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• What makes a person contribute to opensource? [duplicate]

  - by Jibin

  This question already has an answer here: Why develop free, open source programs? [closed] 14 answers I know this is controversial, but.. There are many great projects like Apache Webserver or Hadoop provided by the OpenSource Community. I often feel that the people that actually benefit (financially), from these projects are developers like me, sitting in India, working for MNCs, who has never contributed anything to any opensource project so far, but earn handsomely due to my basic googling skills & the community provided documentation. Is it fair ? I mean no other industry in the world face such dilemma.Those who work get paid. I mean I almost am starting to feel guilty of taking such advantage of some thing that I contribute nothing to. I had to do projects every semester in college (we could choose projects) & I used to enjoy coding then. I want to contribute. But contributing to opensource is not a task [unlike college or office work]. And life is so busy .. Are all these opensource contributors really jobless ?[just kidding..] Could someone please share some personal experiences on how you guys started contributing or any advice on why I should contribute or what attitude in life makes you keep aside time or is it that you just crazly love writing code or is it that you just love to see your name in the contributors list or do you have a local coding group you hang out with ? Do you feel I am destined to do this ? This is my part of contributing back to the world ? Whats that basic mentality that make you guys want to contribute, while I just want to finish my work and go home. What makes you guys tick ?

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• CheckMemoryAllocationGame Sample

  - by Michael B. McLaughlin

  Many times I’ve found myself wondering how much GC memory some operation allocates. This is primarily in the context of XNA games due to the desire to avoid generating garbage and thus triggering a GC collection. Many times I’ve written simple programs to check allocations. I did it again recently. It occurred to me that many XNA developers find themselves asking this question from time to time. So I cleaned up my sample and published it on my website. Feel free to download it and put it to use. It’s rather thoroughly commented. The location where you insert the code you wish to check is in the Update method found in Game1.cs. The default that I put in is a line of code that generates a new Guid using Guid.NewGuid (which, if you’re curious, does not create any heap allocations). Read all of the comments in the Update method (at the very least) to make sure that your code is measured properly. It’s important to make sure that you meaningfully reference any thing you create after the second call to get the memory or else (in Release configuration at least) you will likely get incorrect results. Anyway, it should make sense when you read the comments and if not, feel free to post a comment here or ask me on Twitter. You can find my utilities and code samples page here: http://www.bobtacoindustries.com/developers/utils/Default.aspx To download CheckMemoryAllocationGame’s source code directly: http://www.bobtacoindustries.com/developers/utils/CheckMemoryAllocationGame.zip (If you’re looking to do this outside of the context of an XNA game, the measurement code in the Update method can easily be adapted into, e.g., a C# Windows Console application. In the past I mostly did that, actually. But I didn’t feel like adding references to all the XNA assemblies this time and… anyway, if you want you can easily convert it to a console application. If there’s any demand for it, I’ll do it myself and update this post when I get a chance.)

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• Reaching Intermediate Programming Status

  - by George Stocker

  I am a software engineer that's had positions programming in VBA (though I dare not consider that 'real' experience, as it was trial and error!), Perl w/ CGI, C#, and ASP.NET. The latter two are post-undergraduate, with my entrance into the 'real world'. I'm 2 years out of college, and have had 5 years of experience (total) across the languages I've mentioned. However, when it comes to my resume, I can only put 2 years down for C#, and less than a year down for ASP.NET. I feel like I know C#, but I still have to spend time going 'What does this method do?', whereas some of the more senior level engineers can immediately say, "Oh, Method X does this, without ever having looked at that method before." So I know empirically that there's a gulf there, but I'm not exactly sure how to bridge it. I've started programming in Project Euler, and I picked up a book on design patterns, but I still feel like I spend each day treading water, instead of moving forward. That isn't to say that I don't feel like I've made progress, it just means that as far as I come each day, I still see the mountain top way off in the distance. My question is this: How did you overcome this plateau? How long did it take you? What methods can you suggest to assist me in this? I've read through Code Complete, The Mythical Man Month, and CLR via C#, 2nd edition -- my question is: What do I do now? Edit: I just found this question on projects for an intermediate level programmer. I think it adds to the discussion (though it does not supplant my question). As such, I'm adding it to the question as a "For More Information".

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• From Oracle PL/SQL Developer to Java programmer - Is it a good decision? [on hold]

  - by user3554231

  I will explain my question in simple words. I have little over 1 year experience in Oracle. My dream is to be "called" as a 'Developer', be it database developer if not software developer. But right now I don't develop anything neither I am in good touch with PL/SQL and other Oracle Utilites like SQL*LOADER, shell scripting and stuff like that as I am only a System Analyst where I analyze and configure database using SQL queries. To be honest, I know very basic PL/SQL and good knowledge in SQL but that won't ever give me a chance to be a developer as I am lagging way behind the "real" developers knowledge. Now I feel I should learn JAVA as well so that I can cope up with the competition. But I am too scared to learn new things as it will take much more time which will indirectly increase my useless work experince(just analyzing) which values nothing in todays market. Moreover that, I am too lazy to work hard i.e. to study and not to work during office hours. To sum it up I am lazy and confused and scared but I want to learn things as well but don't know if I am intelligent enough to learn whole of PL/SQL or to master any other language. Is there any other way from which I can feel confident? Actually I even feel sometimes that after 2-3 years if I still don't achieve my goal, I won't ever be able to reach my destination. I just want to live my dream of being a developer. Give me some tips and hopes but not false hopes.

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• Being stupid to get better productivity?

  - by loki2302

  I've spent a lot of time reading different books about "good design", "design patterns", etc. I'm a big fan of the SOLID approach and every time I need to write a simple piece of code, I think about the future. So, if implementing a new feature or a bug fix requires just adding three lines of code like this: if(xxx) { doSomething(); } It doesn't mean I'll do it this way. If I feel like this piece of code is likely to become larger in the nearest future, I'll think of adding abstractions, moving this functionality somewhere else and so on. The goal I'm pursuing is keeping average complexity the same as it was before my changes. I believe, that from the code standpoint, it's quite a good idea - my code is never long enough, and it's quite easy to understand the meanings for different entities, like classes, methods, and relations between classes and objects. The problem is, it takes too much time, and I often feel like it would be better if I just implemented that feature "as is". It's just about "three lines of code" vs. "new interface + two classes to implement that interface". From a product standpoint (when we're talking about the result), the things I do are quite senseless. I know that if we're going to work on the next version, having good code is really great. But on the other side, the time you've spent to make your code "good" may have been spent for implementing a couple of useful features. I often feel very unsatisfied with my results - good code that only can do A is worse than bad code that can do A, B, C, and D. Are there any books, articles, blogs, or your ideas that may help with developing one's "being stupid" approach?

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• Auto-organized / smart inventory system?

