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• MySQL 5.5 - Lost connection to MySQL server during query

  - by bully

  I have an Ubuntu 12.04 LTS server running at a german hoster (virtualized system). # uname -a Linux ... 3.2.0-27-generic #43-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jul 6 14:25:57 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux I want to migrate a Web CMS system, called Contao. It's not my first migration, but my first migration having connection issues with mysql. Migration went successfully, I have the same Contao version running (it's more or less just copy / paste). For the database behind, I did: apt-get install mysql-server phpmyadmin I set a root password and added a user for the CMS which has enough rights on its own database (and only its database) for doing the stuff it has to do. Data import via phpmyadmin worked just fine. I can access the backend of the CMS (which needs to deal with the database already). If I try to access the frontend now, I get the following error: Fatal error: Uncaught exception Exception with message Query error: Lost connection to MySQL server during query (<query statement here, nothing special, just a select>) thrown in /var/www/system/libraries/Database.php on line 686 (Keep in mind: I can access mysql with phpmyadmin and through the backend, working like a charme, it's just the frontend call causing errors). If I spam F5 in my browser I can sometimes even kill the mysql deamon. If I run # mysqld --log-warnings=2 I get this: ... 120921 7:57:31 [Note] mysqld: ready for connections. Version: '5.5.24-0ubuntu0.12.04.1' socket: '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' port: 3306 (Ubuntu) 05:57:37 UTC - mysqld got signal 4 ; This could be because you hit a bug. It is also possible that this binary or one of the libraries it was linked against is corrupt, improperly built, or misconfigured. This error can also be caused by malfunctioning hardware. We will try our best to scrape up some info that will hopefully help diagnose the problem, but since we have already crashed, something is definitely wrong and this may fail. key_buffer_size=16777216 read_buffer_size=131072 max_used_connections=1 max_threads=151 thread_count=1 connection_count=1 It is possible that mysqld could use up to key_buffer_size + (read_buffer_size + sort_buffer_size)*max_threads = 346679 K bytes of memory Hope that's ok; if not, decrease some variables in the equation. Thread pointer: 0x7f1485db3b20 Attempting backtrace. You can use the following information to find out where mysqld died. If you see no messages after this, something went terribly wrong... stack_bottom = 7f1480041e60 thread_stack 0x30000 mysqld(my_print_stacktrace+0x29)[0x7f1483b96459] mysqld(handle_fatal_signal+0x483)[0x7f1483a5c1d3] /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0(+0xfcb0)[0x7f1482797cb0] /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6(+0x42e11)[0x7f14821cae11] mysqld(_ZN10SQL_SELECT17test_quick_selectEP3THD6BitmapILj64EEyyb+0x1368)[0x7f1483b26cb8] mysqld(+0x33116a)[0x7f148397916a] mysqld(_ZN4JOIN8optimizeEv+0x558)[0x7f148397d3e8] mysqld(_Z12mysql_selectP3THDPPP4ItemP10TABLE_LISTjR4ListIS1_ES2_jP8st_orderSB_S2_SB_yP13select_resultP18st_select_lex_unitP13st_select_lex+0xdd)[0x7f148397fd7d] mysqld(_Z13handle_selectP3THDP3LEXP13select_resultm+0x17c)[0x7f1483985d2c] mysqld(+0x2f4524)[0x7f148393c524] mysqld(_Z21mysql_execute_commandP3THD+0x293e)[0x7f14839451de] mysqld(_Z11mysql_parseP3THDPcjP12Parser_state+0x10f)[0x7f1483948bef] mysqld(_Z16dispatch_command19enum_server_commandP3THDPcj+0x1365)[0x7f148394a025] mysqld(_Z24do_handle_one_connectionP3THD+0x1bd)[0x7f14839ec7cd] mysqld(handle_one_connection+0x50)[0x7f14839ec830] /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0(+0x7e9a)[0x7f148278fe9a] /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(clone+0x6d)[0x7f1481eba4bd] Trying to get some variables. Some pointers may be invalid and cause the dump to abort. Query (7f1464004b60): is an invalid pointer Connection ID (thread ID): 1 Status: NOT_KILLED From /var/log/syslog: Sep 21 07:17:01 s16477249 CRON[23855]: (root) CMD ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly) Sep 21 07:18:51 s16477249 kernel: [231923.349159] type=1400 audit(1348204731.333:70): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/sbin/mysqld" pid=23946 comm="apparmor_parser" Sep 21 07:18:53 s16477249 /etc/mysql/debian-start[23990]: Upgrading MySQL tables if necessary. Sep 21 07:18:53 s16477249 /etc/mysql/debian-start[23993]: /usr/bin/mysql_upgrade: the '--basedir' option is always ignored Sep 21 07:18:53 s16477249 /etc/mysql/debian-start[23993]: Looking for 'mysql' as: /usr/bin/mysql Sep 21 07:18:53 s16477249 /etc/mysql/debian-start[23993]: Looking for 'mysqlcheck' as: /usr/bin/mysqlcheck Sep 21 07:18:53 s16477249 /etc/mysql/debian-start[23993]: This installation of MySQL is already upgraded to 5.5.24, use --force if you still need to run mysql_upgrade Sep 21 07:18:53 s16477249 /etc/mysql/debian-start[24004]: Checking for insecure root accounts. Sep 21 07:18:53 s16477249 /etc/mysql/debian-start[24009]: Triggering myisam-recover for all MyISAM tables I'm using MyISAM tables all over, nothing with InnoDB there. Starting / stopping mysql is done via sudo service mysql start sudo service mysql stop After using google a little bit, I experimented a little bit with timeouts, correct socket path in the /etc/mysql/my.cnf file, but nothing helped. There are some old (from 2008) Gentoo bugs, where re-compiling just solved the problem. I already re-installed mysql via: sudo apt-get remove mysql-server mysql-common sudo apt-get autoremove sudo apt-get install mysql-server without any results. This is the first time I'm running into this problem, and I'm not very experienced with this kind of mysql 'administration'. So mainly, I want to know if anyone of you could help me out please :) Is it a mysql bug? Is something broken in the Ubuntu repositories? Is this one of those misterious 'use-tcp-connection-instead-of-socket-stuff-because-there-are-problems-on-virtualized-machines-with-sockets'-problem? Or am I completly on the wrong way and I just miss-configured something? Remember, phpmyadmin and access to the backend (which uses the database, too) is just fine. Maybe something with Apache? What can I do? Any help is appreciated, so thanks in advance :)

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• WPF ListView as a DataGrid – Part 3

  - by psheriff

  I have had a lot of great feedback on the blog post about turning the ListView into a DataGrid by creating GridViewColumn objects on the fly. So, in the last 2 parts, I showed a couple of different methods for accomplishing this. Let’s now look at one more and that is use Reflection to extract the properties from a Product, Customer, or Employee object to create the columns. Yes, Reflection is a slower approach, but you could create the columns one time then cache the View object for re-use. Another potential drawback is you may have columns in your object that you do not wish to display on your ListView. But, just because so many people asked, here is how to accomplish this using Reflection.   Figure 1: Use Reflection to create GridViewColumns. Using Reflection to gather property names is actually quite simple. First you need to pass any type (Product, Customer, Employee, etc.) to a method like I did in my last two blog posts on this subject. Below is the method that I created in the WPFListViewCommon class that now uses reflection. C#public static GridView CreateGridViewColumns(Type anyType){  // Create the GridView  GridView gv = new GridView();  GridViewColumn gvc;   // Get the public properties.  PropertyInfo[] propInfo =          anyType.GetProperties(BindingFlags.Public |                                BindingFlags.Instance);   foreach (PropertyInfo item in propInfo)  {    gvc = new GridViewColumn();    gvc.DisplayMemberBinding = new Binding(item.Name);    gvc.Header = item.Name;    gvc.Width = Double.NaN;    gv.Columns.Add(gvc);  }   return gv;} VB.NETPublic Shared Function CreateGridViewColumns( _  ByVal anyType As Type) As GridView  ' Create the GridView   Dim gv As New GridView()  Dim gvc As GridViewColumn   ' Get the public properties.   Dim propInfo As PropertyInfo() = _    anyType.GetProperties(BindingFlags.Public Or _                          BindingFlags.Instance)   For Each item As PropertyInfo In propInfo    gvc = New GridViewColumn()    gvc.DisplayMemberBinding = New Binding(item.Name)    gvc.Header = item.Name    gvc.Width = [Double].NaN    gv.Columns.Add(gvc)  Next   Return gvEnd Function The key to using Relection is using the GetProperties method on the type you pass in. When you pass in a Product object as Type, you can now use the GetProperties method and specify, via flags, which properties you wish to return. In the code that I wrote, I am just retrieving the Public properties and only those that are Instance properties. I do not want any static/Shared properties or private properties. GetProperties returns an array of PropertyInfo objects. You can loop through this array and build your GridViewColumn objects by reading the Name property from the PropertyInfo object. Build the Product Screen To populate the ListView shown in Figure 1, you might write code like the following: C#private void CollectionSample(){  Product prod = new Product();   // Setup the GridView Columns  lstData.View =      WPFListViewCommon.CreateGridViewColumns(typeOf(Product));  lstData.DataContext = prod.GetProducts();} VB.NETPrivate Sub CollectionSample()  Dim prod As New Product()   ' Setup the GridView Columns  lstData.View = WPFListViewCommon.CreateGridViewColumns( _       GetType(Product))  lstData.DataContext = prod.GetProducts()End Sub All you need to do now is to pass in a Type object from your Product class that you can get by using the typeOf() function in C# or the GetType() function in VB. That’s all there is to it! Summary There are so many different ways to approach the same problem in programming. That is what makes programming so much fun! In this blog post I showed you how to create ListView columns on the fly using Reflection. This gives you a lot of flexibility without having to write extra code as was done previously. NOTE: You can download the complete sample code (in both VB and C#) at my website. http://www.pdsa.com/downloads. Choose Tips & Tricks, then "WPF ListView as a DataGrid – Part 3" from the drop-down. Good Luck with your Coding,Paul Sheriff ** SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY BLOG READERS **Visit http://www.pdsa.com/Event/Blog for a free eBook on "Fundamentals of N-Tier".  

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• Test Drive Windows 7 Online with Virtual Labs

  - by Matthew Guay

  Did you miss out on the Windows 7 public beta and want to try it out before you actually make the leap and upgrade? Maybe you want to learn how to deploy new features in a business environment. Here’s how you can test drive Windows 7 directly from your browser. Whether you manage 10,000 desktops or simply manage your own laptop, it’s usually best to test out a new OS before installing it.  If you’re upgrading from Windows XP you may find many things unfamiliar.  Microsoft has setup a special Windows 7 Test Drive website with resources to help IT professionals test and deploy Windows 7 in their workplaces.  This is a great resource to try out Windows 7 from the comfort of your browser, and look at some of the new features without even installing it. Please note that the online version is not nearly as responsive as a full standard install of Windows 7.  It also does not run the full Aero interface or desktop effects, and may refresh slowly depending on your Internet connection.  So don’t judge Windows 7’s performance based on this virtual lab, but use it as a way to learn more about Windows 7 without installing it. Getting Started To test drive Windows 7, visit Microsoft’s Windows 7 Test Drive website (link below).  You will need to run the Windows 7 Test Drive in Internet Explorer, as it requires Active X support.  We received this error when attempting to run the Test Drive in Firefox: Now, click the “Take a Test Drive” link on the bottom left of the page. This site includes several test drives to demonstrate different features of Windows 7 and its related ecosystem of products including Windows Server 2008 R2, some of which, including the XP Mode test drive, are not yet ready.  For this test, we selected the MED-V Test drive, as this includes Office 2007 and 2010 so you can test them in Windows 7 as well.  Simply select the test drive you want, and click “Try it now!”   If you haven’t run a Windows test drive before, you will be asked to install an ActiveX control.  Click the link to install. Click the yellow bar at the top of the page in Internet Explorer, and select to Install the add-on.  You may have to approve a UAC prompt to finish the install. Once this is finished, click the link on the bottom of the page to return to your test drive.  The test drive page should automatically refresh; if it doesn’t, click refresh to reload it. Now the test drive will load the components.   Once its fully loaded, click the link to launch Windows 7 in a new window. You may see a prompt warning that the server may have been impersonated.  Simply click Yes to proceed. The test lab will give you some getting started directions; click Close Window when you’re ready to try out Windows 7. Here’s the default desktop in the Windows 7 test drive.  You can use it just like a normal Windows computer, but do note that it may function slowly depending on your internet connection.   This test drive includes both Office 2007 and Office 2010 Tech Preview, so you can try out both in Windows 7 as well. You can try out the new Windows 7 applications such as the reworked Paint with the Ribbon interface from Office. Or you can even test the newest version of Media Center, though it will warn you that it may not function good with the down-scaled graphics in the test drive.   Most importantly, you can try out the new features in Windows 7, such as Jumplists and even Aero Snap.  Once again, these features will not function the quickest, but it does let you test them out. While working with the Virtual Lab, there are different tasks it walks you through. You can also download a copy of the lab manual in PDF format to help you navigate through the various objectives. The test drive system is running Microsoft Forefront Security, the enterprise security solution from which Microsoft Security Essentials has adapted components from. Conclusion These virtual labs are great for tech students, or those of you who want to get a first-hand trial of the new features. Also, if you’re not sure on how to deploy something and want to practice in a virtual environment, these labs are quite valuable.While these labs are geared toward IT professionals, it’s a good way for anyone to try out Windows 7 features from the comfort of your current computer. Test Drive Windows 7 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Mount Multiple ISO Images Using Virtual CloneDriveHow To Delete a VHD in Windows 7Keyboard Shortcuts for VMware WorkstationMount an ISO image in Windows 7 or VistaHow To Turn a Physical Computer Into A Virtual Machine with Disk2vhd TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 If it were only this easy SyncToy syncs Files and Folders across Computers on a Network (or partitions on the same drive) Classic Cinema Online offers 100’s of OnDemand Movies OutSync will Sync Photos of your Friends on Facebook and Outlook Windows 7 Easter Theme YoWindoW, a real time weather screensaver

