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• Ask the Readers: What Operating System Do You Use?

  - by Mysticgeek

  The three most popular choices out there when it comes to computer operating systems, is Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. What we want to know is…which operating system do you use? Photo by ~Dudu,,]* Computer users today have more choices than ever when it comes to the operating system they use. In the Windows world, there are three versions out there in daily use. A lot of businesses and home users use XP, completely avoided Vista, and are starting to migrate to Windows 7. While a lot of home users received their new computer with Vista pre-installed and are still using it. Others were quick to jump to Windows 7, and some don’t want to leave the comforts of XP. Desktop Linux distro’s have been consistently growing in popularity as versions like Ubuntu become more user friendly. And let us not forget the loyal Apple users who would never give up OS X. You may have to use a certain OS at the workplace, but when you get home, your options are a lot more open. And now with the ease of virtualization, it’s easy to run multiple operating systems on one machine. Each OS offers different advantages that people pick based on their needs. Today we want to know, which operating system(s) do you use? Let us know in the comments and join the discussion! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Easily Set Default OS in a Windows 7 / Vista and XP Dual-boot SetupGet the Version of Solaris RunningDisable System Restore in Windows 7Disable ProFTP on CentOSShut Down or Reboot a Solaris System TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Out of band Security Update for Internet Explorer 7 Cool Looking Screensavers for Windows SyncToy syncs Files and Folders across Computers on a Network (or partitions on the same drive) If it were only this easy Classic Cinema Online offers 100’s of OnDemand Movies OutSync will Sync Photos of your Friends on Facebook and Outlook

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• Managing Social Relationships for the Enterprise – Part 1

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  By Reggie Bradford, Senior Vice President, Oracle  Today, Mark Hurd, President of Oracle, Thomas Kurian, Executive Vice President of Oracle and I discussed the strategic importance of how social media is impacting the enterprise and how it is changing the way customers, prospects employees and investors interact with brands worldwide.  Oracle understands that the consumer is in control and as such, brands must evolve and change to meet growing needs. In addition, according to social media thought leader and Analyst from Altimeter Group, Jeremiah Owyang, companies now average 178 corporate-owned social media accounts. When Oracle added leading social marketing, listening analytics and development tools from Vitrue, Collective Intellect and Involver to its Oracle’s Cloud Services Suite we went beyond providing a single set of tools. We developed an entire framework to include a comprehensive social relationship management suite to help companies move beyond the social enterprise and achieve the social-enabled enterprise.  The fundamental shift from transaction to engagement means that enterprises need not only a social strategy, but should also ensure that the information and data received from social initiatives flow back to marketing, sales, support and service. Doing so enables companies to deliver a proactive and compelling experience and provides analytics to turn engagement into opportunity – and ultimately that opportunity into revenue.  On September 13, 2012, I am delighted to sit down with Jeremiah to further the discussion about how enterprises are addressing social media strategies and managing content.  In addition, we will be taking your questions after the webinar via Twitter (@Oracle, @ReggieBradford, @cfinn, @jowyang). Use #oracle and #socbiz to submit questions and follow the conversation. I look forward to speaking with you and answering your questions online.  For more information about becoming a social-enabled enterprise, visit www.oracle.com/social. And don’t miss the insights of other social business thought leaders at www.oracle.com/goto/socialbusiness.

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• Do licenses matter if there's nobody around to enforce them?

  - by Corey

  Suppose that the original creators can't (or won't) enforce a license on their software/code, but that work is still popular. I guess if you want to visualize it, I'll throw out a convoluted hypothetical: Imagine a very small group of developers that released a code project under an open-source license. The repository was hosted on their servers. However, the everybody on the immediate development team passed away in a tragic accident or something. Their servers shut down after this happened. The project had a fairly large user base, and so others began to host the last revision on their own servers for others to download. (Yes, I have an active imagination) Does abiding by the license simply become a matter of morality by its users, or can there still exist a legal penalty when there is no one user or group to enforce it? Could anything be done if an unscrupulous user decided to branch off the project and use it under a different license? I am not looking for legal advice -- I am simply curious about how software licenses work. I tend to think of strange situations and wonder what would happen in those scenarios.

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• DevConnections Session Slides, Samples and Links

