Search Results

Search found 832 results on 34 pages for 'waste'.

Page 30/34 | < Previous Page | 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34  | Next Page >

• Create an index only on certain rows in mysql

  - by dhruvbird

  So, I have this funny requirement of creating an index on a table only on a certain set of rows. This is what my table looks like: USER: userid, friendid, created, blah0, blah1, ..., blahN Now, I'd like to create an index on: (userid, friendid, created) but only on those rows where userid = friendid. The reason being that this index is only going to be used to satisfy queries where the WHERE clause contains "userid = friendid". There will be many rows where this is NOT the case, and I really don't want to waste all that extra space on the index. Another option would be to create a table (query table) which is populated on insert/update of this table and create a trigger to do so, but again I am guessing an index on that table would mean that the data would be stored twice. How does mysql store Primary Keys? I mean is the table ordered on the Primary Key or is it ordered by insert order and the PK is like a normal unique index? I checked up on clustered indexes (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/innodb-index-types.html), but it seems only InnoDB supports them. I am using MyISAM (I mention this because then I could have created a clustered index on these 3 fields in the query table). I am basically looking for something like this: ALTER TABLE USERS ADD INDEX (userid, friendid, created) WHERE userid=friendid

  Read the article

• Change Default Winform Icon Across Entire App

  - by Kyle Gagnet

  Can I change the default icon used on a Winform? Most of my forms have their icon property set to a custom icon. For the few forms that slip through the cracks, I don't want the generic "hey look, he made this in visual studio" icon. One solution is to tediously check every one of my forms to make sure they either have a custom icon set or have ShowIcon set to False. Another solution is to have every one of my forms inherit from a base class that sets a custom icon in the constructor. Aside from those solutions, what other options do I have? EDIT: I was hoping there would be a way to replace the source of the stock icon with my own. Is it in a resource file somewhere? Or is it embedded in a .NET dll that I can't (or really, really shouldn't) modify? BOUNTY EDIT: Is there a way to accomplish this without editing or writing a single line of code? I don't care how impractical, complicated, waste-of-time the solution is... I just want to know if it's possible. I need to satisfy my curiosity.

  Read the article

• Sending an AJAX Request - Can't get to work

  - by user357944

  I'm trying to make an AJAX GET request, but I simply cannot get it to work. I want to retrieve the HTML source of example.com. I've previously used JQuery to send AJAX requests, but I use JQuery only for its AJAX capabilities so it's a waste to include the 30KB file for one task. What is it that I'm doing wrong? <script type="text/javascript"> var XMLHttpArray = [ function() {return new XMLHttpRequest()}, function() {return new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP")}, function() {return new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP")}, function() {return new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")} ]; function createXMLHTTPObject(){ var xmlhttp = false; for(var i=0; i<XMLHttpArray.length; i++){ try{ xmlhttp = XMLHttpArray[i](); }catch(e){ continue; } break; } return xmlhttp; } function AjaxRequest(url,method){ var req = createXMLHTTPObject(); req.onreadystatechange= function(){ if(req.readyState != 4) return; if(req.status != 200) return; return req.responseText; } req.open(method,url,true); req.send(null); } function MakeRequst(){ var result=AjaxRequest("http://example.com","get"); alert(result); } </script>

  Read the article

• nginx php5-fpm "File not found" -- FastCGI sent in stderr: "Primary script unknown"

  - by jmfayard

  so I'm trying to run for the first time the nginx web server with php5-fpm on a debian wheezy server Hitting a php file display simply File not found I have done my research (waste a lot of hours actually ;), there are a lot of people that have similar problems, yet I didn't succeed to correct it with what worked for them. I still have the same error : $ tail /var/log/nginx/access.log /var/log/nginx/error.log /var/log/php5-fpm.log | less == /var/log/nginx/error.log <== 2013/10/26 21:36:00 [error] 6900#0: *1971 FastCGI sent in stderr: "Primary script unknown" while reading response header from upstream, I have tried a lot of things, it's hard to remember what. I have put my config files on github my /etc/nginx/nginx.conf my /etc/php5/fpm/php-fpm.conf Currently, the nginx.conf configuration uses this... server { server_name mydomain.tld; root /srv/data1/test; location ~ \.php$ { try_files $uri =404; fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; include fastcgi_params; } } /etc/php5/fpm/pool.d/www.conf contains listen = 127.0.0.1:9000 I have tried the unix socket version, same thing. fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock; I made sure the server is started $ netstat -alnp | grep LISTEN tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:9000 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 6913/php-fpm.conf) tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:3306 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 4785/mysqld tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:842 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 2286/inetd tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:111 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 2812/rpcbind tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:80 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 5710/nginx tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:22 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 2560/sshd tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:443 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 5710/nginx tcp6 0 0 :::111 :::* LISTEN 2812/rpcbind unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 323648 6574/tmux /tmp//tmux-1000/default unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 619072 6790/fcgiwrap /var/run/fcgiwrap.socket unix 2 [ ACC ] SEQPACKET LISTENING 323 464/udevd /run/udev/control unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 610686 2812/rpcbind /var/run/rpcbind.sock unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 318633 4785/mysqld /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock Each time I modify the nginx.conf file, I make sure to relaunch this command nginx -t && nginx -s reload && echo "nginx configuration reloaded" and same thing for php5-fpm /etc/init.d/php5-fpm restart Thanks for your help :-)

  Read the article

• So I want to separate my Program Files from the hard disk with the other system files. What is the b

  - by grg-n-sox

  So I am running Windows 7 as my only OS. I have two hard drives on my computer. The first one is a 74GB Western Digital 10K RPM Raptor. The second one is a 1TB Seagate Barracuda (couldn't remember if it was a 7200.12 or some other decimal after the 7200). The OS in installed to the Raptor and I am just using the Barracuda for storage. With this setup, in case you couldn't guess already, the Raptor fills up quick and I am constantly having to maintain file locations. And although it is nice to have that quicker boot time and program loading, the time spent maintaining the drive makes me waste more time overall. So I am looking for a way to try to keep it clear while still keeping up system loading speeds. A performance hit on games and such is easily acceptable and as long as I can guarantee a 5GB space on the Raptor, I can always just temporarily move the disc image there. So I am figuring that having games installed like Boarderlands and Mass Effect, as well as having large files such as linux distro DVD disc images in My Documents, I probably should be moving my personal files and Program Files directories to the Barracuda. I currently have folders on the Barracuda for this, but this means routinely copying files over and I can't really do anything with the Program Files folder that already exists. The best I can do is remember to designate the install directory of any program installation to the alternative install directory, which I can't seem to get to ever work right with Steam. With that in mind, is there a way that is not too drastic to let me just change some folders and system settings once and everything works fine afterwards for my setup? I have considered just reinstalling Windows 7 to the Barracuda but that would defeat the purpose of the Raptor except for running disc images off of. I am also heard a bit about being able to use symlinks to fix this, but I have also heard that symlinks in Windows are not necessarily the same and not as well supported on Windows. An example a friend mentioned was something about how if you have a symlink in Windows on a small hard drive to a large hard drive and the contents the symlink points to is larger than the small hard drive's capacity, then Windows will think the smaller hard drive is full. So is there a fix/workaround that will let me use symlinks across hard drives without the issues or is there a better solution I am not being told about, not mentioning, or not thinking of?

  Read the article

• Buying a new printer instead of replacing ink?

  - by Kelsey

  With prices of basic printers being around $40 - $50 and a ink cartridge being around $20 - $30 each for black AND color. It costs me more to replace the printer's ink than to just buy a brand new printer. This just seems like a total waste of materials though (I have 4 printers sitting in my basement with no ink). I know the ink cartridges are smaller (not as full) in a new printer but I go through it in about 1 to 1.5 years only and by then my $40 gets me a better printer to boot. Also with certain printers the heads are not part of the ink (Epson use to do this and still might) so I get new heads as well. Is this a bad practice? Are retailers making this a reality when they are selling working hardware cheaper than replacement parts? Is there something more I should be considering? Edit: Some background, long ago I bought an Epson printer which I used to print docs etc vary rarely. The ink started running low so I bought to new carts for around $60 if I recall. The printer then stopped working so I replaced the carts with the new ones but the head was dead on the black which was not worth repairing. I bought a new HP printer for $49. This lasted around 1.5yrs and then the ink ran out, I went to buy new carts and the guy at the store got me to buy a new printer (that was smaller, faster, higher dpi, etc) and it was cheaper than replacing the ink. When the ink ran out on that one I bought a new printer again, etc. The printer gets used maybe once a week at most and I never print photos or anything. It normally is jsut stored away unplugged accumulating dust. People say to buy a laser printer but they are much larger, do not print color, (in the price range I am looking at) and might have the exact same issues. The problem I see is the manufacturer is making my behaviour possible by selling new printers at a loss hoping that they will cash in on the ink later. How can they produce a printer for so cheap which HAS ink in it, and the refills cost more than the unit? It can't.