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• 8 Mac System Features You Can Access in Recovery Mode

  - by Chris Hoffman

  A Mac’s Recovery Mode is for more than just reinstalling Mac OS X. You’ll find many other useful troubleshooting utilities here — you can use these even if your Mac can’t boot normally. To access Recovery Mode, restart your Mac and press and hold the Command + R keys during the boot-up process. This is one of several hidden startup options on a Mac. Reinstall Mac OS X Most people know Recovery Mode as the place you go to reinstall OS X on your Mac. Recovery Mode will download the OS X installer files from teh Intenret if you don’t have them locally, so they don’t take up space on your disk and you’ll never have to hunt for an opearign system disc. Better yet, it will download up-to-date installation files so you don’t have to spend hours installing operating system updates later. Microsoft could learn a lot from Apple here. Restore From a Time Machine Backup Instead of reinstalling OS X, you can choose to restore your Mac from a time machine backup. This is like restoring a system image on another operating system. You’ll need an external disk containing a backup image created on the current computer to do this. Browse the Web The Get Help Online link opens the Safari web browser to Apple’s documentation site. It’s not limited to Apple’s website, though — you can navigate to any website you like. This feature allows you to access and use a browser on your Mac even if it isn’t booting properly. It’s ideal for looking up troubleshooting information. Manage Your Disks The Disk Utility option opens the same Disk Utility you can access from within Mac OS X. It allows you to partition disks, format them, scan disks for problems, wipe drives, and set up drives in a RAID configuration. If you need to edit partitions from outside your operating system, you can just boot into the recovery environment — you don’t have to download a special partitioning tool and boot into it. Choose the Default Startup Disk Click the Apple menu on the bar at the top of your screen and select Startup Disk to access the Choose Startup Disk tool. Use this tool to choose your computer’s default startup disk and reboot into another operating system. For example, it’s useful if you have Windows installed alongside Mac OS X with Boot Camp. Add or Remove an EFI Firmware Password You can also add a firmware password to your Mac. This works like a BIOS password or UEFI password on a Windows or Linux PC. Click the Utilities menu on the bar at the top of your screen and select Firmware Password Utility to open this tool. Use the tool to turn on a firmware password, which will prevent your computer from starting up from a different hard disk, CD, DVD, or USB drive without the password you provide. This prevents people form booting up your Mac with an unauthorized operating system. If you’ve already enabled a firmware password, you can remove it from here. Use Network Tools to Troubleshoot Your Connection Select Utilities > Network Utility to open a network diagnostic tool. This utility provides a graphical way to view your network connection information. You can also use the netstat, ping, lookup, traceroute, whois, finger, and port scan utilities from here. These can be helpful to troubleshoot Internet connection problems. For example, the ping command can demonstrate whether you can communicate with a remote host and show you if you’re experiencing packet loss, while the traceroute command can show you where a connection is failing if you can’t connect to a remote server. Open a Terminal If you’d like to get your hands dirty, you can select Utilities > Terminal to open a terminal from here. This terminal allows you to do more advanced troubleshooting. Mac OS X uses the bash shell, just as typical Linux distributions do. Most people will just need to use the Reinstall Mac OS X option here, but there are many other tools you can benefit from. If the Recovery Mode files on your Mac are damaged or unavailable, your Mac will automatically download them from Apple so you can use the full recovery environment.

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• Silverlight 5 Hosting :: Features in Silverlight 5 and Release Date

  - by mbridge

  Silverlight 5 is finally announced in the Silverlight FireStarter Event on the 2nd December, 2010. This new version of Silverlight which was earlier labeled as 'Future of Microsoft Silverlight' has now come much closer to go live as the first Silverlight 5 Beta version is expected to be shipped during the early months of 2011. However for the full fledged and the final release of Silverlight 5, we have to wait many more months as the same is likely to be made available within the Q3 2011. As would have been usually expected, this latest edition would feature many new capabilities thereby extending the developer productivity to a whole new dimension of premium media experience and feature-rich business applications. It comes along with many new feature updates as well as the inclusion of new technologies to improve the standard of the Silverlight applications which are now fine-tuned to produce next generation business and media solutions that is capable to meet the requirements of the advanced web-based app development. The Silverlight 5 is all set to replace the previous fourth version which now includes more than forty new features while also dropping various deprecated elements that was prevalent earlier. It has brought around some major performance enhancements and also included better support for various other tools and technologies. Following are some of the changes that are registered to be available under the Silverlight 5 Beta edition which is scheduled to be launched during the Q1 2011. Silverlight 5 : Premium Media Experiences The media features of Silverlight 5 has seen some major enhancements with a lot of optimizations being made to deliver richer solutions. It's capability has now been extended to make things easier, faster and capable of performing the desired tasks in the most efficient manner. The Silverlight media solutions has already been a part of many companies in the recent days where various on-demand Silverlight services were featured but with the arrival of the next generation premium media solution of Silverlight 5, it is expected to register new heights of success and global user acclamation for using it with many esteemed web-based projects and media solutions. - The most happening element in the new Silverlight 5 will be its support for utilizing the GPU based hardware acceleration which is intended to lower down the CPU load to a significant extent and thereby allowing faster rendering of media contents without consuming much resources. This feature is believed to be particularly helpful for low configured machines to run full HD media content without any lagging caused due to processor load. It will hence be one great feature to revolutionize the new generation high quality media contents to be available within the web in a more efficient manner with its hardware decoded video playback capabilities. - With the inclusion of hardware video decoding to minimize the processor load, the Silverlight 5 also comes with another optimization enhancement to also reduce the power consumption level by making new methods to deal with the power-saver settings. With this optimization in effect, the computer would be automatically allowed to switch to sleep mode while no video playback is in progress and also to prevent any screensavers to popup and cause annoyances during any video playback. There would also be other power saver options which will be made available to best suit the users requirements and purpose. - The Silverlight trickplay feature is another great way to tweak any silverlight powered media content as is used for many video tutorial sites or for dealing with any sort of presentations. This feature enables the user to modify the playback speed to either slowdown or speedup during the playback durations based on the requirements without compromising on the quality of output. Normally such manipulations always makes the content's audio to go off-pitch, but the same will not be the case with TrickPlay and the audio would seamlessly progress with the video without skipping any of its part. - In addition to all of the above, the new Silverlight 5 will be featuring wireless control of all the media contents by making use of remote controllers. With the use of such remote devices, it will be easier to handle the various media playback controls thereby providing more freedom while experiencing the premium media services. Silverlight 5 : Business Application Development The application development standard has been extended with more possibilities by bringing forth new and useful technologies and also reviving the existing methods to work better than what it was used to. From the UI improvements to advanced technical aspects, the Silverlight 5 scores high on all grounds to produce great next generation business delivered applications by putting in more creativity and resourceful touch to all the apps being produced with it. - The WPF feature of Silverlight is made more effective by introducing new standards of Databinding which is intended to improve the productivity standards of the Silverlight application developer. It brings in a lot of convenience in debugging the databinding components or expressions and hence making things work in a flawless manner. Some additional features related to databinding includes that of Ancestor RelativeSource, Implicit DataTemplates and Model View ViewModel (MVVM) support with DataContextChanged event and many other new features relating it. - It now comes with a refined text and printing service which facilitates better clarity of the text rendering and also many positive changes which are being applied to the layout pattern. New supports has been added to include OpenType font, multi-column text, linked-text containers and character leading support to name a few among the available features.This also includes some important printing aspects like that of Postscript Vector Printing API which allows to program our printing tasks in a user defined way and Pivot functionality for visualization concerns of informations. - The Graphics support is the key improvements being incorporated which now enables to utilize three dimensional graphics pattern using GPU acceleration. It can manage to provide some really cool visualizations being curved to provide media contents within the business apps with also the support for full HD contents at 1080p quality. - Silverlight 5 includes the support for 64-bit operating systems and relevant browsers and is also optimized to provide better performance. It can support the background thread for the networking which can reduce the latency of the network to a considerable extent. The Out-of-Browser functionality adds the support for utilizing various libraries and also the Win32 API. It also comes with testing support with VS 2010 which is mostly an automated procedure and has also enabled increased security aspects of all the Silverlight 5 developed applications by using the improved version of group policy support.

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• Non-Dom Element Event Binding with jQuery

  - by Rick Strahl

  Yesterday I had a short discussion with Dave Reed on Twitter regarding setting up fake ‘events’ on objects that are hookable. jQuery makes it real easy to bind events on DOM elements and with a little bit of extra work (that I didn’t know about) you can also set up binding to non-DOM element ‘event’ bindings. Assume for a second that you have a simple JavaScript object like this: var item = { sku: "wwhelp" , foo: function() { alert('orginal foo function'); } }; and you want to be notified when the foo function is called. You can use jQuery to bind the handler like this: $(item).bind("foo", function () { alert('foo Hook called'); } ); Binding alone won’t actually cause the handler to be triggered so when you call: item.foo(); you only get the ‘original’ message. In order to fire both the original handler and the bound event hook you have to use the .trigger() function: $(item).trigger("foo"); Now if you do the following complete sequence: var item = { sku: "wwhelp" , foo: function() { alert('orginal foo function'); } }; $(item).bind("foo", function () { alert('foo hook called'); } ); $(item).trigger("foo"); You’ll see the ‘hook’ message first followed by the ‘original’ message fired in succession. In other words, using this mechanism you can hook standard object functions and chain events to them in a way similar to the way you can do with DOM elements. The main difference is that the ‘event’ has to be explicitly triggered in order for this to happen rather than just calling the method directly. .trigger() relies on some internal logic that checks for event bindings on the object (attached via an expando property) which .trigger() searches for in its bound event list. Once the ‘event’ is found it’s called prior to execution of the original function. This is pretty useful as it allows you to create standard JavaScript objects that can act as event handlers and are effectively hookable without having to explicitly override event definitions with JavaScript function handlers. You get all the benefits of jQuery’s event methods including the ability to hook up multiple events to the same handler function and the ability to uniquely identify each specific event instance with post fix string names (ie. .bind("MyEvent.MyName") and .unbind("MyEvent.MyName") to bind MyEvent). Watch out for an .unbind() Bug Note that there appears to be a bug with .unbind() in jQuery that doesn’t reliably unbind an event and results in a elem.removeEventListener is not a function error. The following code demonstrates: var item = { sku: "wwhelp", foo: function () { alert('orginal foo function'); } }; $(item).bind("foo.first", function () { alert('foo hook called'); }); $(item).bind("foo.second", function () { alert('foo hook2 called'); }); $(item).trigger("foo"); setTimeout(function () { $(item).unbind("foo"); // $(item).unbind("foo.first"); // $(item).unbind("foo.second"); $(item).trigger("foo"); }, 3000); The setTimeout call delays the unbinding and is supposed to remove the event binding on the foo function. It fails both with the foo only value (both if assigned only as “foo” or “foo.first/second” as well as when removing both of the postfixed event handlers explicitly. Oddly the following that removes only one of the two handlers works: setTimeout(function () { //$(item).unbind("foo"); $(item).unbind("foo.first"); // $(item).unbind("foo.second"); $(item).trigger("foo"); }, 3000); this actually works which is weird as the code in unbind tries to unbind using a DOM method that doesn’t exist. <shrug> A partial workaround for unbinding all ‘foo’ events is the following: setTimeout(function () { $.event.special.foo = { teardown: function () { alert('teardown'); return true; } }; $(item).unbind("foo"); $(item).trigger("foo"); }, 3000); which is a bit cryptic to say the least but it seems to work more reliably. I can’t take credit for any of this – thanks to Dave Reed and Damien Edwards who pointed out some of these behaviors. I didn’t find any good descriptions of the process so thought it’d be good to write it down here. Hope some of you find this helpful.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in jQuery  

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• Feedback on "market manipulation", a peripheral game mechanic for a satirical MMO