  - by Rick Strahl

  Finally coming up for air this week, after catching up with being on the road for the better part of three weeks. Here are my slides, samples and links for my four DevConnections Session two weeks ago in Vegas. I ended up doing one extra un-prepared for session on WebAPI and AJAX, as some of the speakers were either delayed or unable to make it at all to Vegas due to Sandy's mayhem. It was pretty hectic in the speaker room as Erik (our event coordinator extrodinaire) was scrambling to fill session slots with speakers :-). Surprisingly it didn't feel like the storm affected attendance drastically though, but I guess it's hard to tell without actual numbers. The conference was a lot of fun - it's been a while since I've been speaking at one of these larger conferences. I'd been taking a hiatus, and I forgot how much I enjoy actually giving talks. Preparing - well not  quite so much, especially since I ended up essentially preparing or completely rewriting for all three of these talks and I was stressing out a bit as I was sick the week before the conference and didn't get as much time to prepare as I wanted to. But - as always seems to be the case - it all worked out, but I guess those that attended have to be the judge of that… It was great to catch up with my speaker friends as well - man I feel out of touch. I got to spend a bunch of time with Dan Wahlin, Ward Bell, Julie Lerman and for about 10 minutes even got to catch up with the ever so busy Michele Bustamante. Lots of great technical discussions including a fun and heated REST controversy with Ward and Howard Dierking. There were also a number of great discussions with attendees, describing how they're using the technologies touched in my talks in live applications. I got some great ideas from some of these and I wish there would have been more opportunities for these kinds of discussions. One thing I miss at these Vegas events though is some sort of coherent event where attendees and speakers get to mingle. These Vegas conferences are just like "go to sessions, then go out and PARTY on the town" - it's Vegas after all! But I think that it's always nice to have at least one evening event where everybody gets to hang out together and trade stories and geek talk. Overall there didn't seem to be much opportunity for that beyond lunch or the small and short exhibit hall events which it seemed not many people actually went to. Anyways, a good time was had. I hope those of you that came to my sessions learned something useful. There were lots of great questions and discussions after the sessions - always appreciate hearing the real life scenarios that people deal with in relation to the abstracted scenarios in sessions. Here are the Session abstracts, a few comments and the links for downloading slides and  samples. It's not quite like being there, but I hope this stuff turns out to be useful to some of you. I'll be following up a couple of these sessions with white papers in the following weeks. Enjoy. ASP.NET Architecture: How ASP.NET Works at the Low Level Abstract:Interested in how ASP.NET works at a low level? ASP.NET is extremely powerful and flexible technology, but it's easy to forget about the core framework that underlies the higher level technologies like ASP.NET MVC, WebForms, WebPages, Web Services that we deal with on a day to day basis. The ASP.NET core drives all the higher level handlers and frameworks layered on top of it and with the core power comes some complexity in the form of a very rich object model that controls the flow of a request through the ASP.NET pipeline from Windows HTTP services down to the application level. To take full advantage of it, it helps to understand the underlying architecture and model. This session discusses the architecture of ASP.NET along with a number of useful tidbits that you can use for building and debugging your ASP.NET applications more efficiently. We look at overall architecture, how requests flow from the IIS (7 and later) Web Server to the ASP.NET runtime into HTTP handlers, modules and filters and finally into high-level handlers like MVC, Web Forms or Web API. Focus of this session is on the low-level aspects on the ASP.NET runtime, with examples that demonstrate the bootstrapping of ASP.NET, threading models, how Application Domains are used, startup bootstrapping, how configuration files are applied and how all of this relates to the applications you write either using low-level tools like HTTP handlers and modules or high-level pages or services sitting at the top of the ASP.NET runtime processing chain. Comments:I was surprised to see so many people show up for this session - especially since it was the last session on the last day and a short 1 hour session to boot. The room was packed and it was to see so many people interested the abstracts of architecture of ASP.NET beyond the immediate high level application needs. Lots of great questions in this talk as well - I only wish this session would have been the full hour 15 minutes as we just a little short of getting through the main material (didn't make it to Filters and Error handling). I haven't done this session in a long time and I had to pretty much re-figure all the system internals having to do with the ASP.NET bootstrapping in light for the changes that came with IIS 7 and later. The last time I did this talk was with IIS6, I guess it's been a while. I love doing this session, mainly because in my mind the core of ASP.NET overall is so cleanly designed to provide maximum flexibility without compromising performance that has clearly stood the test of time in the 10 years or so that .NET has been around. While there are a lot of moving parts, the technology is easy to manage once you understand the core components and the core model hasn't changed much even while the underlying architecture that drives has been almost completely revamped especially with the introduction of IIS 7 and later. Download Samples and Slides   Introduction to using jQuery with ASP.NET Abstract:In this session you'll learn how to take advantage of jQuery in your ASP.NET applications. Starting with an overview of jQuery client features via many short and fun examples, you'll find out about core features like the power of selectors for document element selection, manipulating these elements with jQuery's wrapped set methods in a browser independent way, how to hook up and handle events easily and generally apply concepts of unobtrusive JavaScript principles to client scripting. The second half of the session then delves into jQuery's AJAX features and several different ways how you can interact with ASP.NET on the server. You'll see examples of using ASP.NET MVC for serving HTML and JSON AJAX content, as well as using the new ASP.NET Web API to serve JSON and hypermedia content. You'll also see examples of client side templating/databinding with Handlebars and Knockout. Comments:This session was in a monster of a room and to my surprise it was nearly packed, given that this was a 100 level session. I can see that it's a good idea to continue to do intro sessions to jQuery as there appeared to be quite a number of folks who had not worked much with jQuery yet and who most likely could greatly benefit from using it. Seemed seemed to me the session got more than a few people excited to going if they hadn't yet :-).  Anyway I just love doing this session because it's mostly live coding and highly interactive - not many sessions that I can build things up from scratch and iterate on in an hour. jQuery makes that easy though. Resources: Slides and Code Samples Introduction to jQuery White Paper Introduction to ASP.NET Web API   Hosting the Razor Scripting Engine in Your Own Applications Abstract:The Razor Engine used in ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web Pages is a free-standing scripting engine that can be disassociated from these Web-specific implementations and can be used in your own applications. Razor allows for a powerful mix of code and text rendering that makes it a wonderful tool for any sort of text generation, from creating HTML output in non-Web applications, to rendering mail merge-like functionality, to code generation for developer tools and even as a plug-in scripting engine. In this session, we'll look at the components that make up the Razor engine and how you can bootstrap it in your own applications to hook up templating. You'll find out how to create custom templates and manage Razor requests that can be pre-compiled, detecting page changes and act in ways similar to a full runtime. We look at ways that you can pass data into the engine and retrieve both the rendered output as well as result values in a package that makes it easy to plug Razor into your own applications. Comments:That this session was picked was a bit of a surprise to me, since it's a bit of a niche topic. Even more of a surprise was that during the session quite a few people who attended had actually used Razor externally and were there to find out more about how the process works and how to extend it. In the session I talk a bit about a custom Razor hosting implementation (Westwind.RazorHosting) and drilled into the various components required to build a custom Razor Hosting engine and a runtime around it. This sessions was a bit of a chore to prepare for as there are lots of technical implementation details that needed to be dealt with and squeezing that into an hour 15 is a bit tight (and that aren't addressed even by some of the wrapper libraries that exist). Found out though that there's quite a bit of interest in using a templating engine outside of web applications, or often side by side with the HTML output generated by frameworks like MVC or WebForms. An extra fun part of this session was that this was my first session and when I went to set up I realized I forgot my mini-DVI to VGA adapter cable to plug into the projector in my room - 6 minutes before the session was about to start. So I ended up sprinting the half a mile + back to my room - and back at a full sprint. I managed to be back only a couple of minutes late, but when I started I was out of breath for the first 10 minutes or so, while trying to talk. Musta sounded a bit funny as I was trying to not gasp too much :-) Resources: Slides and Code Samples Westwind.RazorHosting GitHub Project Original RazorHosting Blog Post   Introduction to ASP.NET Web API for AJAX Applications Abstract:WebAPI provides a new framework for creating REST based APIs, but it can also act as a backend to typical AJAX operations. This session covers the core features of Web API as it relates to typical AJAX application development. We’ll cover content-negotiation, routing and a variety of output generation options as well as managing data updates from the client in the context of a small Single Page Application style Web app. Finally we’ll look at some of the extensibility features in WebAPI to customize and extend Web API in a number and useful useful ways. Comments:This session was a fill in for session slots not filled due MIA speakers stranded by Sandy. I had samples from my previous Web API article so decided to go ahead and put together a session from it. Given that I spent only a couple of hours preparing and putting slides together I was glad it turned out as it did - kind of just ran itself by way of the examples I guess as well as nice audience interactions and questions. Lots of interest - and also some confusion about when Web API makes sense. Both this session and the jQuery session ended up getting a ton of questions about when to use Web API vs. MVC, whether it would make sense to switch to Web API for all AJAX backend work etc. In my opinion there's no need to jump to Web API for existing applications that already have a good AJAX foundation. Web API is awesome for real externally consumed APIs and clearly defined application AJAX APIs. For typical application level AJAX calls, it's still a good idea, but ASP.NET MVC can serve most if not all of that functionality just as well. There's no need to abandon MVC (or even ASP.NET AJAX or third party AJAX backends) just to move to Web API. For new projects Web API probably makes good sense for isolation of AJAX calls, but it really depends on how the application is set up. In some cases sharing business logic between the HTML and AJAX interfaces with a single MVC API can be cleaner than creating two completely separate code paths to serve essentially the same business logic. Resources: Slides and Code Samples Sample Code on GitHub Introduction to ASP.NET Web API White Paper© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Conferences  ASP.NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Why does Process Explorer cause highly targeted failure of some applications / basic UI functions in a high-power EC2 Windows instance?

