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• Simulate 'Shock absorbtion' with tire rubber in PhysX (2.8.x)

  - by Mungoid

  This is a kinda tricky question and I fear there is no easy enough solution, but I figured I'd hit SE up before giving up on it and just doing what I can. A machine I am working on has no suspension or shocks or springs of any sort in the real machine, so you would think that when it drives over bumps, it would shake like crazy but because its tires (6 of them) are quite large they seem to absorb a lot of shock from the bumps. Part of this is because the machine is around 30k lbs and it just smashes/compresses any bumps in the ground down (This is another issue im still working on) and the other part is that the tires seem to have a lot of flex to them with a lot of air as well. So my current task is to simulate shock absorption in physx without visibly separating the tires from the spindle/axle.. I have been messing with all kinds of NxMaterial, NxSpring, Joints, etc. and have had no luck getting this to work. The main problem is that the spindle attached to the tire is directly in the center and the axle is basically solidly attached to the chassis, so if i give it any spring or suspension travel, that spindle on the tires will move upwards or downwards, looking very odd because now its not any longer in the center of the tire. I tried giving it a higher restitution but that just makes it bouncy without any shock absorption. Another avenue I am messing with is to actively smooth the terrain in front of the tires so that before it hits a bumpy patch, that patch is smoothed and it doesn't bounce. The only issue with this is that it is pretty expensive to do with 6 tires, high tesselation of the terrain and other complex things going on at the same time in this simulation. I am still working on this but I am hoping to mix and match a few different aspects to get the best possible outcome. This is a bit of a complex issue so I'm not expecting anyone to have a definitive answer, just hoping someone may think of something I haven't =-) -Side note: Yes i know PhysX 2.8.x is quite outdated but we have to stick with it for this implementation. We are in the process of going to another physics engine but it is out of scope to apply that engine to this project.

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• The difference

  So with the CTP tools available, weve been building a few apps, just to get a feel for the tools and whats supported in the framework.  Whats been great is that everything is fairly familiar and consistent, largely to do with the .net framework and Microsofts focus on providing good tools.  Weve produced mobile applications, mostly in concept form, for Windows Phone Classic, iPhone and Android but never so quickly and not of such high quality and visual impression.  I attribute some of this obviously to our familiarity to the Microsoft platform and tools.  Though when you look at the designs our team has produced, it becomes clear that this is not just another mobile application container.                                                            The Metro design language implores content prominence with fluid motion and transitions, with a crisp font and easily organized features and services placement.  In addition to a purposeful right edge tease, where the intent is for users to discover new premium content and services.   The concept that enables this is called hubs, building application with hubs changes your thinking from a single mobile application task, to thinking creatively about a mobile experience. Its engaging to think of the other brands and industry verticals that will take advantage of this core feature.  Combine this with Windows Phone 7 live tiles, more on that later, and you have a recipe for a solid mobile services platform.                                                              This so much more fun and liberating than my icon on a gridDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Are there any good Java/JVM libraries for my Expression Tree architecture?

  - by Snuggy

  My team and I are developing an enterprise-level application and I have devised an architecture for it that's best described as an "Expression Tree". The basic idea is that the leaf nodes of the tree are very simple expressions (perhaps simple values or strings). Nodes closer to the trunk will get more and more complex, taking the simpler nodes as their inputs and returning more complex results for their parents. Looking at it the other way, the application performs some task, and for this it creates a root expression. The root expression divides its input into smaller units and creates child expressions, which when evaluated it can use to build it's own result. The subdividing process continues until the simplest leaf nodes. There are two very important aspects of this architecture: It must be possible to manipulate nodes of the tree after it is built. The nodes may be given new input values to work with and any change in result for that node needs to be propagated back up the tree to the root node. The application must make best use of available processors and ultimately be scalable to other computers in a grid or in the cloud. Nodes in the tree will often be updating concurrently and notifying other interested nodes in the tree when they get a new value. Unfortunately, I'm not at liberty to discuss my actual application, but to aid understanding a little bit, you might imagine a kind of spreadsheet application being implemented with a similar architecture, where changes to cells in the table are propagated all over the place to other cells that need the result. The spreadsheet could get so massive that applying multi-core multi-computer distributed system to solve it would be of benefit. I've got my prototype "Expression Engine" working nicely on a single multi-core PC but I've started to run into a few concurrency issues (as expected because I haven't been taking too much care so far) so it's now time to start thinking about migrating the Engine to a more robust library, and that leads to a number of related questions: Is there any precedent for my "Expression Tree" architecture that I could research? What programming concepts should I consider. I realise this approach has many similarities to a functional programming style, and I'm already aware of the concepts of using futures and actors. Are there any others? Are there any languages or libraries that I should study? This question is inspired by my accidental discovery of Scala and the Akka library (which has good support for Actors, Futures, Distributed workloads etc.) and I'm wondering if there is anything else I should be looking at as well?

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• Who could ask for more with LESS CSS? (Part 1 of 3&ndash;Features)