  - by BerndBrot

  This question asks for feedback on a specific game-mechanic. Since there is not one right feedback on a game mechanic, I tried to provide enough context and guidelines to still make it possible for users to rate answers and to accept an answer as the best answer (following these criteria from Writer.SE's meta website). Please comment if you have any suggestions on how I could improve the question in that regard. So, let's begin with the game itself and some of its elements which are relevant for this question. Context I'm working on a satirical, text-based multiplayer adventure and role-playing game set in modern-day London. The game resolves around the concept of sin and features a myriad of (venomous) allusions to all the things that go wrong in this world. Players can choose between character classes like bullshit artist (consultant), bankster, lawyer, mobster, celebrity, politician, etc. In order to complete the game, the player has to live so sinfully with regard to any of the seven deadly sins that a demon is willing to offer them a contract of sponsorship. On their quest to live a sinful live, characters explore more and more locations of modern-day London (on a GoogleMap), fight "monsters" like insurance sales agents or Jehovah's Witnesses, and complete quests, like building a PowerPoint presentation out of marketing buzz words or keeping up a number of substance abuse effects in order to progress on the gluttony path. Battles are turn based with both combatants having a deck of cards, with which they try to make their enemy give in to temptations of all sorts. Tempted enemies sometimes become contacts (an item drop mechanic), which can be exploited for various benefits, depending on their area of influence (finance, underworld, bureaucracy, etc.), level of influence, and kind of sway that the player has over them (bribed, seduced, threatened, etc.) Once a contract has been exploited, the player loses that contact. Most actions require turns. Turns are limited, but refill each day. Criteria A number of peripheral game mechanics are supposed to represent real world abuses and mischief in a humorous way integrate real world data and events to strengthen the feeling of relevance of the game's humor with regard to real world problems add fun ways of interacting with other players add ways for players to express themselves through game-play Market manipulation is one such peripheral game mechanic and should fulfill all of these goals. Market manipulation This is my initial design of the mechanic: Players can enter the London Stock Exchange (LSE) (without paying a turn) LSE displays the stock prices of a number of companies in industries like weapons or tobacco as well as some derivatives based on wheat and corn. The stock prices are calculated based on the actual stock prices of these companies and derivatives (in real time) any market manipulations that were conducted by the players any market corrections of the system Players can buy and sell shares with cash, a resource in the game, at current in-game market value (without paying a turn). Players can manipulate the market, i.e. let the price of a share either rise or fall, by some amount, over a certain period of time. Manipulating the market requires 1 turn A contact in the financial sector (see above). The higher the level of influence of the contact, the stronger the effect of the manipulation on the stock price, and/or the shorter it takes for the manipulation to manifest itself. Market manipulation also adds a crime to the player's record. (There are a multitude of ways to take care of that, but it is still another "cost" of market manipulations.) The system continuously corrects market manipulations by letting the in-game prices converge towards their real world counterparts at a rate of 2% of the difference between the two per hour. Because of this market correction mechanism, pushing up prices (and screwing down prices) becomes increasingly difficult the higher (lower) the price already is. Whenever food prices reach a certain level, in-game stories are posted about hunger catastrophes happening somewhere far, far away (maybe with links to real world news stories). Whenever a player sells a certain number of shares with a sufficiently high margin, they are mentioned in that day's in-game financial news. Since the number of stock options is very limited, players will inevitably collide in their efforts to manipulate the market in their favor. Hopefully, it will also be a fun side-arena for guilds and covenants to fight each other. Question(s) What do you think of this mechanism given the criteria for peripheral game mechanics that I specified for my game? Do you have any ideas how the mechanic could be improved with regard to these criteria (or otherwise)? Could it be improved to allow for more expressive game-play, or involve an allusion to some other real world madness (like short selling, leveraging, or some other banking magic)? Are there any game-theoretic problems with this mechanic, like maybe certain dominant individual strategies that, collectively, lead to every player profiting and thus eliminating the idea of market manipulation PVP? Also, if you like (or dislike) this question, feel free to participate in the discussion on GDSE meta: "Should we be more lax with regard to SE's question/answer format to make game design questions possible?"

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• How to Use An Antivirus Boot Disc or USB Drive to Ensure Your Computer is Clean

  - by Chris Hoffman

  If your computer is infected with malware, running an antivirus within Windows may not be enough to remove it. If your computer has a rootkit, the malware may be able to hide itself from your antivirus software. This is where bootable antivirus solutions come in. They can clean malware from outside the infected Windows system, so the malware won’t be running and interfering with the clean-up process. The Problem With Cleaning Up Malware From Within Windows Standard antivirus software runs within Windows. If your computer is infected with malware, the antivirus software will have to do battle with the malware. Antivirus software will try to stop the malware and remove it, while the malware will attempt to defend itself and shut down the antivirus. For really nasty malware, your antivirus software may not be able to fully remove it from within Windows. Rootkits, a type of malware that hides itself, can be even trickier. A rootkit could load at boot time before other Windows components and prevent Windows from seeing it, hide its processes from the task manager, and even trick antivirus applications into believing that the rootkit isn’t running. The problem here is that the malware and antivirus are both running on the computer at the same time. The antivirus is attempting to fight the malware on its home turf — the malware can put up a fight. Why You Should Use an Antivirus Boot Disc Antivirus boot discs deal with this by approaching the malware from outside Windows. You boot your computer from a CD or USB drive containing the antivirus and it loads a specialized operating system from the disc. Even if your Windows installation is completely infected with malware, the special operating system won’t have any malware running within it. This means the antivirus program can work on the Windows installation from outside it. The malware won’t be running while the antivirus tries to remove it, so the antivirus can methodically locate and remove the harmful software without it interfering. Any rootkits won’t be able to set up the tricks they use at Windows boot time to hide themselves from the rest o the operating system. The antivirus will be able to see the rootkits and remove them. These tools are often referred to as “rescue disks.” They’re meant to be used when you need to rescue a hopelessly infected system. Bootable Antivirus Options As with any type of antivirus software, you have quite a few options. Many antivirus companies offer bootable antivirus systems based on their antivirus software. These tools are generally free, even when they’re offered by companies that specialized in paid antivirus solutions. Here are a few good options: avast! Rescue Disk – We like avast! for offering a capable free antivirus with good detection rates in independent tests. avast! now offers the ability to create an antivirus boot disc or USB drive. Just navigate to the Tools -> Rescue Disk option in the avast! desktop application to create bootable media. BitDefender Rescue CD – BitDefender always seems to receive good scores in independent tests, and the BitDefender Rescue CD offers the same antivirus engine in the form of a bootable disc. Kaspersky Rescue Disk – Kaspersky also receives good scores in independent tests and offers its own antivirus boot disc. These are just a handful of options. If you prefer another antivirus for some reason — Comodo, Norton, Avira, ESET, or almost any other antivirus product — you’ll probably find that it offers its own system rescue disk. How to Use an Antivirus Boot Disc Using an antivirus boot disc or USB drive is actually pretty simple. You’ll just need to find the antivirus boot disc you want to use and burn it to disc or install it on a USB drive. You can do this part on any computer, so you can create antivirus boot media on a clean computer and then take it to an infected computer. Insert the boot media into the infected computer and then reboot. The computer should boot from the removable media and load the secure antivirus environment. (If it doesn’t, you may need to change the boot order in your BIOS or UEFI firmware.) You can then follow the instructions on your screen to scan your Windows system for malware and remove it. No malware will be running in the background while you do this. Antivirus boot discs are useful because they allow you to detect and clean malware infections from outside an infected operating system. If the operating system is severely infected, it may not be possible to remove — or even detect — all the malware from within it. Image Credit: aussiegall on Flickr     

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• Surface development: it&rsquo;s just like software development

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  Surface is magic. Everyone using it seems to think that way. And I have to be honest, after working for almost 2 years with the platform I still get that special feeling the moment I turn on the unit to do some more work. The whole user experience, the rich environment of the SDK, the touch, even the look and feel of the Surface environment is so much different from the stuff I’ve been working on all my career that I am still bewildered by it. But… and this is a big but.. in the end we’re still talking about a computer and that needs software to become useful. Deep down the magic of the Surface unit there is a PC somewhere, running Windows Vista and the .net framework 3.5. When you write that magic software that makes the platform come alive you’re still working with .net, WPF/XNA, C#, VB.Net and all those other tools and technologies you know so well. Sure, the whole user experience is different from what you’ve known. And the way of thinking about users, their interaction and the positioning of screen elements requires a whole new paradigm. And that takes time. It took me about half a year before I had the feeling I got it nailed down. But when that moment came (about 18 months ago…) I realized that everything I had learned so far on software development still is true when it comes to Surface. The last 6 months I have been working with some people with a different background to start a new company. The idea was that the new company would be focussing on Surface and Surface only. These people come from a marketing background and had some good ideas for some applications. And I have to admit: their ideas were good. Very good. Where it all fell down of course is that these ideas need to be implemented in a piece of software. And creating great software takes skilled developers and a lot of time and money. That’s where things went wrong: the marketing guys didn’t realize and didn’t want to realize that software development is a job that takes skill. You can’t just hire a bunch of developers and expect them to deliver the best sort of software, especially not when it comes to Surface. I tried to explain that yes, their User Interface in Photoshop looked great, but no: I couldn’t develop an application like that in a weeks time. Even worse: the while backend of the software (WCF for communications, SQL Server for the database, etc) would take a lot more time than the frontend. They didn’t understand. It took them a couple of days to drawn the UI in Photoshop so in Blend I should be able to build the software in about the same amount of time. Well, you and I know that it doesn’t work that way. Software is hard to write, and even harder to write well, and it takes skill and dedication. It’s not something you can do as fast as you can draw a mock up for a Surface application in Photohop. The same holds true for web applications of course. A lot of designers there fail to appreciate the hard work that goes into writing the plumbing for a good web app that can handle thousands of users. Although the UI is very important, it’s not all there is to it. And in Surface development this is the same. The UI should create the feeling of magic, but the software behind it is what makes it come alive. And that takes time. A lot of time. So brush of you skills and don’t throw them away if you start developing for Surface. Because projects (and colaborations) can fail there as hard as they can in any other area of software development. On a side note: we decided to stop the colaboration (something the other parties involved didn’t appreciate and were very angry about) and decided to hire a designer for the Surface projects. The focus is back where it belongs: on the software development we know so well and have been doing very well for 13 years. UI is just a part of the whole project and not the end product. So my company Detrio is still going strong when it comes to develivering Surface solutions but once again from a technological background, not a marketing background.

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• Last week I was presented with a Microsoft MVP award in Virtual Machines – time to thank all who hel

  - by Liam Westley

  MVP in Virtual Machines Last week, on 1st April, I received an e-mail from Microsoft letting me know that I had been presented with a 2010 Microsoft® MVP Award for outstanding contributions in Virtual Machine technical communities during the past year.   It was an honour to be nominated, and is a great reflection on the vibrancy of the UK user group community which made this possible. Virtualisation for developers, not just IT Pros I consider it a special honour as my expertise in virtualisation is as a software developer utilising virtual machines to aid my software development, rather than an IT Pro who manages data centre and network infrastructure.  I’ve been on a minor mission over the past few years to enthuse developers in a topic usually seen as only for network admins, but which can make their life a whole lot easier once understood properly. Continuous learning is fun In 1676, the scientist Isaac Newton, in a letter to Robert Hooke used the phrase (http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/268025.html) ‘If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants’ I’m a nuclear physicist by education, so I am more than comfortable that any knowledge I have is based on the work of others.  Although far from a science, software development and IT is equally built upon the work of others. It’s one of the reasons I despise software patents. So in that sense this MVP award is a result of all the great minds that have provided virtualisation solutions for me to talk about.  I hope that I have always acknowledged those whose work I have used when blogging or giving presentations, and that I have executed my responsibility to share any knowledge gained as widely as possible. Thanks to all those who helped – a big thanks to the UK user group community I reckon this journey started in 2003 when I started attending a user group called the London .Net Users Group (http://www.dnug.org.uk) started by a nice chap called Ian Cooper. The great thing about Ian was that he always encouraged non professional speakers to take the stage at the user group, and my first ever presentation was on 30th September 2003; SQL Server CE 2.0 and the.NET Compact Framework. In 2005 Ian Cooper was on the committee for the first DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper! day, the free community conference held at Microsoft’s UK HQ in Thames Valley park in Reading.  He encouraged me to take part and so on 14th May 2005 I presented a talk previously given to the London .Net User Group on Simplifying access to multiple DB providers in .NET.  From that point on I definitely had the bug; presenting at DDD2, DDD3, groking at DDD4 and SQLBits I and after a break, DDD7, DDD Scotland and DDD8.  What definitely made me keen was the encouragement and infectious enthusiasm of some of the other DDD organisers; Craig Murphy, Barry Dorrans, Phil Winstanley and Colin Mackay. During the first few DDD events I met the Dave McMahon and Richard Costall from NxtGenUG who made it easy to start presenting at their user groups.  Along the way I’ve met a load of great user group organisers; Guy Smith-Ferrier of the .Net Developer Network, Jimmy Skowronski of GL.Net and the double act of Ray Booysen and Gavin Osborn behind what was Vista Squad and is now Edge UG. Final thanks to those who suggested virtualisation as a topic ... Final thanks have to go the people who inspired me to create my Virtualisation for Developers talk.  Toby Henderson (@holytshirt) ensured I took notice of Sun’s VirtualBox, Peter Ibbotson for being a fine sounding board at the Kew Railway over quite a few Adnam’s Broadside and to Guy Smith-Ferrier for allowing his user group to be the guinea pigs for the talk before it was seen at DDD7.  Thanks to all of you I now know much more about virtualisation than I would have thought possible and it continues to be great fun. Conclusion If this was an academy award acceptance speech I would have been cut off after the first few paragraphs, so well done if you made it this far.  I’ll be doing my best to do justice to the MVP award and the UK community.  I’m fortunate in having a new employer who considers presenting at user groups as a good thing, so don’t expect me to stop any time soon. If you’ve never seen me in action, then you can view the original DDD7 Virtualisation for Developers presentation (filmed by the Microsoft Channel 9 team) as part of the full DDD7 video list here, http://www.craigmurphy.com/blog/?p=1591.  Also thanks to Craig Murphy’s fine video work you can also view my latest DDD8 presentation on Commercial Software Development, here, http://vimeo.com/9216563 P.S. If I’ve missed anyone out, do feel free to lambast me in comments, it’s your duty.

