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  • Export all SSIS packages from msdb using Powershell

    - by jamiet
    Have you ever wanted to dump all the SSIS packages stored in msdb out to files? Of course you have, who wouldn’t? Right? Well, at least one person does because this was the subject of a thread (save all ssis packages to file) on the SSIS forum earlier today. Some of you may have already figured out a way of doing this but for those that haven’t here is a nifty little script that will do it for you and it uses our favourite jack-of-all tools … Powershell!!   Imagine I have the following package folder structure on my Integration Services server (i.e. in [msdb]): There are two packages in there called “20110111 Chaining Expression components” & “Package”, I want to export those two packages into a folder structure that mirrors that in [msdb]. Here is the Powershell script that will do that:   Param($SQLInstance = "localhost") #####Add all the SQL goodies (including Invoke-Sqlcmd)##### add-pssnapin sqlserverprovidersnapin100 -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue add-pssnapin sqlservercmdletsnapin100 -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue cls $Packages = Invoke-Sqlcmd -MaxCharLength 10000000 -ServerInstance $SQLInstance -Query "WITH cte AS ( SELECT cast(foldername as varchar(max)) as folderpath, folderid FROM msdb..sysssispackagefolders WHERE parentfolderid = '00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000' UNION ALL SELECT cast(c.folderpath + '\' + f.foldername as varchar(max)), f.folderid FROM msdb..sysssispackagefolders f INNER JOIN cte c ON c.folderid = f.parentfolderid ) SELECT c.folderpath,p.name,CAST(CAST(packagedata AS VARBINARY(MAX)) AS VARCHAR(MAX)) as pkg FROM cte c INNER JOIN msdb..sysssispackages p ON c.folderid = p.folderid WHERE c.folderpath NOT LIKE 'Data Collector%'" Foreach ($pkg in $Packages) { $pkgName = $Pkg.name $folderPath = $Pkg.folderpath $fullfolderPath = "c:\temp\$folderPath\" if(!(test-path -path $fullfolderPath)) { mkdir $fullfolderPath | Out-Null } $pkg.pkg | Out-File -Force -encoding ascii -FilePath "$fullfolderPath\$pkgName.dtsx" }   To run it simply change the “localhost” parameter of the server you want to connect to either by editing the script or passing it in when the script is executed. It will create the folder structure in C:\Temp (which you can also easily change if you so wish – just edit the script accordingly). Here’s the folder structure that it created for me: Notice how it is a mirror of the folder structure in [msdb]. Hope this is useful! @Jamiet

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  • Microsoft Virtual Academy

    Carpe Diem It's been since a while that I could write an article for this blog but alas, I was (and still am) very busy with customer's work. Which is actually good. So, what is this article going to tell you? Well, in general, just what I already tweeted, that life is constant process of learning - especially as software craftsman. Due to an upcoming new customer project in ASP.NET I had to seize the opportunity to get my head deeper into latest available technologies, like Windows Azure and SQL Azure. I know... cloud computing and so on is not a recent development and already available since quite a while but I never any means to get myself into this since roughly two weeks ago. Microsoft Virtual Academy I can't remember exactly what guided me towards the Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA), oh wait... Yes, it was a posting on Facebook from an old CLIP community friend. He posted a shortened URL with #MVA tag that caught my attention. Thanks for that Thomas Kuberek. After the usual sign in or registration via Live ID I was a little bit surprised that Mauritius is not an available country option... Quick mail exchange with the MVA Decan, and yeah, apologies for the missing entry. So, currently I'm learning about Microsoft products and services, and collecting points under "Not Listed Country" until Mauritius is going to be added. Hopefully soon, as MVA honors your effort with different knowledge ranks that are compared to other students with public profiles. I think it's a nice move to add some game and competition factor into the learning game. The tracks and their different modules are mainly references to publicly available material online, namely on either MSDN, TechNet, Channel9, or other Microsoft based sites. The course material therefore also varies in different media and formats, ranging from simple online articles over downloadable documents (.docx or .pdf) to Silverlight / Windows Media streams with download options. Self-assessment and students ranking Each module in a track can be finished by taking part in a self-assessment. Up to now, the assessment I did (and passed) were limited to 10 minutes available time, and consisted of six to seven questions on the module training material. Nothing too serious but it gives you a glimpse idea how Microsoft certification exams are structured. Conclusion Nothing really new but nicely gathered, assembled and presented to the MVA students. At the moment, I wouldn't dare to compare the richness and quality of those courses with professional training offers, like Pluralsight .NET Training, LearnDevNow, VTC, etc. at all, but I think that MVA has potential. Give it a try, and let me know about your opinions.

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  • ASP.NET Membership Password Hash -- .NET 3.5 to .NET 4 Upgrade Surprise!

    - by David Hoerster
    I'm in the process of evaluating how my team will upgrade our product from .NET 3.5 SP1 to .NET 4. I expected the upgrade to be pretty smooth with very few, if any, upgrade issues. To my delight, the upgrade wizard said that everything upgraded without a problem. I thought I was home free, until I decided to build and run the application. A big problem was staring me in the face -- I couldn't log on. Our product is using a custom ASP.NET Membership Provider, but essentially it's a modified SqlMembershipProvider with some additional properties. And my login was failing during the OnAuthenticate event handler of my ASP.NET Login control, right where it was calling my provider's ValidateUser method. After a little digging, it turns out that the password hash that the membership provider was using to compare against the stored password hash in the membership database tables was different. I compared the password hash from the .NET 4 code line, and it was a different generated hash than my .NET 3.5 code line. (Tip -- when upgrading, always keep a valid debug copy of your app handy in case you have to step through a lot of code.) So it was a strange situation, but at least I knew what the problem was. Now the question was, "Why was it happening?" Turns out that a breaking change in .NET 4 is that the default hash algorithm changed to SHA256. Hey, that's great -- stronger hashing algorithm. But what do I do with all the hashed passwords in my database that were created using SHA1? Well, you can make two quick changes to your app's web.config and everything will be OK. Basically, you need to override the default HashAlgorithmTypeproperty of your membership provider. Here are the two places to do that: 1. At the beginning of your element, add the following element: <system.web> <machineKey validation="SHA1" /> ... </system.web> 2. On your element under , add the following hashAlgorithmType attribute: <system.web> <membership defaultProvider="myMembership" hashAlgorithmType="SHA1"> ... </system.web> After that, you should be good to go! Hope this helps.