  Read the article

• Secure openVPN using IPTABLES

  - by bob franklin smith harriet

  Hey, I setup an openVPN server and it works ok. The next step is to secure it, I opted to use IPTABLES to only allow certain connections through but so far it is not working. I want to enable access to the network behind my openVPN server, and allow other services (web access), when iptables is disabaled or set to allow all this works fine, when using my following rules it does not. also note, I already configured openVPN itself to do what i want and it works fine, its only failing when iptables is started. Any help to tell me why this isnt working will appreciated here. These are the lines that I added in accordance with openVPN's recommendations, unfortunately testing these commands shows that they are requiered, they seem incredibly insecure though, any way to get around using them? # Allow TUN interface connections to OpenVPN server -A INPUT -i tun+ -j ACCEPT #allow TUN interface connections to be forwarded through other interfaces -A FORWARD -i tun+ -j ACCEPT # Allow TAP interface connections to OpenVPN server -A INPUT -i tap+ -j ACCEPT # Allow TAP interface connections to be forwarded through other interfaces -A FORWARD -i tap+ -j ACCEPT These are the new chains and commands i added to restrict access as much as possible unfortunately with these enabled, all that happens is the openVPN connection establishes fine, and then there is no access to the rest of the network behind the openVPN server note I am configuring the main iptables file and I am paranoid so all ports and ip addresses are altered, and -N etc appears before this so ignore that they dont appear. and i added some explanations of what i 'intended' these rules to do, so you dont waste time figuring out where i went wrong : 4 #accepts the vpn over port 1192 -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 1192 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -j INPUT-FIREWALL -A OUTPUT -j ACCEPT #packets that are to be forwarded from 10.10.1.0 network (all open vpn clients) to the internal network (192.168.5.0) jump to [sic]foward-firewall chain -A FORWARD -s 10.10.1.0/24 -d 192.168.5.0/24 -j FOWARD-FIREWALL #same as above, except for a different internal network -A FORWARD -s 10.10.1.0/24 -d 10.100.5.0/24 -j FOWARD-FIREWALL # reject any not from either of those two ranges -A FORWARD -j REJECT -A INPUT-FIREWALL -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT -A INPUT-FIREWALL -p tcp -m tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT-FIREWALL -j REJECT -A FOWARD-FIREWALL -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT #80 443 and 53 are accepted -A FOWARD-FIREWALL -m tcp -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT -A FOWARD-FIREWALL -m tcp -p tcp --dport 443 -j ACCEPT #192.168.5.150 = openVPN sever -A FOWARD-FIREWALL -m tcp -p tcp -d 192.168.5.150 --dport 53 -j ACCEPT -A FOWARD-FIREWALL -m udp -p udp -d 192.168.5.150 --dport 53 -j ACCEPT -A FOWARD-FIREWALL -j REJECT COMMIT now I wait :D

  Read the article

• Unecrypted Image of Truecrypt-Encrypted System Partition

  - by Dexter

  The general tenor around the internet seems to be that you can't create images of system partitions that have been encrypted (with truecrypt) other than with dd or similar sector-by-sector copy tools. These files however are very impractical given their size (and are obviously incompressible) which makes keeping multiple states/backups of your system partition rather expensive (..especially considering current hdd prices). The problem is that backup tools (like Acronis True Image, Clonezilla, etc.) won't give you the option to create an image of (mounted/opened) Truecrypt partitions, or that there is no recovery environment for restoring the backup, that would allow to run truecrypt before doing any actual restoring. After some trial and error however, I believe I have found a very simple way. Since Truecrypt (running in Linux) creates a virtual block device, that it uses for mounting the unencrypted partitions into the file system, partclone can be used for creating/restoring images. What I did: boot up a linux live disk mount/open the drive/device/partition in truecrypt unmount the filesystem mount point again, like so: umount /media/truecryptX ("X" being the partition number assigend by truecrypt) use partclone (this is what clonezilla would do too, except that clonezilla only offers you to back up real drive partitions, not virtual block devices): partclone.ntfs -c -s /dev/mapper/truecryptX -o nameOfBackupFile for restoring steps 1-3 remain the same, and step 4 is partclone.ntfs -r -s nameOfBackupFile -o /dev/mapper/truecryptX A backup and test-restore of the system (with this method) seems to have worked fine (and the changed settings were reverted to the backup-state). The backup file is ~40 GB (and compressible down to <8GB with 7zip/LZMA2 on the "fast" setting). I can't quite believe that I'm the only one that wants to create images of encrypted drives, but doesn't want to waste 100GB on the backup of one single system state. So my question now is, given how simple this was, and that no one seems to mention anywhere that this is possible - did I miss something? or did I do something wrong? Is there any situation that I didn't think of where this method will fail? Obviously, the backup file needs to be stored in some other encrypted place in order to still remain confidential, since it is unencrypted. Also, in order to do a full "bare metal" restore, one would have to actually first (re-)install Windows, encrypt it, and only then restore the backup file. The funny thing however is that you won't need to backup any partition tables, etc. since the reinstall will effectively take care of that. Is there anything else? This is imho still a lot better than having sector-by-sector images..

  Read the article

• Thunderbird 3: can't change column width?

  - by rumtscho

  I recently installed Thunderbird 3.0.3. Just noticed a suboptimal UI setting: in the upper pane, which lists the e-mails in the current folder, the Date column is about 200px wide. So when I keep the window at 480x600, all I see in a row is: | tree icon | favourites icon | attachment icon | read icon | junk icon | Date and time, followed by 5cm whitespace | ... | P Where "P" is the first letter of the name of the sender. And the "..." is actually shown this way, I have no idea which column it is meant to be. But I don't see neither the sender, nor the message subject, which makes scrolling a folder for a certain mail rather pointless. I see these when I maximize the window, actually the columns are then not only bigger, they are arranged in another sequence. But I feel that holding a mail client permanently maximised at 1600x1200 is a waste of screen real estate. My naive solution attempt was to try to go with the mouse cursor to the right edge of the date column and try to shrink it by moving the cursor left while holding down the left mouse button. Not only is this default behaviour for all resizable columns I've ever encountered in GUIs, the cursor actually turns into a horizontal double-headed arrow. But pulling has no effect at all. I cannot make a wide column narrow, and I cannot make the narrow columns wide. I didn't find anything in the preferences either. So can please somebody explain how to get the columns arranged sensibly? Edit: I found out that I only have the problem when I drag the Thunderbird window to a GridMove screen area. It gets automatically resized, but doesn't notice the resize event or something, so the column width remains the same as under a maximized window. First making the window narrow using the mouse helps with column width, but the width of the mail pane is still too wide (rows don't reflow). Anyway, this seems to be a bug caused by the combination of the two applications and not a configuration problem, so I guess I'll have to live with it.

