Search Results

Search found 9814 results on 393 pages for 'personal technology'.

Page 310/393 | < Previous Page | 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317  | Next Page >

• The best computer ever

  - by Jeff

  (This is a repost from my personal blog… wow… I need to write more technical stuff!) About three years and three months ago, I bought a 17" MacBook Pro, and it turned out to be the best computer I've ever owned. You might think that every computer with better specs is automatically better than the last, but that hasn't been my experience. My first one was a Sony, back in the Pentium III days, and it cost an astonishing $2,500. That was even more ridiculous in 1999 dollars. It had a dial-up modem, and a CD-ROM, built-in! It may have even played DVD's. A few years later I bought an HP, and it ended up being a pile of shit. The power connector inside came loose from the board, and on occasion would even short. In 2005, I bought a Dell, and it wasn't bad. It had a really high resolution screen (complete with dead pixels, a problem in those days), and it was the first laptop I felt I could do real work on. When 2006 rolled around, Apple started making computers with Intel CPU's, and I bought the very first one the week it came out. I used Boot Camp to run Windows. I still have it in its box somewhere, and I used it for three years. The current 17" was new in 2009. The goodness was largely rooted in having a big screen with lots of dots. This computer has been the source of hundreds of blog posts, tens of thousands of lines of code, video and photo editing, and of course, a whole lot of Web surfing. It connected to corpnet at Microsoft, WiFi in Hawaii and has presented many a deck. It has traveled with me tens of thousands of miles. Last year, I put a solid state drive in it, and it was like getting a new computer. I can boot up a Windows 7 VM in about 19 seconds. Having 8 gigs of RAM has always been fantastic. Everything about it has been fast and fun. When new, the battery (when not using VM's) could get as much as 10 hours. I can still do 7 without much trouble. After 460 charge cycles, the battery health is still between 85 and 90%. The only real negative has been the size and weight. It's only an inch thick, but naturally it's pretty big with a 17" screen. You don't get battery life like that without a huge battery, either, so it's heavy. It was never a deal breaker, but sometimes a long haul across a large airport, you know you're carrying it. Today, Apple announced a new, thinner and lighter 15" laptop, with twice the RAM and CPU cores, and four times the screen resolution. It basically handles my size and weight issues while retaining the resolution, and it still costs less than my 17" did. So I ordered one. Three years is an excellent run, but I kind of budgeted for a new workhorse this year anyway. So if you're interested in a 17" MacBook Pro with a Core 2 Duo 2.66 GHz CPU, 8 gigs of RAM and a 320 gig hard drive (sorry, I'm keeping the SSD), I have one to sell. They've apparently discontinued the 17", which is going to piss off the video community. It's in excellent condition, with a few minor scratches, but I take care of my stuff.

  Read the article

• What Counts For a DBA – Depth

  - by Louis Davidson

  SQL Server offers very simple interfaces to many of its features. Most people could open up SSMS, connect to a server, write a simple query and see the results. Even several of the core DBA tasks are deceptively straightforward. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to perform a basic database backup or run a trace (even using the newfangled Extended Events!). However, appearances can be deceptive, and often times it is really important that a DBA understands not just the basics of how to perform a task, but why we do a task, and how that task works. As an analogy, consider a child walking into a darkened room. Most would know that they need to turn on the light, and how to do it, so they flick the switch. But what happens if light fails to shine forth. Most would immediately tell you that you need to consider changing the light bulb. So you hop in the car and take them to the local home store and instruct them to buy a replacement. Confronted with a 40 foot display of light bulbs, how will they decide which of the hundreds of types of bulbs, of different types, fittings, shapes, colors, power and efficiency ratings, is the right choice? Obviously the main lesson the child is going to learn this day is how to use their cell phone as a flashlight so they don’t have to ask for help the next time. Likewise, when the metaphorical toddlers who use your database server have issues, they will instinctively know something is wrong, and may even have some idea what caused it, but will have no depth of knowledge to figure out the right solution. That is where the DBA comes in and attempts to save the day. However, when one looks beneath the shiny UI, SQL Server has its own “40 foot display of light bulbs”, in the form of the tremendous number of tools and the often-bewildering amount of information they can present to the DBA, to help us find issues. Unfortunately, resorting to guesswork, to trying different “bulbs” over and over, hoping to stumble on the answer. This is where the right depth of knowledge goes a long way. If we need to write a SELECT statement, then knowing the syntax and where to find the data is not enough. Knowledge of indexes and query plans is essential. Without it, we might hit on a query that “works”, but we are basically still a user, not a programmer, because we have no real control over our platform. Is that level of knowledge deep enough? Probably not, since knowledge of the underlying metadata and structures would be very useful in helping us make sense of any query plan. Understanding the structure of an index makes the “key lookup” operator not sound like what you do when someone tapes your car key to the ceiling. So is even this level of understanding deep enough? Do we need to understand the memory architecture used to process the query? It might be a comforting level of knowledge, and will doubtless come in handy at some point, but is not strictly necessary in most cases. Beyond that lies (more or less) full knowledge of SQL language and the intricacies of every step the SQL Server engine takes to process our query. My personal theory is that, as a professional, our knowledge of a given task should extend, at a minimum, one level deeper than is strictly necessary to perform the task. Anything deeper can be left to the ridiculously smart, or obsessive, or both. As an example. tasked with storing an integer value between 0 and 99999999, it’s essential that I know that choosing an Integer over Decimal(8,0) will likely offer performance benefits. It is then useful that I also understand the value of adding a CHECK constraint, to make sure the values are valid to the desired range; and comforting that I know a little about the underlying processors, registers and computer math. Anything further, I leave to the likes of Joe Chang, whose recent blog post on the topic offers depth by the bucketful!  

