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• TechEd 2010 Important Events

  If youll be attending TechEd in New Orleans in a couple of weeks, make sure the following are all on your calendar:   Party with Palermo TechEd 2010 Edition Sunday 6 June 2010 7:30-930pm Central Time RSVP and see who else is coming here.  The party takes place from 730pm to 930pm Central (Local) Time,  and includes a full meal, free swag, and prizes.  The event is being held at Jimmy Buffetts Margaritaville located at 1104 Decatur Street.   Developer Practices Session: DPR304 FAIL: Anti-Patterns and Worst Practices Monday 7 June 2010 4:30pm-545pm Central Time Room 276 Come to my session and hear about what NOT to do on your software project.  Hear my own and others war stories and lessons learned.  Youll laugh, youll cry, youll realize youre a much better developer than a lot of folks out there.  Heres the official description: Everybody likes to talk about best practices, tips, and tricks, but often it is by analyzing failures that we learn from our own and others' mistakes. In this session, Steve describes various anti-patterns and worst practices in software development that he has encountered in his own experience or learned about from other experts in the field, along with advice on recognizing and avoiding them. View DPR304 in TechEd Session Catalog >> Exhibition Hall Reception Monday 7 June 2010 545pm-9pm Immediately following my session, come meet the shows exhibitors, win prizes, and enjoy plenty of food and drink.  Always a good time.   Party: Geekfest Tuesday 8 June 8pm-11pm Central Time, Pat OBriens Lets face it, going to a technical conference is good for your career but its not a whole lot of fun. You need an outlet. You need to have fun. Cheap beer and lousy pizza (with a New Orleans twist) We are bringing back GeekFest! Join us at Pat OBriens for a night of gumbo, beer and hurricanes. There are limited invitations available, so what are you waiting for? If you are attending the TechEd 2010 conference and you are a developer, you are invited. To register pick up your "duck" ticket (and wristband) in the TechEd Technical Learning Center (TLC) at the Developer Tools & Languages (DEV) information desk. You must have wristband to get in. Tuesday, June 8th from 8pm 11pm Pat OBriens New Orleans 624 Bourbon Street New Orleans, LA 70130 Closing Party at Mardi Gras World Thursday 10 June 730pm-10pm Central Time Join us for the Closing Party and enjoy great food, beverages, and the excitement of New Orleans at Mardi Gras World. The colors, the lights, the music, the joie de vivreits all here.  Learn more >> Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Top 5 characteristics Recruiters are looking for

  - by Maria Sandu

  Of course many skills and characteristics recruiters are looking for are job specific. But whether you are a graduate fresh out of college or seasoned in the workplace, recruiters are also looking for generic skills and attitude to see whether you are a good fit to the company. So make sure you prepare and show through examples that you have these skills. 1. Drive/passion Liking the job you are applying for is paramount and something recruiters are always looking for. Show and prove your drive for the role and/or the field you are applying for. Always be prepared to pitch yourself, this shows your drive in the role you are applying for. 2. Communication skills People often make the mistake by thinking this skill is related to how good they are able to talk about their background and expertise. This is important, but as least as important is it that you listen well to questions that are asked. Make sure you answer to the point and ask questions if you want questions to be clarified. This shows your interest in the role and the ability to communicate clearly. This also helps you building trust with the recruiter every time you speak to him/her. 3. Confidence Recruiters are looking for the best candidate for the job. So if you don’t think you are the best candidate why should the recruiter? Show with confidence, without being arrogant (think about building trust), why you are the right person for the job. Confidence also shows in your answers to difficult questions. Be confident enough to explain why some experiences went wrong and how you learnt from them. If you don’t have a direct explanation on a question, it is better to ask for a second to think instead of a random answer. 4. Vision The main reason to hire graduates for many companies is that graduates are perceived to be flexible. The organisation will train and up skill you in the direction best suitable for the organisation. However the most intense learning path is realised when you also know where you want to go. Companies are often happy to accommodate you to support with training and development, but if you don’t have a clear vision on what you want to achieve for yourself and what value you bring to the company, recruiters can decide you are not the right candidate as they are afraid you aren’t going to stay in the company. 5. Business awareness For every job you apply you will get challenged on your knowledge and interest for the market and business they are in. All companies add value in different ways in their respective markets. So make sure you are aware of what a company is doing, what their goal is and why and how they exist and how you can add value for the company in the role you are applying for. /* 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-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; 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-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Proving What You are Worth

  - by Ted Henson

  Here is a challenge for everyone. Just about everyone has been asked to provide or calculate the Return on Investment (ROI), so I will assume everyone has a method they use. The problem with stopping once you have an ROI is that those in the C-Suite probably do not care about the ROI as much as Return on Equity (ROE). Shareholders are mostly concerned with their return on the money the invested. Warren Buffett looks at ROE when deciding whether to make a deal or not. This article will outline how you can add more meaning to your ROI and show how you can potentially enhance the ROE of the company.   First I want to start with a base definition I am using for ROI and ROE. Return on investment (ROI) and return on equity (ROE) are ways to measure management effectiveness, parts of a system of measures that also includes profit margins for profitability, price-to-earnings ratio for valuation, and various debt-to-equity ratios for financial strength. Without a set of evaluation metrics, a company's financial performance cannot be fully examined by investors. ROI and ROE calculate the rate of return on a specific investment and the equity capital respectively, assessing how efficient financial resources have been used. Typically, the best way to improve financial efficiency is to reduce production cost, so that will be the focus. Now that the challenge has been made and items have been defined, let’s go deeper. Most research about implementation stops short at system start-up and seldom addresses post-implementation issues. However, we know implementation is a continuous improvement effort, and continued efforts after system start-up will influence the ultimate success of a system.   Most UPK ROI’s I have seen only include the cost savings in developing the training material. Some will also include savings based on reduced Help Desk calls. Using just those values you get a good ROI. To get an ROE you need to go a little deeper. Typically, the best way to improve financial efficiency is to reduce production cost, which is the purpose of implementing/upgrading an enterprise application. Let’s assume the new system is up and running and all users have been properly trained and are comfortable using the system. You provide senior management with your ROI that justifies the original cost. What you want to do now is develop a good base value to a measure the current efficiency. Using usage tracking you can look for various patterns. For example, you may find that users that are accessing UPK assistance are processing a procedure, such as entering an order, 5 minutes faster than those that don’t.  You do some research and discover each minute saved in processing a claim saves the company one dollar. That translates to the company saving five dollars on every transaction. Assuming 100,000 transactions are performed a year, and all users improve their performance, the company will be saving $500,000 a year. That $500,000 can be re-invested, used to reduce debt or paid to the shareholders.   With continued refinement during the life cycle, you should be able to find ways to reduce cost. These are the type of numbers and productivity gains that senior management and shareholders want to see. Being able to quantify savings and increase productivity may also help when seeking a raise or promotion.

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• Inside Red Gate - Exercising Externally

  - by simonc

  Over the next few weeks, we'll be performing experiments on SmartAssembly to confirm or refute various hypotheses we have about how people use the product, what is stopping them from using it to its full extent, and what we can change to make it more useful and easier to use. Some of these experiments can be done within the team, some within Red Gate, and some need to be done on external users. External testing Some external testing can be done by standard usability tests and surveys, however, there are some hypotheses that can only be tested by building a version of SmartAssembly with some things in the UI or implementation changed. We'll then be able to look at how the experimental build is used compared to the 'mainline' build, which forms our baseline or control group, and use this data to confirm or refute the relevant hypotheses. However, there are several issues we need to consider before running experiments using separate builds: Ideally, the user wouldn't know they're running an experimental SmartAssembly. We don't want users to use the experimental build like it's an experimental build, we want them to use it like it's the real mainline build. Only then will we get valid, useful, and informative data concerning our hypotheses. There's no point running the experiments if we can't find out what happens after the download. To confirm or refute some of our hypotheses, we need to find out how the tool is used once it is installed. Fortunately, we've applied feature usage reporting to the SmartAssembly codebase itself to provide us with that information. Of course, this then makes the experimental data conditional on the user agreeing to send that data back to us in the first place. Unfortunately, even though this does limit the amount of useful data we'll be getting back, and possibly skew the data, there's not much we can do about this; we don't collect feature usage data without the user's consent. Looks like we'll simply have to live with this. What if the user tries to buy the experiment? This is something that isn't really covered by the Lean Startup book; how do you support users who give you money for an experiment? If the experiment is a new feature, and the user buys a license for SmartAssembly based on that feature, then what do we do if we later decide to pivot & scrap that feature? We've either got to spend time and money bringing that feature up to production quality and into the mainline anyway, or we've got disgruntled customers. Either way is bad. Again, there's not really any good solution to this. Similarly, what if we've removed some features for an experiment and a potential new user downloads the experimental build? (As I said above, there's no indication the build is an experimental build, as we want to see what users really do with it). The crucial feature they need is missing, causing a bad trial experience, a lost potential customer, and a lost chance to help the customer with their problem. Again, this is something not really covered by the Lean Startup book, and something that doesn't have a good solution. So, some tricky issues there, not all of them with nice easy answers. Turns out the practicalities of running Lean Startup experiments are more complicated than they first seem! Cross posted from Simple Talk.