  Read the article

• Ubuntu and Postfix Configuration Issues

  - by Obi Hill

  I recently installed postfix on Ubuntu Natty. I'm having a problem with the configuration. Firstly here is my postfix configuration file: # Debian specific: Specifying a file name will cause the first # line of that file to be used as the name. The Debian default # is /etc/mailname. myorigin = /etc/mailname smtpd_banner = $myhostname ESMTP $mail_name (Ubuntu) biff = no # appending .domain is the MUA's job. append_dot_mydomain = no # Uncomment the next line to generate "delayed mail" warnings delay_warning_time = 4h readme_directory = no # TLS parameters smtpd_tls_cert_file=/etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem smtpd_tls_key_file=/etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key smtpd_use_tls=yes smtpd_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${data_directory}/smtpd_scache smtp_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${data_directory}/smtp_scache # See /usr/share/doc/postfix/TLS_README.gz in the postfix-doc package for # information on enabling SSL in the smtp client. mydomain = $myorigin myhostname = mail.nairanode.com alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/aliases alias_database = hash:/etc/postfix/aliases # this specifies where the virtual mailbox folders will be located virtual_mailbox_base = /var/spool/mail/virtual # this specifies where the virtual mailbox folders will be located virtual_mailbox_base = /var/spool/mail/virtual # this is for the mailbox location for each user virtual_mailbox_maps = mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql_mailbox.cf # and this is for aliases virtual_alias_maps = mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql_alias.cf # and this is for domain lookups virtual_mailbox_domains = mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql_domains.cf # this is how to connect to the domains (all virtual, but the option is there) # not used yet # transport_maps = mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql_transport.cf virtual_uid_maps = static:5000 virtual_gid_maps = static:5000 mydestination = $myorigin, $myhostname, localhost.localdomain, , localhost relayhost = mynetworks = 127.0.0.0/8 [::ffff:127.0.0.0]/104 [::1]/128 mailbox_size_limit = 0 recipient_delimiter = + inet_interfaces = all #mynetworks_style = host # ADDITIONAL unknown_local_recipient_reject_code = 550 maximal_queue_lifetime = 7d minimal_backoff_time = 1000s maximal_backoff_time = 8000s smtp_helo_timeout = 60s smtpd_recipient_limit = 16 smtpd_soft_error_limit = 3 smtpd_hard_error_limit = 12 # Requirements for the HELO statement smtpd_helo_restrictions = permit_mynetworks, warn_if_reject reject_non_fqdn_hostname, reject_invalid_hostname, permit # Requirements for the sender details smtpd_sender_restrictions = permit_mynetworks, warn_if_reject reject_non_fqdn_sender, reject_unknown_sender_domain, reject_unauth_$ # Requirements for the connecting server smtpd_client_restrictions = reject_rbl_client sbl.spamhaus.org, reject_rbl_client blackholes.easynet.nl, reject_rbl_client dnsbl.n$ # Requirement for the recipient address smtpd_recipient_restrictions = reject_unauth_pipelining, permit_mynetworks, reject_non_fqdn_recipient, reject_unknown_recipient_do$ # require proper helo at connections smtpd_helo_required = yes # waste spammers time before rejecting them smtpd_delay_reject = yes disable_vrfy_command = yes Here is also my /etc/postfix/aliases: # See man 5 aliases for format postmaster: root Here is also my /etc/mailname: nairanode.com I've also updated my hostname to nairanode.com However, when I run postalias /etc/postfix/aliases I get the following : postalias: warning: valid_hostname: invalid character 47(decimal): /etc/mailname postalias: fatal: file /etc/postfix/main.cf: parameter mydomain: bad parameter value: /etc/mailname Is there something I'm doing wrong?! I noticed that when I replace myorigin = /etc/mailname with myorigin = nairanode.com in my postfix config, I don't see any errors anymore after calling postalias. Is this a bug or something?!

  Read the article

• What is the probable failure - no BSOD, no event log, monitors sleeping, force reboot required

  - by Tyler

  Every 3 to 15 days, my PC freezes. This typically happens when the computer is idle, I'm coming home from work, back from vacation, etc. It's never happened while using my computer. The monitors are in power save mode The Caps Lock light on the (wireless) keyboard doesn't work Ctrl-alt-del has no effect, mouse (wireless) has no effect The hardware reset button and single press of power putton have no effect Computer does not appear on the network No BSOD, no memory dump Event logs have no errors or indications of problems near the time of crash. Only messages after reboot indicating that there was a reboot without a clean shutdown. Windows is set to never put the computer to sleep (just the display) Here are the vital stats of the build: OS Windows 8 Pro 64-bit CPU Intel i5-2400 Mobo Intel BOXDP67DE Micro ATX GPU MSI N460GTX Cyclone768D5/OC RAM CORSAIR XMS3 8GB (2 x 4GB) CMX8GX3M2A1333C9 PSU SeaSonic X Series X650 Gold System Drive Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB SSD Data Drive 2 x Western Digital WD20EARS 2TB in hardware RAID 1 Optical Lite-On DVD burner IHAS424-98 And here is the story of how the problem developed and what I've done to diagnose: January 2011, system built with Windows 7 64-bit, runs great. March 2011, Intel replaced the mobo because of the bad sata controllers. October 2012, upgrade to Windows 8 (problems start shortly after). January 2013, system freezes and causes network to fail for the whole house. Unplug the network cable and other devices and PCs can use the internet. Plug it back in, internet goes away for everyone. Reboot and everything is fine. March 2013, install Intel Gigabit CT PCI-E NIC, disable mobo nic in bios. Network strangeness goes away. Freezes are less frequent. Memtest shows no problems (20 passes). Early June 2013, replace Antec PSU with SeaSonic PSU. Mid June 2013, replace OCZ Vertex 2 SSD with Samsung SSD. Late June 2013, get frustrated and hope the community has some good ideas (I'm running out of budget to replace parts). My next plan of attack is setting "Turn off display" to Never and using a screen saver to see how that reacts on the next freeze. It makes me sad to waste power for up to 15 days though. Has anyone out there seen a problem like this? Any ideas on what kind of malfunction would act this way? Ideas of other diagnostic steps to take?

  Read the article

• Comments on Comments

  - by Joe Mayo

  I almost tweeted a reply to Capar Kleijne's question about comments on Twitter, but realized that my opinion exceeded 140 characters. The following is based upon my experience with extremes and approaches that I find useful in code comments. There are a couple extremes that I've seen and reasons why people go the distance in each approach. The most common extreme is no comments in the code at all.  A few bad reasons why this happens is because a developer is in a hurry, sloppy, or is interested in job preservation. The unfortunate result is that the code is difficult to understand and hard to maintain. The drawbacks to no comments in code are a primary reason why teachers drill the need for commenting code into our heads.  This viewpoint assumes the lack of comments are bad because the code is bad, but there is another reason for not commenting that is gaining more popularity. I've heard/and read that code should be self documenting. Following this thought pattern, if code is well written with meaningful names, there should not be a reason for comments.  An addendum to this argument is that comments are often neglected and get out-of-date, but the code is what is kept up-to-date. Presumably, if code contained very good naming, it would be easy to maintain.  This is a noble perspective and I like the practice of meaningful naming of identifiers. However, I think it's also an extreme approach that doesn't cover important cases.  i.e. If an identifier is named badly (subjective differences in opinion) or not changed appropriately during maintenance, then the badly named identifier is no more useful than a stale comment. These were the two no-comment extremes, so let's look at the too many comments extreme. On a regular basis, I'll see cases where the code is over-commented; not nearly as often as the no-comment scenarios, but still prevalent.  These are examples of where every single line in the code is commented.  These comments make the code harder to read because they get in the way of the algorithm.  In most cases, the comments parrot what each line of code does.  If a developer understands the language, then most statements are immediately intuitive.  i.e. what use is it to say that I'm assigning foo to bar when it's clear what the code is doing. I think that over-commenting code is a waste of time that slows down initial development and maintenance.  Understandably, the developer's intentions are admirable because they've had it beaten into their heads that they must comment. However, I think it's an extreme and prefer a more moderate approach. I don't think the extremes do justice to code because each can make maintenance harder.  No comments on bad code is obviously a problem, but the other two extremes are subtle and require qualification to address properly. The problem I see with the code-as-documentation approach is that it doesn't lift the developer out of the algorithm to identify dependencies, intentions, and hacks. Any developer can read code and follow an algorithm, but they still need to know where it fits into the big picture of the application. Because of indirections with language features like interfaces, delegates, and virtual members, code can become complex.  Occasionally, it's useful to point out a nuance or reason why a piece of code is there. i.e. If you've building an app that communicates via HTTP, you'll have certain headers to include for the endpoint, and it could be useful to point out why the code for setting those header values is there and how they affect the application. An argument against this could be that you should extract that code into a separate method with a meaningful name to describe the scenario.  My problem with such an approach would be that your code base becomes even more difficult to navigate and work with because you have all of this extra code just to make the code more meaningful. My opinion is that a simple and well-stated comment stating the reasons and intention for the code is more natural and convenient to the initial developer and maintainer.  I just don't agree with the approach of going out of the way to avoid making a comment.  I'm also concerned that some developers would take this approach as an excuse to not comment their bad code. Another area where I like comments is on documentation comments.  Java has it and so does C# and VB.  It's convenient because we can build automated tools that extract these comments.  These extracted comments are often much better than no documentation at all.  The "go read the code" answer always doesn't fulfill the need for a quick summary of an API. To summarize, I think that the extremes of no comments and too many comments are less than desirable approaches. I prefer documentation comments to explain each class and member (API level) and code comments as necessary to supplement well-written code. Joe