  - by Dan Nissenbaum

  Update: I have determined that Process Explorer itself - the program I am using to debug a performance issue - seems to be the cause of the issue. See note, with updated question, at end. I am running a high-power (cc2.8xlarge) Amazon AWS EC2 Windows instance off of a boot EBS volume, provisioned at 2500 PIOPS, which was created from a snapshot of a previous boot volume. My purpose with the instance is to use it as a development workstation with many developer tools installed, such as Visual Studio, a local XAMPP stack, etc. I have upwards of 40 programs installed on the machine. The usability of the instance as a development machine often works quite well. The RDP lag is adequately small. I have used it for hours on end without problems for some of my most intense development tasks. As a result, I have just purchased a reserved instance, and I opted to rebuild my development machine starting from scratch with a Windows Server 2012 AMI. After having installed all of my desired/required applications for development over this past week, again the machine seems to often work well and I have worked for up to an hour at a time without problems doing heavy development work. However, I continue to run into catastrophic OS usability issues that may prevent me from being able to rely on this machine as a development machine. I would like to track down the source of the problem, if there is an easily identifiable source. (Update: I have tracked down the source to be Process Explorer, the very program I was using to debug the problem. See update at end.) The issues are as follows. (These are some primary examples) Some applications, after a period of adequate responsiveness, suddenly begin to respond very, very slowly to basic user interface actions such as clicking on menus and pressing Ctrl-Tab to switch between open documents. Two examples are UltraEdit and PhpEd. It typically takes ~2 seconds for a menu to appear, and ~4 seconds to switch between open documents. Additionally, insertion point motion in the editor is lagged by upwards of ~2 seconds. Process Explorer, which I am using to help debug the problem, seems to run acceptably for a couple of minutes, but on multiple occasions Process Explorer itself hangs completely. It hangs at the same time as the problems noted above. When it hangs, it is 100% unresponsive. Clicking on its taskbar icon neither causes it to come to the top or go behind, and its viewable area is filled with nothing but a region partially containing pure white and partially containing incomplete windows widgets that are unreadable, and that never change. Waiting 10 minutes does not clear the problem. Attempting to force-quit Process Explorer by right-clicking on its taskbar icon and choosing "Close Window" takes about 5 full minutes to exit (Process Explorer itself can't be used to exit Process Explorer, and it is registered as a Task Manager substitute). Other programs work just fine during this time. For example, Chrome tabs flip very quickly back and forth, menus pop open instantly, web pages load quickly, and typing in forms/web applications inside the browser works promptly. Another example of an application that works crisply is Filemaker - its menus open instantly, and switching views in this application occurs promptly. Other applications also work without issue. Also, switching between applications occurs promptly as well. It is only a handful of applications that exhibit the problem, with some primary examples given above. At first I thought that EBS IOPS might be a problem. Therefore, I ran Performance Monitor, and watched the "Disk Transfers/sec" monitor in real time. At no point did this measure come anywhere close to hitting the 2500 PIOPS provisioned for the EBS volume. The RAM was also well under the limit (~10 GB used out of 60 GB). I did notice that one CPU core (out of 32 logical cores) was fully thrashing at 100% (i.e., ~3.1%) during the problematic periods. This seems to indicate that a single CPU core is handling the menus / flipping between open documents (for some applications only) / managing the Process Explorer user interface, and that this single core was hosed for some reason during the problematic periods. Also note that I have a desktop workstation (Windows 7) that I also use as a development machine, via a remote connection, with a nearly identical set of programs installed, and this desktop workstation does not exhibit any of the problems I've discussed above. I have been using it heavily for well over a year now. Any suggestions regarding either the source of the problem, or steps I might take to investigate the source of the problem, would be appreciated. Thanks. Note: After extensive testing & investigation, I have noticed that when I quit Process Explorer, the problem vanishes and the system performance returns to normal, and then reappears quickly when I run Process Explorer again (note: again, the performance problems only appear for a subset of applications - other applications work perfectly fine during the same period). My question is therefore (thankfully) more specific: Why does Process Explorer cause highly targeted failure of some applications (including itself) and basic UI functions, in a high-power EC2 Windows instance?

