Search Results

Search found 73 results on 3 pages for 'foolish'.

Page 3/3 | < Previous Page | 1 2 3 

• RPi and Java Embedded GPIO: It all begins with hardware

  - by hinkmond

  So, you want to connect low-level peripherals (like blinky-blinky LEDs) to your Raspberry Pi and use Java Embedded technology to program it, do you? You sick foolish masochist. No, just kidding! That's awesome! You've come to the right place. I'll step you though it. And, as with many embedded projects, it all begins with hardware. So, the first thing to do is to get acquainted with the GPIO header on your RPi board. A "header" just means a thingy with a bunch of pins sticking up from it where you can connect wires. See the the red box outline in the photo. Now, there are many ways to connect to that header outlined by the red box in the photo (which the RPi folks call the P1 header). One way is to use a breakout kit like the one at Adafruit. But, we'll just use jumper wires in this example. So, to connect jumper wires to the header you need a map of where to connect which wire. That's why you need to study the pinout in the photo. That's your map for connecting wires. But, as with many things in life, it's not all that simple. RPi folks have made things a little tricky. There are two revisions of the P1 header pinout. One for older boards (RPi boards made before Sep 2012), which is called Revision 1. And, one for those fancy 512MB boards that were shipped after Sep 2012, which is called Revision 2. So, first make sure which board you have: either you have the Model A or B with 128MB or 256MB built before Sep 2012 and you need to look at the pinout for Rev. 1, or you have the Model B with 512MB and need to look at Rev. 2. That's all you need for now. More to come... Hinkmond

  Read the article

• Getting PATH right for python after MacPorts install

  - by BenjaminGolder

  I can't import some python libraries (PIL, psycopg2) that I just installed with MacPorts. I looked through these forums, and tried to adjust my PATH variable in $HOME/.bash_profile in order to fix this but it did not work. I added the location of PIL and psycopg2 to PATH. I know that Terminal is a version of python in /usr/local/bin, rather than the one installed by MacPorts at /opt/local/bin. Do I need to use the MacPorts version of Python in order to ensure that PIL and psycopg2 are on sys.path when I use python in Terminal? Should I switch to the MacPorts version of Python, or will that cause more problems? In case it is helpful, here are more facts: PIl and psycopg2 are installed in /opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/site-packages which pythonreturns/usr/bin/python echo $PATHreturns (I separated each path for easy reading): :/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/ :/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/site-packages :/opt/local/bin :/opt/local/sbin :/usr/local/git/bin :/usr/bin :/bin :/usr/sbin :/sbin :/usr/local/bin :/usr/local/git/bin :/usr/X11/bin :/opt/local/bin in python, sys.path returns: /Library/Frameworks/SQLite3.framework/Versions/3/Python /Library/Python/2.6/site-packages/numpy-override /Library/Frameworks/GDAL.framework/Versions/1.7/Python/site-packages /Library/Frameworks/cairo.framework/Versions/1/Python /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python26.zip /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6 /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/plat-darwin /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/plat-mac /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/plat-mac/lib-scriptpackages /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/Extras/lib/python /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/lib-tk /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/lib-old /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/lib-dynload /Library/Python/2.6/site-packages /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/Extras/lib/python/PyObjC /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/Extras/lib/python/wx-2.8-mac-unicode I welcome any criticism and comments, if any of the above looks foolish or poorly conceived. I'm new to all of this. Thanks! Running OSX 10.6.5 on a MacBook Pro, invoking python 2.6.1 from Terminal

  Read the article

• How to direct reverse proxy requests using wildcard vhosts

  - by HonoredMule

  I'm interested in running a reverse proxy with 2-3 virtual machines behind it. Each internal server will run multiple virtual hosts, and rather than manually configuring each individual vhost on the proxy (a variety of vhosts come and go too often for this to be practical), I would like to use something which can employ pattern matching in a sequential order to find the appropriate back-end server. For example: Server 1: *.dev.mysite.com Server 2: *.stage.mysite.com Server 3: *.mysite.com, dev.mysite.com, stage.mysite.com, mysite.com Server 4: * In the above configuration, task.dev.mysite.com would go to Server 1, dev.mysite.com would go to Server 3, yoursite.stage.mysite.com to Server 2, www.mysite.com to Server 3, and yoursite.com to Server 4. I've looked into using Squid, Varnish, and nginx so far. I have my opinions regarding their respective desirability and general suitability, but it's not readily apparent if any of them can handle dynamic server selection in this manner and not require per-vhost configuration. Apache on the other hand can do this handily and simply, but otherwise (aside from being well-known and familiar) seems very poorly suited to the partly-performance-serving task. Performance isn't actually a major concern yet, but it seems foolish to use Apache if another system will perform far better and can also handle the desired 'hands-free' configuration. But so is frequently having to adjust the gateway for all production services and risk network-wide outage...and so also is setting oneself up for longer downtime later if Apache becomes a too-small bottleneck. Which of these (or other) reverse proxies can do it/would do it best? And maybe I should post this as a separate question, but if Apache is the only practical option, how safe/reliable/predictable is apache-mpm-event in apache2.2 (Ubuntu 12.04.1) particularly for a dedicated reverse proxy? As I understand it the Event MPM was declared "safe" as of 2.4 but it's unclear whether reaching stability in 2.4 has any implications for the older (2.2) versions available in official/stable package channels of various distros.

  Read the article

• Is It Possible To Self-Teach PHP, Wordpress, CentOS (Linux), Apache, Nginx etc?

  - by Aahan

  consider me a total noob, who uses a Windows PC and has never touched Linux. But I want to administer, manage and take responsibility of my server, at least at some point, if not now. But since I am a full-time blogger I am unable to find time to study at an institute. So, here is my question — - Is It Possible To Self-Teach HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, Wordpress, CentOS (or for that matter any Linux distro), Apache, Nginx, and Varnish? Yes, beginning with HTML, absolutely all of them. I might seem overly ambitious and foolish, but I just want to do it. Aren't there any self-taught server admins? (1) Please help me out with the names of good books, links and whatever you can. (2) How long would it take me to get there (approximately)? 3 years? 5 years? (I have good touch with HTML & Wordpress.) This is a great community, I hope at least some of you will shoot some suggestions at me.

  Read the article

• Urgent: how to deny read access to a ExecCGI directory

  - by Malvolio

  First, I can't believe that that isn't the default behavior. Second, yikes! I don't know how long my code's been hanging out there, with all sort of cool secret stuff, just waiting for some hacker who knows Apache better than I do. EDIT (and apology) Well, this is sort of embarrassing. Here's what happened: We had some Python scripts available to the web, at /aux/file.py, which were not surprisingly at /var/www/http/aux . Separately, we were running an app server and Apache proxies through at /servlets/. A contractor had constructed the WAR file by bundling up all the generated files including the Python files (which are in a directory also called aux, not surprisingly), so if you typed in /servlets/aux/file.py, the web-server would ask the app-server for it and the app-server would just supply the file. It was the latter URL that this morning I happened to type in by accident and lo, the source appeared. Until I realized the shear unlikelihood of what I had done, the situation was rating about 8.3 on the sphincter scale. After a tense half-hour or so I realized that it had nothing to do with the CGI (and that serving files that were also executable would be not only foolish but also impossible), and was able to address the real problems. So -- sorry, everybody. Let the scorn-fest commence.