  Read the article

• Is Your Company Social on the Inside?

  - by Mike Stiles

  As we talk about the extension of social from an outbound-facing marketing tool to a platform that will reach across the entire enterprise, servicing multiple functions of that enterprise, it might be time to take a look at how social can be effectively employed for internal communications. Remember the printed company newsletter? Yeah, nobody reads it. Remember the emailed company newsletter? Yeah, nobody reads it. Why not? Shouldn’t your employees care about the company more than anything else in life and be voraciously hungry for any information related to it? The more realistic prospect is that a company’s employees don’t behave much differently at work where information is concerned than they do in their personal lives. They “tune in” to information that’s immediately relevant to them, that peaks their interest, and/or that’s presented in a visually engaging way. That currently makes an internal social platform the most ideal way to communicate within the organization. It not only facilitates more immediate, more targeted (and thus more relevant) messaging from the company out to employees, it sets a stage for employees to communicate with each other and efficiently get answers to questions from peers. It’s a collaboration tool on steroids. If you build such an internal social portal and you do it right, will employees use it? Considering social media has officially been declared more addictive than cigarettes, booze and sex…probably. But what does it mean to do an internal social platform “right”? The bar has been set pretty high. Your employees are used to Twitter and Facebook, and would roll their eyes at anything less simple or harder to navigate than those. All the Facebook best practices would apply to your internal social as well, including the importance of managing posting frequency, using photos and video, moderation & response, etc. And don’t worry, you won’t be the first to jump in. WPP's global digital agency Possible has its own social network called Colab. Nestle has “The Nest.” Red Robin’s got one. I myself got an in-depth look at McGraw-Hill’s internal social platform at Blogwell NYC. Some of these companies are building their own platforms, others are buying them off the shelf or customizing readymade solutions. But you won’t be the last either. Prescient Digital Media and the IABC learned 39% of companies don’t offer employees any social tools. Not a social network, not discussion forums, not even IM. And a great many continue to ban the use of Facebook and Twitter on the premises. That’s pretty astonishing since social has become as essential a modern day communications tool as the telephone. But such holdouts will pay a big price for being mired in fear while competitors exploit social connections unchallenged. Fish where the fish are. If social has become the way people communicate and take in information, let that be the way communication is trafficked in the organization.

  Read the article

• College Ratings via the Federal Government

  - by user9147039

  A few weeks back you might remember news about a higher education rating system proposal from the Obama administration. As I've discussed previously, political and stakeholder pressures to improve outcomes and increase transparency are stronger than ever before. The executive branch proposal is intended to make progress in this area. Quoting from the proposal itself, "The ratings will be based upon such measures as: Access, such as percentage of students receiving Pell grants; Affordability, such as average tuition, scholarships, and loan debt; and Outcomes, such as graduation and transfer rates, graduate earnings, and advanced degrees of college graduates.” This is going to be quite complex, to say the least. Most notably, higher ed is not monolithic. From community and other 2-year colleges, to small private 4-year, to professional schools, to large public research institutions…the many walks of higher ed life are, well, many. Designing a ratings system that doesn't wind up with lots of unintended consequences and collateral damage will be difficult. At best you would end up potentially tarnishing the reputation of certain institutions that were actually performing well against the metrics and outcome measures that make sense in their "context" of education. At worst you could spend a lot of time and resources designing a system that would lose credibility with its "customers". A lot of institutions I work with already have in place systems like the one described above. They are tracking completion rates, completion timeframes, transfers to other institutions, job placement, and salary information. As I talk to these institutions there are several constants worth noting: • Deciding on which metrics to measure is complicated. While employment and salary data are relatively easy to track, qualitative measures are more difficult. How do you quantify the benefit to someone who studies in one field that may not compensate him or her as well as another field but that provides huge personal fulfillment and reward is a difficult measure to quantify? • The data is available but the systems to transform the data into actual information that can be used in meaningful ways are not. Too often in higher ed information is siloed. As such, much of the data that need to be a part of a comprehensive system sit in multiple organizations, oftentimes outside the reach of core IT. • Politics and culture are big barriers. One of the areas that my team and I spend a lot of time talking about with higher ed institutions all over the world is the imperative to optimize for student success. This, like the tracking of the students’ achievement after graduation, requires a level or organizational capacity that does not currently exist. The primary barrier is the culture of "data islands" in higher ed, and the need for leadership to drive out the divisions between departments, schools, colleges, etc. and institute academy-wide analytics and data stewardship initiatives that will enable student success. • Data quality is a very big issue. So many disparate systems exist (some on premise, some "in the cloud") that keep data about "persons" using different means to identify them. Establishing a single source of truth about an individual and his or her data is difficult without some type of data quality policy and tools. Good tools actually exist but are seldom leveraged. Don't misunderstand - I think it's a great idea to drive additional transparency and accountability into the system of higher education. And not just at home, but globally. Students and parents need access to key data to make informed, responsible choices. The tools exist to not only enable this kind of information to be shared but to capture the very metrics stakeholders care most about and in a way that makes sense in the context of a given institution's "place" in the overall higher ed panoply.