  - by VeXe

  for the past week I've been working on an inventory system with Unity3D. At first I got help from the guys at Design3 but it wasn't too long till we split path, because I really didn't like the way they did their code, it didn't have any smell of OOP whatsoever. I took it further steps ahead - items take more than one slot, advanced placement system (items tries their best to find the best close fit), local mouse system (mouse gets trapped in active bag area), etc. Here's a demo of my work. What we would like to have in our game, is an auto-organizing feature - not auto-sort. We want this feature because our inventory's going to be in 'real-time' - not like in Resident Evil 1,2,3 etc where you would pause the game and do things in your inventory. Now imagine your self in a sticky situation surrounded by zombies, and you don't have bullets, you look around, you see that there are bullets nearby on the ground, so you go for them and try to pick them up, but they don't fit! you look at your inventory and find out that if you reorganize some of the items, it will fit! - now the player - in that situation doesn't have time to reorganize because he's surrounded with zombies and will die if he stops and organizes the inventory to make space (remember inventory in real-time, no pausing) - wouldn't it be nice for that to happen automatically? - Yes! (I believe this has been implemented in some games like Dungeon siege or something, so sure it's doable) take a look at this picture for example: Yes, so if you auto-sort the issue you will get your spaces but it's bad because: 1- Expensive: it doesn't need a whole sort operation to free those spaces, in the first picture, just slide the red item at the bottom to the very left, and you get the same spaces that you got from the auto-sort. 2- It's annoying to the player: "Who the F told you to re-order my stuff?" I'm not asking for "How to write the code" for this, I'm just asking for some guidance, where to look, what algorithms are involved? Is this something related to graphs and shortest path stuff? I hope not cuz I didn't manage to continue my college studies :/ But even if it is, just tell me and I will learn the stuff related. Notice there could be more than just one solution. So I guess the first thing I have to do is figure out if the situation is 'solvable' - if I know how to determine if a situation is solvable or not, then I can 'solve' it. I just need to know the conditions that makes it 'solvable'. And I believe there must be some algorithm/data structure for this. Here's a pic for more than one solution of trying to fit a 1x3 item: The arrows show just one of the solutions, but if you look you will find more than one. This is what I ultimately not auto-sorting but find a solution and applying it. Note that if I spend time on it I will come up with a way to solve it, but it wouldn't be the best way, it's like, holding a car wheel with your feet instead of your hands! XD Or just like trying to solve an issue that requires arrays, but you're not yet aware of their existence! So what is the right approach to this? Hope somebody helps, thanks a lot in advance :)

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• Who wants to keep developing?

  - by wcm

  I'm a bit older than most of my peers, having come into programming in my mid 30's. The thing is, I love what I do. Most of my project managers and bosses are my age or younger. I'm really OK with that. I, however, have no desire to climb the company ladder. While I regularly take on the responsibility of making sure that projects get done and my peers often look to me for programming and architectural guidance, I just like writing code and want to keep doing it for as long as possible. Honestly, my only real goal is grow into being a crusty old tech lead until I retire. IF I retire. I would so much rather learn the latest and greatest new technology than PMP my resume. Are there others out there who feel like this because I often feel rather alone in my pathology? EDIT Something I didn't make clear is that I really like helping and mentoring other developers. It makes me feel good and useful and (to be brutaly honest) important.

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• Inspiring People

  - by barrem23

  So I work with a few people that I feel are intelligent but don't seem to be working out well. After working with them for a while I have seen the flashes of brilliance but mostly I see a reliance on others. What I mean by this is that most times it seems like at the first moment of trouble they go ask for help. Now personally I am all for helping and spend a significant portion of time helping others with whatever they need, but after helping others for so long I have noticed a disturbing trend. These people seem terrified that they might make a mistake and because of this they don't try. So my question is how can I motivate someone who is afraid of making a mistake? In my career I have always learned the most by making mistakes and learning from them. Personally I feel that if I hadn't learned so much I would never have made it as far as I have. So how can I get them to discover that they have the ability to figure it out themselves and that if they make a mistake and learn from it they will be better off. I feel that if I can discover some way to properly motivate them that we all will be better off.

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• Secondment promotion promises

  - by user75460

  I'm a Java developer at a large FTSE 30 company. My line manager approached me and asked if I'd like to be the teams lead developer. I was keen to accept. Initially he said I'd be acting-up for 3 months, then changed his tune and said I would be doing a 6 month secondment. During this time, he has got himself promoted and I have a new line manager. I have been very successful during this secondment and reviews have been overwhelmingly positive: both from my former line manager and current line manager. However, six months on, no lead role has been created in the organization and a new director has re-organised the structure of the team: two senior roles (senior Android and senior iOS) are going to be created. I feel a bit put-out that my secondment has amounted to nothing. I could have just done nothing and then applied for the senior role 6 months later (which I feel aren't as marketable as Lead developer). During my secondment I have basically become TA, senior developer, line manager and general go-to guy for all things (across Android and iOS). What do you think I should do, and has my company abused it's position? I feel they have offered a secondment to a role that they never really planned to create. During this time I have received no financial benefit for doing a more senior role.

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• WiX 3 Tutorial: Custom EULA License and MSI localization