  Read the article

• Pro/con of using Angular directives for complex form validation/ GUI manipulation

  - by tengen

  I am building a new SPA front end to replace an existing enterprise's legacy hodgepodge of systems that are outdated and in need of updating. I am new to angular, and wanted to see if the community could give me some perspective. I'll state my problem, and then ask my question. I have to generate several series of check boxes based on data from a .js include, with data like this: $scope.fieldMappings.investmentObjectiveMap = [ {'id':"CAPITAL PRESERVATION", 'name':"Capital Preservation"}, {'id':"STABLE", 'name':"Moderate"}, {'id':"BALANCED", 'name':"Moderate Growth"}, // etc {'id':"NONE", 'name':"None"} ]; The checkboxes are created using an ng-repeat, like this: <div ng-repeat="investmentObjective in fieldMappings.investmentObjectiveMap"> ... </div> However, I needed the values represented by the checkboxes to map to a different model (not just 2-way-bound to the fieldmappings object). To accomplish this, I created a directive, which accepts a destination array destarray which is eventually mapped to the model. I also know I need to handle some very specific gui controls, such as unchecking "None" if anything else gets checked, or checking "None" if everything else gets unchecked. Also, "None" won't be an option in every group of checkboxes, so the directive needs to be generic enough to accept a validation function that can fiddle with the checked state of the checkbox group's inputs based on what's already clicked, but smart enough not to break if there is no option called "NONE". I started to do that by adding an ng-click which invoked a function in the controller, but in looking around Stack Overflow, I read people saying that its bad to put DOM manipulation code inside your controller - it should go in directives. So do I need another directive? So far: (html): <input my-checkbox-group type="checkbox" fieldobj="investmentObjective" ng-click="validationfunc()" validationfunc="clearOnNone()" destarray="investor.investmentObjective" /> Directive code: .directive("myCheckboxGroup", function () { return { restrict: "A", scope: { destarray: "=", // the source of all the checkbox values fieldobj: "=", // the array the values came from validationfunc: "&" // the function to be called for validation (optional) }, link: function (scope, elem, attrs) { if (scope.destarray.indexOf(scope.fieldobj.id) !== -1) { elem[0].checked = true; } elem.bind('click', function () { var index = scope.destarray.indexOf(scope.fieldobj.id); if (elem[0].checked) { if (index === -1) { scope.destarray.push(scope.fieldobj.id); } } else { if (index !== -1) { scope.destarray.splice(index, 1); } } }); } }; }) .js controller snippet: .controller( 'SuitabilityCtrl', ['$scope', function ( $scope ) { $scope.clearOnNone = function() { // naughty jQuery DOM manipulation code that // looks at checkboxes and checks/unchecks as needed }; The above code is done and works fine, except the naughty jquery code in clearOnNone(), which is why I wrote this question. And here is my question: after ALL this, I think to myself - I could be done already if I just manually handled all this GUI logic and validation junk with jQuery written in my controller. At what point does it become foolish to write these complicated directives that future developers will have to puzzle over more than if I had just written jQuery code that 99% of us would understand with a glance? How do other developers draw the line? I see this all over Stack Overflow. For example, this question seems like it could be answered with a dozen lines of straightforward jQuery, yet he has opted to do it the angular way, with a directive and a partial... it seems like a lot of work for a simple problem. Specifically, I suppose I would like to know: how SHOULD I be writing the code that checks whether "None" has been selected (if it exists as an option in this group of checkboxes), and then check/uncheck the other boxes accordingly? A more complex directive? I can't believe I'm the only developer that is having to implement code that is more complex than needed just to satisfy an opinionated framework.

  Read the article

• Rethinking Oracle Optimizer Statistics for P6 Part 2

  - by Brian Diehl

  In the previous post (Part 1), I tried to draw some key insights about the relationship between P6 and Oracle Optimizer Statistics.  The first is that average cardinality has the greatest impact on query optimization and that the particular queries generated by P6 are more likely to use this average during calculations. The second is that these are statistics that are unlikely to change greatly over the life of the application. Ultimately, our goal is to get the best query optimization possible.  Or is it? Stability No application administrator wants to get the call at 9am that their application users cannot get there work done because everything is running slow. This is a possibility with a regularly scheduled nightly collection of statistics. It may not just be slow performance, but a complete loss of service because one or more queries are optimized poorly. Ideally, this should not be the case. The database optimizer should make better decisions with more up-to-date data. Better statistics may give incremental performance benefit. However, this benefit must be balanced against the potential cost of system down time.  It is stability that we ultimately desire and not absolute optimal performance. We do want the benefit from more accurate statistics and better query plans, but not at the risk of an unusable system. As a result, I've developed the following methodology around managing database statistics for the P6 database.  1. No Automatic Re-Gathering - The daily, weekly, or other interval of statistic gathering is unlikely to be beneficial. Quite the opposite. It is more likely to cause problems. 2. Smart Re-Gathering - The time to collect statistics is when things have changed significantly. For a new installation of P6, this is happening more often because the data is growing from a few rows to thousands and more. But for a mature system, the data is not changing significantly from week-to-week. There are times to collect statistics: New releases of the application Changes in the underlying hardware or software versions (ex. new Oracle RDBMS version) When additional user groups are added. The new groups may use the software in significantly different ways. After significant changes in the data. This may be monthly, quarterly or yearly.  3. Always Test - If you take away one thing from this post, it would be to always have a plan to test after changing statistics. In reality, statistics can be collected as often as you desire provided there are tests in place to verify that performance is the same or better. These might be automated tests or simply a manual script of application functions. 4. Have a Way Out - Never change the statistics without a way to return to the previous set. Think of the statistics as one part of the overall application code that also includes the source code--both application and RDBMS. It would be foolish to change to the new code without a way to get back to the previous version. In the final post, I will talk about the actual script I created for P6 PMDB and possible future direction for managing query performance. 

  Read the article

• XMPP and Android interaction

  - by Ameya Phadke

  I am currently finding about how to build a XMPP client application on android 2.0.I came across this link which somewhat talks about the same problem.I am a newbie to android dev and thus found the solution given there to be difficult to digest. The system currently has Active MQ as a JMS provider.My job is to fed the messages coming from JMS to the XMPP server and then develope XMPP client on android 2.0 which will listen and show notification to the events pushed by the server. I have following concerns(which might sound foolish) 1.How do I push the events from JMS to the XMPP server which will in turn push them on android? 2.Which XMPP server implementation I should use?I have 3 options * Openfire: Very mature (was a commercial product), but sounds like it's heavyweight, written in Java * Prosody: Lightweight and easy to use, written in Lua. Doesn't have PubSub module yet * Tigase: Also lightweight, written in Java, supports PubSub How do I test and setup these servers.Do I need PubSub funcationality for my app? 3.For XMPP client I came across Smack API given here which is updated like 2 years back.Can anyone please tell me how do I make use of it for Android 2.0.If possible can anyone please mail me latest working Smack jar files. Thanks, Ameya

  Read the article

• python - tkinter - update label from variable

  - by Tom

  I wrote a python script that does some stuff to generate and then keep changing some text stored as a string variable. This works, and I can print the string each time it gets changed. Problems have arisen while trying to display that output in a GUI (just as a basic label) using tkinter. I can get the label to display the string for the first time... but it never updates. This is really the first time I have tried to use tkinter, so it's likely I'm making a foolish error. What I've got looks logical to me, but I'm evidently going wrong somewhere! from tkinter import * outputText = 'Ready' counter = int(0) root = Tk() root.maxsize(400, 400) var = StringVar() l = Label(root, textvariable=var, anchor=NW, justify=LEFT, wraplength=398) l.pack() var.set(outputText) while True: counter = counter + 1 #do some stuff that generates string as variable 'result' outputText = result #do some more stuff that generates new string as variable 'result' outputText = result #do some more stuff that generates new string as variable 'result' outputText = result if counter == 5: break root.mainloop() I also tried: from tkinter import * outputText = 'Ready' counter = int(0) root = Tk() root.maxsize(400, 400) var = StringVar() l = Label(root, textvariable=var, anchor=NW, justify=LEFT, wraplength=398) l.pack() var.set(outputText) while True: counter = counter + 1 #do some stuff that generates string as variable 'result' outputText = result var.set(outputText) #do some more stuff that generates new string as variable 'result' outputText = result var.set(outputText) #do some more stuff that generates new string as variable 'result' outputText = result var.set(outputText) if counter == 5: break root.mainloop() In both cases, the label will show 'Ready' but won't update to change that to the strings as they're generated later. After a fair bit of googling and looking through answers on this site, I thought the solution might be to use update_idletasks - I tried putting that in after each time the variable was changed, but it didn't help. It also seems possible I am meant to be using trace and callback somehow to make all this work...but I can't get my head around how that works (I tried, but didn't manage to make anything that even looked like it would do something, let alone actually worked). I'm still very new to both python and especially tkinter, so, any help much appreciated but please spell it out for me if you can :)

  Read the article

• Version control for PHP Developement

  - by Vinod Mohan

  Hello, I have been hearing a lot about the advantages of using a version control system and would like to try one. I was doing freelance web development in PHP for the past 2 years, two months back I hired two more programmer to help me. I will be hiring one more person soon. We maintain 4 websites, all of which are my own, which are continuously being edited by one of us. I learned PHP by myself and have never worked in any other firms. Hence I am new to version control, unit testing and all. Currently, we have development servers on our workstations. When we edit a particular section of a site, we download the code for that particular section (say /news/ or /movies/ or /wallpapers/ ) from the production server to the dev server, makes the changes locally and uploads to the production server (no code review / testing). Because of this, our dev server is always out of date from our prod server. Occasionally, this also create problem when one of us forgets to download the latest copy from prod and overwrites the last change. I know this is very very foolish, but currently our prod server is the only copy that has all the updates and latest changes. Can anyone please suggest which is the best version control system for me? I am more interested in distributed version control, since we don't have a central backup for all our code. I read about Mercurial and Git and found that Mercurial is used in several large open source projects by Mozilla, Sun, Symbian etc. So which one do you think is better for me? Not only version control, if there are any other package that I can use to make my current setup better, please mention that too :) Thanks and Regards, Vinod Mohan

  Read the article

• How can I print a web page on a server?