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  • Impossible to install Ubuntu 10.10 dual boot with Windows 7 on new Acer desktop computer

    - by Don Myers
    My brother has a brand new Acer Desktop with Windows 7. I have done many installs (40+) of Ubuntu starting with 8.10, and have never run into this. I've spent three hours trying to do a dual boot install of 10.10. When you get to the place where you normally would choose to install as a dual boot or overwrite the existing information on the hard drive, that block is just blank. Nothing. No choices even to do a manual partition setup. If you try to go on you get the message "No root file system is defined. Please correct this from the partitioning menu." but there is nothing in the partitioning menu. I tried a good 10.04 disc also. Same thing happens with it. I ran a gparted live cd, and it shows the hard drive as sda with 3 partitions on the original. sda1 is a small partition called PQService. sda2 is another small partition called System Reserved, and GParted says it is the boot partition. sda3 is the main partation with the operating system (Windows 7) and all of the empty space. There is a little unallocated space at the very beginning and very end of the hard drive. If I go to places in the Live CD, it shows a 640 gb hard disk called Acer, but it also shows a 640 gb hard disk called system reserved. They are the same disk. There is just one hard drive. If you click properties in the System Reserved 640 gb, it shows all information as unknown. I had to change the boot order in the bios in order to run the live cd. The hard drive instead of being listed as such is listed as Raid:Raid Ready. Something the way this computer is set up is preventing Ubuntu from being able to identify the hard drive partitions at all to do an install, even if you were not doing a dual boot and just wanted to overwrite Windows. Is this a bug that needs reported? This is a major problem for me and my brother, but also for Ubuntu if new users want to Ubuntu and find they cannot install it.

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  • Launch 2010 Technical Readiness Unofficial Q&amp;A.

    - by mbcrump
    I had an email from one of my readers about the 2010 Technical Readiness Series. Please read below: Hi Michael, I noticed you blogged a while back that you were going to attend MS 2010 Launch event. I’m going to the session in Seattle on May 27, is it worth it to attend? Also, I’m wondering if they give any free software away like VS2010 Pro? Any decent vendors? Looking forward to hearing back from you. I decided this information would probably benefit several instead of just responding back to the reader. In case you are not aware, MS has a 2010 launch event showing VS2010, Office 2010, SharePoint 2010 and SQL Server 2008R2.  You can sign up for an event here: https://microsoft.crgevents.com/Register2010/Content/Event_Selection.aspx I’ve answered the questions asked below. Q: Is it worth going? A: It is if you have had little or no exposure to the latest 2010 products. Most people are familiar with VS2010, but have not seen SharePoint 2010 Office 2010 or Windows Phone 7. It is designed to get you up to speed very quickly. If you have watched most of the MIX videos and keep up with .NET in general, you will benefit more by having the ability to ask questions.    Q: Did you get any free software? A: No, only demos including: VS2010/Office 2010 – They give you a link to the url where you can download the trial version. Windows 7 Enterprise – You get a DVD with the trial version loaded. Q: Do they give away any cool swag? A: Just a Microsoft T-Shirt (XL). Q: What about the vendor selection? A: At the event that I went to, most vendors were pushing SharePoint products. There wasn’t a lot of variety in the selection. Most vendors were giving away the typical pens, buttons and stickers and trial software. If you have any other questions, feel free to contact me. I will answer and add to this un-official FAQ.

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  • New Oracles VM RAC template with support for oracle vm 3 built-in

    - by wcoekaer
    The RAC team did it again (thanks Saar!) - another awesome set of Oracle VM templates published and uploaded to My Oracle Support. You can find the main page here. What's special about the latest version of DeployCluster is that it integrates tightly with Oracle VM 3 manager. It basically is an Oracle VM frontend that helps start VMs, pass arguments down automatically and there is absolutely no need to log into the Oracle VM servers or the guests. Once it completes, you have an entire Oracle RAC database setup ready to go. Here's a short summary of the steps : Set up an Oracle VM 3 server pool Download the Oracle VM RAC template from oracle.com Import the template into Oracle VM using Oracle VM Manager repository - import Create a public and private network in Oracle VM Manager in the network tab Configure the template with the right public and private virtual networks Create a set of shared disks (physical or virtual) to assign to the VMs you want to create (for ASM/at least 5) Clone a set of VMs from the template (as many RAC nodes as you plan to configure) With Oracle VM 3.1 you can clone with a number so one clone command for, say 8 VMs is easy. Assign the shared devices/disks to the cloned VMs Create a netconfig.ini file on your manager node or a client where you plan to run DeployCluster This little text file just contains the IP addresses, hostnames etc for your cluster. It is a very simple small textfile. Run deploycluster.py with the VM names as argument Done. At this point, the tool will connect to Oracle VM Manager, start the VMs and configure each one, Configure the OS (Oracle Linux) Configure the disks with ASM Configure the clusterware (CRS) Configure ASM Create database instances on each node. Now you are ready to log in, and use your x node database cluster. x No need to download various products from various websites, click on trial licenses for the OS, go to a Virtual Machine store with sample and test versions only - this is production ready and supported. Software. Complete. example netconfig.ini : # Node specific information NODE1=racnode1 NODE1VIP=racnode1-vip NODE1PRIV=racnode1-priv NODE1IP=192.168.1.2 NODE1VIPIP=192.168.1.22 NODE1PRIVIP=10.0.0.22 NODE2=racnode2 NODE2VIP=racnode2-vip NODE2PRIV=racnode2-priv NODE2IP=192.168.1.3 NODE2VIPIP=192.168.1.23 NODE2PRIVIP=10.0.0.23 # Common data PUBADAP=eth0 PUBMASK=255.255.255.0 PUBGW=192.168.1.1 PRIVADAP=eth1 PRIVMASK=255.255.255.0 RACCLUSTERNAME=raccluster DOMAINNAME=mydomain.com DNSIP= # Device used to transfer network information to second node # in interview mode NETCONFIG_DEV=/dev/xvdc # 11gR2 specific data SCANNAME=racnode12-scan SCANIP=192.168.1.50