  Read the article

• Cloud Adoption Challenges

  - by Herve Roggero

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/hroggero/archive/2013/11/07/cloud-adoption-challenges.aspxWhile cloud computing makes sense for most organizations and countless projects, I have seen customers significantly struggle with cloud adoption challenges. This blog post is not an attempt to provide a generic assessment of cloud adoption; rather it is an account of personal experiences in the field, some of which may or may not apply to your organization. Cloud First, Burst? In the rush to cloud adoption some companies have made the decision to redesign their core system with a cloud first approach. However a cloud first approach means that the system may not work anymore on-premises after it has been redesigned, specifically if the system depends on Platform as a Service (PaaS) components (such as Azure Tables). While PaaS makes sense when your company is in a position to adopt the cloud exclusively, it can be difficult to leverage with systems that need to work in different clouds or on-premises. As a result, some companies are starting to rethink their cloud strategy by designing for on-premises first, and modify only the necessary components to burst when needed in the cloud. This generally means that the components need to work equally well in any environment, which requires leveraging Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or additional investments for PaaS applications, or both.  What’s the Problem? Although most companies can benefit from cloud computing, not all of them can clearly identify a business reason for doing so other than in very generic terms. I heard many companies claim “it’s cheaper”, or “it allows us to scale”, without any specific metric or clear strategy behind the adoption decision. Other companies have a very clear strategy behind cloud adoption and can precisely articulate business benefits, such as “we have a 500% increase in traffic twice a year, so we need to burst in the cloud to avoid doubling our network and server capacity”. Understanding the problem being solved through by adopting cloud computing can significantly help organizations determine the optimum path and timeline to adoption. Performance or Scalability? I stopped counting the number of times I heard “the cloud doesn’t scale; our database runs faster on a laptop”.  While performance and scalability are related concepts, they are nonetheless different in nature. Performance is a measure of response time under a given load (meaning with a specific number of users), while scalability is the performance curve over various loads. For example one system could see great performance with 100 users, but timeout with 1,000 users, in which case the system wouldn’t scale. However another system could have average performance with 100 users, but display the exact same performance with 1,000,000 users, in which case the system would scale. Understanding that cloud computing does not usually provide high performance, but instead provides the tools necessary to build a scalable system (usually using PaaS services such as queuing and data federation), is fundamental to proper cloud adoption. Uptime? Last but not least, you may want to read the Service Level Agreement of your cloud provider in detail if you haven’t done so. If you are expecting 99.99% uptime annually you may be in for a surprise. Depending on the component being used, there may be no associated SLA at all! Other components may be restarted at any time, or services may experience failover conditions weekly ( or more) based on current overall conditions of the cloud service provider, most of which are outside of your control. As a result, for PaaS cloud environments (and to a certain extent some IaaS systems), applications need to assume failure and gracefully retry to be successful in the cloud in order to provide service continuity to end users. About Herve Roggero Herve Roggero, Windows Azure MVP, is the founder of Blue Syntax Consulting (http://www.bluesyntax.net). Herve's experience includes software development, architecture, database administration and senior management with both global corporations and startup companies. Herve holds multiple certifications, including an MCDBA, MCSE, MCSD. He also holds a Master's degree in Business Administration from Indiana University. Herve is the co-author of "PRO SQL Azure" and “PRO SQL Server 2012 Practices” from Apress, a PluralSight author, and runs the Azure Florida Association.

  Read the article

• No access to Samba shares

  - by koanhead

  I have three shared folders in my local home directory- that is to say, on my Ubuntu desktop's /home/me/. All were set up using "Sharing Options" in Nautilus' right-click menu. The standard "Music" and "Videos" folders are configured identically: the "Guest Access" box is checked, but the "Allow others to create and delete" is not. The third folder, called "shared", is configured to not allow Guest access but to allow others to modify files. I have not altered /etc/samba/smb.conf by hand, I have only used Sharing Options to create and modify these so-called "shares". My roommates have two Windows 7 computers and one Ubuntu Netbook Remix netbook. I have the aforementioned desktop machine and laptop running 10.04. None of these machines can access any of the shares. Attempts to access the Guest shares result in the message \\machine\directory is not accessible. The network name could not be found. This is the error message generated by a VM running Windows 2000. The other Windows machines generate a similar error. The Ubuntu laptop gives the error Unable to mount location: Failed to mount Windows share. Hurrah, once again, for informative error messages. That really helps a lot. When attempting to browse the folder called "shared" from the laptop, I'm confronted with a password dialog. This behavior is the same will all machines I've tried in the situation. On entering my username and password for the account to which the shares belong, the password dialog briefly disappears and is replaced with an identical dialog. No error message, useful or not, appears. When attempting to browse this folder with the VM, the outcome is the same except that the password dialog helpfully states "incorrect username or password". My assumption is that the username and password in question is that of the user which owns the shares. I have tried all other username and password combinations available in this context and the outcome is the same. I would like to be able to share files. Sharing them with Windows machines is a nice feature, or would be if it was available. Really I consider sharing files between two machines with the same version of the same operating system kind of a minimum condition for network usability. Samba last functioned reliably for me more than ten years ago. I have attempted to use it on and off since then with only intermittent success. Oh, and "Personal File Sharing" from the Preferences menu does not result in an entry in Places → Network → my-server. In fact, the old entry "MY-SERVER" goes away and is replaced by "koanhead's public files on my-server", which when I attempt to open it from the laptop gives a "DBus.Error.NoReply: Message did not receive a reply." I know I come here and gripe about Ubuntu a lot, but on the other hand I spend literally hours every day trying to fix things in Ubuntu. It's a good system which aspires to greatness, which is why things like this either Need to work; or Be adequately documented. Ideally both would be the case. Anyway, rant over. Hopefully someone will have some insight on this issue. Thanks all who bother to read this wall o'text for your time.