  - by Gavin Schultz

  Suppose I develop a web page using the cool Google visualization API, and it does everything the user wants. They can the parameters, look at the graphs, and print the page to get a reasonable-looking report. All good. Now suppose I want to do the same thing server-side. For example, say we need a set of report generated at a specific time of day, printed to a PDF and emailed to a manager. It's not a user-initiated action, so we don't have a user's browser or their printer. We have a URL that would render the report if we had a browser, and that's it. Is there a good way to do this server-side? Is this just foolish? Has anyone done anything like that before? Do any of the major browsers have APIs that might provide such functionality? Keep in mind too that it's not just static HTML; probably javascript will be running first to shift the DOM around. I know we could implement a whole different reporting engine on the server side to do this, but that will (a) generate reports that look a bit different, and (b) require me to build/maintain two sets of functionality. Instead, I'd be happy if I could just render the page / pages I want in an invisible server-side browser and print it to a PDF (let's mostly ignore that step - I know any number of PDF printer drivers that could do this). I don't really want to do it ugly either - i.e. by starting a browser process and then sending keystrokes directly to the window either - that's just bound to fall apart with a slight nudge. The only related question I found had an answer like that. Any advice appreciated!

  Read the article

• Returning large collections from WCF Serivce

  - by Nate Bross

  I'm trying to determine the best approach for building a WCF Service, and the area I'm struggling with most is returning lists of objects. The built-in maxMessageSize of 64k seems pretty high, and I really don't want to bump it up (quick googling finds 100s of places bumping the maxMessageSize up to multi-gigabyte range which seems foolish). But, when I'm returning a collection of objects (~150 items) I am exceeding the default 64k. I'm almost to the point of returning my own class which inherits IEnumerable and has properties for hasNext, hasPrevious and PageSize so that I can implement paging on the client side -- this seems like alot of code. The other option is to jackup the maxMessageSize and hope for the best, but that feels wrong. All other aspects of my service are working great, its just returning large collectiosn where I'm having issues. For background, there are two types of consumers of this service, UI applications which will be primarly web and/or wpf applications, and data processing applications, .NET console apps, and maybe some other non-UI apps. For the UI applications, I would like to keep them responsive and keep the messageSize low, on the console apps it doesn't matter as much as they are just pulling data down to do processing and push it back up to the service.

  Read the article

• Could I do this blind relative to absolute path conversion (for perforce depot paths) better?

  - by wonderfulthunk

  I need to "blindly" (i.e. without access to the filesystem, in this case the source control server) convert some relative paths to absolute paths. So I'm playing with dotdots and indices. For those that are curious I have a log file produced by someone else's tool that sometimes outputs relative paths, and for performance reasons I don't want to access the source control server where the paths are located to check if they're valid and more easily convert them to their absolute path equivalents. I've gone through a number of (probably foolish) iterations trying to get it to work - mostly a few variations of iterating over the array of folders and trying delete_at(index) and delete_at(index-1) but my index kept incrementing while I was deleting elements of the array out from under myself, which didn't work for cases with multiple dotdots. Any tips on improving it in general or specifically the lack of non-consecutive dotdot support would be welcome. Currently this is working with my limited examples, but I think it could be improved. It can't handle non-consecutive '..' directories, and I am probably doing a lot of wasteful (and error-prone) things that I probably don't need to do because I'm a bit of a hack. I've found a lot of examples of converting other types of relative paths using other languages, but none of them seemed to fit my situation. These are my example paths that I need to convert, from: //depot/foo/../bar/single.c //depot/foo/docs/../../other/double.c //depot/foo/usr/bin/../../../else/more/triple.c to: //depot/bar/single.c //depot/other/double.c //depot/else/more/triple.c And my script: begin paths = File.open(ARGV[0]).readlines puts(paths) new_paths = Array.new paths.each { |path| folders = path.split('/') if ( folders.include?('..') ) num_dotdots = 0 first_dotdot = folders.index('..') last_dotdot = folders.rindex('..') folders.each { |item| if ( item == '..' ) num_dotdots += 1 end } if ( first_dotdot and ( num_dotdots > 0 ) ) # this might be redundant? folders.slice!(first_dotdot - num_dotdots..last_dotdot) # dependent on consecutive dotdots only end end folders.map! { |elem| if ( elem !~ /\n/ ) elem = elem + '/' else elem = elem end } new_paths << folders.to_s } puts(new_paths) end

  Read the article

• Most efficient way of checking if Date object and Calendar object are in the same month

  - by Indigenuity

  I am working on a project that will run many thousands of comparisons between dates to see if they are in the same month, and I am wondering what the most efficient way of doing it would be. This isn't exactly what my code looks like, but here's the gist: List<Date> dates = getABunchOfDates(); Calendar month = Calendar.getInstance(); for(int i = 0; i < numMonths; i++) { for(Date date : dates) { if(sameMonth(month, date) .. doSomething } month.add(Calendar.MONTH, -1); } Creating a new Calendar object for every date seems like a pretty hefty overhead when this comparison will happen thousands of times, soI kind of want to cheat a bit and use the deprecated method Date.getMonth() and Date.getYear() public static boolean sameMonth(Calendar month, Date date) { return month.get(Calendar.YEAR) == date.getYear() && month.get(Calendar.MONTH) == date.getMonth(); } I'm pretty close to just using this method, since it seems to be the fastest, but is there a faster way? And is this a foolish way, since the Date methods are deprecated? Note: This project will always run with Java 7

  Read the article

• NDepend 4 – First Steps

  - by Ricardo Peres

  Introduction Thanks to Patrick Smacchia I had the chance to test NDepend 4. I can only say: awesome! This will be the first of a series of posts on NDepend, where I will talk about my discoveries. Keep in mind that I am just starting to use it, so more experienced users may find these too basic, I just hope I don’t say anything foolish! I must say that I am in no way affiliated with NDepend and I never actually met Patrick. Installation No installation program – a curious decision, I’m not against it -, just unzip the files to a folder and run the executable. It will optionally register itself with Visual Studio 2008, 2010 and 11 as well as RedGate’s Reflector; also, it automatically looks for updates. NDepend can either be used as a stand-alone program (with or without a GUI) or from within Visual Studio or Reflector. Getting Started One thing that really pleases me is the Getting Started section of the stand-alone, with links to pages on NDepend’s web site, featuring detailed explanations, which usually include screenshots and small videos (<5 minutes). There’s also an How do I with hierarchical navigation that guides us to through the major features so that we can easily find what we want. Usage There are two basic ways to use NDepend: Analyze .NET solutions, projects or assemblies; Compare two versions of the same assembly. I have so far not used NDepend to compare assemblies, so I will first talk about the first option. After selecting a solution and some of its projects, it generates a single HTML page with an highly detailed report of the analysis it produced. This includes some metrics such as number of lines of code, IL instructions, comments, types, methods and properties, the calculation of the cyclomatic complexity, coupling and lots of others indicators, typically grouped by type, namespace and assembly. The HTML also includes some nice diagrams depicting assembly dependencies, type and method relative proportions (according to the number of IL instructions, I guess) and assembly analysis relating to abstractness and stability. Useful, I would say. Then there’s the rules; NDepend tests the target assemblies against a set of more than 120 rules, grouped in categories Code Quality, Object Oriented Design, Design, Architecture and Layering, Dead Code, Visibility, Naming Conventions, Source Files Organization and .NET Framework Usage. The full list can be configured on the application, and an explanation of each rule can be found on the web site. Rules can be validated, violated and violated in a critical manner, and the HTML will contain the violated rules, their queries – more on this later - and results. The HTML uses some nice JavaScript effects, which allow paging and sorting of tables, so its nice to use. Similar to the rules, there are some queries that display results for a number (about 200) questions grouped as Object Oriented Design, API Breaking Changes (for assembly version comparison), Code Diff Summary (also for version comparison) and Dead Code. The difference between queries and rules is that queries are not classified as passes, violated or critically violated, just present results. The queries and rules are expressed through CQLinq, which is a very powerful LINQ derivative specific to code analysis. All of the included rules and queries can be enabled or disabled and new ones can be added, with intellisense to help. Besides the HTML report file, the NDepend application can be used to explore all analysis results, compare different versions of analysis reports and to run custom queries. Comparison to Other Analysis Tools Unlike StyleCop, NDepend only works with assemblies, not source code, so you can’t expect it to be able to enforce brackets placement, for example. It is more similar to FxCop, but you don’t have the option to analyze at the IL level, that is, other that the number of IL instructions and the complexity. What’s Next In the next days I’ll continue my exploration with a real-life test case. References The NDepend web site is http://www.ndepend.com/. Patrick keeps an updated blog on http://codebetter.com/patricksmacchia/ and he regularly monitors StackOverflow for questions tagged NDepend, which you can find on http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/ndepend. The default list of CQLinq rules, queries and statistics can be found at http://www.ndepend.com/DefaultRules/webframe.html. The syntax itself is described at http://www.ndepend.com/Doc_CQLinq_Syntax.aspx and its features at http://www.ndepend.com/Doc_CQLinq_Features.aspx.