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• SQL SERVER – SSMS: Memory Usage By Memory Optimized Objects Report

  - by Pinal Dave

  At conferences and at speaking engagements at the local UG, there is one question that keeps on coming which I wish were never asked. The question around, “Why is SQL Server using up all the memory and not releasing even when idle?” Well, the answer can be long and with the release of SQL Server 2014, this got even more complicated. This release of SQL Server 2014 has the option of introducing In-Memory OLTP which is completely new concept and our dependency on memory has increased multifold. In reality, nothing much changes but we have memory optimized objects (Tables and Stored Procedures) additional which are residing completely in memory and improving performance. As a DBA, it is humanly impossible to get a hang of all the innovations and the new features introduced in the next version. So today’s blog is around the report added to SSMS which gives a high level view of this new feature addition. This reports is available only from SQL Server 2014 onwards because the feature was introduced in SQL Server 2014. Earlier versions of SQL Server Management Studio would not show the report in the list. If we try to launch the report on the database which is not having In-Memory File group defined, then we would see the message in report. To demonstrate, I have created new fresh database called MemoryOptimizedDB with no special file group. Here is the query used to identify whether a database has memory-optimized file group or not. SELECT TOP(1) 1 FROM sys.filegroups FG WHERE FG.[type] = 'FX' Once we add filegroup using below command, we would see different version of report. USE [master] GO ALTER DATABASE [MemoryOptimizedDB] ADD FILEGROUP [IMO_FG] CONTAINS MEMORY_OPTIMIZED_DATA GO The report is still empty because we have not defined any Memory Optimized table in the database.  Total allocated size is shown as 0 MB. Now, let’s add the folder location into the filegroup and also created few in-memory tables. We have used the nomenclature of IMO to denote “InMemory Optimized” objects. USE [master] GO ALTER DATABASE [MemoryOptimizedDB] ADD FILE ( NAME = N'MemoryOptimizedDB_IMO', FILENAME = N'E:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL12.SQL2014\MSSQL\DATA\MemoryOptimizedDB_IMO') TO FILEGROUP [IMO_FG] GO You may have to change the path based on your SQL Server configuration. Below is the script to create the table. USE MemoryOptimizedDB GO --Drop table if it already exists. IF OBJECT_ID('dbo.SQLAuthority','U') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE dbo.SQLAuthority GO CREATE TABLE dbo.SQLAuthority ( ID INT IDENTITY NOT NULL, Name CHAR(500)  COLLATE Latin1_General_100_BIN2 NOT NULL DEFAULT 'Pinal', CONSTRAINT PK_SQLAuthority_ID PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED (ID), INDEX hash_index_sample_memoryoptimizedtable_c2 HASH (Name) WITH (BUCKET_COUNT = 131072) ) WITH (MEMORY_OPTIMIZED = ON, DURABILITY = SCHEMA_AND_DATA) GO As soon as above script is executed, table and index both are created. If we run the report again, we would see something like below. Notice that table memory is zero but index is using memory. This is due to the fact that hash index needs memory to manage the buckets created. So even if table is empty, index would consume memory. More about the internals of how In-Memory indexes and tables work will be reserved for future posts. Now, use below script to populate the table with 10000 rows INSERT INTO SQLAuthority VALUES (DEFAULT) GO 10000 Here is the same report after inserting 1000 rows into our InMemory table.    There are total three sections in the whole report. Total Memory consumed by In-Memory Objects Pie chart showing memory distribution based on type of consumer – table, index and system. Details of memory usage by each table. The information about all three is taken from one single DMV, sys.dm_db_xtp_table_memory_stats This DMV contains memory usage statistics for both user and system In-Memory tables. If we query the DMV and look at data, we can easily notice that the system tables have negative object IDs.  So, to look at user table memory usage, below is the over-simplified version of query. USE MemoryOptimizedDB GO SELECT OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID), * FROM sys.dm_db_xtp_table_memory_stats WHERE OBJECT_ID > 0 GO This report would help DBA to identify which in-memory object taking lot of memory which can be used as a pointer for designing solution. I am sure in future we will discuss at lengths the whole concept of In-Memory tables in detail over this blog. To read more about In-Memory OLTP, have a look at In-Memory OLTP Series at Balmukund’s Blog. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: SQL Memory, SQL Reports

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• XNA Notes 011

  - by George Clingerman

  Even with a lot of the XNA community working on Dream Build Play entries ( I swear I’m going to finish mine this year!) people are still finding time to do side projects and be amazingly active in the XNA and XBLIG community. With my one eye on my code and one eye on the community, here’s what I noticed these over achievers doing this past week! Time Critical XNA News: Xbox LIVE Indie Games sales data will be delayed March 17-20th due to some schedule maintenance http://create.msdn.com/en-us/news/indie_games_data_delay_march2011 GameMarx is releasing a series of videos to help raise donations for victims of the earthquakes and tsunami in Japan. Help out if you can! http://www.gamemarx.com/video/special/29/help-japan-sushido.aspx XNA MVPs: Catalin Zima shares his thoughts on the MVP summit and my book! http://www.catalinzima.com/2011/03/mvp-summit-2011/ Glenn Wilson (@mykre) helps the XNA team announce some new educational content that you don’t want to miss if you’re porting your app or game to Windows Phone 7 http://www.virtualrealm.com.au/Blog/tabid/62/EntryId/653/Porting-your-App-or-Game-to-Windows-Phone-7.aspx and Windows Phone 7 from scratch http://www.virtualrealm.com.au/Blog/tabid/62/EntryId/654/Windows-Phone-from-Scratch.aspx and shares a link to some free architectural models and textures http://twitter.com/#!/Mykre/status/46410160784158720 George (that’s me!) shares his MVP Summit 2011 summary and XBLIG thoughts http://geekswithblogs.net/clingermangw/archive/2011/03/15/144366.aspx XNA Developers: @SmallCaveGames shares a Code of Ethics for Xbox LIVE Indie Game Developers http://smallcavegames.blogspot.com/2011/03/unofficial-xblig-developers-code-of.html Derek S adds more Xbox LIVE Indie Game studios to his master list of XBLIG links http://twitter.com/#!/Mr_Deeke/status/46140996056125440 http://xbl-indieverse.blogspot.com/p/xblig-links.html Making games and want to help kids? Then share your story with GameFace: America! http://gameitupinitiative.com/about-the-initiative/programs/gameface-america/ Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): XonaGames shares some video footage of their booth from GDC 2011 Video 1: http://youtu.be/lxIV9nk3Gq4 Video 2: http://youtu.be/GgfrjqkxR_o Video 3: http://youtu.be/yVcpXrTX7SQ Joystiq on Mommy’s Best Games Serious Sam Double D http://www.joystiq.com/2011/03/16/the-most-important-thing-about-serious-sam-double-d/ And The Escapist recommends that gamers start learning to avoid cleavage now http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/108543-Boobie-Bomber-Makes-First-Appearance-in-Serious-Sam-Double-D Magiko Gaming started a blog on the XBLIG dashboard daily Top 10 games in the US. Good way to go back in time and look at the history of which games were in the the Top 10. http://dailytop10indiegames.wordpress.com/ Where are they going now? XBLIG developers at a crossroads.. http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2011/03/where_are_they_going_now_xblig.php http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/33527/InDepth_Where_Are_They_Going_Now_XBLIG_Developers_At_A_Crossroads_.php BinaryTweed’s Clover: A Curious Tail is Xbox LIVE’s Deal of the Week! http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/03/15/what-luck-clover-a-curious-tale-is-half-price-this-week/ Looking for an Xbox LIVE Indie Game to buy? Writings of Mass Deduction has over 125 suggestions at this point! http://writingsofmassdeduction.com/ SkaStudios shares Vampire Smile Achievements AND their PAX East 2011 Both Setup video http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/03/14/vampire-smile-achievement/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/03/15/pax-booth-setup-time-lapse/ MasterBlud and VVGTV starts a new community for XBLIG developers and gamers to join http://vvgtv.forumotion.com/ Raymond Matthews (@DrakstarMatryx) covers Mommy’s Best Games getting Serious http://www.darkstarmatryx.com/?p=286 XNA Development: Dave Henry (@mort8088) posts the 4th tutorial in his series XNA 4.0 SpriteBatch extended http://mort8088.com/2011/03/11/xna-4-0-tutorial-4-spritebatch-extended/ Tutorial 5 - Creating a manual blank texture http://mort8088.com/2011/03/13/xna-4-tutorial-5-manual-blank-texture/ XNA 4.0 Tutorial 6 - Spritesheet Object http://mort8088.com/2011/03/18/xna-4-0-tutorial-6-spritesheet-object/ Jason Mitchell shares a tutorial on setting the alpha value for spritebatch in XNA 4.0 http://www.jason-mitchell.com/index.php/2011/03/13/setting-alpha-value-for-spritebatch-draw-in-xna-4/ XNA for Silverlight Developers: Part 7 - Collision Detection http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-7-Collision-detection.aspx Markus Ewald (@Cygon4) shares the full Ninject 2.0 binding for XNA and Sunburn http://twitter.com/#!/Cygon4/status/48330203826622464 Michael B. McLaughlin shares an AccelerometerInput XNA GameComponent he created (which I’m probably going to snag for a game I’m working on...) http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/03/17/accelerometerinput-xna-gamecomponent.aspx Extra Credit tackles the building of a good tutorial. Must watch for all Indie game devs (thanks for pointing it out Evan Johnson!) http://twitter.com/#!/johnsonevan/status/48452115680604160 http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2921-Tutorials-101 ExEn is fully funded at this point so definitely something for XBLIG developers to keep an eye on as they consider releasing their games on other platforms http://rockethub.com/projects/752-exen-xna-for-iphone-android-and-silverlight Channel 9 and Greg Duncan post Mixing the Game State Management and Platformer XNA Recipes http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/Mixing-the-Game-State-Management-and-Platformer-XNA-Recipes Sgt. Conker has noticed Mike McLaughlin has been crazy productive and has done a recap of his recent posts http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/03/recap-of-mikebmcls-posts/

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• Nerdstock 2012: A photo review of Microsoft TechEd North America 2012