  Read the article

• Agile Development Requires Agile Support

  - by Matt Watson

  Agile developmentAgile development has become the standard methodology for application development. The days of long term planning with giant Gantt waterfall charts and detailed requirements is fading away. For years the product planning process frustrated product owners and businesses because no matter the plan, nothing ever went to plan. Agile development throws the detailed planning out the window and instead focuses on giving developers some basic requirements and pointing them in the right direction. Constant collaboration via quick iterations with the end users, product owners, and the development team helps ensure the project is done correctly.  The various agile development methodologies have helped greatly with creating products faster, but not without causing new problems. Complicated application deployments now occur weekly or monthly. Most of the products are web-based and deployed as a software service model. System performance and availability of these apps becomes mission critical. This is all much different from the old process of mailing new releases of client-server apps on CD once per quarter or year.The steady stream of new products and product enhancements puts a lot of pressure on IT operations to keep up with the software deployments and adding infrastructure capacity. The problem is most operations teams still move slowly thanks to change orders, documentation, procedures, testing and other processes. Operations can slow the process down and push back on the development team in some organizations. The DevOps movement is trying to solve some of these problems by integrating the development and operations teams more together. Rapid change introduces new problemsThe rapid product change ultimately creates some application problems along the way. Higher rates of change increase the likelihood of new application defects. Delivering applications as a software service also means that scalability of applications is critical. Development teams struggle to keep up with application defects and scalability concerns in their applications. Fixing application problems is a never ending job for agile development teams. Fixing problems before your customers do and fixing them quickly is critical. Most companies really struggle with this due to the divide between the development and operations groups. Fixing application problems typically requires querying databases, looking at log files, reviewing config files, reviewing error logs and other similar tasks. It becomes difficult to work on new features when your lead developers are working on defects from the last product version. Developers need more visibilityThe problem is most developers are not given access to see server and application information in the production environments. The operations team doesn’t trust giving all the developers the keys to the kingdom to log in to production and poke around the servers. The challenge is either give them no access, or potentially too much access. Those with access can still waste time figuring out the location of the application and how to connect to it over VPN. In addition, reproducing problems in test environments takes too much time and isn't always possible. System administrators spend a lot of time helping developers track down server information. Most companies give key developers access to all of the production resources so they can help resolve application defects. The problem is only those key people have access and they become a bottleneck. They end up spending 25-50% of their time on a daily basis trying to solve application issues because they are the only ones with access. These key employees’ time is best spent on strategic new projects, not addressing application defects. This job should fall to entry level developers, provided they have access to all the information they need to troubleshoot the problems.The solution to agile application support is giving all the developers limited access to the production environment and all the server information they need to see. Some companies create their own solutions internally to collect log files, centralize errors or other things to address the problem. Some developers even have access to server monitoring or other tools. But they key is giving them access to everything they need so they can see the full picture and giving access to the whole team. Giving access to everyone scales up the application support team and creates collaboration around providing improved application support.Stackify enables agile application supportStackify has created a solution that can give all developers a secure and read only view of the entire production server environment without console or remote desktop access.They provide a web application that provides real time visibility to the important information that developers need to see. An application centric view enables them to see all of their apps across multiple datacenters and environments. They don’t need to know where the application is deployed, just the name of the application to find it and dig in to see more. All your developers can see server health, application health, log files, config files, windows event viewer, deployment history, application notes, and much more. They can receive email and text alerts when problems arise and even safely query your production databases.Stackify enables companies that do agile development to scale up their application support team by getting more team members involved. The lead developers can spend more time on new projects. Application issues can be fixed quicker than ever. Operations can spend less time helping developers collect server information. Agile application support starts with Stackify. Visit Stackify.com to learn more.

  Read the article

• To My 24 Year Old Self, Wherever You Are&hellip;

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  A decade is a milestone in one’s life, regardless of when it occurs. 2011 might seem like a weird year to mark a decade, but 2001 was a defining year for me. It marked my emergence into the technology industry, an unexpected loss of innocence, and triggered an ongoing struggle with faith and belief. Once you go through a valley, climbing the mountain and looking back over where you travelled, you can take in the entirety of the journey. Over the last 10 years I kept journals, and in this new year I took some time to review them. For those today that are me a decade ago, I share with you what I’ve gleamed from my experiences. Take it for what it’s worth, and safe travels on your own journeys through life. Life is a Performance-Based Sport Have confidence, believe you’re capable, but realize that life is a performance-based sport. Everything you get in life is based on whether you can show that you deserve it. Performance is also your best defense against personal attacks. Just make sure you know what standards you’re expected to hit and if people want to poke holes at you let them do the work of trying to find them. Sometimes performance won’t matter though. Good things will happen to bad people, and bad things to good people. What’s important is that you do the right things and ensure the good and bad even out in your own life. How you finish is just as important as how you start. Start strong, end strong. Respect is Your Most Prized Reward Respect is more important than status or ego. The formula is simple: Performing Well + Building Trust + Showing Dedication = Respect Focus on perfecting your craft and helping your team and respect will come. Life is a Team Sport Whatever aspect of your life, you can’t do it alone. You need to rely on the people around you and ensure you’re a positive aspect of their lives; even those that may be difficult or unpleasant. Avoid criticism and instead find ways to help colleagues and superiors better whatever environment you’re in (work, home, etc.). Don’t just highlight gaps and issues, but also come to the table with solutions. At the same time though, stand up for yourself and hold others accountable for the commitments they make to the team. A healthy team needs accountability. Give feedback early and often, and make it verbal. Issues should be dealt with immediately, and positives should be celebrated as they happen. Life is a Contact Sport Difficult moments will happen. Don’t run from them or shield yourself from experiencing them. Embrace them. They will further mold you and reveal who you will become. Find Your Tribe and Embrace Your Community We all need a tribe: a group of people that we gravitate to for support, guidance, wisdom, and friendship. Discover your tribe and immerse yourself in them. Don’t look for a non-existent tribe just to fill the need of belonging though that will leave you empty and bitter when they don’t meet your unrealistic expectations. Try to associate with people more experienced and more knowledgeable than you. You’ll always learn, and you’ll always remember you have much to learn. Put yourself out there, get involved with the community. Opportunities will present themselves. When we open ourselves up to be vulnerable, we also give others the chance to do the same. This helps us all to grow and help each other, it’s very important. And listen to your wife. (Easter *is* a romantic holiday btw, regardless of what you may think.) Don’t Believe Your Own Press Clippings (and by that I mean the ones you write) Until you have a track record of performance to refer to, any notions of grandeur are just that: notions. You lose your rookie status through trials and tribulations, not by the number of stamps in your passport. Be realistic about your own “experience and leadership” and be honest when you aren’t ready for something. And always remember: nobody really cares about you as much as you think they do. Don’t Let Assholes Get You Down The world isn’t evil, but there is evil in the world. Know the difference and don’t paint all people with the same brush. Do be wary of those that use personal beliefs to describe their business (i.e. “We’re a [religion] company”). What matters is the culture of the organization, and that will tell you the moral compass and what is truly valued. Don’t make someone or something a priority that only makes you an option. Life is unfair and enemies/opponents will succeed when you fail. Don’t waste your energy getting upset at this; the only one that will lose out is you. As mentioned earlier, nobody really cares about you as much as you think they do. Misc Ecclesiastes is bullshit. Everything is certainly *not* meaningless. Software development is about delivery, not the process. Having a great process means nothing if you don’t produce anything. Watch “The Weatherman” (“It’s not easy, but easy doesn’t enter into grownup life.”). Read Tony Dungee’s autobiography, even if you don’t like football, and even if you aren’t a Christian. Say no, don’t feel like you have to commit right away when someone asks you to.