  Read the article

• SSI: Failed String Comparison with CGI Environment Variable [migrated]

  - by Calyo Delphi

  I am currently working on developing a personal website. It's not my first time doing this, but this is my first major foray into implementing SSI. I've run myself into a wall, however, with an if-else directive that uses one of the CGI environment variables as part of its comparison. Even after some limited attempts at debugging, all of the output and documentation that I have means that the comparisons being made should fail outright. This is not the case, and the wrong evaluation is being made by the if-else directive. Here's the code in the file index.shtml: <head> <!--#set var="page" value="Home" --> <!--#include file="headlinks.shtml" --> <style> img#ref { float: right; margin-left: 8px; border-width: 0px; } </style> </head> Here's the code in the file headlinks.shtml: <title><!--#echo var="page" --> &ndash; <!--#echo var="HTTP_HOST" --></title> <!--#set var="docroot" value="${DOCUMENT_ROOT}" --> <!--#echo var="docroot" --> <!--#if expr="( $docroot != '/Applications/MAMP/htdocs' ) || ( $docroot != '/home/dragarch/public_html' )" --> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../style.css"> <link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/svg+xml" href="../favicon.svg" /> <!--#else --> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css"> <link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/svg+xml" href="favicon.svg" /> <!--#endif --> And here's the output for the file index.shtml: <title>Home &ndash; dragarch</title> /Applications/MAMP/htdocs <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../style.css"> <link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/svg+xml" href="../favicon.svg" /> Both style.css and favicon.svg are in the document root with index.shtml, so the if directive should fail and default to the output of the else directive. As you can see, while the document root (which is currently the MAMP htdocs folder on my own notebook) is correct according to the output of the echo directive, the comparison in the if-else directive fails to compare the strings properly. I'm using this page for my documentation: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_include.html I'm at a complete loss as to why this is the case, and need a bit of help here. EDIT: I should note that dragarch is a hostname that I configured in /etc/hosts to point to 127.0.0.1 so I could test the site without having to use localhost. It has no real effect on the functionality of anything, other than to just act as a prettier hostname to use.

  Read the article

• No access to Samba shares

  - by koanhead

  I have three shared folders in my local home directory- that is to say, on my Ubuntu desktop's /home/me/. All were set up using "Sharing Options" in Nautilus' right-click menu. The standard "Music" and "Videos" folders are configured identically: the "Guest Access" box is checked, but the "Allow others to create and delete" is not. The third folder, called "shared", is configured to not allow Guest access but to allow others to modify files. I have not altered /etc/samba/smb.conf by hand, I have only used Sharing Options to create and modify these so-called "shares". My roommates have two Windows 7 computers and one Ubuntu Netbook Remix netbook. I have the aforementioned desktop machine and laptop running 10.04. None of these machines can access any of the shares. Attempts to access the Guest shares result in the message \\machine\directory is not accessible. The network name could not be found. This is the error message generated by a VM running Windows 2000. The other Windows machines generate a similar error. The Ubuntu laptop gives the error Unable to mount location: Failed to mount Windows share. Hurrah, once again, for informative error messages. That really helps a lot. When attempting to browse the folder called "shared" from the laptop, I'm confronted with a password dialog. This behavior is the same will all machines I've tried in the situation. On entering my username and password for the account to which the shares belong, the password dialog briefly disappears and is replaced with an identical dialog. No error message, useful or not, appears. When attempting to browse this folder with the VM, the outcome is the same except that the password dialog helpfully states "incorrect username or password". My assumption is that the username and password in question is that of the user which owns the shares. I have tried all other username and password combinations available in this context and the outcome is the same. I would like to be able to share files. Sharing them with Windows machines is a nice feature, or would be if it was available. Really I consider sharing files between two machines with the same version of the same operating system kind of a minimum condition for network usability. Samba last functioned reliably for me more than ten years ago. I have attempted to use it on and off since then with only intermittent success. Oh, and "Personal File Sharing" from the Preferences menu does not result in an entry in Places → Network → my-server. In fact, the old entry "MY-SERVER" goes away and is replaced by "koanhead's public files on my-server", which when I attempt to open it from the laptop gives a "DBus.Error.NoReply: Message did not receive a reply." I know I come here and gripe about Ubuntu a lot, but on the other hand I spend literally hours every day trying to fix things in Ubuntu. It's a good system which aspires to greatness, which is why things like this either Need to work; or Be adequately documented. Ideally both would be the case. Anyway, rant over. Hopefully someone will have some insight on this issue. Thanks all who bother to read this wall o'text for your time.

  Read the article

• The HTTP request was forbidden with client authentication scheme 'Anonymous'

  - by dudia

  I am trying to configure a WCF server\client to work with SSL I get the following exception: The HTTP request was forbidden with client authentication scheme 'Anonymous' I have a self hosted WCF server. I have run hhtpcfg both my client and server certificates are stored under Personal and Trusted People on the Local Machine Here is the server code: binding.Security.Transport.ClientCredentialType = HttpClientCredentialType.Certificate; binding.Security.Mode = WebHttpSecurityMode.Transport; _host.Credentials.ClientCertificate.Authentication.CertificateValidationMode = System.ServiceModel.Security.X509CertificateValidationMode.PeerOrChainTrust; _host.Credentials.ClientCertificate.Authentication.RevocationMode = X509RevocationMode.NoCheck; _host.Credentials.ClientCertificate.Authentication.TrustedStoreLocation = StoreLocation.LocalMachine; _host.Credentials.ServiceCertificate.SetCertificate("cn=ServerSide", StoreLocation.LocalMachine, StoreName.My); Client Code: binding.Security.Mode = WebHttpSecurityMode.Transport; binding.Security.Transport.ClientCredentialType = HttpClientCredentialType.Certificate; WebChannelFactory<ITestClientForServer> cf = new WebChannelFactory<ITestClientForServer>(binding, url2Bind); cf.Credentials.ClientCertificate.SetCertificate("cn=ClientSide", StoreLocation.LocalMachine, StoreName.My); ServicePointManager.ServerCertificateValidationCallback += RemoteCertificateValidate; Looking at web_tracelog.svclog and trace.log reveals that the server cannot autheticate the client certificate My certificate are not signed by an Authorized CA but this is why I added them to the Trusted People.... What Am I missing? What am I missing?