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  • A Facelift for Fusion

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    It's simple. It's modern. It was the buzz at OpenWorld in San Francisco. See what the UX team has been up to and what customers are going to love. At OpenWorld 2012, the Oracle Applications User Experience (UX) team unveiled the new face of Fusion Applications. You might have seen it in sessions presented by Chris Leone, Anthony Lye, Jeremy Ashley and others or you may have gotten a look on the demogrounds. Why are we delivering a new face for Fusion Applications? "Because," says Ashley, vice president of the Oracle Applications User Experience team, "we want to provide a simple, modern, productive way for users to complete their top quick-entry tasks. The idea is to provide a clear, productive user experience that is backed by the full functionality of Fusion Applications." The first release of the new face of Fusion focuses on three types of users. It provides a fully functional gateway to Fusion Applications for: ·         New and casual users who need quick access to self-service tasks ·         Professional users who need fast access to quick-entry, high-volume tasks ·         Users who are looking for a way to quickly brand their portal for employees The new face of Fusion allows users to move easily from navigation to action, Ashley said, and it has been designed for any device -- Mac, PC, iPad, Android, SmartBoard -- in the browser. How Did We Build It? The new face of Fusion essentially is a custom shell, developed by the Apps UX team, and a set of page templates that embodies a simple design aesthetic. It's repeatable, providing consistency across its pages, and the need for training is little to zero. More specifically, the new face of Fusion has been built on ADF. The Applications UX team created pages in JDeveloper using local tasks flows bound to existing view objects. Three new components were commissioned from ADF and existing Fusion components were re-skinned to deliver a simple, modern user experience. It really is that simple - and to prove that point, we've been sharing our new face of Fusion story on several Oracle channels such as this one. If you want to learn more, check OpenWorld presentation on the Fusion Learning Center.

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  • Determining cause of random latency and loading issues

    - by Sherwin Flight
    I'm not sure exactly what details to post in regards to my issue, because I'm not sure what is relevant. Prior to the end of September my websites all loaded quickly, in almost all cases. Loading time wasn't usually more than a few seconds. However, since the end of September I noticed a big increase in page loading times. In some cases pages were taking 30 seconds or more to load. I do have a remote monitoring service monitoring some of the sites as well, and the image below shows the response times over the past month. The response times shown at the beginning of this graph were what the usual response times were prior to this issue occurring. You can see that there has been a significant increase in response times from the beginning to the end of this graph. The thing is, the problem is not happening 100% of the time. If I click through the site, or even just keep refreshing the page, about 25% of the time the pages load quickly, the remaining 75% of the time they load slowly. Sometimes the pages take so long to load that they time out, and don't load at all. I have contacted my hosting provider, and they said things at their end was fine. I don't believe the problem is my home internet provider, because all other websites load without a problem. The server is located in Texas, USA. This also raises another interesting point. My remote monitor checks my site from two locations, California, USA, and London, England. As you can see in the chart below the response time is actually shorter when checked from London, which doesn't seem to make sense, since the server is physically closer to the California monitoring location. I would have expected the London monitoring location to have higher response times since they are physically farther away. I should also point out that in some traceroute test I've done it seem like the first connection to the server seems to take the longest, then after that the rest of the page loads quickly. Below is a little chart showing the times for the first connection to the server. So, what could be causing this problem, and what steps can I take to resolve it or at least narrow down the problem? Sending the request to the server was very quick, and receiving the reply back seems pretty quick, but the WAIT time is really long. So it connects, sends the request, but then waits close to 30 seconds before it starts receiving data back. I am also aware that there are things I can do to speed up page loading times, like reducing the number of CSS and JS files used on a page, compressing images, etc. This is not really what the source of the problem is though, because nothing has really changed on the site since before the problem started, and other sites on the same server are loading slowly as well.

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  • Controlling text that appears in google search results

    - by Mick
    I have recently made a simple (pure HTML) website. The most important key phrase that I want to capture is "full reserve banking". Currently, if I type "full reserve banking" (without quotes) into google, then my site appears as the 7th item on the first page. I am reasonably happy with this as the site is so new. But one frustration is that the text that google displays in relation to my site is rather misleading. The main message I would like to get across is that my site is "A collection of resources for anyone interested in this alternative monetary system." and I have this as the first line of text on the page. Unfortunately, this important sentence is nowhere to be seen in the google search result. So my question is - is there anything I can do to fix this error? Edit: I noticed that someone edited this question to remove the name of the website. I was very keen to leave it in because being able to look at it makes it far easier to diagnose what I did wrong. Indeed the answer suggested by "Su" clearly shows that they looked at my website and analyzed what it was doing which helped them give a clearer answer. If I am breaking some policy by including the name then please explain what this policy is in a comment. Edit: I have now made a series of changes to my meta descriptions as inspired by the answers given here. On the homepage I now have the text: <META NAME="description" CONTENT="A collection of resources for anyone interested in Full Reserve Banking. What it is, how it works, web resources, organisations, research papers etc."> I am now very excited to see what will happen after the next visit by the google robots. Edit: Result! I just did a google search for "full reserve banking", and the text that appeared was: Full Reserve Banking: The definitive resource. A collection of resources for anyone interested in Full Reserve Banking. What it is, how it works, web resources, organisations, research papers etc. www.fullreservebanking.com/ - Cached By the way, I did originally have a meta description - but it was too short, it just said "full reserve banking". Google obviously assumed this was too little and so chose to use its own algorithms to cook up a different sentence from the main text.

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  • Issues with LVM partition size in Server 13.04