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• tag based file organizer

  - by Richie

  I'm finishing professional school and over the years have acquired a pile of notes and articles that I'd like to hang onto. I'd like to add to them and create sort of an archive of article and files that may be useful down the road. I'd also like to organize this collection of files not only by simple grouping but also with tags. I feel like that will make searching through them years later much easier. Suggestions on software that would be good for this? Just a general file manager, something that uses tags that can be attached to each file? Thanks

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• How should I work out VAT (UK tax) in my eCommerce site?

  - by Leonard Challis

  We have an ecommerce system in place. The sales actually go through Sage, so we have an export script from our system that uses a third-party Sage Importer program. With a new version of this importer, values are checked more thoroughly. We are getting 1 pence discrepancies because of the way rounding works - our system has always held prices and worked to 4 decimal places. In the checkout the totals would be worked out first, then the rounding to 2 decimal places. The importer does rounding first, though. So, for instance: Our way: Product 1: £13.4561 Qty: 2 Total inc VAT = £32.29 (to 2dp) Importer way: Our way: Product 1: £13.4561 Qty: 2 Total inc VAT = £32.30 (to 2dp) Management are reluctant to lose the 4dp but the developers of the Sage importer have said that this is correct and makes sense -- you woudn't sell a product for £13.4561 in a shop, nor would you charge someone tax at 4 decimal places. I contacted the HMRC and the operator didn't really give me much to go on, telling me a technician would phone back, to which they haven't and I'm still waiting after almost a week and numerous follow-up calls. I did find a PDF on the HMRC's web site, but this did about us much to confuse me as it did to answer my questions. I see that they're happy for people to round up or down, as long it is consistent, but I can't tell whether it should be done on a line by line basis or on the end total of the order. We are now in the position where we need to decide whether it's worth us doing one of the following, or something completely different. Please advise with any experience or information I can read. Change all products on the site to use 2dp Keep 4dp but round each line in the order to 2dp before working out tax Keep it as it is and "fudge" the values at the export script (i.e. make that values correct by adding or subtracting 1p and changing the shipping cost to make the totals still work out) Any thoughts?

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• Navigating nested RDP sessions

  - by U62

  Often at work I have to RDP into one server in order to get to another. And no, there's no chance of the network getting sorted out such that I can connect to all machines directly :) I'm wondering if anyone has any good tips/tricks for working in this scenario. I tend to open RDP sessions full screen, so the way to get back to my desktop is to click the minimize or restore buttons on the toolbar the drops down from the top of the screen when you are using a full-screen RDP session. The problem is that when you log into A and then from there log into B, A's toolbar covers B's, so there's no easy way to get back to the desktop of A without logging out of B. At least as far as I can see. Maybe there's a keyboard shortcut that can pop you out of the innermost session? At the moment, I try to not use full screen mode on the nested session, but apart from having to remember to set that before I connect, it reduces the workspace and is something I'd like to avoid.