  - by The Un-T Guy

  Not only could I not fathom that I would ever be attending a tech event of the magnitude of TechEd, neither could any of my co-workers.  As the least technical person in the history of Information Technology ever, I felt as though I were walking into the belly of the beast, fearing I’d not be allowed out until I could write SSIS packages, program in Visual Basic, or at least arm wrestle a DBA.  Most of my fears were unrealized.   But I made it.  I was here.  I even got to wear the Mark of the Geek neck package with schedule, eyeglass cleaners, name badge (company name obfuscated so they don’t fire me), and a pen.  The name  badge was seemingly the key element, as every vendor in the place wanted to scan it to capture name, email address, and numbers to show their bosses back home.  It also let me eat the food and drink the coffee so that’s a fair trade.   A recurring theme throughout the presentations and vendor demos was “the Cloud” and BYOD (bring your own device).  The below was a common site throughout the week, as attendees from all over the world brought their own devices and were able to (seemingly) seamlessly connect to the Worldwide Innerwebs.  Apparently proof that Microsoft and the event organizers were practicing what they were preaching.   “Cavernous” is one way to describe the downstairs facility itself.  “Freaking cavernous” might be more accurate.  Work sessions were held in classrooms on the second and third floors but the real action was happening downstairs.  Microsoft bookstore, blogger hub (shoutout to Geekswithblogs.net), The Wall (sans Pink Floyd, sadly), couches, recharging stations…   …a game zone with pool and air hockey tables, pinball machines, foosball…   …vintage video games…           …and a even giant chess board.  Looked like this guy was opening with the Kaspersky parry.   The blend of technology and fantasy even went so far as to bring childhood favorites to life.  Assuming, of course, your childhood was pre-video games (like mine) and you were stuck with electric football and Rock ‘em Sock ‘em robots:   And, lest the “combatants” become unruly or – God forbid – afternoon snacks were late, Orange County’s finest was on the scene to keep the peace.  On a high-tech mode of transport, of course.   She wasn’t the only one to think this was a swell way to transition from one concourse to the next.  Given the level of support provided by the entire Orange County Convention Center staff, I knew they had to have some secret.   Here’s one entrance to the vendor zone/”Technical Learning Center.”  Couldn’t help but think of them as the remora attached to the Whale Shark that is Microsoft…   …or perhaps planets orbiting the sun. Microsoft is just that huge and it seemed like every vendor in the industry looks forward to partnering with the tech behemoth.   Aside from the free stuff from the vendors, probably the most popular place in the house was the dining area.  Amazing spreads every day, multiple times a day.  While no attendance numbers were available at press time, literally thousands of attendees were fed, and fed well, every day.  And lest you think my post from earlier in the week exaggerated about the backpacks…   …or that I’m exaggerating about the lunch crowds.  This represents only about between 25-30% of the lunch crowd – it was all my camera could capture at once.  No one went away hungry.   The only thing missing was a a vat of Red Bull but apparently organizers went old school, with probably 100 urns of the original energy drink – coffee – all around the venue.   Of course, following lunch and afternoon sessions, some preferred the even older school method of re-energizing.  There were rumors that Microsoft was serving graham crackers and milk in this area.  But they were only rumors.   Cannot overstate the wonderful service provided by the Orange County Convention Center staff.  Coffee, soft drinks, juice, and water were available always.  Buffet meals were delicious with a wide range of healthy options available, in addition to hundreds (at least) special meal requests supported every day.  Ever tried to keep up with an estimated 9,000 hungry and thirsty IT-ers?  These folks did.  Kudos to all of the staff and many thanks!   And while I occasionally poke fun at the Whale Shark, if nothing else this experience convinced me of one thing:  Microsoft knows how to put on a professional event.  Hundreds of informative, professionally delivered sessions, covering a wide range of topics set at varying levels of expertise (some that even I was able to follow), social activities, vendor partnerships…they brought everything you could ask for to inform, educate, and inspire an entire IT industry.   So as I depart the belly of the beast, I can both take pride in the fact that I survived the week and marvel at the brilliance surrounding me.  The IT industry – or at least the segment associated with Microsoft – is in good, professional hands.  And what won’t fit in their hands can be toted in the Microsoft provided backpacks.  Win-win.   Until New Orleans…

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• Using Web Services from an XNA 4.0 WP7 Game

  - by Michael Cummings

  Now that the Windows Phone 7 development tools have been out for a while, let’s talk about how you can use them. Windows Phone 7 ( WP7 ) has two application types that you can create, either Silverlight or XNA, and you can’t really mix the two together. The development environment for WP7 is a special edition of Visual Studio 2010 called Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone. This edition will be installed with the WP7 tools, even if you have a full edition of VS2010 already installed. While you can use your full edition of VS2010 to do WP7 development, this astute developer has noticed that there are a few things that you can only do in the Express for Windows Phone edition. So lets start by discussing WP7 networking. On the WP7 platform the only networking available is through Web Services using WCF or if you’re really masochistic, you’ll use the WebClient to do http. In Silverlight, it’s fairly easy to wire up a WCF proxy to call a web service and get some data. In the XNA projects, not so much. Create WCF Service First, we’ll create our service that will return some information that we need in our game. Open Visual Studio 2010, and create a new WCF Web Service project. We’ll use the default implementation as we only need to see how to use a service, we are not interested in creating a really cool service at this point. However you may want to follow the instructions in the comments of Service1.svc.cs to change the name to something better, I used DataService and IDataService for the interface. You should now be able to run the project and the WCF Test Client will load and properly enumerate your service. At this point we have a functional service that can be consumed by our XNA game. Consume the WCF Service Open Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone and create a new XNA Game Studio 4.0 Windows Phone Game project. Now if you try to add a service reference to the project, you’ll notice that the option is not available. However, if you add a Silverlight application to your solution, you’ll notice that you can create a service reference there. So using the Silverlight project, we can create the service reference. Unfortunately you can’t reference the Silverlight project from the XNA Game project, so using Windows Explorer copy the Service References folder from the Silverlight project directory to the XNA Game project directory, then add the folder to your XNA Game project. You’ll need to set the property Build Action to None for all the files, except for Reference.cs, which should be Build. Truely, we only need Reference.cs but I find it easier to copy the whole folder. If you try to compile at this point, you’ll notice that we are missing  a couple of references, System.Runtime.Serialization, System.Net and System.ServiceModel. Add these to the XNA Game project and you should build successfully. You’ll also need to copy the ServiceReference.ClientConfig file and add it to your project. The WCF infrastructure looks for this file and will complain if it can’t find it. You’ll need to set the Copy to Output Directory property to Copy if Newer. We now need to add the code to call the service and display the results on the screen. Go ahead and add a SpriteFont resource to the Content project and load it in the Game project. There’s nothing here that’s changed much from 3.1 other than your Content project is now under the Solution node and not the Project node. While you’re at it, add a string field to store the result of the service call, and intialize it to string.Empty. Then in the Draw method, write the string out to the screen, only if it does not equal string.Empty. Now to wrap this up, lets create a new field that’s of the type DataServiceClient. In the Initialize Method, create a new instance of this type using its default contructor, then in the LoadContent we can call the service. Since we can only call the GetData method of our service asynchronously we need to set up a Completed event handler first. Thankfully, Visual Studio helps out a lot there just create, using the tab key whatever VS says to. In the GetDataAsyncCompleted event handler assign the service result ( e.Result) to your string field. If you run your game, you should get something like this : Enjoy!

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• Guest Post: Christian Finn: Is Facebook About to Become a Victim of its Own Success?

  - by Michael Snow

  12.00 Print 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}  Since we have a number of new members of the WebCenter Evangelist team - I thought it would be appropriate to close the week with the newest hire and leader of the global WebCenter Evangelists, Christian Finn, who has just joined the Red team after many years with the small technology company up in Redmond, WA. He gave an intro to himself in an earlier post this morning but his post below is a great example of how customer engagement takes on a life of its own in our global online connected and social digital ecosystem. Is Facebook About to Become a Victim of its Own Success? What if I told you that your brand could advertise so successfully, you wouldn’t have to pay for the ads? A recent campaign by Ford Motor Company for the Ford Focus featuring Doug the spokespuppet (I am not making this up) did just that—and it raises some interesting issues for marketers and social media alike in the brave new world of customer engagement that is the Social Web. Allow me to elaborate. An article in the Wall Street Journal last week—“Big Brands Like Facebook, But They Don’t Like to Pay” tells the story of Ford’s recently concluded online campaign for the 2012 Ford Focus. (Ford, by the way, under the leadership of people such as Scott Monty, has been a pioneer of effective social campaigns.) The centerpiece of the campaign was the aforementioned Doug, who appeared as a character on Facebook in videos and via chat. (If you are not familiar with Doug, you can see him in action here, and read the WSJ story here.) You may be thinking puppet ads are a sign of Internet Bubble 2.0 and want to stop now, but bear with me. The Journal reported that Ford spent about $95M on its overall Ford Focus campaign, with TV accounting for over $60M of that spend. The Internet buy for the campaign was just over $10M, which included ad buys to drive traffic to Facebook for people to meet and ‘Like’ Doug and some amount on Facebook ads, too, to promote Doug and by extension, the Ford Focus. So far, a fairly straightforward consumer marketing story in the Internet Era. Yet here’s the curious thing: once Doug reached 10,000 fans on Facebook, Ford stopped paying for Facebook ads. Doug had gone viral with people sharing his videos with one another; once critical mass was reached there was no need to buy more ads on Facebook. Doug went on to be Liked by over 43,000 people, and 61% of his fans said they would be more likely to consider buying a Focus. According to the article, Ford says Focus sales are up this year—and increasing sales is every marketer’s goal. And so in effect, Ford found its Facebook campaign so successful that it could stop paying for it, instead letting its target consumers communicate its messages for fun—and for free. Not only did they get a 3X increase in fans beyond their paid campaign, they had thousands of customers sharing their messages in video form for months. Since free advertising is the Holy Grail of marketing both old and new-- and it appears social networks have an advantage in generating that buzz—it seems reasonable to ask: what would happen to brands’ advertising strategies—and the media they use to engage customers, if this success were repeated at scale? It seems logical to conclude that, at least initially, more ad dollars would be spent with social networks like Facebook as brands attempt to replicate Ford’s success. Certainly Facebook ad revenues are on the rise—eMarketer expects Facebook’s ad revenues to quintuple by 2012 compared with 2009 levels, to nearly 2.9B. That’s bad news for TV and the already battered print media and good news for Facebook. But perhaps not so over the longer run. With TV buys, you have to keep paying to generate impressions. If Doug the spokespuppet is any guide, however, that may not be true for social media campaigns. After an initial outlay, if a social campaign takes off, the audience will generate more impressions on its own. Thus a social medium like Facebook could be the victim of its own success when it comes to ad revenue. It may be there is an inherent limiting factor in the ad spend they can capture, as exemplified by Ford’s experience with Dough and the Focus. And brands may spend much less overall on advertising, with as good or better results, than they ever have in the past. How will these trends evolve? Can brands create social campaigns that repeat Ford’s formula for the Focus with effective results? Can social networks find ways to capture more spend and overcome their potential tendency to make further spend unnecessary? And will consumers become tired and insulated from social campaigns, much as they have to traditional advertising channels? These are the questions CMOs and Facebook execs alike will be asking themselves in the brave new world of customer engagement. As always, your thoughts and comments are most welcome.

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• Edit ePub eBooks with Your Favorite HTML Editor

  - by Matthew Guay

  ePub eBooks are increasingly popular today, but often they’ve been made by converting other file formats. Here’s how you can edit ePub books to remove irregularities and make them better for reading on your devices. ePub’s are actually a zip file containing images, XHTML files with your text, and more with the .epub extension. You can make them better by editing the XHTML files directly.  Code gurus can edit the code directly, but even if you’ve never edited HTML, you can still quickly make changes with a WYSIWYG editor. Extract the Files from your ePub eBook As mentioned before, ePub files are actually renamed zip files.  So first let’s get all of the files in your ePub eBook accessible.  Find an eBook you want to edit and then change the file extension to .zip. If you don’t see the file extensions, click Organize in the menu bar and select Folder and search options. Select the View tab, and then uncheck the box beside Hide extensions for known file types.  Click Ok, and then change the file type as above. Windows will warn you about changing the file type; click Yes to proceed. Now you can browse the files of the ePub file.  Notice that it contains mostly HTML or XHTML files and images.  Click Extract all files to save them all in a folder so you can easily edit them. Alternately, you can open the ePub file directly in your favorite file archival program such as 7-zip.  Browse to the location of your ePub file, double-click it, and it’ll automatically open even if you don’t change the file extension to zip.  Now you can extract the folder, or extract individual files as before.   Edit Your eBook in KompoZer The actual ebook contents are stored in HTML or XHTML files.  These may be stored on the top folder of you ePub file’s directory, or they may be stored in \OEBPS\text in the file. To change the contents of your eBook, you’ll want to edit these files.  Often there may be separate files for each chapter, so you may have to use trial and error to find the one you need to edit.  You could edit them by hand in Windows using Notepad if you don’t have an HTML editor installed. A better option would be to use an HTML editor.  Here we’ll use the free KompoZer program to edit the files just like we’d edit a document in Word. Download KompoZer (link below), and unzip the files.  Then open the new folder and launch kompozer.exe; you don’t even need to install it.  In fact, you could even store KompoZer on a flash drive so you could edit HTML files from any computer. In KompoZer, open the HTML or XHTML file from your eBook that you want to edit. Now you can edit the file just like you would edit a document in Word.  Remove extra and unneeded text, make titles stand out, correct misspellings … anything you want!  This is especially helpful if your ePub file was created by converting a PDF as these often have many small errors. Or, if you’d rather edit the code itself, select the Source tab and edit as you wish. When you’re done making the changes, make sure to save the file in the same location with the same file name. Recreate Your Edited ePub eBook Once you’ve made all the changes you wanted, it’s time to turn this folder of files back into ePub.  Make sure you change the name of the folder if it still has the same name as the original ePub or zip file so you don’t mix them up or have trouble with overwriting the old files. Zip the folder using Windows Explorer or your favorite archival utility.  If you are using another archival program, make sure to compress it as a zip folder; other compression methods will render the ePub unreadable by your eReader app. Now change the file extension again, this time back to .epub. Now you can read your eBook with your changes in your favorite reader program or app on your mobile device. Conclusion Whether you need to remove an odd, misplaced character or need to do fine editing, using an HTML editor is a great way to make your ePub eBooks look just like you want.  Also, with an editor like KompoZer it’s not even difficult. Download KompoZer Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Change the Default Editor From Nano on Ubuntu LinuxConvert a PDF eBook to ePub Format for Your iPad, iPhone, or eReaderRead Mobi eBooks on Kindle for PCEdit Your Firefox Bookmarks Easier with Flat Bookmark EditorChange the Default Editor for Batch Files in Vista TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server XPS file format & XPS Viewer Explained Microsoft Office Web Apps Guide Know if Someone Accessed Your Facebook Account Shop for Music with Windows Media Player 12 Access Free Documentaries at BBC Documentaries Rent Cameras In Bulk At CameraRenter