  Read the article

• Exception on SslStream.AuthenticateAsClient (The message was badly formatted)

  - by Noms

  I have got wierd problem going on. I am trying to connect to Apple server via TCP/SSL. I am using a Client certificate provided by Apple for push notifications. I installed the certificate on my server (Win2k3) in both Local Trusted Root certificates and Local Personal Certificates folder. Now I have a class library that deals with that connection, when i call this class library from a console application running from the server it works absolutely fine, but when i call that class library from an asp.net page or asmx web service I get the following exception. A call to SSPI failed, see inner exception. The message received was unexpected or badly formatted. This is my code: X509Certificate cert = new X509Certificate(certificateLocation, certificatePassword); X509CertificateCollection certCollection = new X509CertificateCollection(new X509Certificate[1] { cert }); // OPEN the new SSL Stream SslStream ssl = new SslStream(client.GetStream(), false, new RemoteCertificateValidationCallback(ValidateServerCertificate), null); ssl.AuthenticateAsClient(ipAddress, certCollection, SslProtocols.Default, false); ssl.AuthenticateAsClient is where the error gets thrown. This is driving me nuts. If the console application can connect fine, there must be some problem with asp.net network layer security that is failing the authentication... not sure, perhaps need to add something or some sort of security policy in the web.config. Also just to point out that i can connect fine on my local development machine both with console and website. Anyone has got any ideas?

  Read the article

• Why can't I resolve ambiguity with Android.OS.Environment?

  - by C. Lang

  I'm trying to use Environment.(...) in my Xamarin app. It complains that "Environment is an ambiguous reference between System.Environment and Android.OS.Environment" I can fix it by using the fully qualified name System.Environment.(...) but not with Android.OS.Environment.(...). For example: // Obviously ambiguous with error above using System; using Android.OS; // ... // OnCreate uses Bundle also in Android.OS //... string path = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.Personal); // Can be fixed by prefixing Environment with "System." But I can't fix it with any variation of possibilities using Android.OS including removing it and explicitly using it. The auto-complete box only shows the Activities and "Resource" and not any of the classes. // Solution to be able to use Android's Environment using Android.OS; // same as above Java.IO.File storageDir = Environment.ExternalStorageDirectory; // Defaults to Android.OS but can still use "System.Environment.(...) // Of course not with this example, but with the one above; yes. // Why doesn't it work both ways? If I remove the using statement and // try to use Android.OS.Environment.(...) it complains // 'OS type or namespace doesn't not exist' The reason is prefixing with Android. is referring to MyAppName.App.Android. Why is that and is there a way to directly access Android.OS.(...)? I've tried Mono.Android.OS.(...).

  Read the article

• What are some good/reputable/widely-used libraries written in VB.NET?

  - by Dan Tao

  Generally speaking, when VB.NET and C# are compared, there is a lot of strong support for C#, accompanied by some bashing of VB.NET until a respected developer comes along and acts as The Voice Of Reason, pointing out that while VB prior to VB.NET had its fair share of issues, VB.NET is really a very strong, fully OOP language that is, feature-wise, right about on par with C# (with the exception of certain things like a full-bodied lamba syntax [pre-VB10] or the yield keyword, as many C# faithfuls are quick to point out). I myself, having written plenty of code in both VB.NET and C#, fall squarely in the "I prefer C#, but don't consider VB.NET any less of a language" camp. However, one thing I have noticed is that when it comes to respected and/or widely-used libraries for .NET, everyting is written in C#. Or at least that's been my impression. This strikes me as a little strange because, aside from the abovementioned sprinkling of nice features (in particular the yield keyword), I tend to view the VB.NET/C# divide as primarily a matter of personal taste. Obviously, plenty of developers prefer C#. But I personally know some developers (good ones) who prefer VB.NET, which would lead me to suspect that surely some libraries (good ones) would be written in VB.NET. They must be out there, and I just haven't found them. What are some good libraries that've been written in VB.NET? The best would be open source, as that would allow interested developers to take a look at some good VB.NET code and see how effective the language can be when used properly. But I'd be interested to know about any libraries at all, particularly reputable ones.

  Read the article

• Powershell Transcript is empty when running script from SQL Agent Job in 2005 SQL Server

  - by Greg Bray

  I have a complex Powershell script that gets run as part of a SQL 2005 Server Agent Job. The script works fine, but it uses the "Start-Transcript $strLogfile -Append" command to log all of it's actions to a transcript file. The problem is that the transcript is always empty. It adds the header and footer to indicate that the transcript is starting and stopping, but it doesn't actually log anything. Example: ********************** Windows PowerShell Transcript Start Start time: 20100304173001 Username : xxxxxxxxxxxx\SYSTEM Machine : xxxxx-xxx (Microsoft Windows NT 5.2.3790 Service Pack 2) ********************** ********************** Windows PowerShell Transcript End End time: 20100304173118 ********************** When I execute the script from a command prompt or start - run everything works just fine. Here is the command used to run the script (same command used in the Operating system CmdExec step of the SQL Agent Job) powershell.exe -File "c:\temp\Backup\backup script.ps1" I first thought it must have something to do with the script running under the System account (default SQL Agent account), but even when I tried changing the SQL Agent to run under my own personal account it still created a blank transcript. Is there any way to get PowerShell Transcripts to work when executing them as part of a 2005 SQL Server Agent Job?

