Release. See the changes in the issue tracker. Minimal -- includes DotSpatial core and essential extensions Extended -- includes debugging symbols and additional extensions Tutorials are available. Just want to run the software? End user (non-programmer) version available branded as MapWindow Want to add your own feature? Develop a plugin, using the template and contribute to the extension feed (you can also write extensions that you distribute in other ways). Components ...WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.3.5: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features Attachable Behaviors AwaitableUI extensions Controls Converters Debugging helpers Extension methods Imaging helpers IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes Docum...AcDown?????: AcDown????? v4.3: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown??????????????????，????????????????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???，????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???，????????Mono?? ??2...New Projects1119P1: So far, I haven't found any bugcoolow: a simple projectDatabase Tools: Windows application for managing SQL Server databases.Editable WILEz Books: Sorry for my bad enlgish. I'm italian. With this project you can write a simple book with images, you can customize text font, color, beckground immage ecc.. simply with a editable txt file.EstimateTracker: Program to track estimate time using XAML, MVVM, WPF, ninject Ioc, nhibernate and Microsoft PrismExtJS based ASP.NET 2.0 Controls: About FineUI ExtJS based professional ASP.NET 2.0 Controls. FineUI Mission Create No JavaScript, No CSS, No UpdatePanel, No ViewState and No WebServices web apGCU: This project supports the Gedcom Utility which allows users to review many Gedcom files for certain information.Heng.Elements: Entity Relationship ModelingiRoboticsPrototype1: iRobotics Prototype 1. Under developmentJamaican kitchen: This a website which will display various jamaican food. these dishes which be ranging from mild to spicey food. JarvisProject1: ???? ?????? ??????? ??????? - ????????????? ?????????? ? ???????? ????????? ??????Java 2D Game Developing Setup: Set of classes as "interface" between game powering code and creative game development in Java. KZ.Express: Project is build to resolve bill managementlbpWGaeBlog: my blog on gaeLogistic Management System: D? án giao nh?n v?n t?i logistics. D? án có r?t nhi?u ký t? D? án giao nh?n v?n t?i logistics. D? án có r?t nhi?u ký t?D? án giao nh?n v?n t?i logistics. D? án Managed3D: Managed3D is a scene graph API that allows developers to have both high-level and low-level access to objects in a 3-dimensional scene.MicroTao: MicroTao is for the future.MVC4 ASPX TourBooking: Website Booking tourMyDay: Simple little spike, using a todo list. Spiking MVC 4, Twitter Bootstrap, code-first migrations in EF 5, and AppHarbor deployments. mytestmusicstoremvc: my Study mvcNDateTime: NDateTime is a javascript library that wrap the most commons properties and methods of .NET DateTime object.onexin: This is test.PersiaCaptchaHandler: A Persian Captcha that use number in lettersPhoneGap/Cordova Libs, PhoneGap Demos, PhoneGap Solutions, PhoneGap Practices: Here you can find PhoneGap/Cordova Libs, demos, solutions, best practices, architectures, etc. Most important, all should be the best and free.PhotOrganizer: Windows application to organize your pictures. Scans folder for number and size of pictures. Moves to destination by year-month and removes duplicate files.PoNCE: PoNCE Engine helps creating of Point and Click quest gamesPragTest: List of my projectsProof of Concept Code: This is pretty much throw-away PoC code. I intend to have a folder for each PoC and the solution file for the PoC under the same folder. Security Center: Security Center is a handy tool to secure your secret notes. 512-bits AES algorithm with your private master password is used to protect your data. SharePoint Metro Sliders: SharePoint 2010 Feature that includes two Metro style image sliders web parts: - Image slider with just one image - Image slider with four smaller images in it.SkilledRES_Portal: SkilledRES Portal consists about Organization Information & Activity Profiling of SkilledRESSuper BASE32: This awesome app let you convert all your music, pictures and video to brand new BASE32 encoding! System.Data.Entity.Repository.Filters: System.Data.Entity.Repository.FiltersThe Media Store: The Media StoreUser Group: Maintain support data for user groupsVivitap: Vivitap Samples and SDK support.Web Scripting and Content Creation - DIY Wedding Cake - Assignment 2 - Prototype: Web Scripting and Content Creation - DIY Wedding Cake - Assignment 2webass2: protoype project for the final project for WSCC .WebTechCoursework2.HRSystem: Human Resource System for Web Technology CourseworkWindows Store Application Library: Windows Store Application Library provides a collection of UI controls and utilities for Windows 8 store application developers.WriteMyName: Código para escrever o nome do autor no começo de código fonte.XMPP Chat for Windows 8 Apps Store: xmpp sample for windows app store???-Windows8: ???Windows8???，?????????

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