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• Approach for packing 2D shapes while minimizing total enclosing area

  - by Dennis

  Not sure on my tags for this question, but in short .... I need to solve a problem of packing industrial parts into crates while minimizing total containing area. These parts are motors, or pumps, or custom-made components, and they have quite unusual shapes. For some, it may be possible to assume that a part === rectangular cuboid, but some are not so simple, i.e. they assume a shape more of that of a hammer or letter T. With those, (assuming 2D shape), by alternating direction of top & bottom, one can pack more objects into the same space, than if all tops were in the same direction. Crude example below with letter "T"-shaped parts: ***** xxxxx ***** x ***** *** ooo * x vs * x vs * x vs * x o * x * xxxxx * x * x o xxxxx xxx Right now we are solving the problem by something like this: using CAD software, make actual models of how things fit in crate boxes make estimates of actual crate dimensions & write them into Excel file (1) is crazy amount of work and as the result we have just a limited amount of possible entries in (2), the Excel file. The good things is that programming this is relatively easy. Given a combination of products to go into crates, we do a lookup, and if entry exists in the Excel (or Database), we bring it out. If it doesn't, we say "sorry, no data!". I don't necessarily want to go full force on making up some crazy algorithm that given geometrical part description can align, rotate, and figure out best part packing into a crate, given its shape, but maybe I do.. Question Well, here is my question: assuming that I can represent my parts as 2D (to be determined how), and that some parts look like letter T, and some parts look like rectangles, which algorithm can I use to give me a good estimate on the dimensions of the encompassing area, while ensuring that the parts are packed in a minimal possible area, to minimize crating/shipping costs? Are there approximation algorithms? Seeing how this can get complex, is there an existing library I could use? My thought / Approach My naive approach would be to define a way to describe position of parts, and place the first part, compute total enclosing area & dimensions. Then place 2nd part in 0 degree orientation, repeat, place it at 180 degree orientation, repeat (for my case I don't think 90 degree rotations will be meaningful due to long lengths of parts). Proceed using brute force "tacking on" other parts to the enclosing area until all parts are processed. I may have to shift some parts a tad (see 3rd pictorial example above with letters T). This adds a layer of 2D complexity rather than 1D. I am not sure how to approach this. One idea I have is genetic algorithms, but I think those will take up too much processing power and time. I will need to look out for shape collisions, as well as adding extra padding space, since we are talking about real parts with irregularities rather than perfect imaginary blocks. I'm afraid this can get geometrically messy fairly fast, and I'd rather keep things simple, if I can. But what if the best (practical) solution is to pack things into different crate boxes rather than just one? This can get a bit more tricky. There is human element involved as well, i.e. like parts can go into same box and are thus a constraint to be considered. Some parts that are not the same are sometimes grouped together for shipping and can be considered as a common grouped item. Sometimes customers want things shipped their way, which adds human element to constraints. so there will have to be some customization.

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• Ops Center 12c - Update - Provisioning Solaris on x86 Using a Card-Based NIC

  - by scottdickson

  Last week, I posted a blog describing how to use Ops Center to provision Solaris over the network via a NIC on a card rather than the built-in NIC.  Really, that was all about how to install Solaris on a SPARC system.  This week, we'll look at how to do the same thing for an x86-based server. Really, the overall process is exactly the same, at least for Solaris 11, with only minor updates. We will focus on Solaris 11 for this blog.  Once I verify that the same approach works for Solaris 10, I will provide another update. Booting Solaris 11 on x86 Just as before, in order to configure the server for network boot across a card-based NIC, it is necessary to declare the asset to associate the additional MACs with the server.  You likely will need to access the server console via the ILOM to figure out the MAC and to get a good idea of the network instance number.  The simplest way to find both of these is to start a network boot using the desired NIC and see where it appears in the list of network interfaces and what MAC is used when it tries to boot.  Go to the ILOM for the server.  Reset the server and start the console.  When the BIOS loads, select the boot menu, usually with Ctrl-P.  This will give you a menu of devices to boot from, including all of the NICs.  Select the NIC you want to boot from.  Its position in the list is a good indication of what network number Solaris will give the device. In this case, we want to boot from the 5th interface (GB_4, net4).  Pick it and start the boot processes.  When it starts to boot, you will see the MAC address for the interface Once you have the network instance and the MAC, go through the same process of declaring the asset as in the SPARC case.  This associates the additional network interface with the server.. Creating an OS Provisioning Plan The simplest way to do the boot via an alternate interface on an x86 system is to do a manual boot.  Update the OS provisioning profile as in the SPARC case to reflect the fact that we are booting from a different interface.  Update, in this case, the network boot device to be GB_4/net4, or the device corresponding to your network instance number.  Configure the profile to support manual network boot by checking the box for manual boot in the OS Provisioning profile. Booting the System Once you have created a profile and plan to support booting from the additional NIC, we are ready to install the server. Again, from the ILOM, reset the system and start the console.  When the BIOS loads, select boot from the Boot Menu as above.  Select the network interface from the list as before and start the boot process.  When the grub bootloader loads, the default boot image is the Solaris Text Installer.  On the grub menu, select Automated Installer and Ops Center takes over from there. Lessons The key lesson from all of this is that Ops Center is a valuable tool for provisioning servers whether they are connected via built-in network interfaces or via high-speed NICs on cards.  This is great news for modern datacenters using converged network infrastructures.  The process works for both SPARC and x86 Solaris installations.  And it's easy and repeatable.

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• Moving abroad - Relocation advice

  - by Tim Koekkoek

  Oracle offers graduates from different European countries the opportunity to start their career abroad. Some already have experience with living abroad as they have done an exchange semester or internship in another county, for others it is the first time they will move abroad. Rui started in October 2011 as a Business Development Consultant in Dublin and moved from Portugal to Dublin, Ireland to start his career. For those planning to leave their home country and who desire to work abroad, he will share some tips and tricks in this article. When you’re faced with an opportunity like this, there are lots of things that will come to your mind. Sometimes it can be either very exciting, or even stressful. 1. First of all, try to relax. If you are certain you are moving abroad, all you need to do is some research about the country where you’re going to live, get to know its culture (gastronomy, important dates and events, its economy and effective ways to keep you in touch with your family and friends – such as mobile companies and Internet services), and start to understand the best locations (with good access) you could/should live in are. Don’t forget that initially you can be limited by transport and therefore it is important to explore the ideal places for you. During this time, Oracle provides everything you’ll need (papers, documents, etc.) to cross borders. 2. When you arrive, you understand that you are in a new country, in a new place, where all things (or most) are unknown to you. Before you panic, try to see it as a new challenge where new opportunities will come. Sometimes, it’s not easy I know, but the very best a new place has to give to you, is the opportunity to understand a new culture, get to know other people, other ways of working, and grow both as a person and professionally. So, you have nothing to lose in this kind of experiment. 3. When you arrive at Oracle, there’s a fantastic team that will help you with settling in, HR, Payroll, Relocation, IT. In my case, Oracle helped me with the relocation, they supported me to arrange everything such as helping out with all the paperwork and finding a new apartment. As you can see they will do their best to help you to be successful! 4. Engage with your new co-workers. Going to a place where you don’t know anyone can be tough sometimes but see it as an opportunity to meet people from all over the world and share experiences. Embrace it. 5. Plan ahead, try to get the most information possible and use it. Oracle is a multinational enterprise that will allow you to get to know a new labour market and give you the flexibility you need to understand your view of employment and occupation, giving you the very best opportunities to join different teams and working areas, so that you can work where you fit best. Good luck! If you’re thinking about starting a career abroad, read the following article: http://www.overseasdigest.com/movingtips.htm it can be very useful to you. Interested in starting your career at Oracle like Rui has? Please have a look at https://campus.oracle.com for all of our latest vacancies.