  Read the article

• Model validation with enumerable properties in Asp.net MVC2 RTM

  - by Robert Koritnik

  I'm using DataAnnotations attributes to validate my model objects. My model class looks similar to this: public class MyModel { [Required] public string Title { get; set; } [Required] public List<User> Editors { get; set; } } public class User { public int Id { get; set; } [Required] public string FullName { get; set; } [Required] [DataType(DataType.Email)] public string Email { get; set; } } My controller action looks like: public ActionResult NewItem(MyModel data) { //... } User is presented with a view that has a form with: a text box with dummy name where users enter user's names. For each user they enter, there's a client script coupled with ajax that creates an <input type="hidden" name="data.Editors[0].Id" value="userId" /> for each user entered (enumeration index is therefore not always 0 as written here), so default model binder is able to consume and bind the form without any problems. a text box where users enter the title Since I'm using Asp.net MVC 2 RTM which does model validation instead of input validation I don't know how to avoid validation errors. The thing is I have to use BindAttribute on my controller action. I would have to either provide a white or a black list of properties. It's always a better practice to provide a white list. It's also more future proof. The problem My form works fine, but I get validation errors about user's FullName and Email properties since they are not provided. I also shouldn't feed them to the client (via ajax when user enters user data), because email is personal contact data and is not shared between users. If there was just a single user reference on MyModel I would write [Bind(Include = "Title, Editor.Id")] But I have an enumeration of them. How do I provide Bind white list to work with my model?

  Read the article

• Can aptitude for learning Programming paradigms be influenced by culture or native language's gramma

  - by DVK

  It is well known that different people have different aptitudes regarding various programming paradigms (e.g. some people have trouble learning non-procedural, especially functional languages. Some people have trouble understanding pointers - see Joel Spolsky's blog for musings on that. Some people have trouble grasping recursion). I was recently reading about a study that looked at how the grammar of someone's native language affected their speed of learning math. Can't find that article now but a quick googling found this reference. That led me to wondering whether someone's native culture or first language might affect their aptitude towards various programming paradigms. I'm more curious about positive influences - e.g. some trait that make it easier/faster for someone to learn a particular paradigm, for example native language grammar being very recursion-oriented. To be clear, I'm looking for how culture/language grammare may affect the difference between aptitude of the same person towards various paradigms as opposed to how it affects overall aptitude towards programming between different persons. Important: the only answers I'm interested in are either references to scientific studies, or personal observations from someone intimately familiar with a particular culture/language, including from their own experience. E.g. I'm not interested in your opinion of how Chinese being your first language affects anything unless you speak Chinese or worked with extremely large set of Chinese-native programmers extensively. I'm OK with your guesstimates not based on scientific studies, but please be sure to supply your reasoning about plausible causes of your observation. I'm not interested in culture-bashing (any such commends will be deleted or flagged for deletion). I'm also not particularly interested in culture-building - we all know Linus is from Finland and Tetris was written in Russia and Larry Wall is an American. Any culture/nation can produce a brilliant mind in any discipline. I'm interested in averages.

  Read the article

• Send Email via Google Apps in C#

  - by NateReid

  Hello, I am trying to send a basic email through Google Apps/Gmail using C# (System.Net.Mail/Framework 4) and I am having trouble doing so. I am receiving the following exception: "The operation has timed out." My code is below: //Create the mail message MailMessage mail = new MailMessage(); //Set the addresses mail.From = new MailAddress("[email protected]", "My Name"); mail.To.Add(Email); //Set the subject and bodycontent mail.Subject = "Email Testing"; mail.Body = "This is the body of the email"; //Send the message using the SmtpClient SmtpClient smtp = new SmtpClient(); smtp.EnableSsl = true; smtp.Send(mail); My web.config has the following settings: <smtp from="[email protected]" deliveryMethod="Network"> <network host="smtp.gmail.com" password="password" port="587" userName="[email protected]" /> </smtp> During my troubleshooting I have tried: Using my personal gmail address as well as another from a domain hosted through Google Apps. Using ports 25, 465, and 587 Hard coding the config settings in the c# code instead of using the web.config Sending and telneting from multiple network locations to ensure the firewall/ISP was not blocking it Ensured that POP was enabled in the GMail settings (according to Google this should turn on the ability to send using SMTP) Changing the send from and replyTo address to ensure they match the account (apparently a GMail necessity). I am able to send and receive email fine through the GMail interface for both of my email accounts. I have also tried the settings and solutions offered in Question # 757987 to no avail. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks all.