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  In this part of the ongoing Wix tutorial series we’ll take a look at how to localize your MSI into different languages. We’re still the mighty SuperForm: Program that takes care of all your label color needs. :) Localizing the MSI With WiX 3.0 localizing an MSI is pretty much a simple and straightforward process. First let look at the WiX project Properties->Build. There you can see "Cultures to build" textbox. Put specific cultures to build into the testbox or leave it empty to build all of them. Cultures have to be in correct culture format like en-US, en-GB or de-DE. Next we have to tell WiX which cultures we actually have in our project. Take a look at the first post in the series about Solution/Project structure and look at the Lang directory in the project structure picture. There we have de-de and en-us subfolders each with its own localized stuff. In the subfolders pay attention to the WXL files Loc_de-de.wxl and Loc_en-us.wxl. Each one has a <String Id="LANG"> under the WixLocalization root node. By including the string with id LANG we tell WiX we want that culture built. For English we have <String Id="LANG">1033</String>, for German <String Id="LANG">1031</String> in Loc_de-de.wxl and for French we’d have to create another file Loc_fr-FR.wxl and put <String Id="LANG">1036</String>. WXL files are localization files. Any string we want to localize we have to put in there. To reference it we use loc keyword like this: !(loc.IdOfTheVariable) => !(loc.MustCloseSuperForm) This is our Loc_en-us.wxl. Note that German wxl has an identical structure but values are in German. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><WixLocalization Culture="en-us" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/2006/localization" Codepage="1252"> <String Id="LANG">1033</String> <String Id="ProductName">SuperForm</String> <String Id="LicenseRtf" Overridable="yes">\Lang\en-us\EULA_en-us.rtf</String> <String Id="ManufacturerName">My Company Name</String> <String Id="AppNotSupported">This application is is not supported on your current OS. Minimal OS supported is Windows XP SP2</String> <String Id="DotNetFrameworkNeeded">.NET Framework 3.5 is required. Please install the .NET Framework then run this installer again.</String> <String Id="MustCloseSuperForm">Must close SuperForm!</String> <String Id="SuperFormNewerVersionInstalled">A newer version of !(loc.ProductName) is already installed.</String> <String Id="ProductKeyCheckDialog_Title">!(loc.ProductName) setup</String> <String Id="ProductKeyCheckDialogControls_Title">!(loc.ProductName) Product check</String> <String Id="ProductKeyCheckDialogControls_Description">Plese Enter following information to perform the licence check.</String> <String Id="ProductKeyCheckDialogControls_FullName">Full Name:</String> <String Id="ProductKeyCheckDialogControls_Organization">Organization:</String> <String Id="ProductKeyCheckDialogControls_ProductKey">Product Key:</String> <String Id="ProductKeyCheckDialogControls_InvalidProductKey">The product key you entered is invalid. Please call user support.</String> </WixLocalization>   As you can see from the file we can use localization variables in other variables like we do for SuperFormNewerVersionInstalled string. ProductKeyCheckDialog* strings are to localize a custom dialog for Product key check which we’ll look at in the next post. Built in dialog text localization Under the de-de folder there’s also the WixUI_de-de.wxl file. This files contains German translations of all texts that are in WiX built in dialogs. It can be downloaded from WiX 3.0.5419.0 Source Forge site. Download the wix3-sources.zip and go to \src\ext\UIExtension\wixlib. There you’ll find already translated all WiX texts in 12 Languages. Localizing the custom EULA license Here it gets ugly. We can override the default EULA license easily by overriding WixUILicenseRtf WiX variable like this: <WixVariable Id="WixUILicenseRtf" Value="License.rtf" /> where License.rtf is the name of your custom EULA license file. The downside of this method is that you can only have one license file which means no localization for it. That’s why we need to make a workaround. License is checked on a dialog name LicenseAgreementDialog. What we have to do is overwrite that dialog and insert the functionality for localization. This is a code for LicenseAgreementDialogOverwritten.wxs, an overwritten LicenseAgreementDialog that supports localization. LicenseAcceptedOverwritten replaces the LicenseAccepted built in variable. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?><Wix xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/2006/wi"> <Fragment> <UI> <Dialog Id="LicenseAgreementDialogOverwritten" Width="370" Height="270" Title="!(loc.LicenseAgreementDlg_Title)"> <Control Id="LicenseAcceptedOverwrittenCheckBox" Type="CheckBox" X="20" Y="207" Width="330" Height="18" CheckBoxValue="1" Property="LicenseAcceptedOverwritten" Text="!(loc.LicenseAgreementDlgLicenseAcceptedCheckBox)" /> <Control Id="Back" Type="PushButton" X="180" Y="243" Width="56" Height="17" Text="!(loc.WixUIBack)" /> <Control Id="Next" Type="PushButton" X="236" Y="243" Width="56" Height="17" Default="yes" Text="!(loc.WixUINext)"> <Publish Event="SpawnWaitDialog" Value="WaitForCostingDlg">CostingComplete = 1</Publish> <Condition Action="disable"> <![CDATA[ LicenseAcceptedOverwritten <> "1" ]]> </Condition> <Condition Action="enable">LicenseAcceptedOverwritten = "1"</Condition> </Control> <Control Id="Cancel" Type="PushButton" X="304" Y="243" Width="56" Height="17" Cancel="yes" Text="!(loc.WixUICancel)"> <Publish Event="SpawnDialog" Value="CancelDlg">1</Publish> </Control> <Control Id="BannerBitmap" Type="Bitmap" X="0" Y="0" Width="370" Height="44" TabSkip="no" Text="!(loc.LicenseAgreementDlgBannerBitmap)" /> <Control Id="LicenseText" Type="ScrollableText" X="20" Y="60" Width="330" Height="140" Sunken="yes" TabSkip="no"> <!-- This is original line --> <!--<Text SourceFile="!(wix.WixUILicenseRtf=$(var.LicenseRtf))" />--> <!-- To enable EULA localization we change it to this --> <Text SourceFile="$(var.ProjectDir)\!(loc.LicenseRtf)" /> <!-- In each of localization files (wxl) put line like this: <String Id="LicenseRtf" Overridable="yes">\Lang\en-us\EULA_en-us.rtf</String>--> </Control> <Control Id="Print" Type="PushButton" X="112" Y="243" Width="56" Height="17" Text="!(loc.WixUIPrint)"> <Publish Event="DoAction" Value="WixUIPrintEula">1</Publish> </Control> <Control Id="BannerLine" Type="Line" X="0" Y="44" Width="370" Height="0" /> <Control Id="BottomLine" Type="Line" X="0" Y="234" Width="370" Height="0" /> <Control Id="Description" Type="Text" X="25" Y="23" Width="340" Height="15" Transparent="yes" NoPrefix="yes" Text="!(loc.LicenseAgreementDlgDescription)" /> <Control Id="Title" Type="Text" X="15" Y="6" Width="200" Height="15" Transparent="yes" NoPrefix="yes" Text="!(loc.LicenseAgreementDlgTitle)" /> </Dialog> </UI> </Fragment></Wix>   Look at the Control with Id "LicenseText” and read the comments. We’ve changed the original license text source to "$(var.ProjectDir)\!(loc.LicenseRtf)". var.ProjectDir is the directory of the project file. The !(loc.LicenseRtf) is where the magic happens. Scroll up and take a look at the wxl localization file example. We have the LicenseRtf declared there and it’s been made overridable so developers can change it if they want. The value of the LicenseRtf is the path to our localized EULA relative to the WiX project directory. With little hacking we’ve achieved a fully localizable installer package.   The final step is to insert the extended LicenseAgreementDialogOverwritten license dialog into the installer GUI chain. This is how it’s done under the <UI> node of course.   <UI> <!-- code to be discussed in later posts –> <!-- BEGIN UI LOGIC FOR CLEAN INSTALLER --> <Publish Dialog="WelcomeDlg" Control="Next" Event="NewDialog" Value="LicenseAgreementDialogOverwritten">1</Publish> <Publish Dialog="LicenseAgreementDialogOverwritten" Control="Back" Event="NewDialog" Value="WelcomeDlg">1</Publish> <Publish Dialog="LicenseAgreementDialogOverwritten" Control="Next" Event="NewDialog" Value="ProductKeyCheckDialog">LicenseAcceptedOverwritten = "1" AND NOT OLDER_VERSION_FOUND</Publish> <Publish Dialog="InstallDirDlg" Control="Back" Event="NewDialog" Value="ProductKeyCheckDialog">1</Publish> <!-- END UI LOGIC FOR CLEAN INSTALLER –> <!-- code to be discussed in later posts --></UI> For a thing that should be simple for the end developer to do, localization can be a bit advanced for the novice WiXer. Hope this post makes the journey easier and that next versions of WiX improve this process. WiX 3 tutorial by Mladen Prajdic navigation WiX 3 Tutorial: Solution/Project structure and Dev resources WiX 3 Tutorial: Understanding main wxs and wxi file WiX 3 Tutorial: Generating file/directory fragments with Heat.exe  WiX 3 Tutorial: Custom EULA License and MSI localization WiX 3 Tutorial: Product Key Check custom action WiX 3 Tutorial: Building an updater WiX 3 Tutorial: Icons and installer pictures WiX 3 Tutorial: Creating a Bootstrapper

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• How do I copy the layout from a header of a JTabbedPane onto a JPanel?