  - by ToStringTheory

  It wasn’t very long ago that I first began to get into CSS precompilers such as SASS (Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets) and LESS (The Dynamic Stylesheet Language) and I had been hooked on the idea since.  When I finally had a new project come up, I leapt at the opportunity to try out one of these languages. Introduction To be honest, I was hesitant at first to add either framework as I didn’t really know much more than what I had read on their homepages, and I didn’t like the idea of adding too much complexity to a project - I couldn’t guarantee I would be the only person to support it in the future. Thankfully, both of these languages just add things into CSS.  You don’t HAVE to know LESS or SASS to do anything, you can still do your old school CSS, and your output will be the same.  However, when you want to start doing more advanced things such as variables, mixins, and color functions, the functionality is all there for you to utilize. From what I had read, SASS has a few more features than LESS, which is why I initially tried to figure out how to incorporate it into a MVC 4 project. However, through my research, I couldn’t find a way to accomplish this without including some bit of the Ruby on Rails framework on the computer running it, and I hated the fact that I had to do that.  Besides SASS, there is little chance of me getting into the RoR framework, at least in the next couple years.  So in the end, I settled with using LESS. Features So, what can LESS (or SASS) do for you?  There are several reasons I have come to love it in the past few weeks. 1 – Constants Using LESS, you can finally declare a constant and use its value across an entire CSS file. The case that most people would be familiar with is colors.  Wanting to declare one or two color variables that comprise the theme of the site, and not have to retype out their specific hex code each time, but rather a variable name.  What’s great about this is that if you end up having to change it, you only have to change it in one place.  An important thing to note is that you aren’t limited to creating constants just for colors, but for strings and measurements as well. 2 – Inheritance This is a cool feature in my mind for simplicity and organization.  Both LESS and SASS allow you to place selectors within other selectors, and when it is compiled, the languages will break the rules out as necessary and keep the inheritance chain you created in the selectors. Example LESS Code: #header {   h1 {     font-size: 26px;     font-weight: bold;   }   p {     font-size: 12px;     a     {       text-decoration: none;       &:hover {         border-width: 1px       }     }   } } Example Compiled CSS: #header h1 {   font-size: 26px;   font-weight: bold; } #header p {   font-size: 12px; } #header p a {   text-decoration: none; } #header p a:hover {   border-width: 1px; } 3 - Mixins Mixins are where languages like this really shine.  The ability to mixin other definitions setup a parametric mixin.  There is really a lot of content in this area, so I would suggest looking at http://lesscss.org for more information.  One of the things I would suggest if you do begin to use LESS is to also grab the mixins.less file from the Twitter Bootstrap project.  This file already has a bunch of predefined mixins for things like border-radius with all of the browser specific prefixes.  This alone is of great use! 4 – Color Functions This is the last thing I wanted to point out as my final post in this series will be utilizing these functions in a more drawn out manner.  Both LESS and SASS provide functions for getting information from a color (R,G,B,H,S,L).  Using these, it is easy to define a primary color, and then darken or lighten it a little for your needs.  Example: Example LESS Code: @base-color: #111; @red:        #842210; #footer {   color: (@base-color + #003300);   border-left:  2px;   border-right: 2px;   border-color: desaturate(@red, 10%); } Example Compiled CSS: #footer {    color: #114411;    border-left:  2px;    border-right: 2px;    border-color: #7d2717; } I have found that these can be very useful and powerful when constructing a site theme. Conclusion I came across LESS and SASS when looking for the best way to implement some type of CSS variables for colors, because I hated having to do a Find and Replace in all of the files using the colors, and in some instances, you couldn’t just find/replace because of the color choices interfering with other colors (color to replace of #000, yet come colors existed like #0002bc).  So in many cases I would end up having to do a Find and manually check each one. In my next post, I am going to cover how I’ve come to set up these items and the structure for the items in the project, as well as the conventions that I have come to start using.  In the final post in the series, I will cover a neat little side project I built in LESS dealing with colors!

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• Keeping the meshes "thickness" the same when scaling an object

  - by user1806687

  I've been bashing my head for the past couple of weeks trying to find a way to help me accomplish, on first look very easy task. So, I got this one object currently made out of 5 cuboids (2 sides, 1 top, 1 bottom, 1 back), this is just for an example, later on there will be whole range of different set ups. Now, the thing is when the user chooses to scale the whole object this is what should happen: X scale: top and bottom cuboids should get scaled by a scale factor, sides should get moved so they are positioned just like they were before(in this case at both ends of top and bottom cuboids), back should get scaled so it fits like before(if I simply scale it by a scale factor it will leave gaps on each side). Y scale: sides should get scaled by a scale factor, top and bottom cuboid should get moved, and back should also get scaled. Z scale: sides, top and bottom cuboids should get scaled, back should get moved. Hope you can help, EDIT: So, I've decided to explain the situation once more, this time more detailed(hopefully). I've also made some pictures of how the scaling should look like, where is the problem and the wrong way of scaling. I this example I will be using a thick walled box, with one face missing, where each wall is made by a cuboid(but later on there will be diffrent shapes of objects, where a one of the face might be roundish, or triangle or even under some angle), scaling will be 2x on X axis. 1.This is how the default object without any scaling applied looks like: http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/4293/defaulttz.png 2.If I scale the whole object(all of the meshes) by some scale factor, the problem becomes that the "thickness" of the object walls also change(which I do not want): http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/9073/wrongwaytoscale.png 3.This is how the correct scaling should look like. Appropriate faces gets caled in this case where the scale is on X axis(top, bottom, back): http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/163/rightwayxscale1.png/ 4.But the scale factor might not be the same for all object all of the times. In this case the back has to get scaled a bit more or it leaves gaps: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/9/problemwhenscaling.png/ 5.If everything goes well this is how the final object should look like: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/856/rightwayxscale2.png/ So, as you have might noticed there are quite a bit of things to look out when scaling. I am asking you, if any of you have any idea on how to accomplish this scaling. I have tried whole bunch of things, from scaling all of the object by the same scale factor, to subtracting and adding sizes to get the right size. But nothing I tried worked, if one mesh got scaled correctly then others didnt. Donwload the example object. English is not my first language, so I am really sorry if its hard to understand what I am saying.

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• JDK 8u20 Documentation Updates

  - by joni g.