  Read the article

• Schliemann's method of programming language learning

  - by DVK

  Background: 19th-century German archeologist Heinrich Schliemann was of course famous for his successful quest to find and excavate the city of Troy (an actual archeological site for the Troy of Homer's Iliad). However, he is just as famous for being an astonishing learner of languages - within the space of two years, he taught himself fluent Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, and later went on to learn seven more, including both modern and ancient Greek. One of the methods he famously used was comparison of a known text, e.g. take a book in a language one is fluent in, take a good translation of a book in a language you wish to learn, and go over them in parallel. (various sources cited the book used by Schliemann to be the Bible, or, as the link above states, a novel). Now, for the actual question. Has anyone used (or heard of) an equivalent of Schliemann's method for learning a new programming language? E.g. instead of basing the leaning on references and tutorials, take a somewhat comprehensive set of programs known to have high-quality code in both languages implementing similar/identical algorithms and learn by comparing them? I'm curious about either personal experiences of applying such an approach, or references to something published, or existance of codebases which could be used for such an approach? What got me thinking about the idea was Project Euler and some code snippets I saw on SO, in C++, Perl and Lisp.

  Read the article

• What's a good way to teach my son to program Java

  - by Software Monkey

  OK, so I've read through various posts about teaching beginner's to program, and there were some helpful things I will look at more closely. But what I want to know is whether there are any effective tools out there to teach a kid Java specifically? I want to teach him Java specifically because (a) with my strong background in C I feel that's too complex, (b) Java is the other language I know extremely well and therefore I can assist meaningfully without needing to teach myself a new but (to me) useless language, and (c) I feel that managed languages are the future, and lastly (d) Java is one of the simplest of all the languages I know well (aside from basic). I learned in basic, and I am open to teaching that first, but I am unaware of a decent free basic shell for Windows (though I haven't really searched, yet since it's not my first choice), and would anyway want to progress quickly to Java. My son is 8, so that's a couple of years earlier than I started - but he has expressed an interest in learning to program (possibly because I work from home a lot and he sees me programming all the time). If no-one can suggest a tool designed for this purpose, I will probably start him off with text/console based apps to teach the basics, and then progress to GUI building. Oh, one last thing, I am not a fan of IDE's (old school text editor type), so I would not be put off at all by a system that has him typing real code, and would likely prefer that to a toy drag/drop system. EDIT: Just to clarify; I really am specifically after ways to teach him Java; there are already a good many posts with good answers for other language alternatives - but that's not what I am looking for here. EDIT: What about Java frameworks for 2D video games - can anyone recommend any of them from personal experience? I like the idea of him starting with the mechanics in place (main game loop, scoring, etc) and adding the specifics for a game of his own imagining - that's what I did, though for me it was basic on a Commodore VIC-20 and a Sinclair ZX-81.

  Read the article

• Simple iPhone drawing app with Quartz 2D

  - by Mr guy 4

  I am making a simple iPhone drawing program as a personal side-project. I capture touches event in a subclassed UIView and render the actual stuff to a seperate CGLayer. After each render, I call [self setNeedsLayout] and in the drawRect: method I draw the CGLayer to the screen context. This all works great and performs decently for drawing rectangles. However, I just want a simple "freehand" mode like a lot of other iPhone applications have. The way I thought to do this was to create a CGMutablePath, and simply: CGMutablePathRef path; -(void)touchBegan { path = CGMutablePathCreate(); } -(void)touchMoved { CGPathMoveToPoint(path,NULL,x,y); CGPathAddLineToPoint(path,NULL,x,y); } -(void)drawRect:(CGContextRef)context { CGContextBeginPath(context); CGContextAddPath(context,path); CGContextStrokePath(context); } However, after drawing for more than 1 second, performance degrades miserably. I would just draw each line into the off-screen CGLayer, if it were not for variable opacity! The less-than-100% opacity causes dots to be left on the screen connecting the lines. I have looked at CGContextSetBlendingMode() but alas I cannot find an answer. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Other iPhone apps are able to do this with very good efficiency.

  Read the article

• Workflow for academic research projects, one-step builds, and the Joel Test

  - by Steve

  Working alone on academic research sometimes breeds bad habits. With no one else reading my code, I would write a lot of throw-away code, and I would lose track of intermediate results which, weeks or months later, I wish I had retained. My recent attempts to make my personal workflow conform to the Joel Test raised interesting questions. Academic research has inherently different goals than industrial software development, and therefore some aspects of the Joel Test become less valid. Nevertheless, I find these steps to be still valuable for academic research: Do you use source control? Can you make a build in one step? Do you have an up-to-date schedule? Do you have a spec? Of particular use is the one-step build. I find myself more organized now that I have implemented the following "one-step build": In other words, I have a single script, build.py, that accepts Python code, data, and TeX as inputs. The outputs are results, figures, and a paper with all the results filled in. (Yes, I know "build" is probably not accurate in this context, but you get the idea.) By consolidating many small steps into one, I am not backtracking as much as I used to. ...but I'm sure there is still room for improvement. Question: For research projects, which steps of the Joel Test do you still value? Do you have a one-step build? If so, what does yours consist of, i.e., what inputs does it accept, and what output does it generate?