  - by Snail

  I have created a "CollapsingPanel"class/sort of a JTabbedPane (code skeleton can be found at http://www.coderanch.com/t/341737/Swing-AWT-SWT-JFace/java/Expand-Collapse-Panels). It is in other words a lot of headers which you click on to show a hidden Panel. At the moment these header-panels are a rectangular box with a LineBorder around them. That is ugly! I'm wondering if there is a way to copy the layout that the JTabbedPane uses for its headers/titles (which is inhierted from Look&Feel I assume) and use it on my JPanel-based headers? So that my headers get a smooth look which is in line with the rest of the program (based on Look&Feel!) instead of looking like alien flat blocks. Illustrated below with the headers nicely circled in green ;) I want to apply the header-look from 2nd picture over the red header JPanel in picture 1: Picture 1: hxxp://img7.imageshack.us/img7/2319/34158982.png - change to http, I got <10 rep :( Pictrue 2: hxxp://img46.imageshack.us/img46/2572/jtabpane.png

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• Dotfuscator Deep Dive with WP7

  - by Bil Simser

  I thought I would share some experience with code obfuscation (specifically the Dotfuscator product) and Windows Phone 7 apps. These days twitter is a buzz with black hat and white operations coming out about how the marketplace is insecure and Microsoft failed, blah, blah, blah. So it’s that much more important to protect your intellectual property. You should protect it no matter what when releasing apps into the wild but more so when someone is paying for them. You want to protect the time and effort that went into your code and have some comfort that the casual hacker isn’t going to usurp your next best thing. Enter code obfuscation. Code obfuscation is one tool that can help protect your IP. Basically it goes into your compiled assemblies, rewrites things at an IL level (like renaming methods and classes and hiding logic flow) and rewrites it back so that the assembly or executable is still fully functional but prying eyes using a tool like ILDASM or Reflector can’t see what’s going on.  You can read more about code obfuscation here on Wikipedia. A word to the wise. Code obfuscation isn’t 100% secure. More so on the WP7 platform where the OS expects certain things to be as they were meant to be. So don’t expect 100% obfuscation of every class and every method and every property. It’s just not going to happen. What this does do is give you some level of protection but don’t put all your eggs in one basket and call it done. Like I said, this is just one step in the process. There are a few tools out there that provide code obfuscation and support the Windows Phone 7 platform (see links to other tools at the end of this post). One such tool is Dotfuscator from PreEmptive solutions. The thing about Dotfuscator is that they’ve struck a deal with Microsoft to provide a *free* copy of their commercial product for Windows Phone 7. The only drawback is that it only runs until March 31, 2010. However it’s a good place to start and the focus of this article. Getting Started When you fire up Dotfuscator you’re presented with a dialog to start a new project or load a previous one. We’ll start with a new project. You’re then looking at a somewhat blank screen that shows an Input tab (among others) and you’re probably wondering what to do? Click on the folder icon (first one) and browse to where your xap file is. At this point you can save the project and click on the arrow to start the process. Bam! You’re done. Right? Think again. The program did indeed run and create a new version of your xap (doing it’s thing and rewriting back your *obfuscated* assemblies) but let’s take a look at the assembly in Reflector to see the end result. Remember a xap file is really just a glorified zip file (or cab file if you prefer). When you ran Dotfuscator for the first time with the default settings you’ll see it created a new version of your xap in a folder under “My Documents” called “Dotfuscated” (you can configure the output directory in settings). Here’s the new xap file. Since a xap is just a zip, rename it to .cab or .zip or something and open it with your favorite unarchive program (I use WinRar but it doesn’t matter as long as it can unzip files). If you already have the xap file associated with your unarchive tool the rename isn’t needed. Once renamed extract the contents of the xap to your hard drive: Now you’ll have a folder with the contents of the xap file extracted: Double click or load up your assembly (WindowsPhoneDataBoundApplication1.dll in the example) in Reflector and let’s see the results: Hmm. That doesn’t look right. I can see all the methods and the code is all there for my LoadData method I wanted to protect. Product failure. Let’s return it for a refund. Hold your horses. We need to check out the settings in the program first. Remember when we loaded up our xap file. It started us on the Input tab but there was a settings tab before that. Wonder what it does? Here’s the default settings: Renaming Taking a closer look, all of the settings in Feature are disabled. WTF? Yeah, it leaves me scratching my head why an obfuscator by default doesn’t obfuscate. However it’s a simple fix to change these settings. Let’s enable Renaming as it sounds like a good start. Renaming obscures code by renaming methods and fields to names that are not understandable. Great. Run the tool again and go through the process of unzipping the updated xap and let’s take a look in Reflector again at our project. This looks a lot better. Lots of methods named a, b, c, d, etc. That’ll help slow hackers down a bit. What about our logic that we spent days weeks on? Let’s take a look at the LoadData method: What gives? We have renaming enabled but all of our code is still there. If you look through all your methods you’ll find it’s still sitting there out in the open. Control Flow Back to the settings page again. Let’s enable Control Flow now. Control Flow obfuscation synthesizes branching, conditional, and iterative constructs (such as if, for, and while) that produce valid executable logic, but yield non-deterministic semantic results when decompilation is attempted. In other words, the code runs as before, but decompilers cannot reproduce the original code. Do the dance again and let’s see the results in Reflector. Ahh, that’s better. Methods renamed *and* nobody can look at our LoadData method now. Life is good. More than Minimum This is the bare minimum to obfuscate your xap to at least a somewhat comfortable level. However I did find that while this worked in my Hello World demo, it didn’t work on one of my real world apps. I had to do some extra tweaking with that. Below are the screens that I used on one app that worked. I’m not sure what it was about the app that the approach above didn’t work with (maybe the extra assembly?) but it works and I’m happy with it. YMMV. Remember to test your obfuscated app on your device first before submitting to ensure you haven’t obfuscated the obfuscator. settings tab: rename tab: string encryption tab: premark tab: A few final notes Play with the settings and keep bumping up the bar to try to get as much obfuscation as you can. The more the better but remember you can overdo it. Always (always, always, always) deploy your obfuscated xap to your device and test it before submitting to the marketplace. I didn’t and got rejected because I had gone overboard with the obfuscation so the app wouldn’t launch at all. Not everything is going to be obfuscated. Specifically I don’t see a way to obfuscate auto properties and a few other language features. Again, if you crank the settings up you might hide these but I haven’t spent a lot of time optimizing the process. Some people might say to obfuscate your xaml using string encryption but again, test, test, test. Xaml is picky so too much obfuscation (or any) might disable your app or produce odd rendering effets. Remember, obfuscation is not 100% secure! Don’t rely on it as a sole way of protecting your assets. Other Tools Dotfuscator is one just product and isn’t the end-all be-all to obfuscation so check out others below. For example, Crypto can make it so Reflector doesn’t even recognize the app as a .NET one and won’t open it. Others can encrypt resources and Xaml markup files. Here are some other obfuscators that support the Windows Phone 7 platform. Feel free to give them a try and let people know your experience with them! Dotfuscator Windows Phone Edition Crypto Obfuscator for .NET DeepSea Obfuscation