  Read the article

• A Knights Tale

  - by Phil Factor

  There are so many lessons to be learned from the story of Knight Capital losing nearly half a billion dollars as a result of a deployment gone wrong. The Knight Capital Group (KCG N) was an American global financial services firm engaging in market making, electronic execution, and institutional sales and trading. According to the recent order (File No.3.15570) against Knight Capital by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission?, Knight had, for many years used some software which broke up incoming “parent” orders into smaller “child” orders that were then transmitted to various exchanges or trading venues for execution. A tracking ‘cumulative quantity’ function counted the number of ‘child’ orders and stopped the process once the total of child orders matched the ‘parent’ and so the parent order had been completed. Back in the mists of time, some code had been added to it  which was excuted if a particular flag was set. It was called ‘power peg’ and seems to have had a similar design and purpose, but, one guesses, would have shared the same tracking function. This code had been abandoned in 2003, but never deleted. In 2005, The tracking function was moved to an earlier point in the main process. It would seem from the account that, from that point, had that flag ever been set, the old ‘Power Peg’ would have been executed like Godzilla bursting from the ice, making child orders without limit without any tracking function. It wasn’t, presumably because the software that set the flag was removed. In 2012, nearly a decade after ‘Power Peg’ was abandoned, Knight prepared a new module to their software to cope with the imminent Retail Liquidity Program (RLP) for the New York Stock Exchange. By this time, the flag had remained unused and someone made the fateful decision to reuse it, and replace the old ‘power peg’ code with this new RLP code. Had the two actions been done together in a single automated deployment, and the new deployment tested, all would have been well. It wasn’t. To quote… “Beginning on July 27, 2012, Knight deployed the new RLP code in SMARS in stages by placing it on a limited number of servers in SMARS on successive days. During the deployment of the new code, however, one of Knight’s technicians did not copy the new code to one of the eight SMARS computer servers. Knight did not have a second technician review this deployment and no one at Knight realized that the Power Peg code had not been removed from the eighth server, nor the new RLP code added. Knight had no written procedures that required such a review.” (para 15) “On August 1, Knight received orders from broker-dealers whose customers were eligible to participate in the RLP. The seven servers that received the new code processed these orders correctly. However, orders sent with the repurposed flag to the eighth server triggered the defective Power Peg code still present on that server. As a result, this server began sending child orders to certain trading centers for execution. Because the cumulative quantity function had been moved, this server continuously sent child orders, in rapid sequence, for each incoming parent order without regard to the number of share executions Knight had already received from trading centers. Although one part of Knight’s order handling system recognized that the parent orders had been filled, this information was not communicated to SMARS.” (para 16) SMARS routed millions of orders into the market over a 45-minute period, and obtained over 4 million executions in 154 stocks for more than 397 million shares. By the time that Knight stopped sending the orders, Knight had assumed a net long position in 80 stocks of approximately $3.5 billion and a net short position in 74 stocks of approximately $3.15 billion. Knight’s shares dropped more than 20% after traders saw extreme volume spikes in a number of stocks, including preferred shares of Wells Fargo (JWF) and semiconductor company Spansion (CODE). Both stocks, which see roughly 100,000 trade per day, had changed hands more than 4 million times by late morning. Ultimately, Knight lost over $460 million from this wild 45 minutes of trading. Obviously, I’m interested in all this because, at one time, I used to write trading systems for the City of London. Obviously, the US SEC is in a far better position than any of us to work out the failings of Knight’s IT department, and the report makes for painful reading. I can’t help observing, though, that even with the breathtaking mistakes all along the way, that a robust automated deployment process that was ‘all-or-nothing’, and tested from soup to nuts would have prevented the disaster. The report reads like a Greek Tragedy. All the way along one wants to shout ‘No! not that way!’ and ‘Aargh! Don’t do it!’. As the tragedy unfolds, the audience weeps for the players, trapped by a cruel fate. All application development and deployment requires defense in depth. All IT goes wrong occasionally, but if there is a culture of defensive programming throughout, the consequences are usually containable. For financial systems, these defenses are required by statute, and ignored only by the foolish. Knight’s mistakes weren’t made by just one hapless sysadmin, but were progressive errors by an  IT culture spanning at least ten years.  One can spell these out, but I think they’re obvious. One can only hope that the industry studies what happened in detail, learns from the mistakes, and draws the right conclusions.

  Read the article

• Unable to retrieve information form HP-UX pst_status object

  - by bogertron

  I am attempting to get process information by using the HP-UX C/C++ library. After scouring the internet, I have discovered that HP-UX has the pstat.h header file which allows programmers to retrieve the process information. After attempting to understand code from the internet hp website, I attempted to create a little test sample to comprehend what the code does. I attempted to use example 3, however, I ran into several issues. The first issue came when I attempted to execute the following line of code: (void)printf("pid is %d, command is %s\n", pst[i].pst_pid, pst[i].pst_ucomm); When I attempted to print the string, I hit a memory fault. So I decided to attempt to see what the string is and came up with the following: #include <sys/param.h> #include <sys/pstat.h> #include <sys/unistd.h> #include <string.h> int main(int argc, char** argv) { #define BURST ((size_t)10) struct pst_status pst[BURST]; int i, count; int idx = 0; /* index within the context */ int index = 0; /* loop until count == 0, will occur all have been returned */ while ((count=pstat_getproc(pst, sizeof(pst[0]),BURST,idx))>0) { index = 0; printf("index: %d", index); /* got count (max of BURST) this time. process them */ while (pst[i].pst_ucomm[index] != '\0') { printf("%c", pst[i].pst_ucomm[index]); index++; } printf("\n"); for (i = 0; i < count; i++) { printf("pid is %d, command is \n", pst[i].pst_pid); } /* * now go back and do it again, using the next index after * the current 'burst' */ idx = pst[count-1].pst_idx + 1; } if (count == -1) perror("pstat_getproc()"); #undef BURST } Unfortunately, what happens is that I get the first process printed, then pid is 2, command is pid is 2, command is pid is 2, command is... I know that I must be doing something foolish since my C/C++ skills are not that great, but I cannot figure out what the issue is since the code is largely copied from the hp website. So here's the question(s) for clarity: 1. Why can't printf("%s", pst[i].pst_ucomm); handle strings? 2. Why can't I iterate over the processes in the system? Any help is greatly appreciated.