  JDK 8u20 has been released and is available from the Java Downloads page. See the JDK 8u20 Update Release Notes for details. Highlights for this release: The Medium security level has been removed. Now only High and Very High levels are available. Applets that do not conform with the latest security practices can still be authorized to run by adding the sites that host them to the Exception Site List. See Security for more information. The javafxpackager tool has been renamed to javapackager, and supports both Java and JavaFX applications. The -B option has been added to the javapackager deploy command to enable arguments to be passed to the bundlers that are used to create self-contained applications. See javapackager for Windows or Linux and OS X for information. The <fx:bundleArgument> helper parameter argument has been added to enable arguments to be passed to the bundlers when using ant tasks. See JavaFX Ant Task Reference for more information. A new attribute is available for JAR file manifests. The Entry-Point attribute is used to identify the classes that are allowed to be used as entry points to your application. See Entry-Point Attribute for more information. A new Microsoft Windows Installer (MSI) Enterprise JRE Installer, which enables users to install the JRE across the enterprise, is available for Java SE Advanced or Java SE Suite licensees. See Downloading the Installer in JRE Installation For Microsoft Windows for more information. The following new configuration parameters are added to the installation process to support commercial features, for use by Java SE Advanced or Java SE Suite licensees only: USAGETRACKERCFG= DEPLOYMENT_RULE_SET= See Installing With a Configuration File for more information about these and other installer parameters. Documentation highlights: New Troubleshooting Guide combines and replaces the Desktop Technologies Troubleshooting Guide and the HotSpot Virtual Machine Troubleshooting Guide to provide a single location for diagnosing and solving problems that might occur with Java Client applications. New Deployment Guide combines and replaces the JavaFX Deployment Guide and the Java Rich Internet Applications Guide to provide a single location for information about the Java packaging tools, creating self-contained applications, and deploying Java and JavaFX applications. New Garbage Collection Tuning Guide describes the garbage collectors included with the Java HotSpot VM and helps you choose which one to use. The Java Tutorials have a new look.

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• Why C++ people loves multithreading when it comes to performances?

  - by user1849534

  I have a question, it's about why programmers seems to love concurrency and multi-threaded programs in general. I'm considering 2 main approach here: an async approach basically based on signals, or just an async approach as called by many papers and languages like the new C# 5.0 for example, and a "companion thread" that maanges the policy of your pipeline a concurrent approach or multi-threading approach I will just say that I'm thinking about the hardware here and the worst case scenario, and I have tested this 2 paradigms myself, the async paradigm is a winner at the point that I don't get why people 90% of the time talk about concurrency when they wont to speed up things or make a good use of their resources. I have tested multi-threaded programs and async program on an old machine with an Intel quad-core that doesn't offer a memory controller inside the CPU, the memory is managed entirely by the motherboard, well in this case performances are horrible with a multi-threaded application, even a relatively low number of threads like 3-4-5 can be a problem, the application is unresponsive and is just slow and unpleasant. A good async approach is, on the other hand, probably not faster but it's not worst either, my application just waits for the result and doesn't hangs, it's responsive and there is a much better scaling going on. I have also discovered that a context change in the threading world it's not that cheap in real world scenario, it's infact quite expensive especially when you have more than 2 threads that need to cycle and swap among each other to be computed. On modern CPUs the situation it's not really that different, the memory controller it's integrated but my point is that an x86 CPUs is basically a serial machine and the memory controller works the same way as with the old machine with an external memory controller on the motherboard. The context switch is still a relevant cost in my application and the fact that the memory controller it's integrated or that the newer CPU have more than 2 core it's not bargain for me. For what i have experienced the concurrent approach is good in theory but not that good in practice, with the memory model imposed by the hardware, it's hard to make a good use of this paradigm, also it introduces a lot of issues ranging from the use of my data structures to the join of multiple threads. Also both paradigms do not offer any security abut when the task or the job will be done in a certain point in time, making them really similar from a functional point of view. According to the X86 memory model, why the majority of people suggest to use concurrency with C++ and not just an async aproach ? Also why not considering the worst case scenario of a computer where the context switch is probably more expensive than the computation itself ?

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• How to properly document functionality in an agile project?

  - by RoboShop

  So recently, we've just finished the first phase of our project. We used agile with fortnightly sprints. And whilst the application turned out well, we're now turning our eyes on some of the maintenance tasks. One maintenance task is that all of our documentation appears in the form of specs. These specs describe 1 or more stories and generally are a body of work which a few devs could knock over in a week. For development, that works really well - every two weeks, the devs get handed a spec and it's a nice discrete chunk of work that they can just do. From a documentation point of view, this has become a mess. The problem with writing specs that are focused on delivering just-in-time requirements to developers is we haven't placed much emphasis on the big picture. Specs come from all different angles - it could be describing a standard function, it could describing parts of a workflow, it could be describing a particular screen... And now, we have business rules about our application scattered across 120 documents. Looking for any document for a particular business rule or function in particular is quite hard because you don't know which document has this information, and making a change request is equally hard because once again, we are unsure about which spec to make the change. So we have maybe a couple of weeks of lull before it's back to specing out functionality for the next phase but in this time, I'd like to re-visit our processes. I think the way we have worked so far in terms of delivering fortnightly specs works well. But we also need a way to manage our documentation so that our business rules for a given function / workflow are easy to locate / change. I have two ideas. One is we compile all of our specs into a series of master specs broken by a few broad functional areas. The specs describe the sprint, the master spec describe the system. The only problem I can see is 1) Our existing 120 specs are not all neatly defined into broad functional areas. Some will require breaking up, merging etc. which will take a lot of time. 2) We'll be writing specs and updating master specs in each new sprint. Seems like double the work, and then do the devs look at the spec or the master spec? My other suggestion is to concede that our documentation is too big of a mess, and manage that mess going forward. So we go through each spec, assign like keywords to it, and then when we want to search for a function, we search for that keyword. Problems I can see 1) Still the problem of business rules scattered everywhere, keywords just make it easier to find it. anyway, if anyone has any decent ideas or any experience to share about how best to manage documentation, would really appreciate it.

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• IPv6, isn't it just a few extra bits?