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• C#: String Concatenation vs Format vs StringBuilder

  - by James Michael Hare

  I was looking through my groups’ C# coding standards the other day and there were a couple of legacy items in there that caught my eye.  They had been passed down from committee to committee so many times that no one even thought to second guess and try them for a long time.  It’s yet another example of how micro-optimizations can often get the best of us and cause us to write code that is not as maintainable as it could be for the sake of squeezing an extra ounce of performance out of our software. So the two standards in question were these, in paraphrase: Prefer StringBuilder or string.Format() to string concatenation. Prefer string.Equals() with case-insensitive option to string.ToUpper().Equals(). Now some of you may already know what my results are going to show, as these items have been compared before on many blogs, but I think it’s always worth repeating and trying these yourself.  So let’s dig in. The first test was a pretty standard one.  When concattenating strings, what is the best choice: StringBuilder, string concattenation, or string.Format()? So before we being I read in a number of iterations from the console and a length of each string to generate.  Then I generate that many random strings of the given length and an array to hold the results.  Why am I so keen to keep the results?  Because I want to be able to snapshot the memory and don’t want garbage collection to collect the strings, hence the array to keep hold of them.  I also didn’t want the random strings to be part of the allocation, so I pre-allocate them and the array up front before the snapshot.  So in the code snippets below: num – Number of iterations. strings – Array of randomly generated strings. results – Array to hold the results of the concatenation tests. timer – A System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch() instance to time code execution. start – Beginning memory size. stop – Ending memory size. after – Memory size after final GC. So first, let’s look at the concatenation loop: 1: // build num strings using concattenation. 2: for (int i = 0; i < num; i++) 3: { 4: results[i] = "This is test #" + i + " with a result of " + strings[i]; 5: } Pretty standard, right?  Next for string.Format(): 1: // build strings using string.Format() 2: for (int i = 0; i < num; i++) 3: { 4: results[i] = string.Format("This is test #{0} with a result of {1}", i, strings[i]); 5: }   Finally, StringBuilder: 1: // build strings using StringBuilder 2: for (int i = 0; i < num; i++) 3: { 4: var builder = new StringBuilder(); 5: builder.Append("This is test #"); 6: builder.Append(i); 7: builder.Append(" with a result of "); 8: builder.Append(strings[i]); 9: results[i] = builder.ToString(); 10: } So I take each of these loops, and time them by using a block like this: 1: // get the total amount of memory used, true tells it to run GC first. 2: start = System.GC.GetTotalMemory(true); 3:  4: // restart the timer 5: timer.Reset(); 6: timer.Start(); 7:  8: // *** code to time and measure goes here. *** 9:  10: // get the current amount of memory, stop the timer, then get memory after GC. 11: stop = System.GC.GetTotalMemory(false); 12: timer.Stop(); 13: other = System.GC.GetTotalMemory(true); So let’s look at what happens when I run each of these blocks through the timer and memory check at 500,000 iterations: 1: Operator + - Time: 547, Memory: 56104540/55595960 - 500000 2: string.Format() - Time: 749, Memory: 57295812/55595960 - 500000 3: StringBuilder - Time: 608, Memory: 55312888/55595960 – 500000   Egad!  string.Format brings up the rear and + triumphs, well, at least in terms of speed.  The concat burns more memory than StringBuilder but less than string.Format().  This shows two main things: StringBuilder is not always the panacea many think it is. The difference between any of the three is miniscule! The second point is extremely important!  You will often here people who will grasp at results and say, “look, operator + is 10% faster than StringBuilder so always use StringBuilder.”  Statements like this are a disservice and often misleading.  For example, if I had a good guess at what the size of the string would be, I could have preallocated my StringBuffer like so:   1: for (int i = 0; i < num; i++) 2: { 3: // pre-declare StringBuilder to have 100 char buffer. 4: var builder = new StringBuilder(100); 5: builder.Append("This is test #"); 6: builder.Append(i); 7: builder.Append(" with a result of "); 8: builder.Append(strings[i]); 9: results[i] = builder.ToString(); 10: }   Now let’s look at the times: 1: Operator + - Time: 551, Memory: 56104412/55595960 - 500000 2: string.Format() - Time: 753, Memory: 57296484/55595960 - 500000 3: StringBuilder - Time: 525, Memory: 59779156/55595960 - 500000   Whoa!  All of the sudden StringBuilder is back on top again!  But notice, it takes more memory now.  This makes perfect sense if you examine the IL behind the scenes.  Whenever you do a string concat (+) in your code, it examines the lengths of the arguments and creates a StringBuilder behind the scenes of the appropriate size for you. But even IF we know the approximate size of our StringBuilder, look how much less readable it is!  That’s why I feel you should always take into account both readability and performance.  After all, consider all these timings are over 500,000 iterations.   That’s at best  0.0004 ms difference per call which is neglidgable at best.  The key is to pick the best tool for the job.  What do I mean?  Consider these awesome words of wisdom: Concatenate (+) is best at concatenating.  StringBuilder is best when you need to building. Format is best at formatting. Totally Earth-shattering, right!  But if you consider it carefully, it actually has a lot of beauty in it’s simplicity.  Remember, there is no magic bullet.  If one of these always beat the others we’d only have one and not three choices. The fact is, the concattenation operator (+) has been optimized for speed and looks the cleanest for joining together a known set of strings in the simplest manner possible. StringBuilder, on the other hand, excels when you need to build a string of inderterminant length.  Use it in those times when you are looping till you hit a stop condition and building a result and it won’t steer you wrong. String.Format seems to be the looser from the stats, but consider which of these is more readable.  Yes, ignore the fact that you could do this with ToString() on a DateTime.  1: // build a date via concatenation 2: var date1 = (month < 10 ? string.Empty : "0") + month + '/' 3: + (day < 10 ? string.Empty : "0") + '/' + year; 4:  5: // build a date via string builder 6: var builder = new StringBuilder(10); 7: if (month < 10) builder.Append('0'); 8: builder.Append(month); 9: builder.Append('/'); 10: if (day < 10) builder.Append('0'); 11: builder.Append(day); 12: builder.Append('/'); 13: builder.Append(year); 14: var date2 = builder.ToString(); 15:  16: // build a date via string.Format 17: var date3 = string.Format("{0:00}/{1:00}/{2:0000}", month, day, year); 18:  So the strength in string.Format is that it makes constructing a formatted string easy to read.  Yes, it’s slower, but look at how much more elegant it is to do zero-padding and anything else string.Format does. So my lesson is, don’t look for the silver bullet!  Choose the best tool.  Micro-optimization almost always bites you in the end because you’re sacrificing readability for performance, which is almost exactly the wrong choice 90% of the time. I love the rules of optimization.  They’ve been stated before in many forms, but here’s how I always remember them: For Beginners: Do not optimize. For Experts: Do not optimize yet. It’s so true.  Most of the time on today’s modern hardware, a micro-second optimization at the sake of readability will net you nothing because it won’t be your bottleneck.  Code for readability, choose the best tool for the job which will usually be the most readable and maintainable as well.  Then, and only then, if you need that extra performance boost after profiling your code and exhausting all other options… then you can start to think about optimizing.