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• SharePoint Content and Site Editing Tips

  - by Bil Simser

  A few content management and site editing tips for power users on this bacon flavoured unicorn morning. The theme here is keep it clean!Write "friendly" email addressesRemember it's human beings reading your content. So seeing something like "If you have questions please send an email to [email protected]" breaks up the readiblity. Instead just do the simple steps of writing the content in plain English and going back, highlighting the name and insert a link (note: you might have to prefix the link with mailto:[email protected]). It makes for a friendlier looking page and hides the ugliness that are sometimes in email addresses.Use friendly column and list namesThis is a big pet peeve of mine. When you first create a column or list with spaces the internal name is changed. The display name might be "My Amazing List of Animals with Large Testicles" but the internal (and link) name becomes "My_x00x20_Amazing_x00x20_List_x00x20_of_x00x20_Animals_x00x20_with_x00x20_Large_x00x20_Testicles". What's worse is if you create a publishing page named "This Website is Fueled By a Dolphin's Spleen". Not only is it incorrect grammar, but the apostrophe wreaks havoc on both the internal name for the list (with lots of crazy hex codes) as well as the hyperlink (where everything is uuencoded). Instead create the list with a distinct and compact name then go back and change it to whatever you want. The end result is a better formed name that you can both script and access in code easier.Keep your Views CleanWhen you add a column to a list or create a new list the default is to add it to the default view. Do everyone a favour and don't check this box! The default view of a list should be something similar to the Title field and nothing else. Keep it clean. If you want to set a defalt view that's different, go back and create one with all the fields and filtering and sorting columns you want and set it as default. It's a good idea to keep the original AllItems.aspx (note the lack of space in the filename!) easy and unfiltered. It's also a good idea to keep your column count down in views. Don't let every column be added by default and don't add every column just because you can. Create separate views for distinct responsibilities and try to keep the number of columns down to a single screen to prevent horizontal scrolling.Simple NavigationThe Quick Launch is a great tool for navigating around your site but don't use the default of adding all lists to it. Uncheck that box and keep navigation simple. Create custom groupings that make sense so if you don't have a site with "Documents and Lists" but "Reports and Notices" makes more sense then do it. Also hide internal lists from the Quick Launch. For example, if most users don't need to see all the lookup tables you might have on a site don't show them. You can use audience filtering on the Quick Launch if you want to hide admin items from non-admin users so consider that as an option.Enjoy!

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• The long road to bug-free software

  - by Tony Davis

  The past decade has seen a burgeoning interest in functional programming languages such as Haskell or, in the Microsoft world, F#. Though still on the periphery of mainstream programming, functional programming concepts are gradually seeping into the imperative C# language (for example, Lambda expressions have their root in functional programming). One of the more interesting concepts from functional programming languages is the use of formal methods, the lofty ideal behind which is bug-free software. The idea is that we write a specification that describes exactly how our function (say) should behave. We then prove that our function conforms to it, and in doing so have proved beyond any doubt that it is free from bugs. All programmers already use one form of specification, specifically their programming language's type system. If a value has a specific type then, in a type-safe language, the compiler guarantees that value cannot be an instance of a different type. Many extensions to existing type systems, such as generics in Java and .NET, extend the range of programs that can be type-checked. Unfortunately, type systems can only prevent some bugs. To take a classic problem of retrieving an index value from an array, since the type system doesn't specify the length of the array, the compiler has no way of knowing that a request for the "value of index 4" from an array of only two elements is "unsafe". We restore safety via exception handling, but the ideal type system will prevent us from doing anything that is unsafe in the first place and this is where we start to borrow ideas from a language such as Haskell, with its concept of "dependent types". If the type of an array includes its length, we can ensure that any index accesses into the array are valid. The problem is that we now need to carry around the length of arrays and the values of indices throughout our code so that it can be type-checked. In general, writing the specification to prove a positive property, even for a problem very amenable to specification, such as a simple sorting algorithm, turns out to be very hard and the specification will be different for every program. Extend this to writing a specification for, say, Microsoft Word and we can see that the specification would end up being no simpler, and therefore no less buggy, than the implementation. Fortunately, it is easier to write a specification that proves that a program doesn't have certain, specific and undesirable properties, such as infinite loops or accesses to the wrong bit of memory. If we can write the specifications to prove that a program is immune to such problems, we could reuse them in many places. The problem is the lack of specification "provers" that can do this without a lot of manual intervention (i.e. hints from the programmer). All this might feel a very long way off, but computing power and our understanding of the theory of "provers" advances quickly, and Microsoft is doing some of it already. Via their Terminator research project they have started to prove that their device drivers will always terminate, and in so doing have suddenly eliminated a vast range of possible bugs. This is a huge step forward from saying, "we've tested it lots and it seems fine". What do you think? What might be good targets for specification and verification? SQL could be one: the cost of a bug in SQL Server is quite high given how many important systems rely on it, so there's a good incentive to eliminate bugs, even at high initial cost. [Many thanks to Mike Williamson for guidance and useful conversations during the writing of this piece] Cheers, Tony.

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• Profiling Startup Of VS2012 &ndash; dotTrace Profiler

  - by Alois Kraus

  Jetbrains which is famous for the Resharper tool has also a profiler in its portfolio. I downloaded dotTrace 5.2 Professional (569€+VAT) to check how far I can profile the startup of VS2012. The most interesting startup option is “.NET Process”. With that you can profile the next started .NET process which is very useful if you want to profile an application which is not started by you.     I did select Tracing as and Wall time to get similar options across all profilers. For some reason the attach option did not work with .NET 4.5 on my home machine. But I am sure that it did work with .NET 4.0 some time ago. Since we are profiling devenv.exe we can also select “Standalone Application” and start it from the profiler. The startup time of VS does increase about a factor 3 but that is ok. You get mainly three windows to work with. The first one shows the threads where you can drill down thread wise where most time is spent. I The next window is the call tree which does merge all threads together in a similar view. The last and most useful view in my opinion is the Plain List window which is nearly the same as the Method Grid in Ants Profiler. But this time we do get when I enable the Show system functions checkbox not a 150 but 19407 methods to choose from! I really tried with Ants Profiler to find something about out how VS does work but look how much we were missing! When I double click on a method I do get in the lower pane the called methods and their respective timings. This is something really useful and I can nicely drill down to the most important stuff. The measured time seems to be Wall Clock time which is a good thing to see where my time is really spent. You can also use Sampling as profiling method but this does give you much less information. Except for getting a first idea where to look first this profiling mode is not very useful to understand how you system does interact.   The options have a good list of presets to hide by default many method and gray them out to concentrate on your code. It does not filter anything out if you enable Show system functions. By default methods from these assemblies are hidden or if the checkbox is checked grayed out. All in all JetBrains has made a nice profiler which does show great detail and it has nice drill down capabilities. The only thing is that I do not trust its measured timings. I did fall several times into the trap with this one to optimize at places which were already fast but the profiler did show high times in these methods. After measuring with Tracing I was certain that the measured times were greatly exaggerated. Especially when IO is involved it seems to have a hard time to subtract its own overhead. What I did miss most was the possibility to profile not only the next started process but to be able to select a process by name and perhaps a count to profile the next n processes of this name. Next: YourKit

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• Ask the Readers: How Many Monitors Do You Use with Your Computer?