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• SQL Server service accounts and SPNs

  - by simonsabin

  Service Principal Names (SPNs) are a must for kerberos authentication which is a must when using sharepoint, reporting services and sql server where you access one server that then needs to access another resource, this is called the double hop. The reason this is a complex problem is that the second hop has to be done with impersonation/delegation. For this to work there needs to be a way for the security system to make sure that the service in the middle is allowed to impersonate you, after all you are not giving the service your password. To do this you need to be using kerberos. The following is my simple interpretation of how kerberos works. I find the Kerberos documentation rediculously complex so the following might be sligthly wrong but I think its close enough. Keberos works on a ticketing system, the prinicipal is that you get a security token from AD and then you can pass that to the service in the middle which can then use that token to impersonate you. For that to work AD has to be able to identify who is allowed to use the token, in this case the service account.But how do you as a client know what service account the service in the middle is configured with. The answer is SPNs. The SPN is the mapping between your logical connection to the service account. One type of SPN is for the DNS name for the server and the port. i.e. MySQL.mydomain.com and 1433. You can see how this maps to SQL Server on that server, but how does it map to the account. Well it can be done in two ways, either you can have a mapping defined in AD or AD can use a default mapping (this is something I didn't know about). To map the SPN in AD then you have to add the SPN to the user account, this is documented in the first link below either directly or using a tool called SetSPN. You might say that is complex, well it is and thats why SQL Server tries to do it for you, at start up it tries to connect to AD and set the SPN on the account it is running as, clearly that can only happen IF SQL is running as a domain account AND importantly it has permission to do so. By default a normal domain user account doesn't have the correct permission, and is why so many people have this problem. If the account is a domain admin then it will have permission, but non of us run SQL using domain admin accounts do we. You might also note that the SPN contains the port number (this isn't a requirement now in sql 2008 but I won't go into that), so if you set it manually and you are using dynamic ports (the default for a named instance) what do you do, well every time the port changes you need to change the SPN allocated to the account. Thats why its advised to let SQL Server register the SPN itself. You may also have thought, well what happens if I change my service account, won't that lead to two accounts with the same SPN. Possibly. Having two accounts with the same SPN is definitely a problem. Why? Well because if there are two accounts Kerberos can't identify the exact account that the service is running as, it could be either account, and so your security falls back to NTLM. SETSPN is useful for finding duplicate SPNs Reading this you will probably be thinking Oh my goodness this is really difficult. It is however I've found today in investigating something else that there is an easy option. Use Network Service as your service account. Network Service is a special account and is tied to the computer. It appears that Network Service has the update rights to AD to set an SPN mapping for the computer account. This then allows the SPN mapping to work. I believe this also works for the local system account. To get all the SPNs in your AD run the following, it could be a large file, so you might want to restrict it to a specific OU, or CN ldifde -d "DC=<domain>" -l servicePrincipalName -F spn.txt You will read in the links below that you need SQL to register the SPN this is done how to use Kerberos authenticaiton in SQL Server - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/319723 Using Kerberos with SQL Server - http://blogs.msdn.com/sql_protocols/archive/2005/10/12/479871.aspx Understanding Kerberos and NTLM authentication in SQL Server Connections - http://blogs.msdn.com/sql_protocols/archive/2006/12/02/understanding-kerberos-and-ntlm-authentication-in-sql-server-connections.aspx Summary The only reason I personally know to use a domain account is when you can't get kerberos to work and you want to do BULK INSERT or other network service that requires access to a a remote server. In this case you have to resort to using SQL authentication and the SQL Server uses its service account to access the remote service, and thus you need a domain account. You migth need this if using some forms of replication. I've always found Kerberos awkward to setup and so fallen back to this domain account approach. So in summary to get Kerberos to work try using the network service or local system accounts. For a great post from the Adam Saxton of the SQL Server support team go to http://blogs.msdn.com/psssql/archive/2010/03/09/what-spn-do-i-use-and-how-does-it-get-there.aspx 

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• .NET 3.5 Installation Problems in Windows 8

  - by Rick Strahl

  Windows 8 installs with .NET 4.5. A default installation of Windows 8 doesn't seem to include .NET 3.0 or 3.5, although .NET 2.0 does seem to be available by default (presumably because Windows has app dependencies on that). I ran into some pretty nasty compatibility issues regarding .NET 3.5 which I'll describe in this post. I'll preface this by saying that depending on how you install Windows 8 you may not run into these issues. In fact, it's probably a special case, but one that might be common with developer folks reading my blog. Specifically it's the install order that screwed things up for me -  installing Visual Studio before explicitly installing .NET 3.5 from Windows Features - in particular. If you install Visual Studio 2010 I highly recommend you install .NET 3.5 from Windows features BEFORE you install Visual Studio 2010 and save yourself the trouble I went through. So when I installed Windows 8, and then looked at the Windows Features to install after the fact in the Windows Feature dialog, I thought - .NET 3.5 - who needs it. I'd be happy to not have to install .NET 3.5, but unfortunately I found out quite a while after initial installation that one of my applications/tools (DevExpress's awesome CodeRush) depends on it and won't install without it. Enabling .NET 3.5 in Windows 8 If you want to run .NET 3.5 on Windows 8, don't download an installer - those installers don't work on Windows 8, and you don't need to do this because you can use the Windows Features dialog to enable .NET 3.5: And that *should* do the trick. If you do this before you install other apps that require .NET 3.5 and install a non-SP1 one version of it, you are going to have no problems. Unfortunately for me, even after I've installed the above, when I run the CodeRush installer I still get this lovely dialog: Now I double checked to see if .NET 3.5 is installed - it is, both for 32 bit and 64 bit. I went as far as creating a small .NET Console app and running it to verify that it actually runs. And it does… So naturally I thought the CodeRush installer is a little whacky. After some back and forth Alex Skorkin on Twitter pointed me in the right direction: He asked me to look in the registry for exact info on which version of .NET 3.5 is installed here: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP where I found that .NET 3.5 SP1 was installed. This is the 64 bit key which looks all correct. However, when I looked under the 32 bit node I found: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v3.5 Notice that the service pack number is set to 0, rather than 1 (which it was for the 64 bit install), which is what the installer requires. So to summarize: the 64 bit version is installed with SP1, the 32 bit version is not. Uhm, Ok… thanks for that! Easy to fix, you say - just install SP1. Nope, not so easy because the standalone installer doesn't work on Windows 8. I can't get either .NET 3.5 installer or the SP 1 installer to even launch. They simply start and hang (or exit immediately) without messages. I also tried to get Windows to update .NET 3.5 by checking for Windows Updates, which should pick up on the dated version of .NET 3.5 and pull down SP1, but that's also no go. Check for Updates doesn't bring down any updates for me yet. I'm sure at some random point in the future Windows will deem it necessary to update .NET 3.5 to SP1, but at this point it's not letting me coerce it to do it explicitly. How did this happen I'm not sure exactly whether this is the cause and effect, but I suspect the story goes like this: Installed Windows 8 without support for .NET 3.5 Installed Visual Studio 2010 which installs .NET 3.5 (no SP) I now had .NET 3.5 installed but without SP1. I then: Tried to install CodeRush - Error: .NET 3.5 SP1 required Enabled .NET 3.5 in Windows Features I figured enabling the .NET 3.5 Windows Features would do the trick. But still no go. Now I suspect Visual Studio installed the 32 bit version of .NET 3.5 on my machine and Windows Features detected the previous install and didn't reinstall it. This left the 32 bit install at least with no SP1 installed. How to Fix it My final solution was to completely uninstall .NET 3.5 *and* to reboot: Go to Windows Features Uncheck the .NET Framework 3.5 Restart Windows Go to Windows Features Check .NET Framework 3.5 and voila, I now have a proper installation of .NET 3.5. I tried this before but without the reboot step in between which did not work. Make sure you reboot between uninstalling and reinstalling .NET 3.5! More Problems The above fixed me right up, but in looking for a solution it seems that a lot of people are also having problems with .NET 3.5 installing properly from the Windows Features dialog. The problem there is that the feature wasn't properly loading from the installer disks or not downloading the proper components for updates. It turns out you can explicitly install Windows features using the DISM tool in Windows.dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFX3 /Source:f:\sources\sxs You can try this without the /Source flag first - which uses the hidden Windows installer files if you kept those. Otherwise insert the DVD or ISO and point at the path \sources\sxs path where the installer lives. This also gives you a little more information if something does go wrong.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Windows  .NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Getting a Web Resource Url in non WebForms Applications

  - by Rick Strahl

  WebResources in ASP.NET are pretty useful feature. WebResources are resources that are embedded into a .NET assembly and can be loaded from the assembly via a special resource URL. WebForms includes a method on the ClientScriptManager (Page.ClientScript) and the ScriptManager object to retrieve URLs to these resources. For example you can do: ClientScript.GetWebResourceUrl(typeof(ControlResources), ControlResources.JQUERY_SCRIPT_RESOURCE); GetWebResourceUrl requires a type (which is used for the assembly lookup in which to find the resource) and the resource id to lookup. GetWebResourceUrl() then returns a nasty old long URL like this: WebResource.axd?d=-b6oWzgbpGb8uTaHDrCMv59VSmGhilZP5_T_B8anpGx7X-PmW_1eu1KoHDvox-XHqA1EEb-Tl2YAP3bBeebGN65tv-7-yAimtG4ZnoWH633pExpJor8Qp1aKbk-KQWSoNfRC7rQJHXVP4tC0reYzVw2&t=634533278261362212 While lately excessive resource usage has been frowned upon especially by MVC developers who tend to opt for content distributed as files, I still think that Web Resources have their place even in non-WebForms applications. Also if you have existing assemblies that include resources like scripts and common image links it sure would be nice to access them from non-WebForms pages like MVC views or even in plain old Razor Web Pages. Where's my Page object Dude? Unfortunately natively ASP.NET doesn't have a mechanism for retrieving WebResource Urls outside of the WebForms engine. It's a feature that's specifically baked into WebForms and that relies specifically on the Page HttpHandler implementation. Both Page.ClientScript (obviously) and ScriptManager rely on a hosting Page object in order to work and the various methods off these objects require control instances passed. The reason for this is that the script managers can inject scripts and links into Page content (think RegisterXXXX methods) and for that a Page instance is required. However, for many other methods - like GetWebResourceUrl() - that simply return resources or resource links the Page reference is really irrelevant. While there's a separate ClientScriptManager class, it's marked as sealed and doesn't have any public constructors so you can't create your own instance (without Reflection). Even if it did the internal constructor it does have requires a Page reference. No good… So, can we get access to a WebResourceUrl generically without running in a WebForms Page instance? We just have to create a Page instance ourselves and use it internally. There's nothing intrinsic about the use of the Page class in ClientScript, at least for retrieving resources and resource Urls so it's easy to create an instance of a Page for example in a static method. For our needs of retrieving ResourceUrls or even actually retrieving script resources we can use a canned, non-configured Page instance we create on our own. The following works just fine: public static string GetWebResourceUrl(Type type, string resource ) { Page page = new Page(); return page.ClientScript.GetWebResourceUrl(type, resource); } A slight optimization for this might be to cache the created Page instance. Page tends to be a pretty heavy object to create each time a URL is required so you might want to cache the instance: public class WebUtils { private static Page CachedPage { get { if (_CachedPage == null) _CachedPage = new Page(); return _CachedPage; } } private static Page _CachedPage; public static string GetWebResourceUrl(Type type, string resource) { return CachedPage.ClientScript.GetWebResourceUrl(type, resource); } } You can now use GetWebResourceUrl in a Razor page like this: <!DOCTYPE html> <html <head> <script src="@WebUtils.GetWebResourceUrl(typeof(ControlResources),ControlResources.JQUERY_SCRIPT_RESOURCE)"> </script> </head> <body> <div class="errordisplay"> <img src="@WebUtils.GetWebResourceUrl(typeof(ControlResources),ControlResources.WARNING_ICON_RESOURCE)" /> This is only a Test! </div> </body> </html> And voila - there you have WebResources served from a non-Page based application. WebResources may be a on the way out, but legacy apps have them embedded and for some situations, like fallback scripts and some common image resources I still like to use them. Being able to use them from non-WebForms applications should have been built into the core ASP.NETplatform IMHO, but seeing that it's not this workaround is easy enough to implement.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in ASP.NET  MVC   Tweet (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Information Indepth Newsletter - Linux Edition