  Read the article

• Some clarification on rvalue references

  - by Dennis Zickefoose

  First: where are std::move and std::forward defined? I know what they do, but I can't find proof that any standard header is required to include them. In gcc44 sometimes std::move is available, and sometimes its not, so a definitive include directive would be useful. When implementing move semantics, the source is presumably left in an undefined state. Should this state necessarily be a valid state for the object? Obviously, you need to be able to call the object's destructor, and be able to assign to it by whatever means the class exposes. But should other operations be valid? I suppose what I'm asking is, if your class guarantees certain invariants, should you strive to enforce those invariants when the user has said they don't care about them anymore? Next: when you don't care about move semantics, are there any limitations that would cause a non-const reference to be preferred over an rvalue reference when dealing with function parameters? void function(T&); over void function(T&&); From a caller's perspective, being able to pass functions temporary values is occasionally useful, so it seems as though one should grant that option whenever it is feasible to do so. And rvalue references are themselves lvalues, so you can't inadvertently call a move-constructor instead of a copy-constructor, or something like that. I don't see a downside, but I'm sure there is one. Which brings me to my final question. You still can not bind temporaries to non-const references. But you can bind them to non-const rvalue references. And you can then pass along that reference as a non-const reference in another function. void function1(int& r) { r++; } void function2(int&& r) { function1(r); } int main() { function1(5); //bad function2(5); //good } Besides the fact that it doesn't do anything, is there anything wrong with that code? My gut says of course not, since changing rvalue references is kind of the whole point to their existence. And if the passed value is legitimately const, the compiler will catch it and yell at you. But by all appearances, this is a runaround of a mechanism that was presumably put in place for a reason, so I'd just like confirmation that I'm not doing anything foolish.

  Read the article

• ssh login successful, but scp password gives me "Permission denied"

  - by YANewb

  I'm trying to get some blogging software up on an organizational remote server. I tried to set up a SSH Key but was having problems and decided that getting the blog up and running was more important than dealing with the SSH Key issue, so I ssh-keygen -R remoteserver.com. Now I can successfully login with ssh -v [email protected] and the correct password. Once logged in I can move around and read any file and directory that I should be able to read. But when I try to edit an existing -rw-r--r-- file with VIM, it shows up as read-only, if I try to edit permissions I get chmod: file.ext: Operation not permitted, and if I try to scp a new file from my local machine I'm prompted for the remote user's password, and then get scp: /home/path/to/file.ext: Permission denied. Since I didn't have any of these problems before I tried to set up the ssh key, I suspect these anomalies are a side effect of that, but I don't know how to troubleshoot this. So what does a foolish server-newb, such as myself, need to do to get edit capability back as a remote user? Addendum 1: My userids are different between my local machine and the remote server. For ssh I ssh -v [email protected]. if I whoami I get remoteuser For scp I scp file.ext [email protected]:/path/to/file.ext from the local directory with file.ext while logged in as the local user. if I whoami I get localuser The ls -l for two different files I've tried scp: -rw-r--r--@ 1 localuser localgroup 20 Feb 11 21:03 phpinfo.php -rw-r--r-- 1 root localgroup 4 Feb 11 22:32 test.txt The ls -l for the file I've tried to VIM: -rw-r--r-- 1 remoteuser remotegroup 76 Jul 27 2009 info.txt Addendum 2: In the past I've set up ssh-keys for git repositories. I don't want to completely destroy them, so in an attempt to follow a deer's train of thinking I renamed my ~/.ssh/ to ~/.ssh-bak/, then tested the different types of access. The abridged version of the terminal commands and results is below; I think everything is working until the 8th line from the end. localcomputer:~ localuser$ ssh -v [email protected] OpenSSH_5.2p1, OpenSSL 0.9.8l 5 Nov 2009 debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh_config debug1: Connecting to remoteserver.com [###.###.###.###] port 22. debug1: Connection established. debug1: identity file /Users/localuser/.ssh/identity type -1 debug1: identity file /Users/localuser/.ssh/id_rsa type -1 debug1: identity file /Users/localuser/.ssh/id_dsa type -1 debug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_5.8p2 FreeBSD-20110503 debug1: match: OpenSSH_5.8p2 FreeBSD-20110503 pat OpenSSH* debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0 debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_5.2 debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT sent debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT received debug1: kex: server->client aes128-ctr hmac-md5 none debug1: kex: client->server aes128-ctr hmac-md5 none debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REQUEST(1024<1024<8192) sent debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_GROUP debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_INIT sent debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REPLY The authenticity of host 'remoteserver.com (###.###.###.###)' can't be established. RSA key fingerprint is ##:##:##:##:##:##:##:##:##:##:##:##:##:##:##:##. Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes Warning: Permanently added 'remoteserver.com,###.###.###.###' (RSA) to the list of known hosts. debug1: ssh_rsa_verify: signature correct debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS sent debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS received debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_REQUEST sent debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password debug1: Next authentication method: publickey debug1: Trying private key: /Users/localuser/.ssh/identity debug1: Trying private key: /Users/localuser/.ssh/id_rsa debug1: Trying private key: /Users/localuser/.ssh/id_dsa debug1: Next authentication method: password [email protected]'s password: debug1: Authentication succeeded (password). debug1: channel 0: new [client-session] debug1: Requesting [email protected] debug1: Entering interactive session. Last login: Sun Feb 12 18:00:54 2012 from 68.69.164.123 FreeBSD 6.4-RELEASE-p8 (VKERN) #1 r101746: Mon Aug 30 10:34:40 MDT 2010 [remoteuser@remoteserver /home]$ ls -l total ### -rw-r--r-- 1 remoteuser remotegroup 76 Aug 12 2009 info.txt [remoteuser@remoteserver /home]$ vim info.txt ~ {at the bottom of the VIM screen it tells me it's [read only]} [remoteuser@remoteserver /home]$ whoami remoteuser [remoteuser@remoteserver /home]$ logout debug1: client_input_channel_req: channel 0 rtype exit-status reply 0 debug1: client_input_channel_req: channel 0 rtype [email protected] reply 0 debug1: channel 0: free: client-session, nchannels 1 Connection to remoteserver.com closed. Transferred: sent 3872, received 12496 bytes, in 107.4 seconds Bytes per second: sent 36.1, received 116.4 debug1: Exit status 0 localcomputer:localdirectory name$ scp -v phpinfo.php [email protected]:/home/www/remotedirectory/phpinfo.php Executing: program /usr/bin/ssh host remoteserver.com, user remoteuser, command scp -v -t /home/www/remotedirectory/phpinfo.php OpenSSH_5.2p1, OpenSSL 0.9.8l 5 Nov 2009 debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh_config debug1: Connecting to remoteserver.com [###.###.###.###] port 22. debug1: Connection established. debug1: identity file /Users/localuser/.ssh/identity type -1 debug1: identity file /Users/localuser/.ssh/id_rsa type -1 debug1: identity file /Users/localuser/.ssh/id_dsa type -1 debug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_5.8p2 FreeBSD-20110503 debug1: match: OpenSSH_5.8p2 FreeBSD-20110503 pat OpenSSH* debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0 debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_5.2 debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT sent debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT received debug1: kex: server->client aes128-ctr hmac-md5 none debug1: kex: client->server aes128-ctr hmac-md5 none debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REQUEST(1024<1024<8192) sent debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_GROUP debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_INIT sent debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REPLY debug1: Host 'remoteserver.com' is known and matches the RSA host key. debug1: Found key in /Users/localuser/.ssh/known_hosts:1 debug1: ssh_rsa_verify: signature correct debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS sent debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS received debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_REQUEST sent debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password debug1: Next authentication method: publickey debug1: Trying private key: /Users/localuser/.ssh/identity debug1: Trying private key: /Users/localuser/.ssh/id_rsa debug1: Trying private key: /Users/localuser/.ssh/id_dsa debug1: Next authentication method: password [email protected]'s password: debug1: Authentication succeeded (password). debug1: channel 0: new [client-session] debug1: Requesting [email protected] debug1: Entering interactive session. debug1: Sending command: scp -v -t /home/www/remotedirectory/phpinfo.php Sending file modes: C0644 20 phpinfo.php Sink: C0644 20 phpinfo.php scp: /home/www/remotedirectory/phpinfo.php: Permission denied debug1: client_input_channel_req: channel 0 rtype exit-status reply 0 debug1: channel 0: free: client-session, nchannels 1 debug1: fd 0 clearing O_NONBLOCK debug1: fd 1 clearing O_NONBLOCK Transferred: sent 1456, received 2160 bytes, in 0.6 seconds Bytes per second: sent 2322.3, received 3445.1 debug1: Exit status 1

  Read the article

• bulls and cows game -- programming algorithm(python)