    - by Michael
    I am new to ubuntu and a little confused about how hard drive partitions and LVM works. I remember setting up Ubuntu server 13.04 and telling to to use 1TB of a 3TB server. Well I have maxed that out with blu-ray rips and want the rest of the drive for space. On log-in it says: System load: 2.24 Processes: 179 Usage of /: 88.7% of 912.89GB Users logged in: 0 Memory usage: 6% IP address for p5p1: 192.168.0.100 Swap usage: 0% => / is using 88.7% of 912.89GB lvdisplay outputs: --- Logical volume --- LV Path /dev/DeathStar-vg/root LV Name root VG Name DeathStar-vg LV Write Access read/write LV Creation host, time DeathStar, 2013-05-18 22:21:11 -0400 LV Status available # open 1 LV Size 2.70 TiB Current LE 707789 Segments 2 Allocation inherit Read ahead sectors auto - currently set to 256 Block device 252:0 --- Logical volume --- LV Path /dev/DeathStar-vg/swap_1 LV Name swap_1 VG Name DeathStar-vg LV Write Access read/write LV Creation host, time DeathStar, 2013-05-18 22:21:11 -0400 LV Status available # open 2 LV Size 3.75 GiB Current LE 959 Segments 1 Allocation inherit Read ahead sectors auto - currently set to 256 Block device 252:1 vgdisplay outputs: VG Name DeathStar-vg System ID Format lvm2 Metadata Areas 1 Metadata Sequence No 4 VG Access read/write VG Status resizable MAX LV 0 Cur LV 2 Open LV 2 Max PV 0 Cur PV 1 Act PV 1 VG Size 2.73 TiB PE Size 4.00 MiB Total PE 715335 Alloc PE / Size 708748 / 2.70 TiB Free PE / Size 6587 / 25.73 GiB df outputs: Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/DeathStar--vg-root 957238932 848972636 59634696 94% / none 4 0 4 0% /sys/fs/cgroup udev 1864716 4 1864712 1% /dev tmpfs 374968 1060 373908 1% /run none 5120 4 5116 1% /run/lock none 1874824 148 1874676 1% /run/shm none 102400 24 102376 1% /run/user /dev/sda2 234153 56477 165184 26% /boot And fdisk /dev/sda -l outputs: Disk /dev/sda: 3000.6 GB, 3000592982016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 364801 cylinders, total 5860533168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 4294967295 2147483647+ ee GPT Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary. I just don't know what to make of all this and am not sure how I can make it use all 2.73TBs. Thanks in advance for any help. EDIT-- Yes I did make changes to the LVM Config, but it didnt do anything. As requested, output of parted -l /dev/sda Model: ATA WDC WD30EFRX-68A (scsi) Disk /dev/sda: 3001GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B Partition Table: gpt Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 1049kB 2097kB 1049kB bios_grub 2 2097kB 258MB 256MB ext2 3 258MB 3001GB 3000GB lvm Model: ATA WDC WD30EFRX-68A (scsi) Disk /dev/sdb: 3001GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B Partition Table: msdos Number Start End Size Type File system Flags Model: Linux device-mapper (linear) (dm) Disk /dev/mapper/DeathStar--vg-swap_1: 4022MB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B Partition Table: loop Number Start End Size File system Flags 1 0.00B 4022MB 4022MB linux-swap(v1) Model: Linux device-mapper (linear) (dm) Disk /dev/mapper/DeathStar--vg-root: 2969GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B Partition Table: loop Number Start End Size File system Flags 1 0.00B 2969GB 2969GB ext4

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  • Data Generator Source Adapter

    This component needs little explanation. It generates random integer (DT_I4) and string (DT_WSTR) data and places them in the pipeline. You specify how many columns of each you would like and for any string columns you pass a fixed length value. You then need to specify how many rows in total you require to be generated. This component is used by us to do testing of the pipeline and components downstream. Previously we would have used a script component (as a source) to generate the rows but found ourselves rewriting the code too often so created this component. Screenshots SQL Server 2005 Integration Services SQL Server 2008/2012 Integration Services The component is provided as an MSI file, however to complete the installation, you will have to add the transformation to the Visual Studio toolbox manually. Right-click the toolbox, and select Choose Items.... Select the SSIS Data Flow Items tab, and then check the Data Generator Source from the list. Downloads The Data Generator Source Adapter is available for SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008 (includes R2) and SQL Server 2012. Please choose the version to match your SQL Server version, or you can install multiple versions and use them side by side if you have more than one version of SQL Server installed. Data Generator Source Adapter for SQL Server 2005 Data Generator Source Adapter for SQL Server 2008 Data Generator Source Adapter for SQL Server 2012 Version History SQL Server 2012 Version 3.0.0.30 - SQL Server 2012 release. Includes upgrade support for both 2005 and 2008 packages to 2012. (5 Jun 2012) SQL Server 2008 Version 2.0.0.29 - SQL Server 2008 February 2008 CTP. Includes support for upgrade of 2005 packages. Simplified user interface. (4 Mar 2008) Version 2.0.0.27 - SQL Server 2008 November 2007 CTP. String columns will now use the default system code page. Previously string columns always used 1252. (15 Feb 2008) SQL Server 2005 Version 1.1.0.23 - SQL Server 2005 RTM Refresh. SP1 Compatibility Testing. (12 Jun 2006) Version 1.0.0.0 - SQL Server 2005 IDW 16 Sept CTP. Public release. (6 Oct 2005)

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  • Height Map Mapping to "Chunked" Quadrilateralized Spherical Cube

    - by user3684950
    I have been working on a procedural spherical terrain generator for a few months which has a quadtree LOD system. The system splits the six faces of a quadrilateralized spherical cube into smaller "quads" or "patches" as the player approaches those faces. What I can't figure out is how to generate height maps for these patches. To generate the heights I am using a 3D ridged multi fractals algorithm. For now I can only displace the vertices of the patches directly using the output from the ridged multi fractals. I don't understand how I generate height maps that allow the vertices of a terrain patch to be mapped to pixels in the height map. The only thing I can think of is taking each vertex in a patch, plug that into the RMF and take that position and translate into u,v coordinates then determine the pixel position directly from the u,v coordinates and determine the grayscale color based on the height. I feel as if this is the right approach but there are a few other things that may further complicate my problem. First of all I intend to use "height maps" with a pixel resolution of 192x192 while the vertex "resolution" of each terrain patch is only 16x16 - meaning that I don't have any vertices to sample for the RMF for most of the pixels. The main reason the height map resolution is higher so that I can use it to generate a normal map (otherwise the height maps serve little purpose as I can just directly displace vertices as I currently am). I am pretty much following this paper very closely. This is, essentially, the part I am having trouble with. Using the cube-to-sphere mapping and the ridged multifractal algorithm previously described, a normalized height value ([0, 1]) is calculated. Using this height value, the terrain position is calculated and stored in the first three channels of the positionmap (RGB) – this will be used to calculate the normalmap. The fourth channel (A) is used to store the height value itself, to be used in the heightmap. The steps in the first sentence are my primary problem. I don't understand how the pixel positions correspond to positions on the sphere and what positions are sampled for the RMF to generate the pixels if only vertices cannot be used.

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  • What is required for a scope in an injection framework?

    - by johncarl
    Working with libraries like Seam, Guice and Spring I have become accustomed to dealing with variables within a scope. These libraries give you a handful of scopes and allow you to define your own. This is a very handy pattern for dealing with variable lifecycles and dependency injection. I have been trying to identify where scoping is the proper solution, or where another solution is more appropriate (context variable, singleton, etc). I have found that if the scope lifecycle is not well defined it is very difficult and often failure prone to manage injections in this way. I have searched on this topic but have found little discussion on the pattern. Is there some good articles discussing where to use scoping and what are required/suggested prerequisites for scoping? I interested in both reference discussion or your view on what is required or suggested for a proper scope implementation. Keep in mind that I am referring to scoping as a general idea, this includes things like globally scoped singletons, request or session scoped web variable, conversation scopes, and others. Edit: Some simple background on custom scopes: Google Guice custom scope Some definitions relevant to above: “scoping” - A set of requirements that define what objects get injected at what time. A simple example of this is Thread scope, based on a ThreadLocal. This scope would inject a variable based on what thread instantiated the class. Here's an example of this: “context variable” - A repository passed from one object to another holding relevant variables. Much like scoping this is a more brute force way of accessing variables based on the calling code. Example: methodOne(Context context){ methodTwo(context); } methodTwo(Context context){ ... //same context as method one, if called from method one } “globally scoped singleton” - Following the singleton pattern, there is one object per application instance. This applies to scopes because there is a basic lifecycle to this object: there is only one of these objects instantiated. Here's an example of a JSR330 Singleton scoped object: @Singleton public void SingletonExample{ ... } usage: public class One { @Inject SingeltonExample example1; } public class Two { @Inject SingeltonExample example2; } After instantiation: one.example1 == two.example2 //true;

