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  • Educate me - should I buy these prebuilt NAS (which is better) or make my own?

    - by user29336
    I'm trying to learn as much as possible, and I think I've learned quite a bit so bear with me here under my confusion. I found a coupe NAS setups. I'm not sure if one is better than the other, other than the price being higher on some, and some coming with drives VS not. Let me list my setup so you can get an idea of what I want to provide: Macbook Pro Macbook Mini for Media streaming (so far) Windows 7 Gaming Computer Xbox 360 I'd like to provide a storage system for all these devices so they can access files very easily, I'd also like any of these devices to be able to stream media from this storage system. I'd like this storage system to be hassle free in terms of my confidence in the data integrity. If a drive fails, I want to know that I can replace the drive and all my files will still exist. I'd like to access this storage system OUTSIDE of my LAN. If I'm out on a job for work I'd like to go in, or be able to have people DL some files. This brings me to a question, is this what iSCSI is? I'd like this data system to be able to download torrents. I want to mount any drive on this storage system onto my OSX laptop as if it were a local drive attached. (Is this with iSCSI is?) I'd like this system to have a GOOD web based GUI. I don't want to install software to use it. I believe those are the most of my requirements. If I'm missing something that I have no knowledge about, can someone educate me? Here are the systems I found: $729ish on Newegg Lacie 5Big Network 2 (comes with 5TB of space. iSCSI / mac compatible, torrents, nice ui, + others?) Is this overpriced for what it provides? It almost seems like a great deal to me because of the 5TB of space it comes with vs the other NAS systems that don't come with storage but cost $600-700. Should I get a different NAS system? Netgear? Others? Do they have same features? Better? Is it better to buy your own disks? What about making my own? I'm tech savy all around. It seems cheaper to buy a premade one especially with the support/warranty it provides...

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  • Mouse Error Code 24. Windows 7

    - by Cj.
    I've had the same mouse for a while, and it's been working fine until one day, it started giving me a message about a device not working properly. I tried updating the drivers, and re-installing, I even deleted old drivers in case my computer should be a little confused. It never made a difference, and my mouse seemed to be working just fine despite getting the permanent error in my device manager, I looked it up several times online, but I never found anything I could actually use, when I go to official websites, I always get the same response "plug in so so into a different place - drivers - install silverlight before you can watch this tutorial, try it on a different machine". so I gave up on that. But now is where I have a real problem, lately, my little strange error evolved into a fullblown Error 24, and my mouse is starting to turn on and off randomely, especially when it is being used, but I do hear it go "badum..dadum" when I'm off doing something else. when I looked up error code 24, I really didn't find much other than it meaning: Code 24 This device is not present, is not working properly, or does not have all its drivers installed. (Code 24) Cause The device is installed incorrectly. The problem could be a hardware failure, or a new driver might be needed. Devices stay in this state if they have been prepared for removal. After you remove the device, this error disappears. But, I have tried uninstalling the device entirely several times, and it'll go right back to its previous state with error 24, and turning on and off randomely. what do I do? I cannot afford taking it to a repair place, I can't really afford a new mouse either, I refuse to buy cheap ones as I am a gamer, in need of more than 3 buttons, and a good grip is important. Could there possibly be some confusion in the registry? I do remember having gotten some early problems after I converted my vista to windows7. But I hardly dare going in there unless I'm 100% certain of what I'm going for, and I can honestly say I am at a loss here. Edit: it is a USB mouse we're talking about here. MX™518 Optical Gaming Mouse (logitech) Edit2: I am seeing no rupture, so it must be on the inside of my mouse, or inside the rubber, protecting the cable, that would be really inconvenient to search for

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  • Slow WLAN file transfer between server and tablet