  - by IcyFlame

  This is a simulation of the game Cows and Bulls with three digit numbers I am trying to get the number of cows and bulls between two numbers. One of which is generated by the computer and the other is guessed by the user. I have parsed the two numbers I have so that now I have two lists with three elements each and each element is one of the digits in the number. So: 237 will give the list [2,3,7]. And I make sure that the relative indices are maintained.the general pattern is:(hundreds, tens, units). And these two lists are stored in the two lists: machine and person. ALGORITHM 1 So, I wrote the following code, The most intuitive algorithm: cows and bulls are initialized to 0 before the start of this loop. for x in person: if x in machine: if machine.index(x) == person.index(x): bulls += 1 print x,' in correct place' else: print x,' in wrong place' cows += 1 And I started testing this with different type of numbers guessed by the computer. Quite randomly, I decided on 277. And I guessed 447. Here, I got the first clue that this algorithm may not work. I got 1 cow and 0 bulls. Whereas I should have got 1 bull and 1 cow. This is a table of outputs with the first algorithm: Guess Output Expected Output 447 0 bull, 1 cow 1 bull, 1 cow 477 2 bulls, 0 cows 2 bulls, 0 cows 777 0 bulls, 3 cows 2 bulls, 0 cows So obviously this algorithm was not working when there are repeated digits in the number randomly selected by the computer. I tried to understand why these errors are taking place, But I could not. I have tried a lot but I just could not see any mistake in the algorithm(probably because I wrote it!) ALGORITHM 2 On thinking about this for a few days I tried this: cows and bulls are initialized to 0 before the start of this loop. for x in range(3): for y in range(3): if x == y and machine[x] == person[y]: bulls += 1 if not (x == y) and machine[x] == person[y]: cows += 1 I was more hopeful about this one. But when I tested this, this is what I got: Guess Output Expected Output 447 1 bull, 1 cow 1 bull, 1 cow 477 2 bulls, 2 cows 2 bulls, 0 cows 777 2 bulls, 4 cows 2 bulls, 0 cows The mistake I am making is quite clear here, I understood that the numbers were being counted again and again. i.e.: 277 versus 477 When you count for bulls then the 2 bulls come up and thats alright. But when you count for cows: the 7 in 277 at units place is matched with the 7 in 477 in tens place and thus a cow is generated. the 7 in 277 at tens place is matched with the 7 in 477 in units place and thus a cow is generated.' Here the matching is exactly right as I have written the code as per that. But this is not what I want. And I have no idea whatsoever on what to do after this. Furthermore... I would like to stress that both the algorithms work perfectly, if there are no repeated digits in the number selected by the computer. Please help me with this issue. P.S.: I have been thinking about this for over a week, But I could not post a question earlier as my account was blocked(from asking questions) because I asked a foolish question. And did not delete it even though I got 2 downvotes immediately after posting the question.

  Read the article

• When Your Boss Doesn't Want you to Succeed

  - by Phil Factor

  You're working hard to get an application finished. You are programming long into the evenings sometimes, and eating sandwiches at your desk instead of taking a lunch break. Then one day you glance up at the IT manager, serene in his mysterious round of meetings, and think 'Does he actually care whether this project succeeds or not?'. The question may seem absurd. Of course the project must succeed. The truth, as always, is often far more complex. Your manager may even be doing his best to make sure you don't succeed. Why? There have always been rich pickings for the unscrupulous in IT.  In extreme cases, where administrators struggle with scarcely-comprehended technical issues, huge sums of money can be lost and gained without any perceptible results. In a very few cases can fraud be proven: most of the time, the intricacies of the 'game' are such that one can do little more than harbor suspicion.  Where does over-enthusiastic salesmanship end and fraud begin? The Business of Information Technology provides rich opportunities for White-collar crime. The poor developer has his, or her, hands full with the task of wrestling with the sheer complexity of building an application. He, or she, has no time for following the complexities of the chicanery of the management that is directing affairs.  Most likely, the developers wouldn't even suspect that their company management had ulterior motives. I'll illustrate what I mean with an entirely fictional, hypothetical, example. The Opportunist and the Aged Charities often do good, unexciting work that is funded by the income from a bequest that dates back maybe hundreds of years.  In our example, it isn't exciting work, for it involves the welfare of elderly people who have fallen on hard times.  Volunteers visit, giving a smile and a chat, and check that they are all right, but are able to spend a little money on their discretion to ameliorate any pressing needs for these old folk.  The money is made to work very hard and the charity averts a great deal of suffering and eases the burden on the state. Daisy hears the garden gate creak as Mrs Rainer comes up the path. She looks forward to her twice-weekly visit from the nice lady from the trust. She always asked ‘is everything all right, Love’. Cheeky but nice. She likes her cheery manner. She seems interested in hearing her memories, and talking about her far-away family. She helps her with those chores in the house that she couldn’t manage and once even paid to fill the back-shed with coke, the other year. Nice, Mrs. Rainer is, she thought as she goes to open the door. The trustees are getting on in years themselves, and worry about the long-term future of the charity: is it relevant to modern society? Is it likely to attract a new generation of workers to take it on. They are instantly attracted by the arrival to the board of a smartly dressed University lecturer with the ear of the present Government. Alain 'Stalin' Jones is earnest, persuasive and energetic. The trustees welcome him to the board and quickly forgive his humorless political-correctness. He talks of 'diversity', 'relevance', 'social change', 'equality' and 'communities', but his eye is on that huge bequest. Alain first came to notice as a Trotskyite union official, who insinuated himself into one of the duller Trades Unions and turned it, through his passionate leadership, into a radical, headline-grabbing organization.  Middle age, and the rise of European federal socialism, had brought him quiet prosperity and charcoal suits, an ear in the current government, and a wide influence as a member of various Quangos (government bodies staffed by well-paid unelected courtiers).  He was employed as a 'consultant' by several organizations that relied on government contracts. After gaining the confidence of the trustees, and showing a surprising knowledge of mundane processes and the regulatory framework of charities, Alain launches his plan.  The trust will expand their work by means of a bold IT initiative that will coordinate the interventions of several 'caring agencies', and provide  emergency cover, a special Website so anxious relatives can see how their elderly charges are doing, and a vastly more efficient way of coordinating the work of the volunteer carers. It will also provide a special-purpose site that gives 'social networking' facilities, rather like Facebook, to the few elderly folk on the lists with access to the internet. The trustees perk up. Their own experience of the internet is restricted to the occasional scanning of railway timetables, but they can see that it is 'relevant'. In his next report to the other trustees, Alain proudly announces that all this glamorous and exciting technology can be paid for by a grant from the government. He admits darkly that he has influence. True to his word, the government promises a grant of a size that is an order of magnitude greater than any budget that the trustees had ever handled. There was the understandable proviso that the company that would actually do the IT work would have to be one of the government's preferred suppliers and the work would need to be tendered under EU competition rules. The only company that tenders, a multinational IT company with a long track record of government work, quotes ten million pounds for the work. A trustee questions the figure as it seems enormous for the reasonably trivial internet facilities being built, but the IT Salesmen dazzle them with presentations and three-letter acronyms until they subside into quiescent acceptance. After all, they can’t stay locked in the Twentieth century practices can they? The work is put in hand with a large project team, in a splendid glass building near west London. The trustees see rooms of programmers working diligently at screens, and who talk with enthusiasm of the project. Paul, the project manager, looked through his resource schedule with growing unease. His initial excitement at being given his first major project hadn’t lasted. He’d been allocated a lackluster team of developers whose skills didn’t seem right, and he was allowed only a couple of contractors to make good the deficit. Strangely, the presentation he’d given to his management, where he’d saved time and resources with a OTS solution to a great deal of the development work, and a sound conservative architecture, hadn’t gone down nearly as big as he’d hoped. He almost got the feeling they wanted a more radical and ambitious solution. The project starts slipping its dates. The costs build rapidly. There are certain uncomfortable extra charges that appear, such as the £600-a-day charge by the 'Business Manager' appointed to act as a point of liaison between the charity and the IT Company.  When he appeared, his face permanently split by a 'Mr Sincerity' smile, they'd thought he was provided at the cost of the IT Company. Derek, the DBA, didn’t have to go to the server room quite some much as he did: but It got him away from the poisonous despair of the development group. Wave after wave of events had conspired to delay the project.  Why the management had imposed hideous extra bureaucracy to cover ISO 9000 and 9001:2008 accreditation just as the project was struggling to get back on-schedule was  beyond belief.  Then  the Business manager was coming back with endless changes in scope, sorrowing saying that the Trustees were very insistent, though hopelessly out in touch with the reality of technical challenges. Suddenly, the costs mount to the point of consuming the government grant in its entirety. The project remains tantalizingly just out of reach. Alain Jones gives an emotional rallying speech at the trustees review meeting, urging them not to lose their nerve. Sadly, the trustees dip into the accumulated capital of the trust, the seed-corn of all their revenues, in order to save the IT project. A few months later it is all over. The IT project is never delivered, even though it had seemed so incredibly close.  With the trust's capital all gone, the activities it funded have to be terminated and the trust becomes just a shell. There aren't even the funds to mount a legal challenge against the IT company, even had the trust's solicitor advised such a foolish thing. Alain leaves as suddenly as he had arrived, only to pop up a few months later, bronzed and rested, at another charity. The IT workers who were permanent employees are dispersed to other projects, and the contractors leave to other contracts. Within months the entire project is but a vague memory. One or two developers remain  puzzled that their managers had been so obstructive when they should have welcomed progress toward completion of the project, but they put it down to incompetence and testosterone. Few suspected that they were actively preventing the project from getting finished. The relationships between the IT consultancy, and the government of the day are intricate, and made more complex by the Private Finance initiatives and political patronage.  The losers in this case were the taxpayers, and the beneficiaries of the trust, and, perhaps the soul of the original benefactor of the trust, whose bid to give his name some immortality had been scuppered by smooth-talking white-collar political apparatniks.  Even now, nobody is certain whether a crime was ever committed. The perfect heist, I guess. Where’s the victim? "I hear that Daisy’s cottage is up for sale. She’s had to go into a care home.  She didn’t want to at all, but then there is nobody to keep an eye on her since she had that minor stroke a while back.  A charity used to help out. The ‘social’ don’t have the funding, evidently for community care. Yes, her old cat was put down. There was a good clearout, and now the house is all scrubbed and cleared ready for sale. The skip was full of old photos and letters, memories. No room in her new ‘home’."