  Read the article

• My Feelings About Microsoft Surface

  - by Valter Minute

  Advice: read the title carefully, I’m talking about “feelings” and not about advanced technical points proved in a scientific and objective way I still haven’t had a chance to play with a MS Surface tablet (I would love to, of course) and so my ideas just came from reading different articles on the net and MS official statements. Remember also that the MVP motto begins with “Independent” (“Independent Experts. Real World Answers.”) and this is just my humble opinion about a product and a technology. I know that, being an MS MVP you can be called an “MS-fanboy”, I don’t care, I hope that people can appreciate my opinion, even if it doesn’t match theirs. The “Surface” brand can be confusing for techies that knew the “original” surface concept but I think that will be a fresh new brand name for most of the people out there. But marketing department are here to confuse people… so I can understand this “recycle” of an existing name. So Microsoft is entering the hardware arena… for me this is good news. Microsoft developed some nice hardware in the past: the xbox, zune (even if the commercial success was quite limited) and, last but not least, the two arc mices (old and new model) that I use and appreciate. In the past Microsoft worked with OEMs and that model lead to good and bad things. Good thing (for microsoft, at least) is market domination by windows-based PCs that only in the last years has been reduced by the return of the Mac and tablets. Google is also moving in the hardware business with its acquisition of Motorola, and Apple leveraged his control of both the hardware and software sides to develop innovative products. Microsoft can scare OEMs and make them fly away from windows (but where?) or just lead the pack, showing how devices should be designed to compete in the market and bring back some of the innovation that disappeared from recent PC products (look at the shelves of your favorite electronics store and try to distinguish a laptop between the huge mass of anonymous PCs on displays… only Macs shine out there…). Having to compete with MS “official” hardware will force OEMs to develop better product and bring back some real competition in a market that was ruled only by prices (the lower the better even when that means low quality) and no innovative features at all (when it was the last time that a new PC surprised you?). Moving into a new market is a big and risky move, but with Windows 8 Microsoft is playing a crucial move for its future, trying to be back in the innovation run against apple and google. MS can’t afford to fail this time. I saw the new devices (the WinRT and Pro) and the specifications are scarce, misleading and confusing. The first impression is that the device looks like an iPad with a nice keyboard cover… Using “HD” and “full HD” to define display resolution instead of using the real figures and reviving the “ClearType” brand (now dead on Win8 as reported here and missed by people who hate to read text on displays, like myself) without providing clear figures (couldn’t you count those damned pixels?) seems to imply that MS was caught by surprise by apple recent “retina” displays that brought very high definition screens on tablets.Also there are no specifications about the processors used (even if some sources report NVidia Tegra for the ARM tablet and i5 for the x86 one) and expected battery life (a critical point for tablets and the point that killed Windows7 x86 based tablets). Also nothing about the price, and this will be another critical point because other platform out there already provide lots of applications and have a good user base, if MS want to enter this market tablets pricing must be competitive. There are some expansion ports (SD and USB), so no fixed storage model (even if the specs talks about 32-64GB for RT and 128-256GB for pro). I like this and don’t like the apple model where flash memory (that it’s dirt cheap used in thumdrives or SD cards) is as expensive as gold (or cocaine to have a more accurate per gram measurement) when mounted inside a tablet/phone. For big files you’ll be able to use external media and an SD card could be used to store files that don’t require super-fast SSD-like access times, I hope. To be honest I really don’t like the marketplace model and the limitation of Windows RT APIs (no local database? from a company that based a good share of its success on VB6+Access!) and lack of desktop support on the ARM (even if the support is here and has been used to port office). It’s a step toward the consumer market (where competitors are making big money), but may impact enterprise (and embedded) users that may not appreciate Windows 8 new UI or the limitations of the new app model (if you aren’t connected you are dead ). Not having compatibility with the desktop will require brand new applications and honestly made all the CPU cycles spent to convert .NET IL into real machine code in the past like a huge waste of time… as soon as a new processor architecture is supported by Windows you still have to rewrite part of your application (and MS is pushing HTML5+JS and native code more than .NET in my perception). On the other side I believe that the development experience provided by Visual Studio is still miles (or kilometres) ahead of the competition and even the all-uppercase menu of VS2012 hasn’t changed this situation. The new metro UI got mixed reviews. On my side I should say that is very pleasant to use on a touch screen, I like the minimalist design (even if sometimes is too minimal and hides stuff that, in my opinion, should be visible) but I should also say that using it with mouse and keyboard is like trying to pick your nose with boxing gloves… Metro is also very interesting for embedded devices where touch screen usage is quite common and where having an application taking all the screen is the norm. For devices like kiosks, vending machines etc. this kind of UI can be a great selling point. I don’t need a new tablet (to be honest I’m pretty happy with my wife’s iPad and with my PC), but I may change my opinion after having a chance to play a little bit with those new devices and understand what’s hidden under all this mysterious and generic announcements and specifications!

  Read the article

• BYOD-The Tablet Difference

  - by Samantha.Y. Ma

  By Allison Kutz, Lindsay Richardson, and Jennifer Rossbach, Sales Consultants Normal 0 false false false EN-US ZH-TW X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Less than three years ago, Apple introduced a new concept to the world: The Tablet. It’s hard to believe that in only 32 months, the iPad induced an entire new way to do business. Because of their mobility and ease-of-use, tablets have grown in popularity to keep up with the increasing “on the go” lifestyle, and their popularity isn’t expected to decrease any time soon. In fact, global tablet sales are expected to increase drastically within the next five years, from 56 million tablets to 375 million by 2016. Tablets have been utilized for every function imaginable in today’s world. With over 730,000 active applications available for the iPad, these tablets are educational devices, portable book collections, gateways into social media, entertainment for children when Mom and Dad need a minute on their own, and so much more. It’s no wonder that 74% of those who own a tablet use it daily, 60% use it several times a day, and an average of 13.9 hours per week are spent tapping away. Tablets have become a critical part of a user’s personal life; but why stop there? Businesses today are taking major strides in implementing these devices, with the hopes of benefiting from efficiency and productivity gains. Limo and taxi drivers use tablets as payment devices instead of traditional cash transactions. Retail outlets use tablets to find the exact merchandise customers are looking for. Professors use tablets to teach their classes, and business professionals demonstrate solutions and review reports from tablets. Since an overwhelming majority of tablet users have started to use their personal iPads, PlayBooks, Galaxys, etc. in the workforce, organizations have had to make a change. In many cases, companies are willing to make that change. In fact, 79% of companies are making new investments in mobility this year. Gartner reported that 90% of organizations are expected to support corporate applications on personal devices by 2014. It’s not just companies that are changing. Business professionals have become accustomed to tablets making their personal lives easier, and want that same effect in the workplace. Professionals no longer want to waste time manually entering data in their computer, or worse yet in a notebook, especially when the data has to be later transcribed to an online system. The response: the Bring Your Own Device phenomenon. According to Gartner, BOYD is “an alternative strategy allowing employees, business partners and other users to utilize a personally selected and purchased client device to execute enterprise applications and access data.” Employees whose companies embrace this trend are more efficient because they get to use devices they are already accustomed to. Tablets change the game when it comes to how sales professionals perform their jobs. Sales reps can easily store and access customer information and analytics using tablet applications, such as Oracle Fusion Tap. This method is much more enticing for sales reps than spending time logging interactions on their (what seem to be outdated) computers. Forrester & IDC reported that on average sales reps spend 65% of their time on activities other than selling, so having a tablet application to use on the go is extremely powerful. In February, Information Week released a list of “9 Powerful Business Uses for Tablet Computers,” ranging from “enhancing the customer experience” to “improving data accuracy” to “eco-friendly motivations”. Tablets compliment the lifestyle of professionals who strive to be effective and efficient, both in the office and on the road. Three Things Businesses Need to do to Embrace BYOD Make customer-facing websites tablet-friendly for consistent user experiences Develop tablet applications to continue to enhance the customer experience Embrace and use the technology that comes with tablets Almost 55 million people in the U.S. own tablets because they are convenient, easy, and powerful. These are qualities that companies strive to achieve with any piece of technology. The inherent power of the devices coupled with the growing number of business applications ensures that tablets will transform the way that companies and employees perform.