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• Clean Code Developer & Certification in IT - MSCC 21.09.2013

  It was a very busy weekend this time, and quite some hectic to organise the second meetup on a Saturday for the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community (MSCC) but it was absolutely fun. Following, I'm writing a brief summary about the topics we spoke about and the new impulses I got. "What a meetup... I was positively impressed. At the beginning I thought that noone would actually show up but then by the time the room got filled. Lots of conversation, great dialogues and fantastic networking between fresh students, experienced students, experienced employees, and self-employed attendees. That's what community is all about!" Above quote was my first reaction shortly after the gathering. And despite being busy during the weekend and yesterday, I took my time to reflect a little bit on things happened and statements made before writing it here on my blog. Additionally, I was also very curious about possible reactions and blogs from other attendees. Reactions from other craftsmen Let me quickly give you some links and quotes from others first... "Like Jochen posted on facebook, that was indeed a 5+ hours marathon (maybe 4 hours for me but still) … Wohoo! We’re indeed a bunch of crazy geeks who did not realise how time flew as we dived into the myriad discussions that sprouted. Yet in the end everyone was happy (:" -- Ish on MSCC meetup - The marathon (: "And the 4hours spent @ Talking drums bore its fruit..I was doing something I never did before....reading the borrowed book while walking....and though I was not that familiar with things mentionned in the book...I was skimming,scanning & flipping...reading titles...short paragraphs...and I skipped pages till I reached home." -- Yannick on Mauritius Software Craftsmanship 1st Meet-up "Hi Developers, Just wanted to share with you the meetups i attended last Saturday - [...] - The second meetup is the one hosted by Jochen Kirstätter, the MSCC, where the attendees were Craftsman, no woman, this time - all sharing the same passion of being a developer - even though it is on different platforms(Windows - Windows Phone - Linux - Adobe(yes a designer) - .Net) - but we manage to sit at the same table - sharing developer views and experience in the corporate world - also talking about good practice when coding( where Jochen initiated a discussion on Clean Coding ) i could not stay till the end - but from what i have heard - the longer you stay the more fun you have till 1600. Developers in the Facebook grouping i invite you to stay tuned about the various developer communities popping up - where you can come to share and learn good practices, develop the entrepreneurial spirit, and learn and share your passion about technologies" -- Arnaud on Facebook More feedback has been posted on the event directly. So, should I really write more? Wouldn't that spoil the impressions? Starting the day with a surprise Indeed, I was very pleased to stumble over the existence of Mobile Monday Mauritius on LinkedIn, an association about any kind of mobile app development, mobile gadgets and latest smartphones on the market. Despite the Monday in their name they had scheduled their recent meeting on Saturday between 10:00 and 12:00hrs. Wow, what a coincidence! Let's grap the bull by its horns and pay them an introductory visit. As they chose the Ebene Accelerator at the Orange Tower in Ebene it was a no-brainer to leave home a bit earlier and stop by. It was quite an experience and fun to talk to the geeks over there. Really looking forward to organise something together.... Arriving at the venue As the children got a bit uneasy at the MoMo gathering and I didn't want to disturb them too much, we arrived early at Bagatelle. Well, no problems as we went for a decent breakfast at Food Lover's Market. Shortly afterwards we went to our venue location, Talking Drums, and prepared the room for the meeting. We only had to take off a repro-painting of the wall in order to have a decent area for the projector. All went very smooth and my two little ones were of great help. Just in time, our first craftsman Avinash arrived on the spot. And then the waiting started... Luckily, not too long. Bit by bit more and more IT people came to join our meeting. Meanwhile, I used the time to give a brief introduction about the MSCC in general, what we are (hm, maybe I am) trying to achieve and that the recent phase is completely focused on creating more awareness that a community like the MSCC is active here in Mauritius. As soon as we reached some 'critical mass' of about ten people I asked everyone for a short introduction and bio, just in case... Conversation between participants started to kick in and we were actually more networking than having a focus on our topics of the day. Quick updates on latest news and development around the MSCC Finally, Clean Code Developer No matter how the position is actually called, whether it is Software Engineer, Software Developer, Programmer, Architect, or Craftsman, anyone working in IT is facing almost the same obstacles. As for the process of writing software applications there are re-occurring patterns and principles combined with some common exercise and best practices on how to resolve them. Initiated by the must-read book 'Clean Code' by Robert C. Martin (aka Uncle Bob) the concept of the Clean Code Developer (CCD) was born already some years ago. CCD is much likely to traditional martial arts where you create awareness of certain principles and learn how to apply practices to improve your style. The CCD initiative recommends to indicate your level of knowledge and experience with coloured wrist bands - equivalent to the belt colours - for various reasons. Frankly speaking, I think that the biggest advantage here is provided by the obvious recognition of conceptual understanding. For example, take the situation of a team meeting... A member with a higher grade in CCD, say Green grade, sees that there are mainly Red grades to talk to, and adjusts her way of communication to their level of understanding. The choice of words might change as certain elements of CCD are not yet familiar to all team members. So instead of talking in an abstract way which only Green grades could follow the whole scenario comes down to Red grade level. Different story, better results... Similar to learning martial arts, we only covered two grades during this occasion - black and red. Most interestingly, there was quite some positive feedback and lots of questions about the principles and practices of the red grade. And we gathered real-world examples from various craftsman and discussed them. Following the Clean Code Developer Red Grade and some annotations from our meetup: CCD Red Grade - Principles Don't Repeat Yourself - DRY Keep It Simple, Stupid (and Short) - KISS Beware of Optimisations! Favour Composition over Inheritance - FCoI Interestingly most of the attendees already heard about those key words but couldn't really classify or categorize them. It's very similar to a situation in which you do not the particular for a thing and have to describe it to others... until someone tells you the actual name and suddenly all is very simple. CCD Red Grade - Practices Follow the Boy Scouts Rule Root Cause Analysis - RCA Use a Version Control System Apply Simple Refactoring Pattern Reflect Daily Introduction to the principles and practices of Clean Code Developer - here: Red Grade As for the various ToDo's we commonly agreed that the Boy Scout Rule clearly is not limited to software development or IT administration but applies to daily life in general. Same for the root cause analysis, btw. We really had good stories with surprisingly endings and conclusions. A quick check about who is using a version control system brought more drive into the conversation. Not only that we had people that aren't using any VCS at all, we also had the 'classic' approach of backup folders and naming conventions as well as the VCS 'junkie' that has to use multiple systems at a time. Just for the records: Git and GitHub seem to be in favour of some of the attendees. Regarding the daily reflection at the end of the day we came up with an easy solution: Wrap it up as a blog entry! Certifications in IT This is kind of a controversy in IT in general. Is it interesting to go for certifications or are they completely obsolete? What are the possibilities to get certified? What are the options we have in Mauritius? How would certificates stand compared to other educational tracks like Computer Science or Web Design. The ratio between craftsmen with certifications like MCP, MSTS, CCNA or LPI versus the ones without wasn't in favour for the first group but there was a high interest in the topic itself and some were really surprised to hear that exam preparations are completely free available online including temporarily voucher codes for either discounts or completely free exams. Furthermore, we discussed possible options on forming so-called study groups on a specific certificates and organising more frequent meetups in order to learn together. Taking into consideration that we have sponsored access to the video course material of Pluralsight (and now PeepCode as well as TrainSignal), we might give it a try by the end of the year. Current favourites are LPIC Level 1 and one of the Microsoft exams 40-78x. Feedback and ideas for the MSCC The closing conversations and discussions about how the MSCC is recently doing, what are the possibilities and what's (hopefully) going to happen in the future were really fertile and I made a couple of mental bullet points which I'm looking forward to tackle down together with orher craftsmen. Eventually, it might be a good option to elaborate on some issues during our weekly Code & Coffee sessions one Wednesday morning. Active discussion on various IT topics like certifications (LPI, MCP, CCNA, etc) and sharing experience Finally, we made it till the end of the planned time. Well, actually the talk was still on and we continued even after 16:00hrs. Unfortunately, we (the children and I) had to leave for evening activities. My resume of the day... It was great to have 15 craftsmen in one room. There are hundreds of IT geeks out there in Mauritius, and as Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community we still have a lot of work to do to pass on the message to some more key players and companies. Currently, it seems that we are able to attract a good number of students in Computer Science... but we have a lot more to offer, even or especially for IT people on the job. I'm already looking forward to our next Saturday meetup in the near future. PS: Meetup pictures are courtesy of Nirvan Pagooah. Thanks for sharing...