  Read the article

• Creating an ITemplate from a String

  - by Damon

  I do a lot of work with control templates, and one of the pieces of functionality that I've always wanted is the ability to build a ITemplate from a string.  Throughout the years, the topic has come up from time to time, and I never really found anything about how to do it. though I have run across a number of postings from people who are also wanting the same capability.  As I was messing around with things the other day, I stumbled on how to make it work and I feel really foolish for not figuring it out sooner. ITemplate is an interface that exposes a single method named InstantiateIn.  I've been searching for years for some magical .NET framework component that would take a string and convert it into an ITemplate, when all along I could just build my own.  Here's the code: /// <summary> ///   Allows string-based ITempalte implementations /// </summary> public class StringTemplate : ITemplate {     #region Constructor(s)     ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////     /// <summary>     ///   Constructor     /// </summary>     /// <param name="template">String based version of the control template.</param>     public StringTemplate(string template)     {         Template = template;     }     /// <summary>     ///   Constructor     /// </summary>     /// <param name="template">String based version of the control template.</param>     /// <param name="copyToContainer">True to copy intermediate container contents to the instantiation container, False to leave the intermediate container in place.</param>     public StringTemplate(string template, bool copyToContainer)     {         Template = template;         CopyToContainer = copyToContainer;     }     ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////     #endregion     #region Properties     ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////     /// <summary>     ///   String based template     /// </summary>     public string Template     {         get;         set;     }     /// <summary>     ///   When a StringTemplate is instantiated it is created inside an intermediate control     ///   due to limitations of the .NET Framework.  Specifying True for the CopyToContainer     ///   property copies all the controls from the intermediate container into instantiation     ///   container passed to the InstantiateIn method.     /// </summary>     public bool CopyToContainer     {         get;         set;     }     ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////     #endregion     #region ITemplate Members     ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////     /// <summary>     ///   Creates the template in the specified control.     /// </summary>     /// <param name="container">Control in which to make the template</param>     public void InstantiateIn(Control container)     {         Control tempContainer = container.Page.ParseControl(Template);         if (CopyToContainer)         {             for (int i = tempContainer.Controls.Count - 1; i >= 0; i--)             {                 Control tempControl = tempContainer.Controls[i];                 tempContainer.Controls.RemoveAt(i);                 container.Controls.AddAt(0, tempControl);             }                         }         else         {             container.Controls.Add(tempContainer);         }     }     ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////     #endregion } //class Converting a string into a user control is fairly easy using the ParseControl method from a Page object.  Fortunately, the container passed into the InstantiateIn method has a Page property.  One caveat, however, is that the Page property only has a reference to a Page if the container is located ON the page.  If you run into this problem, you may have to find a creative way to get the Page reference (you can add it to the constructor, store it in the request context, etc).  Another issue that I ran into is that the ParseControl creates a new control, parses the string template, places any controls defined in the template onto the new control it created, and returns that new control with the template on it.  You cannot pass in your own container. Adding this directly to the container provided as a parameter in the InstantiateIn means that you end up with an additional "level" in the control hierarchy.  To avoid this, I added code in that removes each control from the intermediate container and places it into the actual container.  I am not, however, sure about the performance penalty associated with moving a bunch of control from one place to another, nor am I completely sure if doing such a move completely screws something up if you have a code behind, etc.  It seems to work when it's just a template, but my testing was ever-so-slightly shy of thorough when it comes to other crazy scenarios.  As a catch-all, I added a Boolean property called CopyToContainer that allows you to turn the copying on or off depending on your desires and needs. Technorati Tags: .NET,ASP.NET,ITemplate,Development,C#,Custom Controls,Server Controls