  - by rclewis

  It's always an interesting task, to try and explain what you do to family and friends. I have described IPv6 as the "Next Generation Internet"  or "Second Internet" but the hollow expressions on my kids faces scream for the instant relief of the latest video game.  Never one to give up easily, I have formulated a new example - the Post Office... Similar to the Post Office the Internet delivers mail and packages based on addresses. As the number of residences, businesses, and delivery locations increased, the 5 digit ZIP Code (Washington, DC 20005) was expanded to ZIP+4  allowing for more precise delivery points (Postmaster General, Washington, DC 20260-3100). Ah, if only computers were as simple.  IPv6 isn't an add-on or expansion of the existing IPv4 Addressing, it is a new addressing model which will allow the internet to grow from a single computer in the basement of a university or your parents kitchen table, to support the multitude of smart phones, smart TV's, tablets, dvr's, and disk players, all clambering to connect for information. Unfortunetly there are only a finite number of IPv4 public addresses left, and those are being consumed at an ever increasing rate. Few people could have predicted the explosive growth of the internet or the shortage of IPv4 addresses we now face - but there is a "Plan B" and that is the vastly larger address space of IPv6.  Many in the industry have labeled this a "business continuity" problem,  when in fact most companies will be able to continue conducting business once they run out of existing IPv4 Addresses. The problem is really a Customer Continuity problem, how will businesses communicate with existing customers and reach new customers online who's only option is to adopt IPv6 when IPv4 is depleted? Perhaps a first step is publishing a blog that is also accessible via IPv6, it's just a few extra bits. Join us for the Oracle OpenWorld 2012 Session:   Navigating IPv6 @ Oracle Thursday, Oct. 4th 2:15PM - 3:15PM  Palace Hotel - Concert   Learn more about IPv6 Technologies at Oracle

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• Web optimization

  - by hmloo

  1. CSS Optimization Organize your CSS code Good CSS organization helps with future maintainability of the site, it helps you and your team member understand the CSS more quickly and jump to specific styles. Structure CSS code For small project, you can break your CSS code in separate blocks according to the structure of the page or page content. for example you can break your CSS document according the content of your web page(e.g. Header, Main Content, Footer) Structure CSS file For large project, you may feel having too much CSS code in one place, so it's the best to structure your CSS into more CSS files, and use a master style sheet to import these style sheets. this solution can not only organize style structure, but also reduce server request./*--------------Master style sheet--------------*/ @import "Reset.css"; @import "Structure.css"; @import "Typography.css"; @import "Forms.css"; Create index for your CSS Another important thing is to create index at the beginning of your CSS file, index can help you quickly understand the whole CSS structure./*---------------------------------------- 1. Header 2. Navigation 3. Main Content 4. Sidebar 5. Footer ------------------------------------------*/ Writing efficient CSS selectors keep in mind that browsers match CSS selectors from right to left and the order of efficiency for selectors 1. id (#myid) 2. class (.myclass) 3. tag (div, h1, p) 4. adjacent sibling (h1 + p) 5. child (ul > li) 6. descendent (li a) 7. universal (*) 8. attribute (a[rel="external"]) 9. pseudo-class and pseudo element (a:hover, li:first) the rightmost selector is called "key selector", so when you write your CSS code, you should choose more efficient key selector. Here are some best practice: Don't tag-qualify Never do this:div#myid div.myclass .myclass#myid IDs are unique, classes are more unique than a tag so they don't need a tag. Doing so makes the selector less efficient. Avoid overqualifying selectors for example#nav a is more efficient thanul#nav li a Don't repeat declarationExample: body {font-size:12px;}h1 {font-size:12px;font-weight:bold;} since h1 is already inherited from body, so you don't need to repeate atrribute. Using 0 instead of 0px Always using #selector { margin: 0; } There’s no need to include the px after 0, removing all those superfluous px can reduce the size of your CSS file. Group declaration Example: h1 { font-size: 16pt; } h1 { color: #fff; } h1 { font-family: Arial, sans-serif; } it’s much better to combine them:h1 { font-size: 16pt; color: #fff; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; } Group selectorsExample: h1 { color: #fff; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; } h2 { color: #fff; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; } it would be much better if setup as:h1, h2 { color: #fff; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; } Group attributeExample: h1 { color: #fff; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; } h2 { color: #fff; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; } you can set different rules for specific elements after setting a rule for a grouph1, h2 { color: #fff; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; } h2 { font-size: 16pt; } Using Shorthand PropertiesExample: #selector { margin-top: 8px; margin-right: 4px; margin-bottom: 8px; margin-left: 4px; }Better: #selector { margin: 8px 4px 8px 4px; }Best: #selector { margin: 8px 4px; } a good diagram illustrated how shorthand declarations are interpreted depending on how many values are specified for margin and padding property. instead of using:#selector { background-image: url(”logo.png”); background-position: top left; background-repeat: no-repeat; } is used:#selector { background: url(logo.png) no-repeat top left; } 2. Image Optimization Image Optimizer Image Optimizer is a free Visual Studio2010 extension that optimizes PNG, GIF and JPG file sizes without quality loss. It uses SmushIt and PunyPNG for the optimization. Just right click on any folder or images in Solution Explorer and choose optimize images, then it will automatically optimize all PNG, GIF and JPEG files in that folder. CSS Image Sprites CSS Image Sprites are a way to combine a collection of images to a single image, then use CSS background-position property to shift the visible area to show the required image, many images can take a long time to load and generates multiple server requests, so Image Sprite can reduce the number of server requests and improve site performance. You can use many online tools to generate your image sprite and CSS, and you can also try the Sprite and Image Optimization framework released by The ASP.NET team.

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• Are we queueing and serializing properly?