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• Google Fonts API JSON Data in WordPress Options-Framework-Theme

  - by Rob

  I'm developing a child-theme off of the new Twenty Twelve theme using Wordpress 3.4.2 and the development version of the Options Theme Framework by Devin Price. In Devin's tutorial, it shows of a way to implement 15 Google Web Fonts into the Theme Options page, but not all of them (roughly 560). I know I can create a "manual list", like in the tutorial that states each one with fallbacks, but this is time consuming and unproductive as Google may or may not add to, update, change or remove some of these fonts from their list. The list I've created above will ultimately store unavailable fonts the user thinks is there because of what they can see in the drop-down menu and it won't have any new ones - making the list and some selections obsolete. On the Google Developer API Web Fonts page, it talks briefly on retrieving a "dynamic list" using JSON/JavaScript. I was wondering how would I be able to pull the Google Web Fonts API into my Wordpress Theme Options page so I'm not creating my own list or have to constantly release an update to solve this issue. Could someone please walk me through what I would need to paste into my options.php, functions.php, /inc/options-framework.php file etc. or even in a new one to implement this? I've also had a look into some screencasts, plugins and tutorials on how it works, but none of them are specific enough for people just starting out. Please keep in mind I'm not the best coder... Thank you.

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• Scaling background without scaling foreground in platformer?

  - by David Xu

  I'm currently developing a platform game and I've run into a problem with scaling resolutions. I want a different resolution of the game to still display the foreground unscaled (characters, tiles, etc) but I want the background to be scaled to fit into the window. To explain this better, my viewport has 4 variables: (x, y, width, height) where x and y are the top left corner and width and height are the dimensions. These can be either 800x600, 1024x768 or 1280x960. When I design my levels, I design everything for the highest resolution (1280x960) and expect the game engine to scale it down if a user is running in a lower resolution. I have tried the following to make it work but nothing I've come up with solves it so far: scale = view->width/1280; drawX = x * scale; drawY = y * scale; (this makes the translation too small for low resolution) and scale = view->width/1280; bgWidth = background->width*scale; bgHeight = background->height*scale; drawX = x + background->width/2 - bgWidth/2; drawY = y + background->height/2 - bgHeight/2; (this makes the translation completely wrong at the edges of the map) The thing is, no matter what resolution the game is run at, the map remains the same size, and the foreground is unscaled. (With a lower resolution you just see less of the foreground in the viewport) I was wondering if anyone had any idea how to solve this problem? Thank you in advance!

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• PCI max throughput

  - by allentown

  Hypothetical here, but I want to understand. Say I have a hand me down machine, 4 PCI slots, 64-bit 33 MHz PCI. How much data can that PCI bus handle? System bus is 133 MHz. I want to use one slot for a SATA II card, and the rest for Gig-E cards, building out as fast a NAS as I can. I think one slot may be AGP2x, so that leaves me 2 for Gig-E and one for SATAT II. Will I saturate, what is the max bandwidth of the PCI bus?