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  • Puppet: Getting Started On Windows

    - by Robz / Fervent Coder
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/robz/archive/2014/08/07/puppet-getting-started-on-windows.aspxNow that we’ve talked a little about Puppet. Let’s see how easy it is to get started. Install Puppet Let’s get Puppet Installed. There are two ways to do that: With Chocolatey: Open an administrative/elevated command shell and type: choco install puppet Download and install Puppet manually - http://puppetlabs.com/misc/download-options Run Puppet Let’s make pasting into a console window work with Control + V (like it should): choco install wincommandpaste If you have a cmd.exe command shell open, (and chocolatey installed) type: RefreshEnv The previous command will refresh your environment variables, ala Chocolatey v0.9.8.24+. If you were running PowerShell, there isn’t yet a refreshenv for you (one is coming though!). If you have to restart your CLI (command line interface) session or you installed Puppet manually open an administrative/elevated command shell and type: puppet resource user Output should look similar to a few of these: user { 'Administrator': ensure => 'present', comment => 'Built-in account for administering the computer/domain', groups => ['Administrators'], uid => 'S-1-5-21-some-numbers-yo-500', } Let's create a user: puppet apply -e "user {'bobbytables_123': ensure => present, groups => ['Users'], }" Relevant output should look like: Notice: /Stage[main]/Main/User[bobbytables_123]/ensure: created Run the 'puppet resource user' command again. Note the user we created is there! Let’s clean up after ourselves and remove that user we just created: puppet apply -e "user {'bobbytables_123': ensure => absent, }" Relevant output should look like: Notice: /Stage[main]/Main/User[bobbytables_123]/ensure: removed Run the 'puppet resource user' command one last time. Note we just removed a user! Conclusion You just did some configuration management /system administration. Welcome to the new world of awesome! Puppet is super easy to get started with. This is a taste so you can start seeing the power of automation and where you can go with it. We haven’t talked about resources, manifests (scripts), best practices and all of that yet. Next we are going to start to get into more extensive things with Puppet. Next time we’ll walk through getting a Vagrant environment up and running. That way we can do some crazier stuff and when we are done, we can just clean it up quickly.

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-06-06

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Creating an Oracle Endeca Information Discovery 2.3 Application Part 3 : Creating the User Interface | Mark Rittman Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman continues his article series. WebLogic Advisor WebCasts on-demand A series of videos by WebLogic experts, available to those with access to support.oracle.com. Integrating OBIEE 11g into Weblogic’s SAML SSO | Andre Correa A-Team blogger Andre Correa illustrates a transient federation scenario. InfoQ: Cloud 2017: Cloud Architectures in 5 Years Andrew Phillips, Mark Holdsworth, Martijn Verburg, Patrick Debois, and Richard Davies review the evolution of cloud computing so far and look five years into the future. Call for Nominations: Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards 2012 - Win a free pass to #OOW12 These awards honor customers for their cutting-edge solutions using Oracle Fusion Middleware. Either a customer, their partner, or an Oracle representative can submit the nomination form on behalf of the customer. Submission deadline: July 17. Winners receive a free pass to Oracle OpenWorld 2012 in San Francisco. SOA Analysis within the Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF) 2.0 – Part II | Dawit Lessanu The conclusion of Lessanu's two-part series for Service Technology Magazine. Driving from Business Architecture to Business Process Services | Hariharan V. Ganesarethinam "The perfect mixture of EA, SOA and BPM make enterprise IT highly agile so it can quickly accommodate dynamic business strategies, alignments and directions," says Ganesarethinam. "However, there should be a structured approach to drive enterprise architecture to service-oriented architecture and business processes." Book Review: Oracle Application Integration Architecture (AIA) Foundation Pack 11gR1: Essentials | Rajesh Raheja Rajesh Raheja reviews the new AIA book from Packt Publishing. ODTUG Kscope12 - June 24-28 - San Antonio, TX San Antonio, TX June 24-28, 2012 Kscope12, sponsored by ODTUG, is your home for Application Express, BI and Oracle EPM, Database Development, Fusion Middleware, and MySQL training by the best of the best! Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c : Enterprise Controller High Availability (EC HA) | Mahesh Sharma Mahesh Sharma describes EC HA, looks at the prerequisites, and shares screen shots. The right way to transform your business via the cloud | David Linthicum A couple of quick tests will show you where you need to focus your transition efforts. Thought for the Day "Most software isn't designed. Rather, it emerges from the development team like a zombie emerging from a bubbling vat of Research and Development juice. When a discipline is hugging the ragged edge of technology, this might be expected, but most of today's software is comprised of mostly 'D' and very little 'R'." — Alan Cooper Source: softwarequotes.com

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  • Getting WLAN on my Laptop to work (Medion MD98300)

    - by Anand Böhmer
    Dear Ubuntu Community, I am having difficulties to get the WLAN Adapter on my Medion 98300 Laptop to work. The WLAN Card seems to be connected through an internal USB Interface and the Card itself had shown up as a wirelles Network while installing Ubuntu. I have tried a few things earlier, but none of my google reasearches have brought me to a working solution... I am quite new to the Linux System and only knoew a couple of terminal commands so far, so I probably have missed out on a few possible solutions. Maybe you can help me? Thank you very much in advance! A fre minimal technical Details: AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technolgie TL-50 NVIDIA GeForce Go 6150 SanDisk 64GB SSD 2GB RAM DDR2 667 nForce Chipset (I forgt the Version, but deductable from the GPU I guess) WiFi: ZyDAS ZD1211B 802.11g Thank's a lot again! :) UPDATE: I tried around myself a little and found a guide on the Linux Mint forums that helped! I already had tried to install the linux backport modules etc. What I finally did was update the linux firmware and run the following command: echo "options acer_wmi wirelles=1" sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/acer_wmi.conf and rebooted now I found and could connect to networks, but unfortunately I found, that the link quality was very bad, around 40 to 50. Eventhough my Router is running at high power and is only 6 Meters away! I then switched a few channels, but that did not improve much. Before, under Windows, I had a very good link quality and had the entire 16mbit/s internet connection at disposal, now I can only get about 3-5Mbit/s. better then nothing, but still pretty bad! The "TX power" is fixed on 20dBm and iwconfig says, that the "Power Management" is off... Maybe the power of the module is set too low?... UPDATE2: I figured that 20dBm is a normal power output. I even tried to change the power using iwconfig wlan0 txpower INTEGERHERE but, obviously my "Card" does not support more then 20. More would probably be illegal as well, so I won't even use more then 20. I guess that I will have to figure out a way, or maybe just switch cards. Are the Mailboard-USB-Connectors on a laptop of the same property as the standard external ones? If so, I could simply solder a micro Wirelless N Adapter onto the board :)

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  • What is the rationale behind snazzy Window Managers/Composers?