  - by insta

  We process messages through a variety of services (one message will touch probably 9 services before it's done, each doing a specific IO-related function). Right now we have a combination of the worst-case (XML data contract serialization) and best-case (in-memory MSMQ) for performance. The nature of the message means that our serialized data ends up about 12-15 kilobytes, and we process about 4 million messages per week. Persistent messages in MSMQ were too slow for us, and as the data grows we are feeling the pressure from MSMQ's memory-mapped files. The server is at 16GB of memory usage and growing, just for queueing. Performance also suffers when the memory usage is high, as the machine starts swapping. We're already doing the MSMQ self-cleanup behavior. I feel like there's a part we're doing wrong here. I tried using RavenDB to persist the messages and just queueing an identifier, but the performance there was very slow (1000 messages per minute, at best). I'm not sure if that's a result of using the development version or what, but we definitely need a higher throughput[1]. The concept worked very well in theory but performance was not up to the task. The usage pattern has one service acting as a router, which does all reads. The other services will attach information based on their 3rd party hook, and forward back to the router. Most objects are touched 9-12 times, although about 10% are forced to loop around in this system for awhile until the 3rd parties respond appropriately. The services right now account for this and have appropriate sleeping behaviors, as we utilize the priority field of the message for this reason. So, my question, is what is an ideal stack for message passing between discrete-but-LAN'ed machines in a C#/Windows environment? I would normally start with BinaryFormatter instead of XML serialization, but that's a rabbit hole if a better way is to offload serialization to a document store. Hence, my question. [1]: The nature of our business means the sooner we process messages, the more money we make. We've empirically proven that processing a message later in the week means we are less likely to make that money. While performance of "1000 per minute" sounds plenty fast, we really need that number upwards of 10k/minute. Just because I'm giving numbers in messages per week doesn't mean we have a whole week to process those messages.

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• Should we persist with an employee still writing bad code after many years?

  - by user94986

  I've been assigned the task of managing developers for a well-established company. They have a single developer who specialises in all their C++ coding (since forever), but the quality of the work is abysmal. Code reviews and testing have revealed many problems, one of the worst being memory leaks. The developer has never tested his code for leaks, and I discovered that the applications could leak many MBs with only a minute of use. User's were reporting huge slowdowns, and his take was, "it's nothing to do with me - if they quit and restart, it's all good again." I've given him tools to detect and trace the leaks, and sat down with him for many hours to demonstrate how the tools are used, where the problems occur, and what to do to fix them. We're 6 months down the track, and I assigned him to write a new module. I reviewed it before it was integrated into our larger code base, and was dismayed to discover the same bad coding as before. The part that I find incomprehensible is that some of the coding is worse than amateurish. For example, he wanted a class (Foo) that could populate an object of another class (Bar). He decided that Foo would hold a reference to Bar, e.g.: class Foo { public: Foo(Bar& bar) : m_bar(bar) {} private: Bar& m_bar; }; But (for other reasons) he also needed a default constructor for Foo and, rather than question his initial design, he wrote this gem: Foo::Foo() : m_bar(*(new Bar)) {} So every time the default constructor is called, a Bar is leaked. To make matters worse, Foo allocates memory from the heap for 2 other objects, but he didn't write a destructor or copy constructor. So every allocation of Foo actually leaks 3 different objects, and you can imagine what happened when a Foo was copied. And - it only gets better - he repeated the same pattern on three other classes, so it isn't a one-off slip. The whole concept is wrong on so many levels. I would feel more understanding if this came from a total novice. But this guy has been doing this for many years and has had very focussed training and advice over the past few months. I realise he has been working without mentoring or peer reviews most of that time, but I'm beginning to feel he can't change. So my question is, would you persist with someone who is writing such obviously bad code?

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• Is my work on a developers test being taken advantage of?

  - by CodeWarrior

  I am looking for a job and have applied to a number of positions. One of them responded, I had a pretty lengthy phone interview (perhaps an hour +) and they then set me up with the developers test. I was told that this test is estimated to take between 6 and 8 hours and that, provided it met with their approval, I could be paid for my work on it. That gave me some pause, but I endeavored. The dev test took place on a VM accessed via RDP. The task was to implement a search page in a web project that requests data from the server, displays it on the screen in a table, has a pretty complicated search filtering scheme (there are about 15 statuses and when sending the search to the server you can search by these statuses) in addition to the string/field search. They want some SVG icons to change color on certain data values, they want some data to be represented differently than how it is in the database, etc. Loooong story short, this took one heck of a lot longer than 6-8 hours. Much of it was due to the very poor VM that I was running on (Visual Studio 2013 took 10 minutes to load, and another 15 minutes to open the 3 GB ginormous solution). After completing, I was told to commit my changes to source control... Hmm, OK. I get an email back that they thought that the SVGs could have their color changed differently, they found a bug in this edge-case, there was an occasional problem with this other thing that I never experienced, etc. So I am 13-14 hours into this thing now and I have to do bug fixes. I do them, and they come back with some more. This is all apparently going into a production application. I noticed some anomalies in the code that was already in there where it looked like other people had coded all of one functionality and not anything else that I could find. Am I just being used for cheap labor? Even if they pay me the promised 50 dollars and hour for 6 hours, I have committed like 18 hours to this thing now. If I bug fix all of the stuff they keep coming up with, I will have worked at least 16 hours for free. I have taken a number of dev tests. I have never taken one where I worked on code that was destined for production. I have never taken one where I implemented a feature that was in the pipeline for development (it was planned for, and I implemented it through the course of the test). And I have never taken one that took 4 rounds and a total of 20+ hours. I get the impression that they are using their dev test to field some of the functionality, that they don't have time for in their normal team, on the cheap. Also, I wouldn't mind a 'devtest' tag.

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• Good bug tracking with Sharepoint?

  - by torbengb

  At my place of work, it has been decided to move many processes to Sharepoint. I'm now looking into how Sharepoint can be used for bug tracking (à la Mantis, FogBugz etc. but within Sharepoint). Specifically, we're using a collaboration room and the solution must work inside that. I know that I can create lists using an "Issue tracker" template, but it lacks workflow, integrated correspondence (like FogBugz), and audit log (any user can edit any field any time, without it being noted anywhere). That's not sufficient, so I am looking for "bigger" solutions but haven't yet found anything at all. This question is similar but aims at Helpdesk use; we aim at bug tracking and change requests to a system. I'm open to suggestions! As I'm not an administrator, I can't just grab a Sharepoint component and install it for testing. I'm looking for experiences, documentation, white papers, screen shots -- the actual downloadable will be relevant later. Ideally, some of these matters should be covered: Support for different ticket types (bug, feature, inquiry, internal task). Configurable workflow per ticket type, no fixed number of steps. Configurable read/write permissions per field and per workflow status. Configurable dashboard for managers with nice charts. Configurable email notifications. Correspondence à la FogBugz. (Challenge: we use Notes, not Exchange.)