  Read the article

• My own personal use of Oracle Linux

  - by wcoekaer

  It always is easier to explain something with examples... Many people still don't seem to understand some of the convenient things around using Oracle Linux and since I personally (surprise!) use it at home, let me give you an idea. I have quite a few servers at home and I also have 2 hosted servers with a hosted provider. The servers at home I use mostly to play with random Linux related things, or with Oracle VM or just try out various new Oracle products to learn more. I like the technology, it's like a hobby really. To be able to have a good installation experience and use an officially certified Linux distribution and not waste time trying to find the right libraries, I, of course, use Oracle Linux. Now, at least I can get a copy of Oracle Linux for free (even if I was not working for Oracle) and I can/could use that on as many servers at home (or at my company if I worked elsewhere) for testing, development and production. I just go to http://edelivery.oracle.com/linux and download the version(s) I want and off I go. Now, I also have the right (and not because I am an employee) to take those images and put them on my own server and give them to someone else, I in fact, just recently set up my own mirror on my own hosted server. I don't have to remove oracle-logos, I don't have to rebuild the ISO images, I don't have to recompile anything, I can just put the whole binary distribution on my own server without contract. Perfectly free to do so. Of course the source code of all of this is there, I have a copy of the UEK code at home, just cloned from https://oss.oracle.com/git/?p=linux-2.6-unbreakable.git. And as you can see, the entire changelog, checkins, merges from Linus's tree, complete overview of everything that got changed from kernel to kernel, from patch to patch, errata to errata. No obfuscating, no tar balls and spending time with diff, or go read bug reports to find out what changed (seems silly to me). Some of my servers are on the external network and I need to be current with security errata, but guess what, no problem, my servers are hooked up to http://public-yum.oracle.com which is open, free, and completely up to date, in a consistent, reliable way with any errata, security or bugfix. So I have nothing to worry about. Also, not because I am an employee. Anyone can. And, with this, I also can, and have, set up my own mirror site that hosts these RPMs. both binary and source rpms. Because I am free to get them and distribute them. I am quite capable of supporting my servers on my own, so I don't need to rely on the support organization so I don't need to have a support subscription :-). So I don't need to pay. Neither would you, at least not with Oracle Linux. Another cool thing. The hosted servers came (unfortunately) with Centos installed. While Centos works just fine as is, I tend to prefer to be current with my security errata(reliably) and I prefer to just maintain one yum repository instead of 2, I converted them over to Oracle Linux as well (in place) so they happily receive and use the exact same RPMs. Since Oracle Linux is exactly the same from a user/application point of view as RHEL, including files like /etc/redhat-release and no changes from .el. to .centos. I know I have nothing to worry about installing one of the RHEL applications. So, OL everywhere makes my life a lot easier and why not... Next! Since I run Oracle VM and I have -tons- of VM's on my machines, in some cases on my big WOPR box I have 15-20 VMs running. Well, no problem, OL is free and I don't have to worry about counting the number of VMs, whether it's 1, or 4, or more than 10 ... like some other alternatives started doing... and finally :) I like to try out new stuff, not 3 year old stuff. So with UEK2 as part of OL6 (and 6.3 in particular) I can play with a 3.0.x based kernel and it just installs and runs perfectly clean with OL6, so quite current stuff in an environment that I know works, no need to toy around with an unsupported pre-alpha upstream distribution with libraries and versions that are not compatible with production software (I have nothing against ubuntu or fedora or opensuse... just not what I can rely on or use for what I need, and I don't need a desktop). pretty compelling. I say... and again, it doesn't matter that I work for Oracle, if I was working elsewhere, or not at all, all of the above would still apply. Student, teacher, developer, whatever. contrast this with $349 for 2 sockets and oneguest and selfsupport per year to even just get the software bits.

  Read the article

• Tip #19 Module Private Visibility in OSGi

  - by ByronNevins

  I hate public and protected methods and classes.  It requires so much work to change them in a huge project like GlassFish.  Not to mention that you may well have to support those APIs forever.  They are highly overused in GlassFish.  In fact I'd bet that > 95% of classes are marked as public for no good reason.  It's just (bad) habit is my guess. private and default visibility (I call it package-private) is easier to maintain.  It is much much easier to change such classes and methods around.  If you have ANY public method or public class in GlassFish you'll need to grep through a tremendous amount of source code to find all callers.  But even that won't be theoretically reliable.  What if a caller is using reflection to access public methods?  You may never find such usages. If you have package private methods, it's easy.  Simply grep through all the code in that one package.  As long as that package compiles ok you're all set.  There can' be any compile errors anywhere else.  It's a waste of time to even look around or build the "outside" world.  So you may be thinking: "Aha!  I'll just make my module have one giant package with all the java files.  Then I can use the default visibility and maintenance will be much easier.  But there's a problem.  You are wasting a very nice feature of java -- organizing code into separate packages.  It also makes the code much more encapsulated.  Unfortunately to share code between the packages you have no choice but to declare public visibility. What happens in practice is that a module ends up having tons of public classes and methods that are used exclusively inside the module.  Which finally brings me to the point of this blog:  If Only There Was A Module-Private Visibility Available Well, surprise!  There is such a mechanism.  If your project is running under OSGi that is.  Like GlassFish does!  With this mechanism you can easily add another level of visibility by telling OSGi exactly which public you want to be exposed outside of the module.  You get the best of both worlds: Better encapsulation of your code so that maintenance is easier and productivity is increased. Usage of public visibility inside the module so that you can encapsulate intra-module better with packages. How I do this in GlassFish: Carefully plan out at least one package that will contain "true" publics.  This is the package that will be exported by OSGi.  I recommend just one package. Here is how to tell OSGi to use it in GlassFish -- edit osgi.bundle like so:-exportcontents:     org.glassfish.mymodule.truepublics;  version=${project.osgi.version} Now all publics declared in any other packages will be visible module-wide but not outside the module. There is one caveat: Accessing "module-private" items outside of the module is controlled at run-time, not compile-time.  The compiler has no clue that a public in a dependent module isn't really public.  it will happily compile it.  At runtime you will definitely see fireworks.  The good news is that you don't have to wait for the code path that tries to use the "module-private" items to fire.  OSGi will complain loudly when that module gets loaded.  OSGi will refuse to load it.  You will see an error like this: remote failure: Error while loading FOO: Exception while adding the new configuration : Error occurred during deployment: Exception while loading the app : org.osgi.framework.BundleException: Unresolved constraint in bundle com.oracle.glassfish.miscreant.code [115]: Unable to resolve 115.0: missing requirement [115.0] osgi.wiring.package; (osgi.wiring.package=org.glassfish.mymodule.unexported). Please see server.log for more details. That is if you accidentally change code in module B to use a public that is really a "module-private" in module A, then you will see the error immediately when you try to test whatever you were changing in module B.