    - by Emanuele
    This is more of a generic question, based on trying out Window Managers like Awesome, Mate and others. To me looks like that other Window Managers like Gnome3 and/or Unity are heavy and pointless. I do understand that having all the composed UIs is more pleasant for the eye, but apart that, what are the other major benefits? To make an example, when I run the game Heroes of Newerth (using nVidia drivers) under: Unity : the FPS drops sharply Gnome3 : FPS is ok, but X and other processes use 15~20% of CPU and quite some additional memory Awesome : FPS is ok, and other processes use very little memory and CPU Below some numbers regarding what I'm saying (please note my system is 64 bit, AMD Phenom II X4, 8 GB RAM, nd nVidia 470 GTX, SSD disk). All data is sorted by mem usage (watch -d -n 10 "ps -e -o pcpu,pmem,pid,user,cmd --sort=-pmem | head -20"); again note that CPU time of ./hon-x86_64 might be different due to the fact I can't take the snapshot of the system during exactly same time. Awesome: %CPU %MEM PID USER CMD 91.8 21.6 3579 ema ./hon-x86_64 2.4 0.9 3223 root /usr/bin/X :0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch 1.6 0.4 2600 ema /usr/lib/erlang/erts-5.8.5/bin/beam.smp -Bd -K true -A 4 -- -root /usr/lib/erlang -progname erl -- -home /home/ema -- -noshell -noinp 0.3 0.2 3602 ema gnome-terminal 0.0 0.2 2698 ema /usr/bin/python /usr/lib/desktopcouch/desktopcouch-service Gnome3: %CPU %MEM PID USER CMD 82.7 21.0 5528 ema ./hon-x86_64 17.7 1.7 5315 ema /usr/bin/gnome-shell 5.8 1.2 5062 root /usr/bin/X :0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch 1.0 0.4 5657 ema /usr/bin/python /usr/lib/ubuntuone-client/ubuntuone-syncdaemon 0.7 0.3 5331 ema nautilus -n 1.6 0.3 2600 ema /usr/lib/erlang/erts-5.8.5/bin/beam.smp -Bd -K true -A 4 -- -root /usr/lib/erlang -progname erl -- -home /home/ema -- - 0.9 0.2 5451 ema gnome-terminal 0.1 0.2 5400 ema /usr/bin/python /usr/lib/desktopcouch/desktopcouch-service Unity 3D: %CPU %MEM PID USER CMD 87.2 21.1 6554 ema ./hon-x86_64 10.7 2.6 6105 ema compiz 17.8 1.1 5842 root /usr/bin/X :0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch 1.3 0.9 6672 root /usr/bin/python /usr/sbin/aptd 0.4 0.4 6606 ema /usr/bin/python /usr/lib/ubuntuone-client/ubuntuone-syncdaemon 0.5 0.3 6115 ema nautilus -n 1.5 0.3 2600 ema /usr/lib/erlang/erts-5.8.5/bin/beam.smp -Bd -K true -A 4 -- -root /usr/lib/erlang -progname erl -- -home /home/ema -- -noshell -noinput -sasl errl 0.3 0.2 6180 ema /usr/lib/unity/unity-panel-service So my point is, what's the rationale behind going towards such heavy WMs/Composers?

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  • Geek Bike Ride JavaOne 2012

    - by Tori Wieldt
    "Geek Bike Ride?" the clerk at the bike rental shop asked. "Are you guys all from the same company?" "We aren't even from the same country!" we answered. "I'm from Russia." "We're from Germany."  "I'm from Belgium." "I'm from Palo Alto." "I'm from Japan."  "We're from Brazil." "We're from Brazil." "I'm from Sweden." "Coooool" was all she could say. She was right. The Geek Bike Ride was cooool. We had 39 bike riders and one skater show up Saturday for a great route from San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf, across the Golden Gate bridge, to Saulsalito, and back to the city by ferry. Duke Bike jerseys, sponsored by OTN, were given out. To make sure Java developers got them, each person had to answer a Java question to get a jersey. The questions were really hard, like "Who is the Father of Java?" "What's the biggest Java conference in San Francisco?" The best was when the question was "Name one of Duke's Choice Award winner from this year," and Régina ten Bruggencate answered answered "Me!"  It was foggy throughout the day, with the sun poking out occasionally. The fog was thickest on the bridge, more that one rider commented that we were "in the cloud." It was a great day to meet new friends, and have a chat with old friends. We all had fun, though some of us may more a little more slowly during JavaOne. Ride on!  Photos by permission by Arun Gupta and Yoshio Terada. Thanks, guys!

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  • Is anyone doing "real" TDD with Visual-C++, and if yes, how do they do it?