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• Windows 7 intermittently drops wired internet/lan connection.

  - by CraigTP

  In a nutshell, my Windows 7 Ultimate PC intermittently drops it's internet connection. Why? Background: My PC is wired to my ADSL modem/router which is directly connected to the phone line. I also have wireless connectivity turned on within the router for a laptop to connect wirelessly. Every few hours or so, when using my PC, I find I cannot access the internet and pages will not load. Eventually, Windows7 will update the network icon in the task-tray to show the exclamation mark symbol on the network icon. Opening up the Network And Sharing Centre will show the red cross between the "Multiple Networks" and "The Internet". Here's a picture of the "Network And Sharing Centre" (grabbed when everything was working!) As you can see, I'm running Sun's VirtualBox on this machine and that creates a Network connection for itself. This doesn't seem to affect the intermittent dropping (i.e. the intermittent drops occur whether the VirtualBox connection is in use or not). When the connection does drop, I cannot access any internet pages, nor can I access the router's web admin page at http://192.168.1.1/, so I'm assuming I've lost all local LAN access too. It's definitely not the router (or the internet connection itself) as my laptop, using the wireless connection (and running Vista Home Premium) continues to be able to access the internet (and the router's web admin pages) just fine. Every time this happens, I can immediately restore all internet and LAN access by opening Network Adapter page, disabling the "Local Area Connection" and then re-enabling it. Give it a few seconds and everything is fine again. I assume this is because, beneath the GUI, it's effectively doing an "ipconfig /release" then "ipconfig /renew". Why does this happen in the first place, though? I've googled for this and seen quite a few other people (even on MSDN/Technet forums) experiencing the same or almost the same problem, but with no clear resolution. Suggestions of turning off IPv6 on the LAN adapter, and ensuring there's no power management "sleeping" the network adapter have been tried but do not cure the problem. There does not seem to be any particular sequence of events that cause it to happen either. I've had it go twice in 20 minutes when just randomly browsing the web with no other traffic, and I've also had it go once then not go again for 2-3 hours with the same sort of usage. Can anyone tell me why this is happening and how to make it stop? EDIT: Additional information based upon the answer provided so far: Firstly, I forgot the mention that this is Windows 7 64 bit if that makes any difference at all. I mentioned that I don't think the VirtualBox network adpater is causing this problem in any way, and I also have VirtualBox installed on two other machines, one running Vista Home Premium and the other running XP. Neither of these machine experience the same network connectivity issues as the Windows 7 machine. The IP assignment for the Windows 7 machine is the same both before and after the "drop". I have a DHCP server on the router issuing IP Addresses, however my Windows 7 machine uses a static address. Here's the output from "ipconfig": Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.2(Preferred) Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1 DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1 NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled Within the system's event logs, the only event that relates to the connection dropping is a "DNS Client Event" and this is generated after the connection has dropped and is an event detailing that DNS information can't be found for whatever website I may be trying to access, just as the connection drops: Log Name: System Source: Microsoft-Windows-DNS-Client Event ID: 1014 Task Category: None Level: Warning Keywords: User: NETWORK SERVICE Description: Name resolution for the name weather.service.msn.com timed out after none of the configured DNS servers responded. The network adapter chipset is Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller and I have confirmed that this is the correct chipset for the motherboard (Asus M4A77TD PRO), and in fact, Windows Update installed an updated driver for this on 12/Jan/2009. The details of the update say that it's a Realtek software update from December 2009. Incidentally, I was still having the same intermittent problems prior to this update. It seems to have made no difference at all. EDIT 2 (1 Feb 2010): In my quest to solve this problem, I have discovered some more interesting information. On another forum, someone suggested that I should try running Windows in "Safe Mode With Networking" and see if the problem continues to occur. This was a fantastic suggestion and I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner myself. So, I proceeded to run in Safe Mode with Networking for a number of hours, and amazingly, the "drops" didn't occur once. It was a positive discovery, however, due to the intermittent nature of the original problem, I wasn't completely convinced that the problem was cured. One thing I did note is that the fan on my GFX card was running alot louder than normal. This is due to the fact that I have an ASUS ENGTS250 graphics card (http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=B6imcoax3MRY42f3) which had a known problem with a noisy fan until a BIOS update fixed the issue. (See the "Manufacturer Response" here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121334 for details). Well, running in safe mode had the fan running (incorrectly) at full speed (as it did before the BIOS update), but with an (apparently) stable network connection. Obviously some driver was not loaded for the GFX card when in Safe Mode so this got me thinking about the GFX card (since the very noisy fan was quite obvious when running in Safe Mode). I rebooted into normal mode, and found that Nvidia had a very up-to-date new driver for my GFX card (only about 1 week old), so I downloaded the appropriate driver and installed it. After installation and a reboot, I was able to use my PC for an entire day with NO NETWORK DROPS!!! This was on Saturday. However, on the Sunday, I also had my PC for pretty much the entire day and experienced 2 network drops. No other changes have been made to my PC in this time. So, the story seems to be that updating my graphics card drivers seems to have improved (if not completely fixed) the issue, however, I'm still searching for a proper fix for this problem. Hopefully, this information may help anyone who may have additional ideas as to why this problem is occuring in the first place. (And why does new GFX card drivers have anything to do with the network?) I appreciate everyone's feedback so far. However, I'll have to ask once more if anyone has any further ideas of how to fix this particular problem? Thanks in advance.

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• SQL Server: How to shrink FileStream files?

  - by J4N

  For a project, I'm using a SQL Server 2008 R2. One table has a filestream column. I've made some load tests, and now the database has ~20GB used. I've empty tables, except several(configuration tables). But my database was still using a lot of space. So I used the Task -> Shrink -> Database / Files But my database is still using something like 16GB. I found that it's the filestream file is still using a lot of space. The problem is that I need to backup this database to export it on the final production server, and event if I indicate to compress the backup I got a file more than 3.5Go. Not convenient to store and upload. And I'm planning much bigger test, so I want to know how to shrink that empty space. When I'm trying: I get this exception: The properties SIZE, MAXSIZE, or FILEGROWTH cannot be specified for the FILESTREAM data file 'FileStreamFile'. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 5509) So what should I do? I found several topics with this error but they was about removing the filestream column.