    - by user266985
    My file server is running Ubuntu 12.04 and I'm sharing files from it over samba. It is connected via gigabit ethernet. My desktop, running Windows 8.1, is also connected via gigabit ethernet. I can transfer files between the two and completely saturate that gigabit pipe. However, I just got a Surface Pro 2, and I'm trying to stream HD movies from my server to the device over WiFi. For some reason, I can't break much past 1.5MB/s transferring files over the network. I've tried streaming through XBMC and a standard file copy; no difference. To add the confusion, if I connect to my guest network and then use my VPN server (installed on the router) to access the file server, I get around 3.2MB/s. I've been running diagnostics to determine the root and I think I've found it but I have no idea what is causing it or how to fix it. Router: Asus RT-N66U Surface Pro 2 Network Card: Marvell Avastar 350N (Driver 19/09/2013 v14.69.24044.150) InSSIDer: Link Score: 100 Co-Channels: 0 Overlapping: 0 5GHz Network Channel: 48+44 iperf File Server as Server; Surface Pro 2 as Client - TCP Performance: Acceptable ------------------------------------------------------------ Server listening on TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 85.3 KByte (default) ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 4] local 192.168.0.90 port 5001 connected with 192.168.0.56 port 57367 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 4] 0.0- 1.0 sec 10.1 MBytes 84.7 Mbits/sec [ 4] 1.0- 2.0 sec 10.4 MBytes 87.6 Mbits/sec [ 4] 2.0- 3.0 sec 10.6 MBytes 88.8 Mbits/sec [ 4] 3.0- 4.0 sec 10.7 MBytes 89.5 Mbits/sec [ 4] 4.0- 5.0 sec 10.1 MBytes 84.4 Mbits/sec [ 4] 5.0- 6.0 sec 10.2 MBytes 85.8 Mbits/sec [ 4] 6.0- 7.0 sec 7.04 MBytes 59.1 Mbits/sec [ 4] 7.0- 8.0 sec 10.8 MBytes 90.2 Mbits/sec [ 4] 8.0- 9.0 sec 10.6 MBytes 89.1 Mbits/sec [ 4] 9.0-10.0 sec 8.62 MBytes 72.3 Mbits/sec [ 4] 0.0-10.0 sec 99.2 MBytes 83.1 Mbits/sec iperf Surface Pro 2 as Server, File Server as Client Performance: Poor ------------------------------------------------------------ Client connecting to 192.168.0.56, TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 22.9 KByte (default) ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 3] local 192.168.0.90 port 40233 connected with 192.168.0.56 port 5001 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 0.0- 1.0 sec 1.50 MBytes 12.6 Mbits/sec [ 3] 1.0- 2.0 sec 1.50 MBytes 12.6 Mbits/sec [ 3] 2.0- 3.0 sec 1.50 MBytes 12.6 Mbits/sec [ 3] 3.0- 4.0 sec 1.25 MBytes 10.5 Mbits/sec [ 3] 4.0- 5.0 sec 1.62 MBytes 13.6 Mbits/sec [ 3] 5.0- 6.0 sec 1.50 MBytes 12.6 Mbits/sec [ 3] 6.0- 7.0 sec 1.38 MBytes 11.5 Mbits/sec [ 3] 7.0- 8.0 sec 1.50 MBytes 12.6 Mbits/sec [ 3] 8.0- 9.0 sec 1.50 MBytes 12.6 Mbits/sec [ 3] 9.0-10.0 sec 1.62 MBytes 13.6 Mbits/sec [ 3] 0.0-10.1 sec 15.0 MBytes 12.4 Mbits/sec For some reason, it gets capped and I haven't got a clue why. Any suggestions? Edit: My link speed is reported as 270Mbps by Windows. I'm less than two metres from the router with a clear line of sight.

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  • Difference between LASTDATE and MAX for semi-additive measures in #DAX