    - by Martin
    Test Driven Development implies writing the test before the code and following a certain cycle: Write Test Check Test (run) Write Production Code Check Test (run) Clean up Production Code Check test (run) As far as I'm concerned, this is only possible if your development solution allows you to very quickly switch between the production and test code, and to execute the test for a certain production code part extremely quickly. Now, while there exist lots of Unit Testing Frameworks for C++ (I'm using Bost.Test atm.) it does seem that there doesn't really exist any decent (for native C++) Visual Studio (Plugin) solution that makes the TDD cycle bearable regardless of framework used. "Bearable" means that it's a one-click action to run a test for a certain cpp file without having to manually set up a separate testing project etc. "Bearable" also means that a simple test starts (linking!) and runs very quickly. So, what tools (plugins) and techniques are out there that make the TDD cycle possible for native C++ development with Visual Studio? Note: I'm fine with free or "commercial" tools. Please: No framework recommendations. (Unless the framework has a dedicated Visual Studio plugin and you want to recommend the plugin.) Edit Note: The answers so far have provided links on how to integrate a Unit Testing framework into Visual Studio. The resources more or less describe how to get the UT framework to compile and get your first Tests running. This is not what this question is about. I'm of the opinion that to really work productively, having the Unit Tests in a manually maintained(!), separate vcproj from your production classes will add so much overhead that TDD "isn't possible". As far as I am aware, you do not add extra "projects" to a Java or C# thing to enable Unit Tests and TDD, and for a good reason. This should be possible with C++ given the right tools, but it seems (this question is about) that there are very little tools for TDD/C++/VS. Googling around, I've found one tool, VisualAssert, that seems to aim in the right direction. However, afaiks, it doesn't seem to be in widespread use (compared to CppUnit, Boost.Test etc.). Edit: I would like to add a comment to the context for this question. I think it does a good summary of outlining (part of) the problem: (comment by Billy ONeal) Visual Studio does not use "build scripts" that are reasonably editable by the user. One project produces one binary. Moreover, Java has the property that Java never builds a complete binary -- the binary you build is just a ZIP of the class files. Therefore it's possible to compile separately then JAR together manually (using e.g. 7z). C++ and C# both actually link their binaries, so generally speaking you can't write a script like that. The closest you can get is to compile everything separately and then do two linkings (one for production, one for testing).

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  • How can a solo programmer become a good team player?

    - by Nick
    I've been programming (obsessively) since I was 12. I am fairly knowledgeable across the spectrum of languages out there, from assembly, to C++, to Javascript, to Haskell, Lisp, and Qi. But all of my projects have been by myself. I got my degree in chemical engineering, not CS or computer engineering, but for the first time this fall I'll be working on a large programming project with other people, and I have no clue how to prepare. I've been using Windows all of my life, but this project is going to be very unix-y, so I purchased a Mac recently in the hopes of familiarizing myself with the environment. I was fortunate to participate in a hackathon with some friends this past year -- both CS majors -- and excitingly enough, we won. But I realized as I worked with them that their workflow was very different from mine. They used Git for version control. I had never used it at the time, but I've since learned all that I can about it. They also used a lot of frameworks and libraries. I had to learn what Rails was pretty much overnight for the hackathon (on the other hand, they didn't know what lexical scoping or closures were). All of our code worked well, but they didn't understand mine, and I didn't understand theirs. I hear references to things that real programmers do on a daily basis -- unit testing, code reviews, but I only have the vaguest sense of what these are. I normally don't have many bugs in my little projects, so I have never needed a bug tracking system or tests for them. And the last thing is that it takes me a long time to understand other people's code. Variable naming conventions (that vary with each new language) are difficult (__mzkwpSomRidicAbbrev), and I find the loose coupling difficult. That's not to say I don't loosely couple things -- I think I'm quite good at it for my own work, but when I download something like the Linux kernel or the Chromium source code to look at it, I spend hours trying to figure out how all of these oddly named directories and files connect. It's a programming sin to reinvent the wheel, but I often find it's just quicker to write up the functionality myself than to spend hours dissecting some library. Obviously, people who do this for a living don't have these problems, and I'll need to get to that point myself. Question: What are some steps that I can take to begin "integrating" with everyone else? Thanks!

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  • Ubuntu won't connect to wired network

    - by djeikyb
    I'm running 10.04, upgraded from 9.10, maybe, but probably not upgraded from 9.04. I have two wifi routers. Zeus is connected to the dsl modem. Hermes uses a wds bridge with Zeus to extend the network. My desktop (Daedalus) is ethernetted to Hermes. My laptop (Clyde) is wifi, switching to Hermes or Zeus as needed. Occasionally, as in whenever I transfer a large file from desktop to laptop, the wds bridge will die. Fixing it means restarting both routers, though it seems Hermes should boot first. This is ridiculous, and eventually I'll get around to asking you guys to help me stop it from happening. More importantly is that my desktop requires a reboot to get back on the network. WTF. ifconfig shows my nic has no ip. /etc/init.d/networking restart doesn't do anything, not even give me a lousy ip. dhcpcd eth1 grants me an ip address, but doesn't help with internet access. route -n shows what looks like my normal routing table, but pinging google.com informs me it's an unknown host. jake@daedalus:~$ route -n Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 10.1.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth1 169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth1 0.0.0.0 10.1.1.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth1 It may be worth noting that I can ping both Zeus (10.1.1.1) and Hermes (10.1.1.4) and my laptop (10.1.1.55). Much obliged for any help. Rebooting is, well, trivial in this instance. But it's stupid. I switched to linux because I like the idea that if one part breaks, you fix it instead of reboot reboot reboot. I've left my poor desktop in disarray, confining myself to my little netbook. My desktop is broken, awaiting magical commands from you brilliant folk. (and yes, i know clyde the netbook should be named icarus. it was its original name. ironically the ssd burned out, and i felt it wasn't right when it came to reinstalling)

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  • Correct way to handle path-finding collision matrix

    - by Xander Lamkins
    Here is an example of me utilizing path finding. The red grid represents the grid utilized by my A* library to locate a distance. This picture is only an example, currently it is all calculated on the 1x1 pixel level (pretty darn laggy). I want to make it so that the farther I click, the less accurate it will be (split the map into larger grid pieces). Edit: as mentioned by Eric, this is not a required game mechanic. I am perfectly fine with any method that allows me to make this accurate while still fast. This isn't the really the topic of this question though. The problem I have is, my current library uses a two dimensional grid of integers. The higher the number in a cell, the more resistance for that grid tile. Currently I'm setting all unwalkable spots to Integer Max. Here is an example of what I want: I'm just not sure how I should set up the arrays of integers of the grid. Every time an element is added/removed to/from the game, it's collision details are updated in the table. Here is a picture of what the map looks like on my collision layer: I probably shouldn't be creating new arrays every time I have to do a path find because my game needs to support tons of PF at the same time. Should I have multiple arrays that are all updated when the dynamic elements are updated (a building is built/a building is destroyed). The problem I see with this is that it will probably make the creation and destruction of buildings a little more laggy than I would want because it would be setting the collision grid for each built in accuracy level. I would also have to add more/remove some arrays if I ever in the future changed the map size. Should I generate the new array based on an accuracy value every time I need to PF? The problem I see with this is that it will probably make any form of PF just as laggy because it will have to search through a MapWidth x MapHeight number of cells to shrink it all down. Or is there a better way? I'm certainly not the best at optimizing really anything. I've just started dealing with XNA so I'm not used to having optimization code really doing much of an affect until now... :( If you need code examples, please ask. I'll add it as an edit. EDIT: While this doesn't directly relate to the question, I figure the more information I provide, the better. To keep your units from moving as accurately to the players desired position, I've decided that once the unit PFs over to the less accurate grid piece, it will then PF on a more accurate level to the exact position requested.