  Read the article

• Client Certificate installed in IE8 on Windows 7 doesn't work - 403.7

  - by mlauter

  We have configured IIS 6 to accept client certificates and have installed the certificate services on our server. When we go to http://[our site]/CertSrv and request a Web Browser Certificate (client certificate) from IE7/8 on Windows XP and Vista and Windows 7, then issue the cert on the server certificate authority manager, all combinations of the client/OS seem to install the client certificate properly in the personal certificate store. When we visit our test application that requires client certificates, all IE versions installed in Windows XP propmt for the client certificate and then properly display the page. Uhfortunately, all IE versions installed on Vista and Windows 7 do not prompt for the cert, nor do they automatically send the cert. It's like IE on these operating systems is unaware of the client certificate and it doesn't prompt for it, nor does it send it to the site. Since everything works as expected, at least on the XP configurations, we assume that IIS6 is correctly configured. It's been 8 hours with two of us trying to figure this out and we're ready to throw a laptop through a window and "the google" has let us down. Thanks for anyone who can help. Mark

  Read the article

• Convert ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8

  - by tau

  I have several documents I need to convert from ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8 (without the BOM of course). This is the issue though. I have so many of these documents (it is actually a mix of documents, some UTF-8 and some ISO-8859-1) that I need an automated way of converting them. Unfortunately I only have ActivePerl installed and don't know much about encoding in that language. I may be able to install PHP, but I am not sure as this is not my personal computer. Just so you know, I use Scite or Notepad++, but both do not convert correctly. For example, if I open a document in Czech that contains the character "ž" and go to the "Convert to UTF-8" option in Notepad++, it incorrectly converts it to an unreadable character. There is a way I CAN convert them, but it is tedious. If I open the document with the special characters and copy the document to Windows clipboard, then paste it into a UTF-8 document and save it, it is okay. This is too tedious (opening every file and copying/pasting into a new document) for the amount of documents I have. Any ideas? Thanks!!!

  Read the article

• Accessing Yahoo realtime stock quotes

  - by DVK

  There's a fairly easy way of retrieving 15-minute delayed quotes off of Yahoo! Finance web site ("quotes.csv" API). However, so far I was unable to find any info on how to access real-time quotes. The hang-ups with real-time quotes are: Only available to logged-in user No API Non-obvious how to scrape the info - I'm somewhat convinced they are placed on the page by some weird Ajax call. So I was wondering if anyone had managed to develop a publically available solution to retrieve real-time quotes for a stock from Yahoo! Finance. Notes: Implementation language/framework need is flexible but Perl or Excel is highly preferred. Assume that security is not an issue - I'm willing to supply yahoo userid and pasword, even in cleartext. I'm not 100% hung up on Yahoo - they are merely the only provider of free realtime stock quotes I'm familiar with. if the same thing can be done with Google Finance, I'd be just as happy. This is for a personal project, so scalability/fault tolerance/etc... are not important. I'm looking for a "do the whole retrieval" library ideally, but if I'm pointed to partial solutions (e.g. how to retrieve info from Yahoo's user-logged-in pages; how to scrape realtime quotes from Yahoo's page) I can fill in the blanks. I saw Finance::YahooQuote but it does not seem to allow you to supply log-in information and appears to use the lagging quotes.csv API Thanks!

  Read the article

• Storing info in a PostgreSQl database issue

  - by MrEnder

  Ok I am making a registry for my website. First page asks for some personal info if($error==false) { $query = pg_query("INSERT INTO chatterlogins(firstName, lastName, gender, password, ageMonth, ageDay, ageYear, email, createDate) VALUES('$firstNameSignup', '$lastNameSignup', '$genderSignup', md5('$passwordSignup'), $monthSignup, $daySignup, $yearSignup, '$emailSignup', now());"); $query = pg_query("INSERT INTO chatterprofileinfo(email, lastLogin) VALUES('$emailSignup', now());"); $userNameSet = $emailSignup; $_SESSION['$userNameSet'] = $userNameSet; header('Location: signup_step2.php'.$rdruri); } The first query works. The second query works but doesn't save the email... the session doesn't work but the header works and sends me to the next page I get no errors even if I comment out header next page @session_start(); $conn = pg_connect("host=localhost dbname=brittains_db user=brittains password=XXXX" ); $signinCheck = false; $checkForm = ""; if(isset($_SESSION['$userName'])) { $userName = $_SESSION['$userName']; $signinCheck = true; $query = pg_query("UPDATE chatterprofileinfo SET lastLogin='now()' WHERE email='$userName'"); } if(isset($_SESSION['$userNameSet'])) { $userName = $_SESSION['$userNameSet']; $signinCheck = true; $query = pg_query("UPDATE chatterprofileinfo SET lastLogin='now()' WHERE email='$userName'"); } This is the top starting the session depending on if your logged in or not. then if I enter in the info here and put it through this if($error==false) { $query = pg_query("UPDATE chatterprofileinfo SET aboutSelf='$aboutSelf', hobbies='$hobbies', music='$music', tv='$tv', sports='$sports', lastLogin='now()' WHERE email='$userName'") or exit(pg_last_error()); //header('Location: signup_step3.php'.$rdruri); } nothing shows up for on my database from this. I have no idea where I went wrong the website is http://opentech.durhamcollege.ca/~intn2201/brittains/chatter/

  Read the article

• How can one detect if a server/script is accessing their site through cURL/file_get_contents()? (excluding user-agents and IP addresses)

  - by navnav

  I've come across a question where a user is having difficulties accessing an image through a script (using cURL/file_get_contents()): How to save an image from url using PHP? The image link seems to return a 403 error when using file_get_contents() to request it. But in cURL, a more detailed error is returned: You were denied access to the system. Turn off the engine or Surf Proxy, Fake IP if you really want to access. Proxy or not accepted from any Web tools Intrusion Prevention System. Binh Minh Online Data Services @ 2008 - 2012 I also failed to access the same image after fiddling around with a cURL request myself. I tried changing the user-agent to my exact browsers user-agent which can successfully access the image. I've also tried the script on my personal local server, which (obviously) uses the same IP address as my browser... So as far as I know, user-agents and IP addresses are out of the situation. How else can someone detect a script performing a request? BTW, this is not for anything crazy. I'm just curious xD

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317  | Next Page >