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    I recently wrote an article on SQLBI about the semi-additive measures in DAX. I included the formulas common calculations and there is an interesting point that worth a longer digression: the difference between LASTDATE and MAX (which is similar to FIRSTDATE and MIN – I just describe the former, for the latter just replace the correspondent names). LASTDATE is a dax function that receives an argument that has to be a date column and returns the last date active in the current filter context. Apparently, it is the same value returned by MAX, which returns the maximum value of the argument in the current filter context. Of course, MAX can receive any numeric type (including date), whereas LASTDATE only accepts a column of type date. But overall, they seems identical in the result. However, the difference is a semantic one. In fact, this expression: LASTDATE ( 'Date'[Date] ) could be also rewritten as: FILTER ( VALUES ( 'Date'[Date] ), 'Date'[Date] = MAX ( 'Date'[Date] ) ) LASTDATE is a function that returns a table with a single column and one row, whereas MAX returns a scalar value. In DAX, any expression with one row and one column can be automatically converted into the corresponding scalar value of the single cell returned. The opposite is not true. So you can use LASTDATE in any expression where a table or a scalar is required, but MAX can be used only where a scalar expression is expected. Since LASTDATE returns a table, you can use it in any expression that expects a table as an argument, such as COUNTROWS. In fact, you can write this expression: COUNTROWS ( LASTDATE ( 'Date'[Date] ) ) which will always return 1 or BLANK (if there are no dates active in the current filter context). You cannot pass MAX as an argument of COUNTROWS. You can pass to LASTDATE a reference to a column or any table expression that returns a column. The following two syntaxes are semantically identical: LASTDATE ( 'Date'[Date] ) LASTDATE ( VALUES ( 'Date'[Date] ) ) The result is the same and the use of VALUES is not required because it is implicit in the first syntax, unless you have a row context active. In that case, be careful that using in a row context the LASTDATE function with a direct column reference will produce a context transition (the row context is transformed into a filter context) that hides the external filter context, whereas using VALUES in the argument preserve the existing filter context without applying the context transition of the row context (see the columns LastDate and Values in the following query and result). You can use any other table expressions (including a FILTER) as LASTDATE argument. For example, the following expression will always return the last date available in the Date table, regardless of the current filter context: LASTDATE ( ALL ( 'Date'[Date] ) ) The following query recap the result produced by the different syntaxes described. EVALUATE     CALCULATETABLE(         ADDCOLUMNS(              VALUES ('Date'[Date] ),             "LastDate", LASTDATE( 'Date'[Date] ),             "Values", LASTDATE( VALUES ( 'Date'[Date] ) ),             "Filter", LASTDATE( FILTER ( VALUES ( 'Date'[Date] ), 'Date'[Date] = MAX ( 'Date'[Date] ) ) ),             "All", LASTDATE( ALL ( 'Date'[Date] ) ),             "Max", MAX( 'Date'[Date] )         ),         'Date'[Calendar Year] = 2008     ) ORDER BY 'Date'[Date] The LastDate columns repeat the current date, because the context transition happens within the ADDCOLUMNS. The Values column preserve the existing filter context from being replaced by the context transition, so the result corresponds to the last day in year 2008 (which is filtered in the external CALCULATETABLE). The Filter column works like the Values one, even if we use the FILTER instead of the LASTDATE approach. The All column shows the result of LASTDATE ( ALL ( ‘Date’[Date] ) ) that ignores the filter on Calendar Year (in fact the date returned is in year 2010). Finally, the Max column shows the result of the MAX formula, which is the easiest to use and only don’t return a table if you need it (like in a filter argument of CALCULATE or CALCULATETABLE, where using LASTDATE is shorter). I know that using LASTDATE in complex expressions might create some issue. In my experience, the fact that a context transition happens automatically in presence of a row context is the main reason of confusion and unexpected results in DAX formulas using this function. For a reference of DAX formulas using MAX and LASTDATE, read my article about semi-additive measures in DAX.

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  • SSAS Compare: an intern’s journey

    - by Red Gate Software BI Tools Team
    About a month ago, David mentioned an intern working in the BI Tools Team. That intern happens to be me! In five weeks’ time, I’ll start my second year of Computer Science at the University of Cambridge and be a full-time student again, but for the past eight weeks, I’ve been living a completely different life. As Jon mentioned before, the teams here at Red Gate are small and everyone (including the interns!) is responsible for the product as a whole. I’ve attended planning sessions, UX tests, daily meetings, and everything else a full-time member of the team would; I had as much say in where we would go next with the product as anyone; I was able to see that what I was doing was an important part of the product from the feedback we got in the UX tests. All these things almost made me forget that this is just an internship and not my full-time job. First steps at Red Gate Being based in Cambridge, Red Gate has many Cambridge university graduates working for them. They also hire some Cambridge undergraduates for internships each summer. With its popularity with university graduates and its great working environment, Red Gate has managed to build up a great reputation. When I thought of doing an internship here in Cambridge, Red Gate just seemed to be the obvious choice for my first real work experience. On my first day at Red Gate, David, the lead developer for SSAS Compare, helped me settle in and explained what I’d be doing. My task was to improve the user experience of displaying differences between MDX scripts by syntax highlighting, script formatting, and improving the difference identification in the first place. David suggested how I should approach the problem, but left all the details and design decisions to me. That was when I realised how much independence and responsibility I’d have. What I’ve done If you launch the latest version of SSAS Compare and drill down to an MDX script difference, you can see the changes that have been made. In earlier versions, you could only see the scripts in plain text on both sides — either in black or grey, depending on whether they were the same or not. However, you couldn’t see exactly where the scripts were different, which was especially annoying when the two scripts were large – as they often are. Furthermore, if parts of the two scripts were formatted differently, they seemed to be different but were actually the same, which caused even more confusion and made it difficult to see where the differences were. All these issues have been fixed now. The two scripts are automatically formatted by the tool so that if two things are syntactically equivalent, they look the same – including case differences in keywords! The actual difference is highlighted in grey, which makes them easy to spot. The difference identification has been improved as well, so two scripts aren’t identified as different if there’s just a difference in meaningless whitespace characters, or when you have “select” on one side and “SELECT” on the other. We also have syntax highlighting, which makes it easier to read the scripts. How I did it In order to do the formatting properly, we decided to parse the MDX scripts. After some investigation into parser builders, I decided to go with the GOLD Parser builder and the bsn-goldparser .NET engine. GOLD Parser builder provides a fairly nice GUI to write, build, and test grammar in. We also liked the idea of separating the grammar building from parsing a text. The bsn-goldparser is one of many .NET engines for GOLD, and although it doesn’t support the newest features of GOLD Parser, it has “the ability to map semantic action classes to terminals or reduction rules, so that a completely functional semantic AST can be created directly without intermediate token AST representation, and without the need for glue code.” That makes it much easier for us to change the implementation in our program when we change the grammar. As bsn-goldparser is open source, and I wanted some more features in it, I contributed two new features which have now been merged to the project. Unfortunately, there wasn’t an MDX grammar written for GOLD already, so I had to write it myself. I was referencing MSDN to get the formal grammar specification, but the specification was all over the place, so it wasn’t that easy to implement and find. We’re aware that we don’t yet fully support all valid MDX, so sometimes you’ll just see the MDX script difference displayed the old way. In that case, there is some grammar construct we don’t yet recognise. If you come across something SSAS Compare doesn’t recognise, we’d love to hear about it so we can add it to our grammar. When some MDX script gets parsed, a tree is produced. That tree can then be processed into a list of inlines which deal with the correct formatting and can be outputted to the screen. Doing all this has led me to many new technologies and projects I haven’t worked with before. This was my first experience with C# and Visual Studio, although I have done things in Java before. I have learnt how to unit test with NUnit, how to do dependency injection with Ninject, how to source-control code with SVN and Mercurial, how to build with TeamCity, how to use GOLD, and many other things. What’s coming next Sadly, my internship comes to an end this week, so there will be less development on MDX difference view for a while. But the team is going to work on marking the differences better and making it consistent with difference indication in the top part of comparison window, and will keep adding support for more MDX grammar so you can see the differences easily in every comparison you make. So long! And maybe I’ll see you next summer!