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• TDD a controller with ASP.NET MVC 2, NUnit and Rhino Mocks

  - by Nissan Fan

  What would a simple unit test look like to confirm that a certain controller exists if I am using Rhino Mocks, NUnit and ASP.NET MVC 2? I'm trying to wrap my head around the concept of TDD, but I can't see to figure out how a simple test like "Controller XYZ Exists" would look. In addition, what would the unit test look like to test an Action Result off a view?

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• The future for Microsoft

  - by Scott Dorman

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/sdorman/archive/2013/10/16/the-future-for-microsoft.aspxMicrosoft is in the process of reinventing itself. While some may argue that it’s “too little, too late” or that their growing consumer-focused strategy is wrong, the truth of the situation is that Microsoft is reinventing itself into a new company. While Microsoft is now calling themselves a “devices and services” company, that’s not entirely accurate. Let’s look at some facts: Microsoft will always (for the long-term foreseeable future) be financially split into the following divisions: Windows/Operating Systems, which for FY13 made up approximately 24% of overall revenue. Server and Tools, which for FY13 made up approximately 26% of overall revenue. Enterprise/Business Products, which for FY13 made up approximately 32% of overall revenue. Entertainment and Devices, which for FY13 made up approximately 13% of overall revenue. Online Services, which for FY13 made up approximately 4% of overall revenue. It is important to realize that hardware products like the Surface fall under the Windows/Operating Systems division while products like the Xbox 360 fall under the Entertainment and Devices division. (Presumably other hardware, such as mice, keyboards, and cameras, also fall under the Entertainment and Devices division.) It’s also unclear where Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Nokia’s handset division will fall, but let’s assume that it will be under Entertainment and Devices as well. Now, for the sake of argument, let’s assume a slightly different structure that I think is more in line with how Microsoft presents itself and how the general public sees it: Consumer Products and Devices, which would probably make up approximately 9% of overall revenue. Developer Tools, which would probably make up approximately 13% of overall revenue. Enterprise Products and Devices, which would probably make up approximately 47% of overall revenue. Entertainment, which would probably make up approximately 13% of overall revenue. Online Services, which would probably make up approximately 17% of overall revenue. (Just so we’re clear, in this structure hardware products like the Surface, a portion of Windows sales, and other hardware fall under the Consumer Products and Devices division. I’m assuming that more of the income for the Windows division is coming from enterprise/volume licenses so 15% of that income went to the Enterprise Products and Devices division. Most of the enterprise services, like Azure, fall under the Online Services division so half of the Server and Tools income went there as well.) No matter how you look at it, the bulk of Microsoft’s income still comes from not just the enterprise but also software sales, and this really shouldn’t surprise anyone. So, now that the stage is set…what’s the future for Microsoft? The future I see for Microsoft (again, this is just my prediction based on my own instinct, gut-feel and publicly available information) is this: Microsoft is becoming a consumer-focused enterprise company. Let’s look at it a different way. Microsoft is an enterprise-focused company trying to create a larger consumer presence.  To a large extent, this is the exact opposite of Apple, who is really a consumer-focused company trying to create a larger enterprise presence. The major reason consumer-focused companies (like Apple) have started making in-roads into the enterprise is the “bring your own device” phenomenon. Yes, Apple has created some “game-changing” products but their enterprise influence is still relatively small. Unfortunately (for this blog post at least), Apple provides revenue in terms of hardware products rather than business divisions, so it’s not possible to do a direct comparison. However, in the interest of transparency, from Apple’s Quarterly Report (filed 24 July 2013), their revenue breakdown is: iPhone, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 51% of revenue. iPad, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 18% of revenue. Mac, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 14% of revenue. iPod, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 2% of revenue. iTunes, Software, and Services, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 11% of revenue. Accessories, which for the 3 months ending 29 July 2013 made up approximately 3% of revenue. From this, it’s pretty clear that Apple is a consumer-and-hardware-focused company. At this point, you may be asking yourself “Where is all of this going?” The answer to that lies in Microsoft’s shift in company focus. They are becoming more consumer focused, but what exactly does that mean? The biggest change (at least that’s been in the news lately) is the pending purchase of Nokia’s handset division. This, in combination with their Surface line of tablets and the Xbox, will put Microsoft squarely in the realm of a hardware-focused company in addition to being a software-focused company. That can (and most likely will) shift the revenue split to looking at revenue based on software sales (both consumer and enterprise) and also hardware sales (mostly on the consumer side). If we look at things strictly from a Windows perspective, Microsoft clearly has a lot of irons in the fire at the moment. Discounting the various product SKUs available and painting the picture with broader strokes, there are currently 5 different Windows-based operating systems: Windows Phone Windows Phone 7.x, which runs on top of the Windows CE kernel Windows Phone 8.x+, which runs on top of the Windows 8 kernel Windows RT The ARM-based version of Windows 8, which runs on top of the Windows 8 kernel Windows (Pro) The Intel-based version of Windows 8, which runs on top of the Windows 8 kernel Xbox The Xbox 360, which runs it’s own proprietary OS. The Xbox One, which runs it’s own proprietary OS, a version of Windows running on top of the Windows 8 kernel and a proprietary “manager” OS which manages the other two. Over time, Windows Phone 7.x devices will fade so that really leaves 4 different versions. Looking at Windows RT and Windows Phone 8.x paints an interesting story. Right now, all mobile phone devices run on some sort of ARM chip and that doesn’t look like it will change any time soon. That means Microsoft has two different Windows based operating systems for the ARM platform. Long term, it doesn’t make sense for Microsoft to continue supporting that arrangement. I have long suspected (since the Surface was first announced) that Microsoft will unify these two variants of Windows and recent speculation from some of the leading Microsoft watchers lends credence to this suspicion. It is rumored that upcoming Windows Phone releases will include support for larger screen sizes, relax the requirement to have a hardware-based back button and will continue to improve API parity between Windows Phone and Windows RT. At the same time, Windows RT will include support for smaller screen sizes. Since both of these operating systems are based on the same core Windows kernel, it makes sense (both from a financial and development resource perspective) for Microsoft to unify them. The user interfaces are already very similar. So similar in fact, that visually it’s difficult to tell them apart. To illustrate this, here are two screen captures: Other than a few variations (the Bing News app, the picture shown in the Pictures tile and the spacing between the tiles) these are identical. The one on the left is from my Windows 8.1 laptop (which looks the same as on my Surface RT) and the one on the right is from my Windows Phone 8 Lumia 925. This pretty clearly shows that from a consumer perspective, there really is no practical difference between how these two operating systems look and how you interact with them. For the consumer, your entertainment device (Xbox One), phone (Windows Phone) and mobile computing device (Surface [or some other vendors tablet], laptop, netbook or ultrabook) and your desktop computing device (desktop) will all look and feel the same. While many people will denounce this consistency of user experience, I think this will be a good thing in the long term, especially for the upcoming generations. For example, my 5-year old son knows how to use my tablet, phone and Xbox because they all feature nearly identical user experiences. When Windows 8 was released, Microsoft allowed a Windows Store app to be purchased once and installed on as many as 5 devices. With Windows 8.1, this limit has been increased to over 50. Why is that important? If you consider that your phone, computing devices, and entertainment device will be running the same operating system (with minor differences related to physical hardware chipset), that means that I could potentially purchase my sons favorite Angry Birds game once and be able to install it on all of the devices I own. (And for those of you wondering, it’s only 7 [at the moment].) From an app developer perspective, the story becomes even more compelling. Right now there are differences between the different operating systems, but those differences are shrinking. The user interface technology for both is XAML but there are different controls available and different user experience concepts. Some of the APIs available are the same while some are not. You can’t develop a Windows Phone app that can also run on Windows (either Windows Pro or RT). With each release of Windows Phone and Windows RT, those difference become smaller and smaller. Add to this mix the Xbox One, which will also feature a Windows-based operating system and the same “modern” (tile-based) user interface and the visible distinctions between the operating systems will become even smaller. Unifying the operating systems means one set of APIs and one code base to maintain for an app that can run on multiple devices. One code base means it’s easier to add features and fix bugs and that those changes become available on all devices at the same time. It also means a single app store, which will increase the discoverability and reach of your app and consolidate revenue and app profile management. Now, the choice of what devices an app is available on becomes a simple checkbox decision rather than a technical limitation. Ultimately, this means more apps available to consumers, which is always good for the app ecosystem. Is all of this just rumor, speculation and conjecture? Of course, but it’s not unfounded. As I mentioned earlier, some of the prominent Microsoft watchers are also reporting similar rumors. However, Microsoft itself has even hinted at this future with their recent organizational changes and by telling developers “if you want to develop for Xbox One, start developing for Windows 8 now.” I think this pretty clearly paints the following picture: Microsoft is committed to the “modern” user interface paradigm. Microsoft is changing their release cadence (for all products, not just operating systems) to be faster and more modular. Microsoft is going to continue to unify their OS platforms both from a consumer perspective and a developer perspective. While this direction will certainly concern some people it will excite many others. Microsoft’s biggest failing has always been following through with a strong and sustained marketing strategy that presents a consistent view point and highlights what this unified and connected experience looks like and how it benefits consumers and enterprises. We’ve started to see some of this over the last few years, but it needs to continue and become more aggressive and consistent. In the long run, I think Microsoft will be able to pull all of these technologies and devices together into one seamless ecosystem. It isn’t going to happen overnight, but my prediction is that we will be there by the end of 2016. As both a consumer and a developer, I, for one, am excited about the future of Microsoft.