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 22, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 22, 2013Popular ReleasesGac Library -- C++ Utilities for GPU Accelerated GUI and Script: Gaclib 0.5.2.0: Gaclib.zip contains the following content GacUIDemo Demo solution and projects Public Source GacUI library Document HTML document. Please start at reference_gacui.html Content Necessary CSS/JPG files for document. Improvements to the previous release Add 4 demos Controls.DataGrid.ChemicalElements This demo shows how to display data in a GuiVirtualDataGrid control using different styles for different cells. Controls.DataGrid.FileExplorer This demo shows how to use GuiVirtualDataGrid w...Three-Dimensional Maneuver Gear for Minecraft: TDMG 1.1.0.0 for 1.5.2: CodePlex???(????????) ?????????(???1/4) ??????????? ?????????? ???????????(??????????) ??????????????????????? ↑????、?????????????????????(???????) ???、??????????、?????????????????????、????????1.5?????????? Shift+W(????)??????????????????10°、?10°(?????????)???Pizarrón Virtual: Pizarron virtual codigo fuente: Código fuenteHyper-V Management Pack Extensions 2012: HyperVMPE2012: Hyper-V Management Pack Extensions 2012 Beta ReleaseOutlook 2013 Add-In: Email appointments: This new version includes the following changes: - Ability to drag emails to the calendar to create appointments. Will gather all the recipients from all the emails and create an appointment on the day you drop the emails, with the text and subject of the last selected email (if more than one selected). - Increased maximum of numbers to display appointments to 30. You will have to uninstall the previous version (add/remove programs) if you had installed it before. Before unzipping the file...Caliburn Micro: WPF, Silverlight, WP7 and WinRT/Metro made easy.: Caliburn.Micro v1.5.2: v1.5.2 - This is a service release. We've fixed a number of issues with Tasks and IoC. We've made some consistency improvements across platforms and fixed a number of minor bugs. See changes.txt for details. 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 inversion of control container (IoC); source code...CODE Framework: 4.0.30618.0: See change notes in the documentation section for details on what's new. Note: If you download the class reference help file with, you have to right-click the file, pick "Properties", and then unblock the file, as many browsers flag the file as blocked during download (for security reasons) and thus hides all content.Toolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011: XrmToolBox (v1.2013.6.18): XrmToolbox improvement Use new connection controls (use of Microsoft.Xrm.Client.dll) New display capabilities for tools (size, image and colors) Added prerequisites check Added Most Used Tools feature Tools improvementNew toolSolution Transfer Tool (v1.0.0.0) developed by DamSim Updated toolView Layout Replicator (v1.2013.6.17) Double click on source view to display its layoutXml All tools list Access Checker (v1.2013.6.17) Attribute Bulk Updater (v1.2013.6.18) FetchXml Tester (v1.2013.6.1...Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.570b: New* Movie - using XBMC TMDB - now renames movies if option selected. * Movie - using Xbmc Tmdb - Actor images saved from TMDb if option selected. Fixed* Movie - Checks for poster.jpg against missing poster filter * Movie - Fixed continual scraping of vob movie file (not DVD structure) * Both - Correctly display audio channels * Both - Correctly populate audio info in nfo's if multiple audio tracks. * Both - added icons and checked for DTS ES and Dolby TrueHD audio tracks. * Both - Stream d...Document.Editor: 2013.24: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.24: Improved Video Editing support Improved Link Editing support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsExtJS based ASP.NET Controls: FineUI v3.3.0: ??FineUI ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET ???。 FineUI??? ?? No JavaScript，No CSS，No UpdatePanel，No ViewState，No WebServices ???????。 ?????? IE 7.0、Firefox 3.6、Chrome 3.0、Opera 10.5、Safari 3.0+ ???? Apache License v2.0 ?：ExtJS ?? GPL v3 ?????(http://www.sencha.com/license)。 ???? ??：http://fineui.com/bbs/ ??：http://fineui.com/demo/ ??：http://fineui.com/doc/ ??：http://fineui.codeplex.com/ FineUI???? ExtJS ?????????，???? ExtJS ?。 ????? FineUI ? ExtJS ?：http://fineui.com/bbs/forum.php?mod=viewthrea...BarbaTunnel: BarbaTunnel 8.0: Check Version History for more information about this release.ExpressProfiler: ExpressProfiler v1.5: [+] added Start time, End time event columns [+] added SP:StmtStarting, SP:StmtCompleted events [*] fixed bug with Audit:Logout eventpatterns & practices: Data Access Guidance: Data Access Guidance Drop4 2013.06.17: Drop 4Kooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 4.1.1: The stable release of Kooboo CMS 4.1.0 with fixed the following issues: https://github.com/Kooboo/CMS/issues/1 https://github.com/Kooboo/CMS/issues/11 https://github.com/Kooboo/CMS/issues/13 https://github.com/Kooboo/CMS/issues/15 https://github.com/Kooboo/CMS/issues/19 https://github.com/Kooboo/CMS/issues/20 https://github.com/Kooboo/CMS/issues/24 https://github.com/Kooboo/CMS/issues/43 https://github.com/Kooboo/CMS/issues/45 https://github.com/Kooboo/CMS/issues/46 https://github....VidCoder: 1.5.0 Beta: The betas have started up again! If you were previously on the beta track you will need to install this to get back on it. That's because you can now run both the Beta and Stable version of VidCoder side-by-side! Note that the OpenCL and Intel QuickSync changes being tested by HandBrake are not in the betas yet. They will appear when HandBrake integrates them into the main branch. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5590. This adds a new FDK AAC encoder. The FAAC encoder has been removed and now...Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.2.1306.16: Date/Time are displayed as Local Time. (Last Contact, Last Report and DeadLine) Wpp now remember the last used path for update publishing. (See 'Settings' Form for options) Add an option to allow users to publish an update even if the Framework has judged the certificate as invalid. (Attention : Using this option will NOT allow you to publish or revise an update if your certificate is really invalid). When publishing a new update, filter update files to ensure that there is not files wi...Employee Info Starter Kit: v6.0 - ASP.NET MVC Edition: Release Home - Getting Started - Hands on Coding Walkthrough – Technology Stack - Design & Architecture EISK v6.0 – ASP.NET MVC edition bundles most of the greatest and successful platforms, frameworks and technologies together, to enable web developers to learn and build manageable and high performance web applications with rich user experience effectively and quickly. User End SpecificationsCreating a new employee record Read existing employee records Update an existing employee reco...OLAP PivotTable Extensions: Release 0.8.1: Use the 32-bit download for... Excel 2007 Excel 2010 32-bit (even Excel 2010 32-bit on a 64-bit operating system) Excel 2013 32-bit (even Excel 2013 32-bit on a 64-bit operating system) Use the 64-bit download for... Excel 2010 64-bit Excel 2013 64-bit Just download and run the EXE. There is no need to uninstall the previous release. If you have problems getting the add-in to work, see the Troubleshooting Installation wiki page. The new features in this release are: View #VALUE! Err...DirectXTex texture processing library: June 2013: June 15, 2013 Custom filtering implementation for Resize & GenerateMipMaps(3D) - Point, Box, Linear, Cubic, and Triangle TEX_FILTER_TRIANGLE finite low-pass triangle filter TEX_FILTER_WRAP, TEX_FILTER_MIRROR texture semantics for custom filtering TEX_FILTER_BOX alias for TEX_FILTER_FANT WIC Ordered and error diffusion dithering for non-WIC conversion sRGB gamma correct custom filtering and conversion DDS_FLAGS_EXPAND_LUMINANCE - Reader conversion option for L8, L16, and A8L8 legacy ...New Projects7tin - For Business Expansion: 7tin.net one project that every Businessman can open a shop and sale everything. It's free.AntikCompta: AntikCompta is the easiest way to share comptability beetween an antiquaire and it's account manager.Community wallpaper: share your desktop wall paper with others using People Near Me (PNM) protocolDeep.NET: This project aims at providing basic tools for developers to build learning models that can extract hierarchical representations of knowledge. DynamicAccess: DynamicAccess is a library to aid connecting DLR languages such as ironpython and ironruby to non-dynamic languages like managed C++. It also fills in some gaps in the current C# support of dynamic objects, such as member access by string and deletion of members or indexes.EntInscripcion: Este es un proyecto de inscripcionesExtensible Lightweight Framework: ELF is developed in C# .NET 4.0. It offers extensions on standard components from the .NET Framework and custom components such as MVP. Most classes implement interfaces and are resolved using IoC. Currently a single feature is available, the coming month new features will be added. WCF Service Client - Exception Handling - Retry Logic - Reusable Eye tracking with Kinect for Windows: Attempts to track eyes and calculate the pupillary distance of the user using Kinect for Windows.Hanoi: Another implementation of the popular game of Towers of Hanoi for SmartPhones with Windows Mobile 2003 or newer. But it's not only the classic Towers of Hanoi, it has some value-added features like timing, time-limited gaming, column order changing, etc. It supports from 1 disk to 8. Very geeky game.HR_project: WPF ?????????? ? ???????? ? ???? ??????. ???????? ? ?????????? ????? ??????????? ? ???? ??????.HttpUtility: HttpUtility???C#?HttpRequest（HttpWebRequest）?????。 ??HttpUtility????????? 1.??HttpRequest?Get??，?????html?? 2.??HttpRequest?Post??，?????html?? 3.??HttpRequest??IL2 Stats DB: A SQL 2008 Database Scheme to store data generated by the IL2 Log Parser.maillib: Libreria mail per l'invio di posta elettronicamgl Pluginsystem: mgl is a pluginsystem. MIBETerminal: ---Mobile FIT VUT: Školní aplikace pro zacínající studenty FIT VUT. Obsahuje potrebné informace pro studium na Vysokém ucení v Brne fakulta Informacních technologií. Aplikace obsahuje: -školní prírucku -aktuální jídelní lístkem menz -kontaktní informace na zamestnance FIT VUT -mapu fakulty FIT -aktuality -plánovac úloh Aplikace se nachází na Windows Marketplace: http://www.windowsphone.com/cs-CZ/apps/c2e8036d-970a-4ab1-8ca4-b97788a0dcb5 OMANE: OMANEPDF Unlocker Software for those who want to unlock PDF Restrictions: PDF Unlocker Software has the competence to unlock PDF restrictions. With this tool user can exclusive attribute to remove PDF security completelyPortalCemil: Portal CemilResonance: Resonance is a system to train neural networks, it allows to automate the train of a neural network, distributing the calculation on multiple machines.SauravUtil: These are some small utilities created specially by saurav sarkar. 1. Wcf Tutorial using Entity Framework 5 2. Rest Coming soonSelcukEticaretDenemesi: Test için bir çalisma yürütecegimSPWTF: "SPWTF or SharePoint well thats foolish" is a project that intends to bridge various gaps in the OOTB SharePoint apps story. Enjoy!SQL Server Integration Services Reporting: The canned SSMS Integration Services reports rewritten for deployment on Reporting Services.Swyish Chess: Chess Application built using C# and WPFThree-Dimensional Maneuver Gear for Minecraft: Minecraft?????????????。Urdu Translation: Urdu Translation Project Visual Studio Templates compliant with StyleCop Rules: This project contains the templates and instructions to make your Visual Studio 2008 create new files compliant to StyleCop rules.webapps-in-action.com: Here you'll find all the Code Samples & Solutions from my Blog http://webapps-in-action.com

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 1 2 3