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• Windows 2008R2 two node failover cluster creation fails

  - by Francois Wolmarans

  We have just installed two Windows 2008R2 Enterprise machines with identical hardware. When running the cluster validation everything is ok. When creating the cluster it fails with the following error: An error occurred while creating the cluster. An error occurred creating cluster 'CLUSTER04'. The parameter is incorrect The logfile on the first node where we are running our config from, does not show any errors. On the second node we get: The Cluster service is shutting down because quorum was lost. This could be due to the loss of network connectivity between some or all nodes in the cluster, or a failover of the witness disk. I've double checked and all communication between the servers are fine. Even when creating a one node cluster it gives the error. There are other failover clusters we have setup without any issues.

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• Computer Science Degrees and Real-World Experience

  - by Steven Elliott Jr

  Recently, at a family reunion-type event I was asked by a high school student how important it is to get a computer science degree in order to get a job as a programmer in lieu of actual programming experience. The kid has been working with Python and the Blender project as he's into making games and the like; it sounds like he has some decent programming chops. Now, as someone that has gone through a computer science degree my initial response to this question is to say, "You absolutely MUST get a computer science degree in order to get a job as a programmer!" However, as I thought about this I was unsure as to whether my initial reaction was due in part to my own suffering as a CS student or because I feel that this is actually the case. Now, for me, I can say that I rarely use anything that I learned in college, in terms of the extremely hard math, algorithms, etc, etc. but I did come away with a decent attitude and the willingness to work through tough problems. I just don't know what to tell this kid; I feel like I should tell him to do the CS degree but I have hired so many programmers that majored in things like English, Philosophy, and other liberal arts-type degrees, even some that never went to college. In fact my best developer, falls into this latter category. He got started writing software for his church or something and then it took off into a passion. So, while I know this is one of those juicy potential down vote questions, I am just curious as to what everyone else thinks about this topic. Would you tell a high school kid about this? Perhaps if he/she already knows a good deal of programming and loves it he doesn't need a CS degree and could expand his horizons with a liberal arts degree. I know one of the creators of the Django web framework was a American Literature major and he is obviously a pretty gifted developer. Anyway, thanks for the consideration.

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• Windows 2003 Server R2SP2 throws even ID 2269 after installing Excel WebPart in MOSS3

  - by Phil

  We recently added an Excel workbook webpart (read only excel file - no editing) on our Sharepoint 2007 server. Once we did that, approximately 3-4 times an hour event ID 2269 is shown in the Application Log and a few minutes after that, an event id 1002 is displayed in the system long and the Sharepoint Offfce Servers Application pool shuts down. We've already check the "Bypass traverse checking and DCOM settings) per the MS KB and I have opened a ticket with MS Support. Problem is that MS Suppoert (sharepoint) thinks it is an IIS problem and the IIS people think it is a Sharepoint issue. Anyone else seen this problem? If we remove the Excel webpart, everything goes back to normal. The App Pools, SP and SP Central Admin sites are all using the same domain service account. Thanks in advance, Phil

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• Protect me from this perl syn flood script [closed]

  - by Luka

  Possible Duplicate: How to best defend against a “slowloris” DOS attack against an Apache web server? As everybody here I was interested in hacking in a period of time, using a perl scripts. CSF is protecting me from every perl script which can make damage. But not from this one here: http://pastebin.com/CfRiSVkQ It's Syn Flood script, when I attack my dedicated server from another dedicated with 100MBPS link csf is detecting the attack and he always block attackers address but I am flooded and sites are down, I get email from csf, but attack is still damaging sites! Then I need to restart httpd, csf and sites are online again...

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• iOS 5: Enable Android Style Auto Correction Feature With A Simple Trick

  - by Gopinath

  Apple generally don’t let its users to play with their devices, but seems to be these days there are few things slipping through the nets. Smart users are able find some hacks and enable new features on iOS devices! Few days ago we heard about the hidden panorama feature built into iOS 5 and it could be enabled on a jail broken device. Here come another hidden feature unearthed by a smart geek in iOS 5 : enable Android style auto-correction on on-screen keyboard. Luckily to enable this feature you don’t need to jailbreak, all you need to do is to take backup of your device, edit a file and restore it back. Boom!  That’s it. To enable auto corrections feature on the on-screen keyboard of iOS 5 follow these steps Download iBackupBot and install it on your machine. It’s works on both Windows and Mac OS X. Backup your iPhone, iPod, or iPad with iTunes – plug in your iOS device and sync it. Open iBackupBot, locate your most recent backup and click on it Scroll down to Library/Preferences/com.apple.keyboard.plist and double-click on it.   Replace everything between the two <dict> with the following <key>KeyboardAutocorrectionLists</key> <string>YES</string> Save the plist file, then hit the "Restore From Backup" button in iBackupbot. Reboot your device to see the auto correction feature in action on your device’s on-screen keyboard. via lifehacker This article titled,iOS 5: Enable Android Style Auto Correction Feature With A Simple Trick, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• Problems with RDC into Win2008 Server

  - by Jason

  I'm having the same problem with a variety of new machines that I have built. When I RDC into the machine, the display does not update correctly. I get partial images, or refreshes only every 20-30 seconds. It is completely unusable. Eventually, it will even disconnect even though I am logged in. From RDCing into the machine, it looks like the machine is down, but it is fine. I can connect to it with an monitor and the problem is not visible. I think it is a problem with my network configuration. What should I look for to resolve this?