  Read the article

• How do I dig myself out of this DEEP hole? [closed]

  - by user74847

  I may be a bit bias in the way i word this but any opinions and suggestions are welcome. I should start by saying i have a MSc in CS and a degree in new media +6 years expereince and im probably around a middleweight developer. I started a web development company with my friend from uni a year ago, there was a 4 month gap in the middle where i went miles away work on a big project. Ive since returned and picked up where we left off. A year on though i find im still staying up til 5am and getting up at 9 sometimes 2-3 days without sleep. While i was away i was working 9-5 and struggling to keep up with doing stuff for my clients 8 hours ahead, after work, so things stagnated. We currently have about 12 active projects, with one other part time developer and a full time freelancer who is dealing with one of our major projects. I am solely responsible for concurrently developing 2 big sites similar to gumtree in functionality, at the same time as about 5-6+ small WordPress based 5-10page sites. a lot of the content isnt in yet or the client is delaying so i chop and change project every other day which does my head in. Is it reasonable to expect myself to remember the intricate details of each project when i come back to it a week later? and remember the details of a task which hasnt been written down? my business partner seems to think so. or am i just forgetful? Im particularly bad at estimating timescales which doesnt help, added to that a lot of the technologies im am using are new to me (a magento site took weeks to theme rather than days and was full of bugs, even after 1000's of google searches and hours reading forums) im still trying to learn and find the best CMS for us to use and getting my head around the likes of Bootstrap and jquery, Cpanel / Linux (we just got a blank vps for me to set up with no experience) even installing an SSL certificate caused everyone's mail clients to go down which was more stress for me to sort out. I find the pressure of the workload and timescales and trying to learn this stuff so fast is beginning to turn me against my career path. The fact that i never seem to get anything done really winds up my business partner and iv come to associate him with the stress and pain of the whole situation especially when I get berated or a look that says "oh you retard" when I forget something. Even today i spent hours learning how a particular themeforest theme worked with wordpress and how i could twist it to work for our partiuclar needs, on the surface had done no work, that triggered a 30 minute tirade of anger and stress and questioning what i had done from my business partner. had i taken too long to work on that? shoudl i have done it in 2 hours instead of 6? i told him i would take 2 hours. i was wrong. I feel like im running myself into the ground. My sleeping pattern has got so bad that when im working im half asleep and making mistakes, my eyes are constantly purple underneath, i literally fall asleep at my desk, its affecting my social life too, ive not slept more than lightly for the last year and grind through impossible code puzzles in my half sleep wich keeps me awake, when im already exhausted. plus the work is rushed and buggy when it does get done so drags on into the next project. I also procrastinate quite badly, pacing the livingroom, looking out the window when Im alone for three days straight in the flat and start to get cabin fever which means i do even less work and the negative feedback loop continues. I get told im the only one with the problem when i say that i cant work from home any more, and examples of other freelancers get brought up. an office wouldnt bring any extra cash in to the company but im convinced having that moving more than 2 meters away from my bed to go to "work" would get me working, at the moment i feel guilty like i should be working 24-7. It is important that we do all this work to raise enough cash to get our business to the next level but every month still feels like a struggle to pay the rent (there is about £20K coming in by Jan) and i have to borrow money from friends often to buy food or get a taxi to a meeting, so it is vital the money keeps coming in. (im also 20 mins late for nearly all meetings but thats a different issue) have you experienced anything similar? how can i deal with the issues ive raised? is it realistic to develop 10 sites at once? how can i improve my relationship with my business partner? do you struggle to work at home? how do you deal with that? i think if i dont get my life on track by feb i will seriously consider giving it all up, but that seems like such a waste. any ideas!!? i need help! Thanks.

  Read the article

• Tweaking Hudson memory usage

  - by rovarghe

  Hudson 3.1 has some performance optimizations that greatly reduces its memory footprint. Prior to this Hudson used to always hold the entire data model (all jobs and all builds) in memory which affected scalability. Some installations configured heap sizes in excess of 1GB to counteract this. Hudson 3.1.x maintains an MRU cache and only loads jobs and builds as they are required. Because of the inability to change existing APIs and be backward compatible with plugins, there were limits to how far we could go with this approach. Memory optimizations almost always come with a related cost, in this case its additional I/O that has to be performed to load data on request. On a small site that has frequent traffic, this is usually not noticeable since the MRU cache will usually hold on to all the data. A large site with infrequent traffic might experience some delays when the first request hits the server after a long gap. If you have a large heap and are able to allocate more memory, the cache settings can be adjusted to take advantage of this and even go back to pre-3.1 behavior. All the cache settings can be passed as options to the JVM container (Tomcat or the default Jetty container) using the -D option. There are two caches, independant of each other, one for Jobs and the other for Builds. For the jobs cache: hudson.jobs.cache.evict_in_seconds ( default=60 ) Seconds from last access (could be because of a servlet request or a background cron thread) a job should be purged from the cache. Set this to 0 to never purge based on time. hudson.jobs.cache.initial_capacity ( default=1024 ) Initial number of jobs the cache can accomodate. Setting this to the number of jobs you typically display on your Hudson landing page or home page will speed up consecutive access to that page. If the default is too large you may consider downsizing and using that memory for the Builds cache instead. hudson.jobs.cache.max_entries ( default=1024) Maximum number of jobs in the cache. The default is large enough for most installations, but if you find I/O activity when always accessing the hudson home page you might consider increasing this, but first verify if the I/O is caused by frequent eviction (see above), rather than by the cache not being large enough. For the builds cache: The builds cache is used to store Build objects as they are read from storage. Typically this happens when a user drills down into the details of a particular Job from the hudson hom epage. The cache is shared among builds for different jobs since in most installations all jobs are not accessed with the same frequency, so a per-job builds cache would be a waste of memory. hudson.job.builds.cache.evict_in_seconds ( default=60 ) Same as the equivalent Job cache, applied to Build. hudson.job.builds.cache.initial_capacity" ( default=512 ) Same as equivalent Job cache setting. Note the smaller initial size. If your site stores a large number of builds and has frequent access to more builds you might consider bumping this up. hudson.job.builds.cache.max_entries ( default=10240 ) The default max is large enough for most installations, the builds cache has bigger sized objects, so be careful about increasing the upper limit on this. See section on monitoring below. Sample usage: java -jar hudson-war-3.1.2-SNAPSHOT.war -Dhudson.jobs.cache.evict_in_seconds=300 \ -Dhudson.job.builds.cache.evict_in_seconds=300 Monitoring cache usage The 'jmap' tool that comes with the JDK can be used to monitor cache performance in an indirect way by looking at the number of Job and Build objects in each cache. Find the PID of the hudson instance and run $ jmap -histo:live <pid | grep 'hudson.model.*Lazy.*Key$' Here's a sample output: num #instances #bytes class name 523: 28 896 hudson.model.RunMap$LazyRunValue$Key 1200: 3 96 hudson.model.LazyTopLevelItem$Key These are the keys to the Jobs (LazyTopLevelItem$Key) and Builds (RunMap$LazyRunValue$Key) in the caches, so counting the number of keys is a good indicator of the number of items in the cache at any given moment. The size in bytes can be ignored, they are just the size of the keys, not the actual sizes of the objects they hold. Those sizes can only be obtained with a profiler. With the output above we can conclude that there are 3 jobs and 28 builds in memory. The 28 builds can all be from 1 job or all 3 jobs. Over time on an idle system, these should get evicted and memory cache should be empty. In practice, because of background cron threads and triggers, jobs rarely fall down to zero. Access of a job or a build by a cron thread resets the eviction timer.

  Read the article

• Stop lazy loading or skip loading a property in NHibernate? Proxy cannot be serialized through WCF

  - by HelloSam

  Consider I have a parent, child relationship class and mapping. I am using NHibernate to read the object from the database, and intended to use WCF to send the object across the wire. Goal For reading the parent object, I want to selectively, at different execution path, decide when I would want to load the child object. Because I don't want to read more than what I needed. Those partially loaded object must be able to sent through WCF. When I mean I don't load it, neither side will access such property. Problem When such partially loaded object is being sent through WCF, as those property is marked as [DataContract], it cannot be serialized as the property is lazy load proxy instead of real known type. What I want to archive, or solution that I can think of lazy=false or lazy=true doesn't work. Former will eagerly fetch all the relationships, latter will create a proxy. But I want nothing instead - a null would be the best. I don't need lazy load. I hope to get a null for those references that I don't want to fetch. A null, but not just a proxy. This will makes WCF happy, and waste less time to have a lazy-load proxy constructed. Like could I have a null proxy factory? -OR- Or making WCF ignoring those property that's a proxy instead of real. I tried the IDataContractSurrogate solution, but only parent is passed to GetObjectToSerialize, I never observe an proxy being passed through GetObjectToSerialize, leaving no chance to un-proxy it. Edit After reading the comments, more surfing on the Internet... It seems to me that DTO would shift major part of the computation to the server side. But for the project I am working on, 50% of time the client is "smarter" than the server and the server is more like a data store with validation and verification. Though I agree the server is not exactly dumb - I have to decide when to fetch the extra references already, and DTO will make this very explicit. Maybe I should just take the pain. I didn't know http://automapper.codeplex.com/ before, this motivates me a little more to take the pain. On the other hand, I found http://trentacular.com/2009/08/how-to-use-nhibernate-lazy-initializing-proxies-with-web-services-or-wcf/, which seems to be working with IDataContractSurrogate.GetObjectToSerialize.