  - by Paulo Folgado

  INFORMATION INDEPTH NEWSLETTERLinux Edition February 2011 Stay Connected:  NEWS Now Available: Oracle Linux 6 Get the latest release of Oracle Linux 6, which includes Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel.Download Oracle Linux 6 Read More Customers Succeed by Using Oracle Exadata with Oracle Linux Watch IT executives from Bank of America, Linkshare, and Johns Hopkins as they talk about the business challenges they faced and why they chose to use Oracle Linux along with Oracle Exadata as the solution. Watch Now Video Interview: Oracle Senior Vice President Wim Coekaerts Watch Wim Coekaerts, senior vice president, Linux and Virtualization Engineering, as he talks about use cases for Oracle VM Templates as well as the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel for Linux.Watch Now Hot Off the Press: Migrate Your IBM AIX Environment to Oracle Linux This new white paper provides recommendations for planning and implementing the migration of applications from an IBM Power System running AIX to Oracle's Sun Fire X4800 Server with Intel Xeon 7560 Processor running Oracle Linux 5.5.Read More  Back to Top BLOGOSPHERE Just Launched: The Oracle Linux Blog Follow our new Oracle Linux blog  to hear the latest updates, product news, upcoming events, and all the latest happenings, directly from the Linux team at Oracle. Back to Top TECH DIVE NEW: Linux/Oracle Solaris CommandComparo Site from Oracle Technology NetworkThis site gives equivalent command syntax in Oracle Solaris 10 and Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 for common administrative tasks--focusing particularly on tasks that have tricky syntax or that you frequently need to double check. It acts as a quick reference for administrators who operate in these two OS environments. Free Download: Oracle Linux Release 5.6Did you know that by using Oracle Linux 5.5 or 5.6 along with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel, you can get all the benefits of Linux mainline kernel 2.6.32 and more, right now, without the need to reinstall or migrate to a new operating system such as RHEL6?Read Release NotesDownload Oracle Linux 5.6 LSB 4.0 Certification Completed for Oracle Linux 5.5Oracle Linux 5.5 with Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel successfully completed the LSB 4.0 certification.  Back to Top WEBCASTS Boost Your Linux Performance with Oracle's Enhancements in Infiniband and RDSRegister to hear Director of Kernel Engineering Chris Mason cover scalability and performance improvements in Linux environment. Get the Facts Oracle's Unbreakable Enterprise KernelSVP Wim Coekaerts and Senior Director Monica Kumar cover the facts about and benefits of using Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel.  View Other Webcasts on Demand   Back to Top EVENTS Collaborate 2011April 10-14 Orlando, Florida Cloud Summit Events, WorldwideVarious dates (check the city for date/time of event) Datacenter Efficiency Events WorldwideThese events include Linux and Oracle VM sessions.Various dates (check the city for date/time of event) Virtualization Events in North America Find an Oracle Event  Back to Top EDUCATION Get Oracle Linux Certified from Oracle University Oracle University offers courses in both Oracle Linux and the administration of Oracle Database on Linux.  Back to Top CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT Pella Corporation Improves IT Performance and Efficiency with Oracle Linux and Oracle VM To improve IT performance and efficiency and lower operational costs, Pella Corporation, has standardized on Oracle VM and Oracle Linux. Read More Disney Store Deploys POS in 330 Stores and 7 Countries on Oracle Linux Disney Store is running 1,500 registers worldwide on a broad Oracle technology software stack including Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Fusion Middleware, and Oracle Linux. Read More Back to Top PARTNER SPOTLIGHT Emulex and Oracle Announce Data Integrity Features The Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel provides data integrity checking between Oracle Database applications and Emulex 8Gb/s LightPulse Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters. Read More Dell Inc. Dell Inc. tested and validated configurations support Oracle Linux. Back to Top STAY IN TOUCH Follow @ORCL_Linux on Twitter for the latest penguin tweets Bookmark Oracle.com/Linux Read the Oracle Linux blog Back to Top  Oracle Information InDepth newsletters bring targeted news, articles, customer stories, and special offers to business people who want to find out how to streamline enterprise information management, measure results, improve business processes, and communicate a single truth to their constituents. Please send questions or comments to [email protected]. For answers to questions about subscribing, unsubscribing, and managing your Oracle e-mail communications preferences, please see the Oracle E-Mail Communications page. Copyright © 2011, Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. This document is provided for information purposes only, and the contents hereof are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor is it subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document, and no contractual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission. 

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• XNA Notes 004

  - by George Clingerman

  The XNA community has been crazy busy again. It always make me fee like such a slacker collecting all of these notes as I see the tremendous output from people all over the world and it’s incredible and humbling. There are some amazingly skilled people working with XNA. On another not, I’m going to take a minute to get on my soapbox and say, if you are developing ANYTHING and are not using some sort of source/revision control, START IMMEDIATELY. This applies to teams of one. Projects for fun. And “I back up my hard drive” or “I use dropbox!” does NOT count as using source control. You’ll be doing yourself a HUGE favor if you find one, learn to use it and integrate it into your everyday workflow. I personally use Subversion. It’s hosted offsite at xp.dev.com and I use TortoiseSVN as my front end to interface with the repository. It’s simple and easy to use and has saved me from myself so many time. Honestly, get setup with some type of source control immediately. If you don’t understand how, grab another developer that does and have them walk you through setup and the basics of using it. Ok, I’m done. On to the notes… The XNA Team Only 14 days left to Submit XNA GS 3.1 Games! http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2011/01/24/14-days-left-to-submit-xna-gs-3-1-games-on-app-hub.aspx Shawn Hargreaves shares some great information on Exception Handling best practices on the XNA forums http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/73333/448556.aspx#448556 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2008/09/10/vexing-exceptions.aspx XNA MVPs @CatalinZima gives us a peek at Chicken’s Can’t Fly http://www.amusedsloth.com/games/chickens-cant-fly/ Screen-space deformations in XNA for WP7 from Catalin Zima http://twitter.com/CatalinZima/statuses/30313083767357440 http://www.amusedsloth.com/2011/01/screen-space-deformations-in-xna-for-windows-phone-7/ XNA Developers Going to GDC? Don’t miss the XNA panel hosted by a plethora of well known XNA community names! http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/73576/448842.aspx#448842 MasterBlud does an interview with @Xalterax http://twitter.com/MasterBlud/statuses/28510774812999680 http://www.xboxhornet.com/wordpress/?p=7102 Luke Schneider of Radiangames posts about The Radiangames Style http://radiangames.com/?p=532 Holmade Games had a “vote for the new playable character” poll going on for Hurdle Turtle this past week http://holmadegames.blogspot.com/2011/01/new-level-pack-vote-for-your-favorite.html IGF v0.1.0.0 release post mortem http://indiefreaks.com/2011/01/24/v0-1-0-0-release-post-mortem/ James an Super Dunner post Good Morning Gato #46 and a look at the Vampire Smile box art http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/01/21/good-morning-gato-46/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/01/20/vampire-smiles-digital-box-art/ Alfredo Di Napoli creates Cow Pong using XNA and F#! http://alfredodinapoli.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/cow-pong-a-simple-xna-game-in-f/ Xbox LIVE Indie Games Signed In Podcast posts Episode #61 http://www.signedinpodcast.com/?p=559 Gamergeddon posts the January 23rd edition of XBLIG Round Up http://www.gamergeddon.com/2011/01/23/xbox-indie-games-round-up-january-23rd/ Indie Asylum posts Antipole Review http://www.indieasylum.com/reviews/38-xblig/112-antipole.html 1UPOrPosion Reviews OSR Unhinged http://www.1uporpoison.com/xblig/osr-unhinged/ DarkstarMatryx review Warbirds at Work http://www.darkstarmatryx.com/?p=185 Review of Aban Hawkins and the 1000 Spikes http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/01/24/xbox-indie-review-aban-hawkins-the-1000-spikes/ XboxHornet reviews Corrupted http://www.xboxhornet.com/wordpress/?p=7123 XBLIG 2010: The Best And The Worst http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JamieMann/20110121/6840/ Xbox LIVE Arcade Sales Analysis - an interesting read for XBLIG developers wondering how they’re doing compared to arcade.. http://www.gamerbytes.com/2011/01/xbla_sales_analysis_dec_2010.php Best of Indies for January 25th http://www.thisisfakediy.co.uk/articles/games/best-of-the-indies-25th-january-2011 Decimation X3 appears as an arcade machine in the wild! http://twitter.com/mdoucette/statuses/29605562484260864 XNA Game Development Guiseppe De Francesco (@PinoEire) announced Torque X 4.0 CEV is now in RC phase! http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/20779 DrMistry of mstargames shares his struggle (and mistakes) with learning to use the Content Pipeline http://www.mstargames.co.uk/mistryblogmain/35-genblog/181-pontent-cipeline-more-like-it.html New Tutorial posted XNA 2D Basic Collision Detection with Rotation from Ioannis Panagopoulos http://www.progware.org/Blog/post/XNA-2D-Basic-Collision-Detection-with-Rotation.aspx Sgt. Conker roars to life! Doing a much better (and prettier) job of collecting XNA news from around the interwebs. http://www.sgtconker.com/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/dedication-for-captain-boki/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/screen-space-deformations-in-xna-for-windows-phone-7/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/xna-4-0-light-pre-pass-2/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/indiefreaks-game-framework-0-1-0-0-released/ Offering a little free publicity for XBLIGs http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/73465/448321.aspx#448321 Ben Kane writes about building loot tables from Excel using the Content Pipeline http://benkane.wordpress.com/2011/01/23/building-loot-tables-from-excel-using-the-content-pipeline/ Good tips on attracting a game artist AND an offer to create your cover art for FREE http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/72998.aspx If you’re an XBLIG developer keeping your eye on places to release on the PC, might want to be watching the IndieCity blog. Seems like these guys are well on their way to constructing something worth watching. http://www.indiecity.com/blog/ DVMGames spotted a new crowd-funding site for Indies http://twitter.com/DVMGames/statuses/29947274767372289 http://www.8bitfunding.com/ Transmute continues to make progress and there’s a nice dev blog to follow along here http://forgottenstarstudios.com/blog/

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• Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 - Business Intelligence Samples

  - by smisner

  On April 14, 2010, Microsoft Press (blog | twitter) released my latest book, co-authored with Ross Mistry (twitter), as a free ebook download - Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2. As the title implies, this ebook is an introduction to the latest SQL Server release. Although you'll find a comprehensive review of the product's features in this book, you will not find the step-by-step details that are typical in my other books. For those readers who are interested in a more interactive learning experience, I have created two samples file for download: IntroSQLServer2008R2Samples project Sales Analysis workbook Here's a recap of the business intelligence chapters and the samples I used to generate the screen shots by chapter: Chapter 6: Scalable Data Warehousing covers a new edition of SQL Server, Parallel Data Warehouse. Understandably, Microsoft did not ship me the software and hardware to set up my own Parallel Data Warehouse environment for testing purposes and consequently you won't see any screenshots in this chapter. I received a lot of information and a lot of help from the product team during the development of this chapter to ensure its technical accuracy. Chapter 7: Master Data Services is a new component in SQL Server. After you install Master Data Services (MDS), which is a separate installation from SQL Server although it's found on the same media, you can install sample models to explore (which is what I did to create screenshots for the book). To do this, you deploying packages found at \Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\Master Data Services\Samples\Packages. You will first need to use the Configuration Manager (in the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2\Master Data Services program group) to create a database and a Web application for MDS. Then when you launch the application, you'll see a Getting Started page which has a Deploy Sample Data link that you can use to deploy any of the sample packages. Chapter 8: Complex Event Processing is an introduction to another new component, StreamInsight. This topic was way too large to cover in-depth in a single chapter, so I focused on information such as architecture, development models, and an overview of the key sections of code you'll need to develop for your own applications. StreamInsight is an engine that operates on data in-flight and as such has no user interface that I could include in the book as screenshots. The November CTP version of SQL Server 2008 R2 included code samples as part of the installation, but these are not the official samples that will eventually be available in Codeplex. At the time of this writing, the samples are not yet published. Chapter 9: Reporting Services Enhancements provides an overview of all the changes to Reporting Services in SQL Server 2008 R2, and there are many! In previous posts, I shared more details than you'll find in the book about new functions (Lookup, MultiLookup, and LookupSet), properties for page numbering, and the new global variable RenderFormat. I will confess that I didn't use actual data in the book for my discussion on the Lookup functions, but I did create real reports for the blog posts and will upload those separately. For the other screenshots and examples in the book, I have created the IntroSQLServer2008R2Samples project for you to download. To preview these reports in Business Intelligence Development Studio, you must have the AdventureWorksDW2008R2 database installed, and you must download and install SQL Server 2008 R2. For the map report, you must execute the PopulationData.sql script that I included in the samples file to add a table to the AdventureWorksDW2008R2 database. The IntroSQLServer2008R2Samples project includes the following files: 01_AggregateOfAggregates.rdl to illustrate the use of embedded aggregate functions 02_RenderFormatAndPaging.rdl to illustrate the use of page break properties (Disabled, ResetPageNumber), the PageName property, and the RenderFormat global variable 03_DataSynchronization.rdl to illustrate the use of the DomainScope property 04_TextboxOrientation.rdl to illustrate the use of the WritingMode property 05_DataBar.rdl 06_Sparklines.rdl 07_Indicators.rdl 08_Map.rdl to illustrate a simple analytical map that uses color to show population counts by state PopulationData.sql to provide the data necessary for the map report Chapter 10: Self-Service Analysis with PowerPivot introduces two new components to the Microsoft BI stack, PowerPivot for Excel and PowerPivot for SharePoint, which you can learn more about at the PowerPivot site. To produce the screenshots for this chapter, I created the Sales Analysis workbook which you can download (although you must have Excel 2010 and the PowerPivot for Excel add-in installed to explore it fully). It's a rather simple workbook because space in the book did not permit a complete exploration of all the wonderful things you can do with PowerPivot. I used a tutorial that was available with the CTP version as a basis for the report so it might look familiar if you've already started learning about PowerPivot. In future posts, I'll continue exploring the new features in greater detail. If there's any special requests, please let me know! Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• It&rsquo;s A Team Sport: PASS Board Year 2, Q3