  - by Asian Angel

  Most people have a single monitor for their computers, many have two, and some individuals enjoy “3 monitor plus” goodness. This week we would like to know how many monitors you use with your computer. Photo by DamnedNice. A good majority of people have a single monitor that they use with their computers and that single monitor serves their needs very well. It could be that these individuals do not engage in a heavy amount of work or play on their computers…they just need to do the basics like checking e-mail, using I.M., working with photos, etc. Another possibility is the use of virtual desktop software such as Dexpot, Yodm 3D, or Sysinternals Desktops on Windows systems. Linux systems such as Ubuntu already have that wonderful multi-desktop functionality built in. The wonderful part about virtual desktops is that a single monitor can feel equivalent to a small army of monitors. The ability to separate your open windows into “categories” and spread them out across multiple desktops is definitely nice. With each passing year dual monitor setups are becoming more common. Having twice the screen real-estate visible at the same time can be extremely convenient when you are multi-tasking. Perhaps you like to monitor your system’s stats and an e-mail account on the second monitor while working with software on the first. It certainly beats having windows popping up and down on your screen constantly while keeping on top of everything! Next we have the people who have three or more monitors in use with their computers. This may be a result of the type of work they do, an experiment to see if multiple monitors are right for them, or the cool, geeky factor that comes with having all those monitors. Needless to say these individuals can induce a good amount of envy and/or inspiration in the rest of us when we see their awesome setups. Are you perfectly content with a single monitor? Do you have two or more monitors that you use? If you have two or more monitors are they actually that useful to you? Perhaps you are getting ready even now to add additional monitors to your system. Whatever your situation may be at the moment, let us know your thoughts (and possible multi-monitor plans) in the comments! How-To Geek Polls require Javascript. Please Click Here to View the Poll. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Is Your Desktop Printer More Expensive Than Printing Services? 20 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know HTG Explains: Which Linux File System Should You Choose? HTG Explains: Why Does Photo Paper Improve Print Quality? Hidden Tracks Your Stolen Mac; Free Until End of January Why the Other Checkout Line Always Moves Faster World of Warcraft Theme for Windows 7 Ubuntu Font Family Now Available for Download Oh No! WikiLeaks Published Santa Claus’s Naughty List [Video] Remember the Milk Now Supports HTTPS Encryption for the Entire Session

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• TechEd 2010 Important Events

  If youll be attending TechEd in New Orleans in a couple of weeks, make sure the following are all on your calendar:   Party with Palermo TechEd 2010 Edition Sunday 6 June 2010 7:30-930pm Central Time RSVP and see who else is coming here.  The party takes place from 730pm to 930pm Central (Local) Time,  and includes a full meal, free swag, and prizes.  The event is being held at Jimmy Buffetts Margaritaville located at 1104 Decatur Street.   Developer Practices Session: DPR304 FAIL: Anti-Patterns and Worst Practices Monday 7 June 2010 4:30pm-545pm Central Time Room 276 Come to my session and hear about what NOT to do on your software project.  Hear my own and others war stories and lessons learned.  Youll laugh, youll cry, youll realize youre a much better developer than a lot of folks out there.  Heres the official description: Everybody likes to talk about best practices, tips, and tricks, but often it is by analyzing failures that we learn from our own and others' mistakes. In this session, Steve describes various anti-patterns and worst practices in software development that he has encountered in his own experience or learned about from other experts in the field, along with advice on recognizing and avoiding them. View DPR304 in TechEd Session Catalog >> Exhibition Hall Reception Monday 7 June 2010 545pm-9pm Immediately following my session, come meet the shows exhibitors, win prizes, and enjoy plenty of food and drink.  Always a good time.   Party: Geekfest Tuesday 8 June 8pm-11pm Central Time, Pat OBriens Lets face it, going to a technical conference is good for your career but its not a whole lot of fun. You need an outlet. You need to have fun. Cheap beer and lousy pizza (with a New Orleans twist) We are bringing back GeekFest! Join us at Pat OBriens for a night of gumbo, beer and hurricanes. There are limited invitations available, so what are you waiting for? If you are attending the TechEd 2010 conference and you are a developer, you are invited. To register pick up your "duck" ticket (and wristband) in the TechEd Technical Learning Center (TLC) at the Developer Tools & Languages (DEV) information desk. You must have wristband to get in. Tuesday, June 8th from 8pm 11pm Pat OBriens New Orleans 624 Bourbon Street New Orleans, LA 70130 Closing Party at Mardi Gras World Thursday 10 June 730pm-10pm Central Time Join us for the Closing Party and enjoy great food, beverages, and the excitement of New Orleans at Mardi Gras World. The colors, the lights, the music, the joie de vivreits all here.  Learn more >> Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Obfuscation is not a panacea

  - by simonc

  So, you want to obfuscate your .NET application. My question to you is: Why? What are your aims when your obfuscate your application? To protect your IP & algorithms? Prevent crackers from breaking your licensing? Your boss says you need to? To give you a warm fuzzy feeling inside? Obfuscating code correctly can be tricky, it can break your app if applied incorrectly, it can cause problems down the line. Let me be clear - there are some very good reasons why you would want to obfuscate your .NET application. However, you shouldn't be obfuscating for the sake of obfuscating. Security through Obfuscation? Once your application has been installed on a user’s computer, you no longer control it. If they do not want to pay for your application, then nothing can stop them from cracking it, even if the time cost to them is much greater than the cost of actually paying for it. Some people will not pay for software, even if it takes them a month to crack a $30 app. And once it is cracked, there is nothing stopping them from putting the result up on the internet. There should be nothing suprising about this; there is no software protection available for general-purpose computers that cannot be cracked by a sufficiently determined attacker. Only by completely controlling the entire stack – software, hardware, and the internet connection, can you have even a chance to be uncrackable. And even then, someone somewhere will still have a go, and probably succeed. Even high-end cryptoprocessors have known vulnerabilities that can be exploited by someone with a scanning electron microscope and lots of free time. So, then, why use obfuscation? Well, the primary reason is to protect your IP. What obfuscation is very good at is hiding the overall structure of your program, so that it’s very hard to figure out what exactly the code is doing at any one time, what context it is running in, and how it fits in with the rest of the application; all of which you need to do to understand how the application operates. This is completely different to cracking an application, where you simply have to find a single toggle that determines whether the application is licensed or not, and flip it without the rest of the application noticing. However, again, there are limitations. An obfuscated application still has to run in the same way, and do the same thing, as the original unobfuscated application. This means that some of the protections applied to the obfuscated assembly have to be undone at runtime, else it would not run on the CLR and do the same thing. And, again, since we don’t control the environment the application is run on, there is nothing stopping a user from undoing those protections manually, and reversing some of the obfuscation. It’s a perpetual arms race, and it always will be. We have plenty of ideas lined about new protections, and the new protections added in SA 6.6 (method parent obfuscation and a new control flow obfuscation level) are specifically designed to be harder to reverse and reconstruct the original structure. So then, by all means, obfuscate your application if you want to protect the algorithms and what the application does. That’s what SmartAssembly is designed to do. But make sure you are clear what a .NET obfuscator can and cannot protect you against, and don’t expect your obfuscated application to be uncrackable. Someone, somewhere, will crack your application if they want to and they don’t have anything better to do with their time. The best we can do is dissuade the casual crackers and make it much more difficult for the serious ones. Cross posted from Simple Talk.