  Read the article

• Which functions in the C standard library commonly encourage bad practice?

  - by Ninefingers

  Hello all, This is inspired by this question and the comments on one particular answer in that I learnt that strncpy is not a very safe string handling function in C and that it pads zeros, until it reaches n, something I was unaware of. Specifically, to quote R.. strncpy does not null-terminate, and does null-pad the whole remainder of the destination buffer, which is a huge waste of time. You can work around the former by adding your own null padding, but not the latter. It was never intended for use as a "safe string handling" function, but for working with fixed-size fields in Unix directory tables and database files. snprintf(dest, n, "%s", src) is the only correct "safe strcpy" in standard C, but it's likely to be a lot slower. By the way, truncation in itself can be a major bug and in some cases might lead to privilege elevation or DoS, so throwing "safe" string functions that truncate their output at a problem is not a way to make it "safe" or "secure". Instead, you should ensure that the destination buffer is the right size and simply use strcpy (or better yet, memcpy if you already know the source string length). And from Jonathan Leffler Note that strncat() is even more confusing in its interface than strncpy() - what exactly is that length argument, again? It isn't what you'd expect based on what you supply strncpy() etc - so it is more error prone even than strncpy(). For copying strings around, I'm increasingly of the opinion that there is a strong argument that you only need memmove() because you always know all the sizes ahead of time and make sure there's enough space ahead of time. Use memmove() in preference to any of strcpy(), strcat(), strncpy(), strncat(), memcpy(). So, I'm clearly a little rusty on the C standard library. Therefore, I'd like to pose the question: What C standard library functions are used inappropriately/in ways that may cause/lead to security problems/code defects/inefficiencies? In the interests of objectivity, I have a number of criteria for an answer: Please, if you can, cite design reasons behind the function in question i.e. its intended purpose. Please highlight the misuse to which the code is currently put. Please state why that misuse may lead towards a problem. I know that should be obvious but it prevents soft answers. Please avoid: Debates over naming conventions of functions (except where this unequivocably causes confusion). "I prefer x over y" - preference is ok, we all have them but I'm interested in actual unexpected side effects and how to guard against them. As this is likely to be considered subjective and has no definite answer I'm flagging for community wiki straight away. I am also working as per C99.

  Read the article

• Best way to handle multiple tables to replace one big table in Rails? (e.g. 'Books1', 'Books2', etc.

  - by mikep

  Hello, I've decided to use multiple tables for an entity (e.g. Books1, Books2, Books3, etc.), instead of just one main table which could end up having a lot of rows (e.g. just Books). I'm doing this to try and to avoid a potential future performance drop that could come with having too many rows in one table. With that, I'm looking for a good way to handle this in Rails, mainly by trying to avoid loading a bunch of unused associations. (I know that I could use a partition for this, but, for now, I've decided to go the 'multiple tables' route.) Each user has their books placed into a specific table. The actual book table is chosen when the user is created, and all of their books go into the same table. I'm going to split the adds across the tables. The goal is to try and keep each table pretty much even -- but that's a different issue. One thing I don't particularly want to have is a bunch of unused associations in the User class. Right now, it looks like I'd have to do the following: class User < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :books1, :books2, :books3, :books4, :books5 end class Books1 < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :user end class Books2 < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :user end class Books3 < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :user end I'm assuming that the main performance hit would come in terms of memory and possibly some method call overhead for each User object, since it has to load all of those associations, which in turn creates all of those nice, dynamic model accessor methods like User.find_by_. But for each specific user, only one of the book tables would be usable/applicable, since all of a user's books are stored in the same table. So, only one of the associations would be in use at any time and any other has_many :bookX association that was loaded would be a waste. For example, with a user.id of 2, I'd only need books3.find_by_author('Author'), but the way I'm thinking of setting this up, I'd still have access to Books1..n. I don't really know Ruby/Rails does internally with all of those has_many associations though, so maybe it's not so bad. But right now I'm thinking that it's really wasteful, and that there may just be a better, more efficient way of doing this. So, a few questions: 1) Is there's some sort of special Ruby/Rails methodology that could be applied to this 'multiple tables to represent one entity' scheme? Are there any 'best practices' for this? 2) Is it really bad to have so many unused has_many associations for each object? Is there a better way to do this? 3) Does anyone have any advice on how to abstract the fact that there's multiple book tables behind a single books model/class? For example, so I can call books.find_by_author('Author') instead of books3.find_by_author('Author'). Thank you!

  Read the article

• The most efficient method of drawing multiple quads in OpenGL

  - by CPatton

  I'm not very keen with OpenGL and I was wondering if someone could give me some insight on this. I'm a 'seasoned' programmer, I've read the redbook about VBOs and the like, but I was wondering from a more experienced person about the best/most efficient way of achieving this. I've been producing this 2d tile-based game engine to be used in several projects. I have a class called "ScreenObject" which is mainly composed of a Dictionary<Point, Tile> The Point key is to show where to render the Tile on the screen, and the Tile contains one or more textures to be drawn at that point. This ScreenObject is where the tiles will be modified, deleted, added, etc.. My original method of drawing the tiles in the testing I've done was to iterate through the ScreenObject and draw each quad at each location separately. From what I've read, this is a massive waste of resources. It wasn't horribly slow in the testing, but after I've completed the animation classes and effect classes, I'm sure it would be extremely slow. And one last thing, if you wouldn't mind.. As I said before, the Tile class can contain multiple textures to be drawn at the Point location on the screen. I recognize possibly two options for me here. Either add a quad at that location for each texture to be drawn, or, somehow.. use a multiple texture for the same quad (if it's possible). Even if each tile contained one texture only, that would be 64 quads to be drawn on the screen. Most of the tiles will contain 2-5 textures, so the number of total quads would increase dramatically with this method. Would it be feasible to add a quad for each new texture, or am I ignoring a better way to do this? Just need some help understanding this if you don't mind :) I've tried to be as concise as possible, and I'd greatly appreciate any responses.. and even some criticism. Programming is often a learning process and one who develops seems to never stops learning. Thanks for your time.

  Read the article

• How to create a compiler in vb.net

  - by Cyclone

  Before answering this question, understand that I am not asking how to create my own programming language, I am asking how, using vb.net code, I can create a compiler for a language like vb.net itself. Essentially, the user inputs code, they get a .exe. By NO MEANS do I want to write my own language, as it seems other compiler related questions on here have asked. I also do not want to use the vb.net compiler itself, nor do I wish to duplicate the IDE. The exact purpose of what I wish to do is rather hard to explain, but all I need is a nudge in the right direction for writing a compiler (from scratch if possible) which can simply take input and create a .exe. I have opened .exe files as plain text before (my own programs) to see if I could derive some meaning from what I assumed would be human readable text, yet I was obviously sorely disappointed to see the random ascii, though it is understandable why this is all I found. I know that a .exe file is simply lines of code, being parsed by the computer it is on, but my question here really boils down to this: What code makes up a .exe? How could I go about making one in a plain text editor if I wanted to? (No, I do not want to do that, but if I understand the process my goals will be much easier to achieve.) What makes an executable file an executable file? Where does the logic of the code fit in? This is intended to be a programming question as opposed to a computer question, which is why I did not post it on SuperUser. I know plenty of information about the System.IO namespace, so I know how to create a file and write to it, I simply do not know what exactly I would be placing inside this file to get it to work as an executable file. I am sorry if this question is "confusing", "dumb", or "obvious", but I have not been able to find any information regarding the actual contents of an executable file anywhere. One of my google searches Something that looked promising EDIT: The second link here, while it looked good, was an utter fail. I am not going to waste hours of my time hitting keys and recording the results. "Use the "Alt" and the 3-digit combinations to create symbols that do not appear on the keyboard but that you need in the program." (step 4) How the heck do I know what symbols I need??? Thank you very much for your help, and my apologies if this question is a nooby or "bad" one. To sum this up simply: I want to create a program in vb.net that can compile code in a particular language to a single executable file. What methods exist that can allow me to do this, and if there are none, how can I go about writing my own from scratch?

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34  | Next Page >