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• Android Money Input with fixed decimal

  - by miannelle

  How do you create an edittext entry that formats input in money format only? When the user enters 5, I want the input to look like "$0.05" and when they then enter 3, the input should now look like "$0.53" and finally they enter 6 and the input should look like "$5.36".

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• Windows 7 theme for WPF?

  - by DanM

  Is there any way to make a WPF app look like it's running on Windows 7 even if it's running on XP? I'm looking for some kind of theme I can just paste in. I'm aware of the themes project on Codeplex (http://www.codeplex.com/wpfthemes), but it lacks support for DataGrid, which is something I critically need. I was thinking maybe the Windows 7 theme would just be an easy port, or exists in some file somewhere already. Any information you have (even if it's bad news) would be much appreciated. Update Using @Lars Truijens idea, I was able to get the Windows 7 look for the major controls, but unfortunately it did not work for the WPF Toolkit DataGrid control, which I need. DataGrid looks like this with Aero theme DataGrid should look like this So, I'm still looking for a solution to this problem if anyone has any ideas. Maybe someone has built an extension to the Aero theme that covers the WPF toolkit controls? Again, any information you have is much appreciated. Update 2 - Problem solved! To get the Aero theme to work with WPF Toolkit controls, you just need to add a second Aero dictionary, so your App.xaml should now look like this. <Application.Resources> ... <ResourceDictionary> <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries> <ResourceDictionary Source="/PresentationFramework.Aero;component/themes/Aero.NormalColor.xaml" /> <ResourceDictionary Source="pack://application:,,,/WPFToolkit;component/Themes/Aero.NormalColor.xaml" /> ... </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries> </ResourceDictionary> </Application.Resources> Also, I would recommend turning the gridlines off in your DataGrid controls (because they look horrible): <DataGrid GridLinesVisibility="None" ...>

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• Can someone explain the "use-cases" for the default munin graphs?

  - by exhuma

  When installing munin, it activates a default set of plugins (at least on ubuntu). Alternatively, you can simply run munin-node-configure to figure out which plugins are supported on your system. Most of these plugins plot straight-forward data. My question is not to explain the nature of the data (well... maybe for some) but what is it that you look for in these graphs? It is easy to install munin and see fancy graphs. But having the graphs and not being able to "read" them renders them totally useless. I am going to list standard plugins which are enabled by default on my system. So it's going to be a long list. For completeness, I am also going to list plugins which I think to understand and give a short explanation as to what I think it's used for. Pleas correct if I am wrong with any of them. So let me split this questions in three parts: Plugins where I don't even understand the data Plugins where I understand the data but don't know what I should look out for Plugins which I think to understand Plugins where I don't even understand the data These may contain questions that are not necessarily aimed at munin alone. Not understanding the data usually mean a gap in fundamental knowledge on operating systems/hardware.... ;) Feel free to respond with a "giyf" answer. These are plugins where I can only guess what's going on... I hardly want to look at these "guessing"... Disk IOs per device (IOs/second)What's an IO. I know it stands for input/output. But that's as far as it goes. Disk latency per device (Average IO wait)Not a clue what an "IO wait" is... IO Service TimeThis one is a huge mess, and it's near impossible to see something in the graph at all. Plugins where I understand the data but don't know what I should look out for IOStat (blocks/second read/written)I assume, the thing to look out for in here are spikes? Which would mean that the device is in heavy use? Available entropy (bytes)I assume that this is important for random number generation? Why would I graph this? So far the value has always been near constant. VMStat (running/I/O sleep processes)What's the difference between this one and the "processes" graph? Both show running/sleeping processes, whereas the "Processes" graph seems to have more details. Disk throughput per device (bytes/second read/written) What's thedifference between this one and the "IOStat" graph? inode table usageWhat should I look for in this graph? Plugins which I think to understand I'll be guessing some things here... correct me if I am wrong. Disk usage in percent (percent)How much disk space is used/remaining. As this is approaching 100%, you should consider cleaning up or extend the partition. This is extremely important for the root partition. Firewall Throughput (packets/second)The number of packets passing through the firewall. If this is spiking for a longer period of time, it could be a sign of a DOS attack (or we are simply recieving a large file). It can also give you an idea about your firewall performance. If it's levelling out and you need more "power" you should consider load balancing. If it's levelling out and see a correlation with your CPU load, it could also mean that your hardware is not fast enough. Correlations with disk usage could point to excessive LOG targets in you FW config. eth0 errors (packets in/out)Network errors. If this value is increasing, it could be a sign of faulty hardware. eth0 traffic (bits/second in/out)Raw network traffic. This should correlate with Firewall throughput. number of threadsAn ever-increasing value might point to a process not properly closing threads. Investigate! processesBreakdown of active processes (including sleeping). A quick spike in here might point to a fork-bomb. A slowly, but ever-increasing value might point to an application spawning sub-processes but not properly closing them. Investigate using ps faux. process priorityThis shows the distribution of process priorities. Having only high-priority processes is not of much use. Consider de-prioritizing some. cpu usageFairly straight-forward. If this is spiking, you may have an attack going on, or a process is hogging the CPU. Idf it's slowly increasing and approaching max in normal operations, you should consider upgrading your hardware (or load-balancing). file table usageNumber of actively open files. If this is reaching max, you may have a process opening, but not properly releasing files. load averageShows an summarized value for the system load. Should correlate with CPU usage. Increasing values can come from a number of sources. Look for correlations with other graphs. memory usageA graphical representation of you memory. As long as you have a lot of unused+cache+buffers you are fine. swap in/outShows the activity on your swap partition. This should always be 0. If you see activity on this, you should add more memory to your machine!