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• Pinterest and the Rising Power of Imagery

  - by Mike Stiles

  If images keep you glued to a screen, you’re hardly alone. Countless social users are letting their eyes do the walking, waiting for that special photo to grab their attention. And perhaps more than any other social network, Pinterest has been giving those eyes plenty of room to walk. Pinterest came along in 2010. Its play was that users could simply create topic boards and pin pictures to the appropriate boards for sharing. Yes there are some words, captions mostly, but not many. The speed of its growth raised eyebrows. Traffic quadrupled in the last quarter of 2011, with 7.51 million unique visitors in December alone. It now gets 1.9 billion monthly page views. And it was sticky. In the US, the average time a user spends strolling through boards and photos on Pinterest is 15 minutes, 50 seconds. Proving the concept of browsing a catalogue is not dead, it became a top 5 referrer for several apparel retailers like Land’s End, Nordstrom, and Bergdorfs. Now a survey of online shoppers by BizRate Insights says that Pinterest is responsible for more purchases online than Facebook. Over 70% of its users are going there specifically to keep up with trends and get shopping ideas. And when they buy, the average order value is $179. Pinterest is also scoring better in terms of user engagement. 66% of pinners regularly follow and repin retailers, whereas 17% of Facebook fans turn to that platform for purchase ideas. (Facebook still wins when it comes to reach and driving traffic to 3rd-party sites by the way). Social posting best practices have consistently shown that posts with photos are rewarded with higher engagement levels. You may be downright Shakespearean in your writing, but what makes images in the digital world so much more powerful than prose? 1. They transcend language barriers. 2. They’re fun and addictive to look at. 3. They can be consumed in fractions of a second, important considering how fast users move through their social content (admit it, you do too). 4. They’re efficient gateways. A good picture might get them to the headline. A good headline might then get them to the written content. 5. The audience for them surpasses demographic limitations. 6. They can effectively communicate and trigger an emotion. 7. With mobile use soaring, photos are created on those devices and easily consumed and shared on them. Pinterest’s iPad app hit #1 in the Apple store in 1 day. Even as far back as 2009, over 2.5 billion devices with cameras were on the streets generating in just 1 year, 10% of the number of photos taken…ever. But let’s say you’re not a retailer. What if you’re a B2B whose products or services aren’t visual? Should you worry about your presence on Pinterest? As with all things, you need a keen awareness of who your audience is, where they reside online, and what they want to do there. If it doesn’t make sense to put a tent stake in Pinterest, fine. But ignore the power of pictures at your own peril. If not visually, how are you going to attention-grab social users scrolling down their News Feeds at top speed? You’re competing with every other cool image out there from countless content sources. Bore us and we’ll fly right past you.

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• Faster Memory Allocation Using vmtasks

  - by Steve Sistare

  You may have noticed a new system process called "vmtasks" on Solaris 11 systems: % pgrep vmtasks 8 % prstat -p 8 PID USERNAME SIZE RSS STATE PRI NICE TIME CPU PROCESS/NLWP 8 root 0K 0K sleep 99 -20 9:10:59 0.0% vmtasks/32 What is vmtasks, and why should you care? In a nutshell, vmtasks accelerates creation, locking, and destruction of pages in shared memory segments. This is particularly helpful for locked memory, as creating a page of physical memory is much more expensive than creating a page of virtual memory. For example, an ISM segment (shmflag & SHM_SHARE_MMU) is locked in memory on the first shmat() call, and a DISM segment (shmflg & SHM_PAGEABLE) is locked using mlock() or memcntl(). Segment operations such as creation and locking are typically single threaded, performed by the thread making the system call. In many applications, the size of a shared memory segment is a large fraction of total physical memory, and the single-threaded initialization is a scalability bottleneck which increases application startup time. To break the bottleneck, we apply parallel processing, harnessing the power of the additional CPUs that are always present on modern platforms. For sufficiently large segments, as many of 16 threads of vmtasks are employed to assist an application thread during creation, locking, and destruction operations. The segment is implicitly divided at page boundaries, and each thread is given a chunk of pages to process. The per-page processing time can vary, so for dynamic load balancing, the number of chunks is greater than the number of threads, and threads grab chunks dynamically as they finish their work. Because the threads modify a single application address space in compressed time interval, contention on locks protecting VM data structures locks was a problem, and we had to re-scale a number of VM locks to get good parallel efficiency. The vmtasks process has 1 thread per CPU and may accelerate multiple segment operations simultaneously, but each operation gets at most 16 helper threads to avoid monopolizing CPU resources. We may reconsider this limit in the future. Acceleration using vmtasks is enabled out of the box, with no tuning required, and works for all Solaris platform architectures (SPARC sun4u, SPARC sun4v, x86). The following tables show the time to create + lock + destroy a large segment, normalized as milliseconds per gigabyte, before and after the introduction of vmtasks: ISM system ncpu before after speedup ------ ---- ------ ----- ------- x4600 32 1386 245 6X X7560 64 1016 153 7X M9000 512 1196 206 6X T5240 128 2506 234 11X T4-2 128 1197 107 11x DISM system ncpu before after speedup ------ ---- ------ ----- ------- x4600 32 1582 265 6X X7560 64 1116 158 7X M9000 512 1165 152 8X T5240 128 2796 198 14X (I am missing the data for T4 DISM, for no good reason; it works fine). The following table separates the creation and destruction times: ISM, T4-2 before after ------ ----- create 702 64 destroy 495 43 To put this in perspective, consider creating a 512 GB ISM segment on T4-2. Creating the segment would take 6 minutes with the old code, and only 33 seconds with the new. If this is your Oracle SGA, you save over 5 minutes when starting the database, and you also save when shutting it down prior to a restart. Those minutes go directly to your bottom line for service availability.

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• Criminals and Other Illegal Characters

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  SQLTeam's favorite Slovenian blogger Mladen (b | t) had an interesting question on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/MladenPrajdic/status/347057950470307841 I liked Kendal Van Dyke's (b | t) reply: http://twitter.com/SQLDBA/status/347058908801667072 And he was right!  This is one of those pretty-useless-but-sounds-interesting propositions that I've based all my presentations on, and most of my blog posts. If you read all the replies you'll see a lot of good suggestions.  I particularly like Aaron Bertrand's (b | t) idea of going into the Unicode character set, since there are over 65,000 characters available.  But how to find an illegal character?  Detective work? I'm working on the premise that if SQL Server will reject it as a name it would throw an error.  So all we have to do is generate all Unicode characters, rename a database with that character, and catch any errors. It turns out that dynamic SQL can lend a hand here: IF DB_ID(N'a') IS NULL CREATE DATABASE [a]; DECLARE @c INT=1, @sql NVARCHAR(MAX)=N'', @err NVARCHAR(MAX)=N''; WHILE @c<65536 BEGIN BEGIN TRY SET @sql=N'alter database ' + QUOTENAME(CASE WHEN @c=1 THEN N'a' ELSE NCHAR(@c-1) END) + N' modify name=' + QUOTENAME(NCHAR(@c)); RAISERROR(N'*** Trying %d',10,1,@c) WITH NOWAIT; EXEC(@sql); SET @c+=1; END TRY BEGIN CATCH SET @err=ERROR_MESSAGE(); RAISERROR(N'Ooops - %d - %s',10,1,@c,@err) WITH NOWAIT; BREAK; END CATCH END SET @sql=N'alter database ' + QUOTENAME(NCHAR(@c-1)) + N' modify name=[a]'; EXEC(@sql); The script creates a dummy database "a" if it doesn't already exist, and only tests single characters as a database name.  If you have databases with single character names then you shouldn't run this on that server. It takes a few minutes to run, but if you do you'll see that no errors are thrown for any of the characters.  It seems that SQL Server will accept any character, no matter where they're from.  (Well, there's one, but I won't tell you which. Actually there's 2, but one of them requires some deep existential thinking.) The output is also interesting, as quite a few codes do some weird things there.  I'm pretty sure it's due to the font used in SSMS for the messages output window, not all characters are available.  If you run it using the SQLCMD utility, and use the -o switch to output to a file, and -u for Unicode output, you can open the file in Notepad or another text editor and see the whole thing. I'm not sure what character I'd recommend to answer Mladen's question.  I think the standard tab (ASCII 9) is fine.  There's also several specific separator characters in the original ASCII character set (decimal 28-31). But of all the choices available in Unicode whitespace, I think my favorite would be the Mongolian Vowel Separator.  Or maybe the zero-width space. (that'll be fun to print!)  And since this is Mladen we're talking about, here's a good selection of "intriguing" characters he could use.

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• How to handle multi-processing of libraries which already spawn sub-processes?