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• How do I leverage Bitlocker cmdlets?

  - by user1418882

  This article hints at being able to unlock a bitlocked drive using: Unlock-BitLocker -MountPoint -Password However, I know diddly squat about Powershell and how to use the Powershell cmdlets to do what I want to do. So, how do I do use the above to do something like the following? Unlock-BitLocker -MountPoint D:\ -Password "password" Currently about as much as I know how to do is start Powershell and that's it. I don't want to learn masses of Powershell to get to the point where I can do this. All that I need to know in enough to know how I can execute the commands that are pointed out in the first link. So far in the powershell prompt if I past in: Unlock-BitLocker -MountPoint D:\ -Password "password" I get the following error: The term 'Unlock-BitLocker' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Chec k the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again. At line:1 char:17 + Unlock-BitLocker <<<< -MountPoint D:\ -Password "password" + CategoryInfo : ObjectNotFound: (Unlock-BitLocker:String) [], CommandNotFoundException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException This is most likely because I don't have any clue about how the commands on the initially linked page work in a powershell context. This is so that I can answer my own question here: Bitlocker and scheduled task (powershell) script to unlock non-system drive

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• Why does my PowerShell script hang when called in PSEXEC via a batch (.cmd) file?

  - by Kev

  I'm trying to remotely execute a PowerShell script using PSEXEC. The PowerShell script is called via a .cmd batch file. The reason we do this is to change the execution policy, run the powershell script then reset the execution policy again: On the remote server do-tasks.cmd looks like: powershell -command "&{ set-executionpolicy unrestricted}" powershell DoTasks.ps1 powershell -command "&{ set-executionpolicy restricted}" The PowerShell script DoTasks.ps1 just does this for now: Write-Output "Hello World!" Both of these scripts live in c:\windows\system32 (for now) just so they're on the PATH. On the originating server I do this: psexec \\web1928 -u administrator -p "adminpassword" do-tasks.cmd When this runs I get the following response at the command line: c:\Windows\system32>powershell -command "&{ set-executionpolicy unrestricted}" and the script runs no further. I can't ctrl-c to break the script and I just see ^C characters, I can type input from the keyboard and the characters are echoed to console. On the remote server I see that PowerShell.exe and CMD.exe are running in Task Manager's Process tab. If I end these processes then control returns to the command line on the originating server. I have tried this with just a simple .cmd batch file with a @echo hello world and it works just fine. Running do-tasks.cmd on the remote server via an RDP session works ok as well. Why is my remote batch file getting stuck when executing via PSEXEC?

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• Outlook unable to synchronize SharePoint library - error 0x80004005

  - by DLux

  We have one large library (~10 GB) on SharePoint that cannot be synchronized with Outlook, even if you only attempt to synch one of the smaller sub folders in the library. Other libraries (or other library sub folders) work fine with Outlook. This is with MOSS 2007 SP1 and Outlook 2007 SP2. The error is: Task 'SharePoint' reported error (0x80004005): 'An error occurred either in Outlook or SharePoint. Contact the SharePoint site administrator.' Reproducing the error Open up the large SharePoint document library in Internet Explorer From the Actions menu, select Connect to Outlook Select Allow on the stssync: security warning that pops up Outlook automatically tries an initial sync and sync status immediately shows the above error. Update 1: I verified the same issue occurs on Windows XP SP3 with IE 6 using Outlook 2007 SP2 and the same SharePoint library (it was originally tested on Windows 7). The issue is definitely related to the library or Outlook. Update 2: Using stsadm I exported the site with this large document library (8.6 GB 15,000 items) and imported it on to a development system. The result is the same on the development system - multiple clients are unable to connect Outlook to the library and get the 0x80004005 error above.

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• Whys is System process listening on Port 80?

  - by Seth Spearman

  I am running Windows 7 RC1. I have multiple issues getting IIS to work on my system and today when I installed a new application and I tried to load it using http:\localhost\MyApplication I get absolutely no errors and I get no page load. Just a pretty, white blank page. I did some digging and I found something about some other process listening on port 80 so I did a scan using netstat -aon | findstr 0.0:80 and discovered that PID 4 was listening on that port. PID 4 does not show in task manager so I fired up Process Explorer and it showed me that PID 4 is the System process. (Multiple google searches seems to indicate that System always uses PID 4). Since then I am basically stuck. I have no idea why System needs port 80 and what to do about it. If you google the following strings you will find two helpful Experts-Exchange articles at the top of the search results and you can read them for some helpful information. (If I gave the direct URL to the pages then Experts-Exchange would ask you to pay...but when you click on the results from a google search you can scroll all of the way to the bottom to read the exchanges.) Here are the google searches... "System Process is listening on port 80 (Vista)" "SYSTEM Process is listening on Port 80 and Preventing IIS Default Website from Running" The last entry from the first result showed how to do a trace of http.sys at the following URL: http://blogs.msdn.com/wndp/archive/2007/01/18/event-tracing-in-http-sys-part-1-capturing-a-trace.aspx Trace showed nothing useful. Any thoughts?