  - by Denise McInerney

  As I type this I’m on an airplane en route to my 12th PASS Summit. It’s been a very busy 3.5 months since my last post on my work as a Board member. Nearing the end of my 2-year term I am struck by how much has happened, and yet how fast the time has gone. But I’ll save the retrospective post for next time and today focus on what happened in Q3. In the last three months we made progress on several fronts, thanks to the contributions of many volunteers and HQ staff members. They deserve our appreciation for their dedication to delivering for the membership week after week. Virtual Chapters The Virtual Chapters continue to provide many PASS members with valuable free training. Between July and September of 2013 VCs hosted over 50 webinars with a total of 4300 attendees. This quarter also saw the launch of the Security & Global Russian VCs. Both are off to a strong start and I welcome these additions to the Virtual Chapter portfolio. At the beginning of 2012 we had 14 Virtual Chapters. Today we have 22. This growth has been exciting to see. It has also created a need to have more volunteers help manage the work of the VCs year-round. We have renewed focus on having Virtual Chapter Mentors work with the VC Leaders and other volunteers. I am grateful to volunteers Julie Koesmarno, Thomas LeBlanc and Marcus Bittencourt who join original VC Mentor Steve Simon on this team. Thank you for stepping up to help. Many improvements to the VC web sites have been rolling out over the past few weeks. Our marketing and IT teams have been busy working a new look-and-feel, features and a logo for each VC. They have given the VCs a fresh, professional look consistent with the rest of the PASS branding, and all VCs now have a logo that connects to PASS and the particular focus of the chapter. 24 Hours of PASS The Summit Preview edition  of 24HOP was held on July 31 and by all accounts was a success. Our first use of the GoToWebinar platform for this event went extremely well. Thanks to our speakers, moderators and sponsors for making this event possible. Special thanks to HQ staffers Vicki Van Damme and Jane Duffy for a smoothly run event. Coming up: the 24HOP Portuguese Edition will be held November 13-14, followed December 12-13 by the Spanish Edition. Thanks to the Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking community volunteers who are organizing these events. July Board Meeting The Board met July 18-19 in Kansas City. The first order of business was the election of the Executive Committee who will take office January 1. I was elected Vice President of Marketing and will join incoming President Thomas LaRock, incoming Executive Vice President of Finance Adam Jorgensen and Immediate Past President Bill Graziano on the Exec Co. I am honored that my fellow Board members elected me to this position and look forward to serving the organization in this role. Visit to PASS HQ In late September I traveled to Vancouver for my first visit to PASS HQ, where I joined Tom LaRock and Adam Jorgensen to make plans for 2014.  Our visit was just a few weeks before PASS Summit and coincided with the Board election, and the office was humming with activity. I saw first-hand the enthusiasm and dedication of everyone there. In each interaction I observed a focus on what is best for PASS and our members. Our partners at HQ are key to the organization’s success. This week at PASS Summit is a great opportunity for all of us to remember that, and say “thanks.” Next Up PASS Summit—of course! I’ll be around all week and look forward to connecting with many of our member over meals, at the Community Zone and between sessions. In the evenings you can find me at the Welcome Reception, Exhibitor’s Reception and Community Appreciation Party. And I will be at the Board Q&A session  Friday at 12:45 p.m. Transitions The newly elected Exec Co and Board members take office January 1, and the Virtual Chapter portfolio is transitioning to a new director. I’m thrilled that Jen Stirrup will be taking over. Jen has experience as a volunteer and co-leader of the Business Intelligence Virtual Chapter and was a key contributor to the BI VCs expansion to serving our members in the EMEA region. I’ll be working closely with Jen over the next couple of months to ensure a smooth transition.

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• ISO Files to USB &ndash; The Cheap and Easy Way

  - by RonGarlit

  (DISCLAIMER: Yes there are lots of more elegant ISO software beside the free Microsoft one I’m about to show. But free is free and it has been tested and works for me for making advance bootable USB drives. That is another story. Look up Windows 8 Developer Preview for that one on BING.) For those of use that work with new technology all the time we accumulate a lot of ISO files and have to burn them to CD/DVD’s quite often. But we now have machines without burner in the corporate environment. We have personally Netbooks and light wait highly mobile laptops that do not have DVD burner. USB ports are all the rage and now we have USB 3.0 which is way faster than the 2.0 we are used to. Just looking at the technology, space saving and the cost issues alone is a reason to buy these answer to the DVD’s. So what is special about USB 2.0 and USB 3.0? USB 2 has a maximum speed of 480 Mbps... (That is Megabits per SECOND!!) Now look at the storage that we have with USB thumb drives that are now up to 64 GB in size, cell phone and PDAs that have a lots of internal storage built in well above the 16 Gig range. At the MAX USB 2.0 speed of 480 Mbps a full transfer of data in between devices can take a long time. Time is money right. Every back up a iPhone? Don’t get me started. So at least the engineers have been planning ahead with USB 3.0 which offers a maximum transfer speed of 4.8 Gbps... (That is Giga bits per SECOND!!) That speed is almost 10 times faster than USB 2.0 …. We don’t need to do the math on that one do we? But for now I'm thrilled with USB 2.0 and the fact I can get these little 4 Gig USB drives for $4.00 each at Staples on sale. Well that is a no brainer don’t you think. But what can you do with them to replace that DVD. Simply and cheaply put………. THIS! First let’s get an ISO file like the Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate DVD ISO from MSDN to demonstrate with. I develop on several computers so this is a good choice for me. So we downloaded the ISO file and put it in a folder somewhere like this. Next we go download to the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool site and read about the tool. http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/html/pbPage.Help_Win7_usbdvd_dwnTool And click this like to get the tool and install it. Once it is installed you go to the Start, Programs menu, Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool folder. And then click the tool to open it up. As you will see it is a sweet, simple tool that was originally designed to put the ISO for Windows 7 which is designed to be bootable on a USB or DVD for us geeks to play with. It is now being used for the Windows 8 Developer Preview by many developers for that for the same purpose it was built for in the past. But for now we will use it to put a NON Bootable ISO on a USB. Hey it does the job and I’m reusing a left over program. Why buy the fancy one or a free trial and clutter up my machine. We will click the BROWSE button and navigate to where we put our ISO file we want to put on the USB drive. Obviously we are going to click NEXT and continue to select a USB Device (you can guess what the DVD button is for). Next we select the USB that we have plugged into one of our laptops USB ports. Then we click the BEGIN COPYING button and the first thing the program does is format our USB drive. Then it starts copying out files out of the ISO and constructing the USB as if it was a DVD. So now that the files are copying to the drive I’m going to warn you. We will error out here. This program was design for bootable ISO’s of which this one is NOT. No problem because what fails it the writing of the bootable data to the drive that isn’t there. No biggie…. Forget the STARTOVER button is even there and click the dialog’s CLOSE button and exit the program. Now go to Windows Explorer and navigate to the USB Device. You can now access everything and even add stuff to the drive. But for me I want to keep this drive for one purpose and that is to install VS2010 on various machines. So the only stuff I’ll add to this is a folder of notes on things on visual studio that I might want to put on other machines I’m installing VS2010 on to. So that is it. Have a nice day! The Ron

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• ASP.NET Web API - Screencast series Part 3: Delete and Update

  - by Jon Galloway

  We're continuing a six part series on ASP.NET Web API that accompanies the getting started screencast series. This is an introductory screencast series that walks through from File / New Project to some more advanced scenarios like Custom Validation and Authorization. The screencast videos are all short (3-5 minutes) and the sample code for the series is both available for download and browsable online. I did the screencasts, but the samples were written by the ASP.NET Web API team. In Part 1 we looked at what ASP.NET Web API is, why you'd care, did the File / New Project thing, and did some basic HTTP testing using browser F12 developer tools. In Part 2 we started to build up a sample that returns data from a repository in JSON format via GET methods. In Part 3, we'll start to modify data on the server using DELETE and POST methods. So far we've been looking at GET requests, and the difference between standard browsing in a web browser and navigating an HTTP API isn't quite as clear. Delete is where the difference becomes more obvious. With a "traditional" web page, to delete something'd probably have a form that POSTs a request back to a controller that needs to know that it's really supposed to be deleting something even though POST was really designed to create things, so it does the work and then returns some HTML back to the client that says whether or not the delete succeeded. There's a good amount of plumbing involved in communicating between client and server. That gets a lot easier when we just work with the standard HTTP DELETE verb. Here's how the server side code works: public Comment DeleteComment(int id) { Comment comment; if (!repository.TryGet(id, out comment)) throw new HttpResponseException(HttpStatusCode.NotFound); repository.Delete(id); return comment; } If you look back at the GET /api/comments code in Part 2, you'll see that they start the exact same because the use cases are kind of similar - we're looking up an item by id and either displaying it or deleting it. So the only difference is that this method deletes the comment once it finds it. We don't need to do anything special to handle cases where the id isn't found, as the same HTTP 404 handling works fine here, too. Pretty much all "traditional" browsing uses just two HTTP verbs: GET and POST, so you might not be all that used to DELETE requests and think they're hard. Not so! Here's the jQuery method that calls the /api/comments with the DELETE verb: $(function() { $("a.delete").live('click', function () { var id = $(this).data('comment-id'); $.ajax({ url: "/api/comments/" + id, type: 'DELETE', cache: false, statusCode: { 200: function(data) { viewModel.comments.remove( function(comment) { return comment.ID == data.ID; } ); } } }); return false; }); }); So in order to use the DELETE verb instead of GET, we're just using $.ajax() and setting the type to DELETE. Not hard. But what's that statusCode business? Well, an HTTP status code of 200 is an OK response. Unless our Web API method sets another status (such as by throwing the Not Found exception we saw earlier), the default response status code is HTTP 200 - OK. That makes the jQuery code pretty simple - it calls the Delete action, and if it gets back an HTTP 200, the server-side delete was successful so the comment can be deleted. Adding a new comment uses the POST verb. It starts out looking like an MVC controller action, using model binding to get the new comment from JSON data into a c# model object to add to repository, but there are some interesting differences. public HttpResponseMessage<Comment> PostComment(Comment comment) { comment = repository.Add(comment); var response = new HttpResponseMessage<Comment>(comment, HttpStatusCode.Created); response.Headers.Location = new Uri(Request.RequestUri, "/api/comments/" + comment.ID.ToString()); return response; } First off, the POST method is returning an HttpResponseMessage<Comment>. In the GET methods earlier, we were just returning a JSON payload with an HTTP 200 OK, so we could just return the  model object and Web API would wrap it up in an HttpResponseMessage with that HTTP 200 for us (much as ASP.NET MVC controller actions can return strings, and they'll be automatically wrapped in a ContentResult). When we're creating a new comment, though, we want to follow standard REST practices and return the URL that points to the newly created comment in the Location header, and we can do that by explicitly creating that HttpResposeMessage and then setting the header information. And here's a key point - by using HTTP standard status codes and headers, our response payload doesn't need to explain any context - the client can see from the status code that the POST succeeded, the location header tells it where to get it, and all it needs in the JSON payload is the actual content. Note: This is a simplified sample. Among other things, you'll need to consider security and authorization in your Web API's, and especially in methods that allow creating or deleting data. We'll look at authorization in Part 6. As for security, you'll want to consider things like mass assignment if binding directly to model objects, etc. In Part 4, we'll extend on our simple querying methods form Part 2, adding in support for paging and querying.

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