  - by exhuma

  I am having some trouble coming up with a good solution to limit sub-processes in a script which uses a multi-processed library and the script itself is also multi-processed. Both, the library and script are modifiable by us. I believe the question is more about design than actual code, but for what it's worth, it's written in Python. The goal of the library is to hide implementation details of various internet routers. For that reason, the library has a "Proxy" factory method which takes the IP of a router as parameter. The factory then probes the device using a set of possible proxies. Usually, there is one proxy which immediately knows that is is able to send commands to this device. All others usually take some time to return (given a timeout). One thought was already to simply query the device for an identifier, and then select the proper proxy using that, but in order to do so, you would already need to know how to query the device. Abstracting this knowledge is one of the main purposes of the library, so that becomes a little bit of a "circular-requirement"/deadlock: To connect to a device, you need to know what proxy to use, and to know what proxy to create, you need to connect to a device. So probing the device is - as we can see - the best solution so far, apart from keeping a lookup-table somewhere. The library currently kills all remaining processes once a valid proxy has been found. And yes, there is always only one good proxy per device. Currently there are about 12 proxies. So if one create a proxy instance using the factory, 12 sub-processes are spawned. So far, this has been really useful and worked very well. But recently someone else wanted to use this library to "broadcast" a command to all devices. So he took the library, and wrote his own multi-processed script. This obviously spawned 12 * n processes where n is the number of IPs to which he broadcasted. This has given us two problems: The host on which the command was executed slowed down to a near halt. Aborting the script with CTRL+C ground the system to a total halt. Not even the hardware console responded anymore! This may be due to some Python strangeness which still needs to be investigated. Maybe related to http://bugs.python.org/issue8296 The big underlying question, is how to design a library which does multi-processing, so other applications which use this library and want to be multi-processed themselves do not run into system limitations. My first thought was to require a pool to be passed to the library, and execute all tasks in that pool. In that way, the person using the library has control over the usage of system resources. But my gut tells me that there must be a better solution. Disclaimer: My experience with multiprocessing is fairly limited. I have implemented a few straightforward which did not require access control to resources. So I have not yet any practical experience with semaphores or mutexes. p.s.: In the future, we may have enough information to do this without the probing. But the database which would contain the proper information is not yet operational. Also, the design about multiprocessing a multiprocessed library intrigues me :)

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• Career-Defining Moments

  - by Robz / Fervent Coder

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/robz/archive/2013/06/25/career-defining-moments.aspx Fear holds us back from many things. A little fear is healthy, but don’t let it overwhelm you into missing opportunities. In every career there is a moment when you can either step forward and define yourself, or sit down and regret it later. Why do we hold back: is it fear, constraints, family concerns, or that we simply can't do it? I think in many cases it comes to the unknown, and we are good at fearing the unknown. Some people hold back because they are fearful of what they don’t know. Some hold back because they are fearful of learning new things. Some hold back simply because to take on a new challenge it means they have to give something else up. The phrase sometimes used is “It’s the devil you know versus the one you don’t.” That fear sometimes allows us to miss great opportunities. In many people’s case it is the opportunity to go into business for yourself, to start something that never existed. Most hold back hear for a fear of failing. We’ve all heard the phrase “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?”, which is intended to get people to think about the opportunities they might create. A better term I heard recently on the Ruby Rogues podcast was “What would be worth doing even if you knew you were going to fail?” I think that wording suits the intent better. If you knew (or thought) going in that you were going to fail and you didn’t care, it would open you up to the possibility of paying more attention to the journey and not the outcome. In my case it is a fear of acceptance. I am fearful that I may not learn what I need to learn or may not do a good enough job to be accepted. At the same time that fear drives me and makes me want to leap forward. Some folks would define this as “The Flinch”. I’m learning Ruby and Puppet right now. I have limited experience with both, limited to the degree it scares me some that I don’t know much about either. Okay, it scares me quite a bit! Some people’s defining moment might be going to work for Microsoft. All of you who know me know that I am in love with automation, from low-tech to high-tech automation. So for me, my “mecca” is a little different in that regard. Awhile back I sat down and defined where I wanted my career to go and it had to do more with DevOps, defined as applying developer practices to system administration operations (I could not find this definition when I searched). It’s an area that interests me and why I really want to expand chocolatey into something more awesome. I want to see Windows be as automatable and awesome as other operating systems that are out there. Back to the career-defining moment. Sometimes these moments only come once in a lifetime. The key is to recognize when you are in one of these moments and step back to evaluate it before choosing to dive in head first. So I am about to embark on what I define as one of these “moments.”  On July 1st I will be joining Puppet Labs and working to help make the Windows automation experience rock solid! I’m both scared and excited about the opportunity!

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• DirectX particle system. ConstantBuffer

  - by Liuka

  I'm new in DirectX and I'm making a 2D game. I want to use a particle system to simulate a 3D starfield, so each star has to set its own constant buffer for the vertexshader es. to set it's world matrix. So if i have 500 stars (that move every frame) i need to call 500 times VSsetconstantbuffer, and map/unmap each buffer. with 500 stars i have an average of 220 fps and that's quite good. My bottelneck is Vs/PsSetconstantbuffer. If i dont call this function i have 400 fps(obliviously nothing is display, since i dont set the position of the stars). So is there a method to speed up the render of the particle system?? Ps. I'm using intel integrate graphic (hd 2000-3000). with a nvidia (or amd) gpu will i have the same bottleneck?? If, for example, i dont call setshaderresource i have 10-20 fps more (for 500 objcets), that is not 180.Why does SetConstantBuffer take so long?? LPVOID VSdataPtr = VSmappedResource.pData; memcpy(VSdataPtr, VSdata, CszVSdata); context->Unmap(VertexBuffer, 0); result = context->Map(PixelBuffer, 0, D3D11_MAP_WRITE_DISCARD, 0, &PSmappedResource); if (FAILED(result)) { outputResult.OutputErrorMessage(TITLE, L"Cannot map the PixelBuffer", &result, OUTPUT_ERROR_FILE); return; } LPVOID PSdataPtr = PSmappedResource.pData; memcpy(PSdataPtr, PSdata, CszPSdata); context->Unmap(PixelBuffer, 0); context->VSSetConstantBuffers(0, 1, &VertexBuffer); context->PSSetConstantBuffers(0, 1, &PixelBuffer); this update and set the buffer. It's part of the render method of a sprite class that contains a the vertex buffer and the texture to apply to the quads(it's a 2d game) too. I have an array of 500 stars (sprite setup with a star texture). Every frame: clear back buffer; draw the array of stars; present the backbuffer; draw also call the function update( which calculate the position of the sprite on screen based on a "camera class") Ok, create a vertex buffer with the vertices of each quads(stars) seems to be good, since the stars don't change their "virtual" position; so.... In a particle system (where particles move) it's better to have all the object in only one vertices array, rather then an array of different sprite/object in order to update all the vertices' position with a single setbuffer call. In this case i have to use a dynamic vertex buffer with the vertices positions like this: verticesForQuad={{ XMFLOAT3((float)halfDImensions.x-1+pos.x, (float)halfDImensions.y-1+pos.y, 1.0f), XMFLOAT2(1.0f, 0.0f) }, { XMFLOAT3((float)halfDImensions.x-1+pos.x, -(float)halfDImensions.y-1+pos.y, 1.0f), XMFLOAT2(1.0f, 1.0f) }, { XMFLOAT3(-(float)halfDImensions.x-1+pos.x, (float)halfDImensions.y-1.pos.y, 1.0f), XMFLOAT2(0.0f, 0.0f) }, { XMFLOAT3(-(float)halfDImensions.x-1.pos.x, -(float)halfDImensions.y-1+pos.y, 1.0f), XMFLOAT2(0.0f, 1.0f) }, ....other quads} where halfDimensions is the halfsize in pixel of a texture and pos the virtual position of a star. than create an array of verticesForQuad and create the vertex buffer ZeroMemory(&vertexDesc, sizeof(vertexDesc)); vertexDesc.Usage = D3D11_USAGE_DEFAULT; vertexDesc.BindFlags = D3D11_BIND_VERTEX_BUFFER; vertexDesc.ByteWidth = sizeof(VertexType)* 4*numStars; ZeroMemory(&resourceData, sizeof(resourceData)); resourceData.pSysMem = verticesForQuad; result = device->CreateBuffer(&vertexDesc, &resourceData, &CvertexBuffer); and call each frame Context->IASetVertexBuffers(0, 1, &CvertexBuffer, &stride, &offset); But if i want to add and remove obj i have to recreate the buffer each time, havent i?? There is a faster way? I think i can create a vertex buffer with a max size (es. 10000 objs) and when i update it set only the 250 position (for 250 onjs for example) and pass this number as the vertexCount to the draw function (numObjs*4), or i'm worng