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• IIS6 Wildcard Mapping to ASP.NET - no file extension results in IIS 404

  - by Ian Robinson

  I'm trying to perform what I understand to be a relatively simple task. I'd like to remove the extensions from the URLs on my website. I have the proper set up in my application to handle and rewrite the URLs - the trouble is I can't get past IIS to actually get to my application without the extensions. The details: I'm running IIS6 on Windows Server 2003. I've gone into the web site for my application, gone to the home directory tab, clicked "Configuration" and added a wildcard map to the following file: c:\windows\microsoft.net\framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_isapi.dll Which I verified is the same as what is used above in the application extensions portion by .ascx, etc. If I navigate to http://mywebsite.com/Blogs the result is as follows: HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found Content-Length: 1635 Content-Type: text/html Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:04:49 GMT Which seems to be a standard IIS 404 message. If I navigate to http://mywebsite.com/Blogs.aspx I get my ASP.NET app.... How can I troubleshoot this? I feel like I've double checked everything a dozen times but to no avail. I must be missing something obvious. Update: Here are the exact instructions given by the asp.net url rewriter that I'm using: IIS 6.0 - Windows 2003 Server open property page for website / virtual directory. click the 'home directory' tab click the 'configuration' button, select the 'mappings' tab click 'insert' next to the 'Wildcard application maps' section browse to the aspnet_isapi.dll (normally at c:\windows\microsoft.net\framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_isapi.dll) Ensure that 'check that file exists' is unchecked Click OK, OK, OK to close and apply changes Update 2: I have yet to find a resolution for this. The application does not seem to be receiving the request from IIS, any further ideas?

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• Vista Power Management GPO

  - by Matt

  Hi, I've created a loopback GPO that has several settings (both computer and user) including a Custom User Interface (Access 2007 Application) and Power Management (has the computer sleep after being idle for 2 min). I'm also filtering so that this policy does not apply to "Admins" - only to "Users". The problem I'm having is when the "Users" login the Power Management settings don’t work, but they do for "Admins". For testing I'm allowing the "Users" to launch Task Manager and use the Run line, so I'll run Explorer and look at Power Management and it shows the settings from my GPO. So I created a test OU with copies of the aforementioned GPO, but removed the Custom User Interface and found the Power Management settings do work for both the "Users" and "Admins". When I add the Custom UI the Power Management settings break for the "User" but continue to work for "Admins". Do the Power Management options need to have User Interface be "Explorer.exe"? Is this a bug or am I doing this the wrong way? BTW the tablets are using Vista SP2. Any insight or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Matt

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• RAID-1 and regular drive removal (using RAID-1 as a backup measure)

  - by Vi

  Is using mdadm's RAID-1 of 2 partitions (one on laptop's internal HDD, one on external HDD) a good idea. I want the system to work as RAID-1 if both drives are present, work as regular volume (degradad RAID-1) if external HDD is unplugged and quickly resync when I plug external HDD again. Questions: Is it a good idea? Will write-intent bitmap be enough for this task or I need something else? Should I consider doing it at filesystem level (3b. if yes, how?). Basic requirements are: Quick resync when I re-add the external drive (provided I hasn't changed that partition). More or less consistent data on the removed drive if I remove it not during write/resync operation. If I remove the drive during resync I expect the data to be somewhat inconsistent, but expect quick resync completion when I re-add it again. E.g. I want the the remaining drive to track what is changed (there can be a lot of changes) and that sync back only those parts that need it.

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• I need a piece software to use with my HP F4280 scanner.

  - by D Connors

  So, I got this printer/scanner about a year ago, and I'm really happy with it. The only thing is that I never really liked the HP scanning software that came with it. A few months ago I reformatted and reinstalled windows 7. Then, once I plugged in the printer, I noticed that windows recognized it automatically, and offered to install all the drivers by itself. So instead of manually installing the driver that came in the CD, I simply let windows automatically install it from its servers, and so far it's great. Instead of HP's scanning software (that really wasn't pleasing me), I got a very simplified interface that is more than enough for my ocasional scanning habits. Until today. Today I had to scan a bunch of old pictures for my father. And that simple interface felt like it was lacking quite a few features to make this repetitive task a little easier. And that's why I'm now looking for a good software to use for scanning. By "good" I mean anything well thought out, and specially anything that will make my life easier when repetitive-scanning. It doesn't need to have professional tweaking options, but having them is not a problem either. You guys got anything?

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• Wacom consumer tablet driver service may crash while opening Bamboo Preferences, often after resuming computer from sleep

  - by DragonLord

  One of the ExpressKeys on my Wacom Bamboo Capture graphics tablet is mapped to Bamboo Preferences, so that I can quickly access the tablet settings and view the battery level (I have the Wireless Accessory Kit installed). However, when I connect the tablet to the computer, in wired or wireless mode, and attempt to open Bamboo Preferences, the Wacom consumer tablet driver service may crash, most often when I try to do so after resuming the computer from sleep. There is usually no direct indication of the crash (although I once did get Tablet Service for consumer driver stopped working and was closed), only that the cursor shows that the system is busy for a split second. When this happens, the pen no longer tracks on the screen when in proximity of the tablet (even though it is detected by the tablet itself); however, touch continues to function correctly. To recover from this condition, I need to restart the tablet driver services. I got tired of having to go through Task Manager to restart the service every time this happens, so I ended up writing the following command script, with a shortcut on the desktop for running it with elevated privileges: net stop TabletServicePen net start TabletServicePen net stop TouchServicePen net start TouchServicePen Is there something I can do to prevent these crashes from happening in the first place, or do I have have to deal with this issue until the driver is updated? Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. Tablet drivers are up to date. Technical details Action Center gives the following details about the crash in Reliability Monitor: Source Tablet Service for consumer driver Summary Stopped working Date ?10/?15/?2012 2:48 PM Status Report sent Description Faulting Application Path: C:\Program Files\Tablet\Pen\Pen_Tablet.exe Problem signature Problem Event Name: APPCRASH Application Name: Pen_Tablet.exe Application Version: 5.2.5.5 Application Timestamp: 4e694ecd Fault Module Name: Pen_Tablet.exe Fault Module Version: 5.2.5.5 Fault Module Timestamp: 4e694ecd Exception Code: c0000005 Exception Offset: 00000000002f6cde OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.3 Locale ID: 1033 Additional Information 1: 9d4f Additional Information 2: 9d4f1c8d2c16a5d47e28521ff719cfba Additional Information 3: 375e Additional Information 4: 375ebb9963823eb7e450696f2abb66cc Extra information about the problem Bucket ID: 45598085 Exception code 0xC0000005 means STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION. The event log contains essentially the same information.

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