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  • Phone number in meta description bad or good for local rankings NAP

    - by bybe
    Once again I'm at it with increasing people's local rankings and I've learnt so much about local rankings in the past 2 weeks it feels like my brain is gonna pop anyway, question is fairly simple for someone who engages in local rankings and I appreciate the question may be a little guess work but isn't SEO mostly guessing anyway? From what I've read and learned that Google works of a system called nap for local rankings (With many other factors but this question is purely based on NAP). For people who care about local rankings NAP stands for Name of Business / Address of Business / Phone Number for Business. Now what what I've read you don't need the whole NAP to be on one website, a P or just a N can help towards your local rankings. It's believed that NAP rewards more than just P and N for example but knowing Google they might have a diversity checker which is my concern what your get to in a moment. Now of course sites weight differently where your business is posted, it's certainly going to be more credible if your NAP details are on your national phone book than say a blog site, so taking in this consideration too. Pure Guess (Not apart of the question but none the less makes a good read on my belief). Now my guess work would make me believe that the formula would look something like (N)+(A)+(P)x(T) So (N)name would be 1 or 0 to indicate present or not So (A)dress would be 1 or 0 to indicate present or not So (P)hone would be 1 or 0 to indicate present or not So (T)rust would be 1-100 to indicate level of trust So a phone number appearing on youtube might look something like 0+0+1x95= 95 and a NAP appearing on your national phone book might look something like 1+1+1x100= 300 Please note that I'm not saying this is the sole factor and I'm sure its way more complex that this with things like other factors on the page, off the page (Reviews, Links, Clicks) and so on but its still a contributor). The Question My question is fairly simple and I'd imagine hard to impossible to have an actual definite answer to this but maybe someone has seen official wording else where on this, is it bad to include address or phone number in the Meta Description? The reason I ask is that one of my competitors has these elements in the meta descriptions and their local rankings are absolutely superb, the problem I have with this is scrap bot sites like 'Similar Too' 'Seo Rankings' and 1,000's of the other scrap box networks that scrap site and then make urls with your site information are mostly limited to your meta description what this means that your phone number, address and sometimes even your company name if the domain is exact will appear as AP, and even NAP on thousands of websites. So, is it a bad strategy to include phone number and address in meta description, everything I read into would suggest its good of course with the downside of maybe lowering quality of description for click thoughts but top rankings would increase this 10 folds anyhow..

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  • The Case for Complimentary Software Copies

    - by GGBlogger
    As the Geriatric Geek you can understand that I’ve been writing and studying for over 60 years. That means that I’ve seen insane changes in the computer software industry. I’ve made the joke that I get a new college education every 6 months or so. Of course that’s an exaggeration but it doesn’t make the feeling go away. I have a long standing and strong relationship with Microsoft so I’m armed with virtually every tool they make. It also means that I have access to tons of training material. But here’s the rub… Last year I started a definitive read of Professional Visual Basic 2008. The purpose was to fill in holes in my understanding of various things. I’m currently on page 1119 of some 1400 pages. During this sojourn I’ve decided that the future is web related which is to say that the future of “thick client” applications running as Windows applications is likely to slowly disappear. To that end I’ve taken a side trip or two into the world of ASP (including XML), Silverlight and cloud development. After carefully avoiding (that’s tongue in cheek) XML for years I finally had to bite the bullet, so to speak, and start learning XML in earnest. The most recent result of that was trail downloads of Altova’s MissionKit 2010 for Software Architects and Liquid Technologies Liquid XML Studio Developer Edition. These are both beautiful products and I want to learn them and write about them. Now comes the rub… While 30 day evaluations are generous in allowing casual users to assess these technologies for purchase they are NOT long enough to allow an author to evaluate, learn and ultimately write about them. Even if I devoted the full 30 days to learning, using and writing about say Altova’s suite I wouldn’t have enough time. Liquid XML may be a little easier to learn (one product as opposed to 8).  Add to that the fact that I frequently get sidetracked to add to my kit and it really blows out. It can be extremely frustrating when I’ve devoted hours to a project and suddenly discover that to complete it I will either need to purchase a license or abandon the project. Since my life blood does not depend on the product I end up abandoning the project and moving on. So to the folks from whom I request complimentary copies… I guarantee that if I convert your product to doing paid development work I will purchase a license to do that but as long as I am using your product to study for the purpose of writing samples, teaching use or otherwise promoting your product to other paying customers I will ask that you give me a license so that I can do that without facing the dread expiration of a 30 day trial.

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  • XNA Moddable Game - Architecture Design and Reflection

    - by David K
    I've decided to embark on an XNA moddable game project of a simple rogue style. For all purposes of this question, I'm going to not be using a scripting engine, but rather allow modders to directly compile assemblies that are loaded by the game at run time. I know about the security problems this may raise. So in order to expose the moddable content, I have gone about creating a generic project in XNA called MyModel. This contains a number of interfaces that all inherit from IPlugin, such as IGameSystem, IRenderingSystem, IHud, IInputSystem etc. Then I've created another project called MyRogueModel. This references MyModel project, and holds interfaces such as IMonster, IPlayer, IDungeonGenerator, IInventorySystem. More rogue specific interfaces, but again, all interfaces in this project inherit from IPlugin. Then finally, I've created another project called MyRogueGame, that references both MyModel and MyRogueModel projects. This project will be the game that you run and play. Here I have put the actual implementation of the Monster, DungeonGenerator, InputSystem and RenderingSystem classes. This project will also scan the mods directory during run time and load any IPlugins it finds using reflection and override anything it finds from the default. For example if it finds a new implementation of the DungeonGenerator it will use that one instead. Now my question is, in order to get this far, I have effectively 2 projects that contain nothing but interfaces... which seems a little... strange ? For people to create mods for the game, I would give them both the MyModel and MyRogueModel assemblies in which they would reference. I'm not sure whether this is the right way to do it, but my reasoning goes as follows : If I write 1 input system, I can use it in any game I write. If I create 3 rogue like games, and a modder writes 1 rendering system, that modder could use the rendering system for all 3 games, because it all comes from the MyModel project. I come from a more web based C# role, so having empty interface projects doesn't seem wrong, its just something I haven't done before. Before I embark on something that might be crazy, I'd just like to know whether this is a foolish idea and whether there's a better (or established) design principle I should be following ?

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