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• Software and/(x)or Hardware Projects for Pre-School Kids

  - by haylem

  I offered to participate at my kid's pre-school for various activities (yes, I'm crazy like that), and one of them is to help them discover extra-curricular (big word for a pre-school, but by lack of a better one... :)) hobbies, which may or may not relate to a professional activity. At first I thought that it wouldn't be really easy to have pre-schoolers relate to programming or the internal workings of a computer system in general (and I'm more used to teaching middle-school to university-level students), but then I thought there must be a way. So I'm trying to figure out ways to introduce very young kids (3yo) to computer systems in a fun and preferably educational way. Of course, I don't expect them to start smashing the stack for fun and profit right away (or at least not voluntarily, though I could use the occasion for some toddler tests...), but I'm confident there must be ways to get them interested in both: using the systems, becoming curious about understanding what they do, interacting with the systems to modify them. I guess this setting is not really relevant after all, it's pretty much the same as if you were aiming to achieve the same for your own kids at home. Ideas Considering we're talking 3yo pre-schoolers here, and that at this age some kids are already quite confident using a mouse (some even a keyboard, if not for typing, at least to press some buttons they've come to associate with actions) while others have not yet had any interaction with computers of any kind, it needs to be: rather basic, demonstrated and played with in less then 5 or 10 minutes, doable in in groups or alone, scalable and extendable in complexity to accommodate their varying abilities. The obvious options are: basic smallish games to play with, interactive systems like LOGO, Kojo, Squeak and clones (possibly even simpler than that), or thngs like Lego Systems. I guess it can be a thing to reflect on both at the software and the hardware levels: it could be done with a desktop or laptop machine, a tablet, a smartphone (or a crap-phone, for that matter, as long as you can modify it), or even get down to building something from scratch (Raspberry Pi and Arduino being popular options at the moment). I can probably be in the form of games, funny visualizations (which are pretty much games) w/ Prototype, virtual worlds to explore. I also thought on the moment (and I hope this won't offend anyone) that some approaches to teaching pets could work (reward systems, haptic feedback and such things could quickly point a kid in the right direction to understanding how things work, in a similar fashion - I'm not suggesting to shock the kids!). Hmm, Is There an Actual Question in There? What type of systems do you think might be a good fit, both in terms of hardware and software? Do you have seen such systems, or have anything in mind to work on? Are you aware of some research in this domain, with tangible results? Any input is welcome. It's not that I don't see options: there are tons, but I have a harder time pinpointing a more concrete and definite type of project/activity, so I figure some have valuable ideas or existing ones. Note: I am not advocating that every kid should learn to program, be interested in computer systems, or that all of them in a class would even care enough to follow such an introduction with more than a blank stare. I don't buy into the "everybody would benefit from learning to program" thing. Wouldn't hurt, but not necessary in any way. But if I can walk out of there with a few of them having smiled using the thing (or heck, cried because others took them away from them), that'd be good enough. Related Questions I've seen and that seem to complement what I'm looking for, but not exactly for the same age groups or with the same goals: Teaching Programming to Kids Recommendations for teaching kids math concepts & skills for programming?

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• Selective Suppression of Log Messages

  - by Duncan Mills

  Those of you who regularly read this blog will probably have noticed that I have a strange predilection for logging related topics, so why break this habit I ask?  Anyway here's an issue which came up recently that I thought was a good one to mention in a brief post.  The scenario really applies to production applications where you are seeing entries in the log files which are harmless, you know why they are there and are happy to ignore them, but at the same time you either can't or don't want to risk changing the deployed code to "fix" it to remove the underlying cause. (I'm not judging here). The good news is that the logging mechanism provides a filtering capability which can be applied to a particular logger to selectively "let a message through" or suppress it. This is the technique outlined below. First Create Your Filter  You create a logging filter by implementing the java.util.logging.Filter interface. This is a very simple interface and basically defines one method isLoggable() which simply has to return a boolean value. A return of false will suppress that particular log message and not pass it onto the handler. The method is passed the log record of type java.util.logging.LogRecord which provides you with access to everything you need to decide if you want to let this log message pass through or not, for example  getLoggerName(), getMessage() and so on. So an example implementation might look like this if we wanted to filter out all the log messages that start with the string "DEBUG" when the logging level is not set to FINEST:  public class MyLoggingFilter implements Filter {     public boolean isLoggable(LogRecord record) {         if ( !record.getLevel().equals(Level.FINEST) && record.getMessage().startsWith("DEBUG")){          return false;            }         return true;     } } Deploying   This code needs to be put into a JAR and added to your WebLogic classpath.  It's too late to load it as part of an application, so instead you need to put the JAR file into the WebLogic classpath using a mechanism such as the PRE_CLASSPATH setting in your domain setDomainEnv script. Then restart WLS of course. Using The final piece if to actually assign the filter.  The simplest way to do this is to add the filter attribute to the logger definition in the logging.xml file. For example, you may choose to define a logger for a specific class that is raising these messages and only apply the filter in that case.  <logger name="some.vendor.adf.ClassICantChange"         filter="oracle.demo.MyLoggingFilter"/> You can also apply the filter using WLST if you want a more script-y solution.

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• Entity System with C++ templates

  - by tommaisey

  I've been getting interested in the Entity/Component style of game programming, and I've come up with a design in C++ which I'd like a critique of. I decided to go with a fairly pure Entity system, where entities are simply an ID number. Components are stored in a series of vectors - one for each Component type. However, I didn't want to have to add boilerplate code for every new Component type I added to the game. Nor did I want to use macros to do this, which frankly scare me. So I've come up with a system based on templates and type hinting. But there are some potential issues I'd like to check before I spend ages writing this (I'm a slow coder!) All Components derive from a Component base class. This base class has a protected constructor, that takes a string parameter. When you write a new derived Component class, you must initialise the base with the name of your new class in a string. When you first instantiate a new DerivedComponent, it adds the string to a static hashmap inside Component mapped to a unique integer id. When you subsequently instantiate more Components of the same type, no action is taken. The result (I think) should be a static hashmap with the name of each class derived from Component that you instantiate at least once, mapped to a unique id, which can by obtained with the static method Component::getTypeId ("DerivedComponent"). Phew. The next important part is TypedComponentList<typename PropertyType>. This is basically just a wrapper to an std::vector<typename PropertyType> with some useful methods. It also contains a hashmap of entity ID numbers to slots in the array so we can find Components by their entity owner. Crucially TypedComponentList<> is derived from the non-template class ComponentList. This allows me to maintain a list of pointers to ComponentList in my main ComponentManager, which actually point to TypedComponentLists with different template parameters (sneaky). The Component manager has template functions such as: template <typename ComponentType> void addProperty (ComponentType& component, int componentTypeId, int entityId) and: template <typename ComponentType> TypedComponentList<ComponentType>* getComponentList (int componentTypeId) which deal with casting from ComponentList to the correct TypedComponentList for you. So to get a list of a particular type of Component you call: TypedComponentList<MyComponent>* list = componentManager.getComponentList<MyComponent> (Component::getTypeId("MyComponent")); Which I'll admit looks pretty ugly. Bad points of the design: If a user of the code writes a new Component class but supplies the wrong string to the base constructor, the whole system will fail. Each time a new Component is instantiated, we must check a hashed string to see if that component type has bee instantiated before. Will probably generate a lot of assembly because of the extensive use of templates. I don't know how well the compiler will be able to minimise this. You could consider the whole system a bit complex - perhaps premature optimisation? But I want to use this code again and again, so I want it to be performant. Good points of the design: Components are stored in typed vectors but they can also be found by using their entity owner id as a hash. This means we can iterate them fast, and minimise cache misses, but also skip straight to the component we need if necessary. We can freely add Components of different types to the system without having to add and manage new Component vectors by hand. What do you think? Do the good points outweigh the bad?