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• Automatically keeping two excel data tables in-sync (w/out VBA)

  - by Neil

  I'm putting together a workbook for tracking a stock portfolio. The primary sheet contains a table with the list of the transactions. From this I would like to create an overview table on another sheet with only one row per unique stock symbol that includes things like cost basis, returns, etc. The problem is that nothing I've tried updates the overview table correctly when rows are added to the transaction table. The closest I've got is something like the following: http://www.get-digital-help.com/2009/04/14/create-a-unique-alphabetically-sorted-list-extracted-from-a-column/ However, this requires applying that formula to every cell in the primary column of the overview sheet. And even then the range of the table isn't extended down to include new rows as they become valid. Essentially I'm looking for a way that auto-adds rows to a table and copies the formula based on a different table changing without using VBA. Trivial example data Sheet1 Symbol Type Shares Price F Buy 100 12 MSFT Buy 100 25 MSFT Sell 50 28 F Buy 100 16 Sheet2 Symbol Quantity F 200 MSFT 50

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• Dell D620 Windows 7 Blank screen

  - by Dave Arkell

  When I installed Windows 7 on my Dell D620 it was all fine until a couple of days later most times when I either shut down or suspend (by closing the lid). When I unsuspend or startup the computer, there is often a completely blank screen (can't see post screen or anything), and restarting doesn't help. I've found that I can eventually bring it back up again by suspending and unsuspending a few times, but obviously this is not ideal. Has anyone else experienced this? I think it is a driver issue, that somehow the driver is putting the video card into a certain mode that it forgets how to get it back out of. Any ideas on a better solution than my switching off and on business? Edit: Turns out that the video card had burned out! IT managed to get me a new mainboard sorted for me.

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• Am I wrong to disagree with A Gentle Introduction to symfony's template best practices?

  - by AndrewKS

  I am currently learning symfony and going through the book A Gentle Introduction to symfony and came across this section in "Chapter 4: The Basics of Page Creation" on creating templates (or views): "If you need to execute some PHP code in the template, you should avoid using the usual PHP syntax, as shown in Listing 4-4. Instead, write your templates using the PHP alternative syntax, as shown in Listing 4-5, to keep the code understandable for non-PHP programmers." Listing 4-4 - The Usual PHP Syntax, Good for Actions, But Bad for Templates <p>Hello, world!</p> <?php if ($test) { echo "<p>".time()."</p>"; } ?> (The ironic thing about this is that echo statement would look even better if time was variable declared in the controller, because then you could just embed the variable in the string instead of concatenating) Listing 4-5 - The Alternative PHP Syntax, Good for Templates <p>Hello, world!</p> <?php if ($test): ?> <p><?php echo time(); ?> </p><?php endif; ?> I fail to see how listing 4-5 makes the code "understandable for non-PHP programmers", and its readability is shaky at best. 4-4 looks much more readable to me. Are there any programmers who are using symfony that write their templates like those in 4-4 rather than 4-5? Are there reasons I should use one over the other? There is the very slim chance that somewhere down the road someone less technical could be editing it the template, but how does 4-5 actually make it more understandable to them?

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• Medion Akoya E5211 won't boot up or go into BIOS

  - by jay

  My Medion Akoya kept getting a blue screen and shutting down. Now when I try and restart the laptop, I just get a blank screen with a flashing _ in the top left corner. It doesnt beep when turned on – only if I press buttons. It doesn't give me the option to start BIOS or set up. I have tried pressing F8, F12, F2 and F3 but still nothing happens. It just goes to the the black screen with the flashing _ It is running Windows Visa Home Basic.

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• How to disallow use of disable_functions in?

  - by Gaia

  I'm obviously not the first one to have this problem, but I cannot not find an answer to this situation. I want to lock down PHP a bit, more specifically the use disable_functions. The environment is CentOS 6.2/PHP 5.3.3 fcgid/Apache 2.2.15: Whats the proper apache config (AllowOverride, etc) to disable any PHP setting to be changed via .htaccess? All other overrides are ok (current setting is AllowOverride All) Whats the proper config to forbid effective use of disable_functions in all but the master php.ini (as in forbid use of disable_functions in /home/myvhost/etc/php5/php.ini or any directory within in that vhost public_html. another way to say this: the only effective disable_functions comes from the master php.ini)? If #2 is not possible, at least whats the proper config to disallow a vhost owner to effectively use any php.ini but the vhost main one (/home/myvhost/etc/php5/php.ini)? Thanks

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• What is the best answer for: "my Internet is not working"?

  - by Maciek Sawicki

  Hi, I look for work in IT Support. One of interview questions is: what would you first say if user call You and tell my Internet is not working? I think about it a lot and still don't know what is correct answerer nor what answer my future employer expects. My choice would be something like: What part of Internet? (but more polite). For example I could ask for opening web page that works on my PC. Please give only serious answers. If You want BOFH or "The website is down" style answers I can create separate question for that.

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• Setting Sql server security rights for multiple situations

  - by DanDan

  We have an application which uses an instance of Sql Server locally for its backend storage. The administrator windows login has had its sysadmin right revoked, and instead two sql logins have been created; one for the application with a secret password and one read only login we let users view the raw data with. This was working fine until we moved on FileStreams, which requires intergrated windows authentication. So now the sql server logins must be replaced. As a result, I am now reviewing all of our logins but I am not sure how it is possible. It seems that the application needs full read/write access, yet I still need to lock down writing to the tables so the user cannot login into the database and delete data randomly. Does anyone have any tips for setting multiple levels of security using intergrated windows logins, or can you direct me to any further reading? Thanks.

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