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• Good mobile oriented GWT widget library alternatives

  - by Michael Donohue

  I've been developing a travel planning site - tripgrep.com - which is built on appengine, GWT and smartgwt, among other technologies. It is still early days, and the site is now working well on my development environment, which is either a windows or mac computer. However, I am frequently talking up the website to my friends when we are at a bar or other venue, so I am standing there while they try to access the site via an iPhone, Android or Blackberry - I've witnessed all three. It has been painfully obvious that the browser based frontend takes a long time to download on a mobile device. I am pretty sure this is because of the javascript download for SmartGWT. So, I would like to look at alternatives to SmartGWT. What I like about SmartGWT is that it has a reasonable look and feel out of the box - I don't need to learn any design or css and it has an office application look. This is considerably better than the GWT built-in widgets, which just get a blue border. The better look-and-feel is why I went with SmartGWT early on. However, the slow load times are killing me on these mobile demos. So now I want a fast loading widget alternative that has good look-and-feel out of the box. The features I care about are: tabs, good form layout, Google maps API integration, grid data viewing. If those are all available in a library that loads quickly on a mobile device, then that's the library I want.

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• where does the professional sheen of a GUI application realistically come from?

  - by JW

  I have been playing around with php-gtk recently and in the past I have experimented with Java to make GUI 'hello world' apps. However both these types of applications have had a bit of a clunky (almost childish) look and feel to them. I cannot deny that they are handy for making apps for in-house use (and I totally respect the amount of community effort that goes into these projects). But I would not necessarily be proud to sell it as a commercial application with a price tag of, say, £450 or £1,000. If I wanted to make an application that had the look and feel of, say, Firefox for Windows, or Adobe xyz, what GUI/language should I use? Is the 'professional sheen' or smart look and feel down to the designer or is it the case that, no matter how good a designer is, picking the right GUI framework is essential to get that look?

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• Strip All Urls From A Mixed String ( php )

  - by Axel

  Hi, i reposted this question because i didn't find a good answer. i have a string which can contains text with urls. i want a function to strip all urls from this string and just let the text. by example the string can contains like this : 1) hey take a look here : http://xxx.xxx/545df5 this is nice! 2) hey take a look here : http://www.xxx.xxx/545df5 this is nice! 3) hey take a look here : xxx.xxx/545df5 this is nice! 4) hey take a look here : www.xxx.xxx/545df5 this is nice! Thanks

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• TDD a controller with ASP.NET MVC 2, NUnit and Rhine Mocks

  - by Nissan Fan

  What would a simple unit test look like to confirm that a certain controller exists if I am using Rhino Mocks, NUnit and ASP.NET MVC 2? I'm trying to wrap my head around the concept of TDD, but I can't see to figure out how a simple test like "Controller XYZ Exists" would look. In addition, what would the unit test look like to test an Action Result off a view?

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• Optimizing a fluid grid layout

  - by user1815176

  I recently just added a grid layout, but I can't figure out how to make my links work. The grid that I used is the 1140 one at http://cssgrid.net/. I studied the source code of that website, and tried to make my page like theirs, but when I put everything in it made mine worse, and the grid didn't even work. This is how my website is supposed to look http://spencedesign.netau.net/singaporehome.html and this is how it does http://spencedesign.netau.net/home.html And when you reduce the size, it doesn't look like it's supposed to. When you minimize it I want the pictures(links) to be two per row, then one per row depending on how small the page is. I also want the quote to turn into different rows when it is too small for it. But I can't figure out how to make the page look normal regularly let alone make it look good with a smaller browser. Thanks!

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• Background color of the main content on the html page disappears

  - by Denis

  It just makes me go mad. I can't realize what the problem is. Please have a look at the pixeli.ca/glass. There is a home page that looks good - white background of the main content and looks good. But all the other pages don't have white background so they look not the way they should look. All the pages have the same style sheet and the same layout elements taken from 960.gs framework. It's just some kind of mystery there. What I need is to make all page look like the home page - having white background. Thanks.

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• PHP, MySQL: Display only required parts of my website in sister website

  - by Devner

  Hi all, Now I have my website built on PHP & Mysql. Consider this like a forum. Now when a user posts a reply in my website 1 (ex. www.website1.com), I want to be able to show the starting thread and it's related replies in a sister website of mine. I want to do this in a way that it does not show the rest of the page & other page contents (like logo etc.). I don't think iframe would be a solution because an iframe would embed the whole page and the users visiting my sister website (totally different domain i.e. www.website2.com) would be able to see all the page contents, like logo etc. I want to avoid that. I want to make them see only limited information from website 1 and only the info. that I intend. I hope that makes sense. In a way, you could say that I am trying to replicate my 1 website, and show only a limited part of it. Users browsing 2nd website can post a reply in the 2nd website and it should automatically be posted & visible to the visitors of the website 1. Users of website 1 should not know that a user of website 2 has posted it. They would feel that some user from website 1 has posted it. Do I have to use 2 separate mysql DB or just 1? I think it would be problematic if I am trying to use different DB. I also feel I might have to face DB connectivity issues as I can connect to only 1 DB at a time. It's basically like users of website1.com should feel that they are replying to users of website1.com & users of website2.com should feel that they are replying to users of website2.com. (I need it this way to bridge the gap between them). At the same time I want to make the front end of the websites different so that they don't feel that they are replying to some other users outside the domain. These websites would be under my control and I will have access to the source code at any time. If I need to change the source code, these changes are welcome. Is this really possible? Thank you in advance.

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