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• How to introduce a computer illiterate 50-year old to programming [closed]

  - by sunday

  The other day my dad asked me a question that I would have never expected from him. "How can I learn C++?" My dad is turning 56 this year and computers are a distant concept for him. He doesn't know how to use a phone very well besides calling numbers (no speed dial or contacts); though he has started to learn computers a little better - to the point that he knows how to open the internet (in Windows) and browse around (and has successfully completed several job applications entirely on his own online, of which he was offered positions too). But still, these are too narrow-windowed experiences to mean much, really. While he may not have the background, my dad knows how to read. And I mean reading as a skill, not just an ability. He has little to no college education (financial problems, family, etc.) and was fortunate enough to finish high school, but still taught himself to become a master electrician and has been one for almost 30 years now. He did the same with guitar, learning to play at a very professional level and has been praised for his skill. In high school, he picked up a weight lifting book - and was the only person in his high school at the time to qualify officially as an "athlete" by national standards. In all cases, he just needed something to read. Something to teach him. He absorbs information like a sponge. I have no doubt in my dad's motivation or capability of doing this, so my general goal is simply: Get my dad into the world of computers, and get him on the road to programming. I strongly believe that once I get him through the fundamentals, his drive and reading skill will keep him going on this own. So I'm asking you all: where should I start with all this? And what are the best resources out there? Should I get him to start Linux instead of Windows? Is C++ a bad idea? Remember, he needs to (IMO) learn computers first, and then get that first grasp (the "Hello world" experience) of programming. For money's sake and at top preference, I'd like free online resources that he can read, but by all means any good suggestions in print or paid-for-online are welcome (that I could possibly look into later to purchase). And also, I intend to start him off with C++ (no Python, Java, etc.), because I know it the best and will be able to help him along the way with code. (I have minimal knowledge right now in other languages). Edit: I'm getting a lot of persistent suggestions to use Python. The only reason I wanted to do C++ is that I KNOW it and can be THERE when my dad needs help. My VERY FIRST exposure to programming ever was Java. I learned Java, and I got good at it. I open to other suggestions, but please provide an effective application of your suggestions. EDIT #2: I understand my approach/thinking/knowledge could be lacking here. I'm a sophomore level undergraduate CS major. If you don't agree with anything in my post, tell me why - give me ideas, information - that's why I'm asking in the first place. To narrow down my general goal to specific reachable goals.

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• The long road to bug-free software

  - by Tony Davis

  The past decade has seen a burgeoning interest in functional programming languages such as Haskell or, in the Microsoft world, F#. Though still on the periphery of mainstream programming, functional programming concepts are gradually seeping into the imperative C# language (for example, Lambda expressions have their root in functional programming). One of the more interesting concepts from functional programming languages is the use of formal methods, the lofty ideal behind which is bug-free software. The idea is that we write a specification that describes exactly how our function (say) should behave. We then prove that our function conforms to it, and in doing so have proved beyond any doubt that it is free from bugs. All programmers already use one form of specification, specifically their programming language's type system. If a value has a specific type then, in a type-safe language, the compiler guarantees that value cannot be an instance of a different type. Many extensions to existing type systems, such as generics in Java and .NET, extend the range of programs that can be type-checked. Unfortunately, type systems can only prevent some bugs. To take a classic problem of retrieving an index value from an array, since the type system doesn't specify the length of the array, the compiler has no way of knowing that a request for the "value of index 4" from an array of only two elements is "unsafe". We restore safety via exception handling, but the ideal type system will prevent us from doing anything that is unsafe in the first place and this is where we start to borrow ideas from a language such as Haskell, with its concept of "dependent types". If the type of an array includes its length, we can ensure that any index accesses into the array are valid. The problem is that we now need to carry around the length of arrays and the values of indices throughout our code so that it can be type-checked. In general, writing the specification to prove a positive property, even for a problem very amenable to specification, such as a simple sorting algorithm, turns out to be very hard and the specification will be different for every program. Extend this to writing a specification for, say, Microsoft Word and we can see that the specification would end up being no simpler, and therefore no less buggy, than the implementation. Fortunately, it is easier to write a specification that proves that a program doesn't have certain, specific and undesirable properties, such as infinite loops or accesses to the wrong bit of memory. If we can write the specifications to prove that a program is immune to such problems, we could reuse them in many places. The problem is the lack of specification "provers" that can do this without a lot of manual intervention (i.e. hints from the programmer). All this might feel a very long way off, but computing power and our understanding of the theory of "provers" advances quickly, and Microsoft is doing some of it already. Via their Terminator research project they have started to prove that their device drivers will always terminate, and in so doing have suddenly eliminated a vast range of possible bugs. This is a huge step forward from saying, "we've tested it lots and it seems fine". What do you think? What might be good targets for specification and verification? SQL could be one: the cost of a bug in SQL Server is quite high given how many important systems rely on it, so there's a good incentive to eliminate bugs, even at high initial cost. [Many thanks to Mike Williamson for guidance and useful conversations during the writing of this piece] Cheers, Tony.

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• Is there any kind of established architecture for browser based games?

  - by black_puppydog

  I am beginning the development of a broser based game in which players take certain actions at any point in time. Big parts of gameplay will be happening in real life and just have to be entered into the system. I believe a good kind of comparison might be a platform for managing fantasy football, although I have virtually no experience playing that, so please correct me if I am mistaken here. The point is that some events happen in the program (i.e. on the server, out of reach for the players) like pulling new results from some datasource, starting of a new round by a game master and such. Other events happen in real life (two players closing a deal on the transfer of some team member or whatnot - again: have never played fantasy football) and have to be entered into the system. The first part is pretty easy since the game masters will be "staff" and thus can be trusted to a certain degree to not mess with the system. But the second part bothers me quite a lot, especially since the actions may involve multiple steps and interactions with different players, like registering a deal with the system that then has to be approved by the other party or denied and passed on to a game master to decide. I would of course like to separate the game logic as far as possible from the presentation and basic form validation but am unsure how to do this in a clean fashion. Of course I could (and will) put some effort into making my own architectural decisions and prototype different ideas. But I am bound to make some stupid mistakes at some point, so I would like to avoid some of that by getting a little "book smart" beforehand. So the question is: Is there any kind of architectural works that I can read up on? Papers, blogs, maybe design documents or even source code? Writing this down this seems more like a business application with business rules, workflows and such... Any good entry points for that? EDIT: After reading the first answers I am under the impression of having made a mistake when including the "MMO" part into the title. The game will not be all fancy (i.e. 3D or such) on the client side and the logic will completely exist on the server. That is, apart from basic form validation for the user which will also be mirrored on the server side. So the target toolset will be HTML5, JavaScript, probably JQuery(UI). My question is more related to the software architecture/design of a system that enforces certain rules. Separation of ruleset and presentation One problem I am having is that I want to separate the game rules from the presentation. The first step would be to make an own module for the game "engine" that only exposes an interface that allows all actions to be taken in a clean way. If an action fails with regard to some pre/post condition, the engine throws an exception which is then presented to the user like "you cannot sell something you do not own" or "after that you would end up in a situation which is not a valid game state." The problem here is that I would like to be able to not even present invalid action in the first place or grey out the corresponding UI elements. Changing and tweaking the ruleset Another big thing is the ruleset. It will probably evolve over time and most definitely must be tweaked. What's more, it should be possible (to a certain extent) to build a ruleset that fits a specific game round, i.e. choosing different kinds of behaviours in different aspects of the game. This would do something like "we play it with extension A today but we throw out extension B." For me, this screams "Architectural/Design pattern" but I have no idea on who might have published on something like this, not even what to google for.

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