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  • SanjayP&rsquo;s venture after Microsoft involves no Microsoft

    - by eddraper
    When I was at Microsoft, I always found Sanjay Parthasarathy to be a bright and passionate leader.  While he was a bit disconnected at times with what was really going on out in the trenches, I always thought he was true believer in what we in Developer Platform and Evangelism (DPE) were doing.  He got it.  He had started DPE and kicked a lot of doors down up in Redmond to make it happen.  Back in the early 2000s, battles over platform choices at large customers was trench warfare… bayonets and hand grenades at the P-Code level.  This model was not at all suited to Microsoft’s org structure at the time.  While there were plenty of people fully able to have competitive conversations around Windows Server, or AD, or Exchange, or the desktop, there weren’t many that could have deep technical conversations around Java vs .NET and the platform “stack” as a cohesive, unified unit of value.  This task fell to DPE. Sanjay ended up leaving Microsoft a number of months before me in 2009 and I remember thinking these exact words: “holy shit, SanjayP left Microsoft.”  When SanjayP left DPE years before that,  Sheila Gulati had stepped into his shoes and I thought we where starting to miss a beat.  Sheila had built an amazing business at Microsoft India, but I don’t recall being inspired by her as a leader.  SanjayP’s talks felt like the opening scene of “Patton” with George C. Scott pacing in front of the American flag.  Sheila was a voice on a con-call.  When she moved on in 2007, Walid Abu-Hadba was given the reigns.  Personally, I don’t ever recall even seeing his face.  I think I might recall hearing his voice on some con-calls, but for all intents and purposes he was invisible to me.  Perhaps this was the beginning of my carelessness around seeking “visibility.” Fast forward to Build 2011.  First off, we have no PDC – we have Build.  Microsoft had made an 11 year investment by this time in building an organization to make its technology relevant to developers.  One would think such an org would be in the driver’s seat of such an event, but we see Windows product group people on the podiums.  Watching, I could see the messaging unfold… but no story.  It was like the old days.  Demos and PowerPoints by team members building the tech, and in many cases VPs.  The ensuing confusion is almost legendary now.  Windows 8 was, and is, a pretty big deal… but who is telling the story – not just features and benefits, but the story around how it all fits together. Having been out of Microsoft for two years now, and looking in, I can only conclude that the “DPE of old” has at best been emasculated, and at worst been completely marginalized by internal politics, or perhaps the eternal march of the corporate entropy generator that resides at all large companies.  I don’t think this is a good thing for anyone. And now, back to Sanjay who is the father of Microsoft DPE… I noticed that he has moved back to India and is doing start-up work.  His current company Indix looks to be doing some interesting things with “big data” and here’s their stack: Nary a trace of anything Microsoft.  What could account for this?  I wonder….  Better availability of labor and expertise in India for this stack?  Donno, but even in India, leet R and Hadoop skills have to be hard to find. Technical superiority?  This, I sincerely doubt. This stack, with SanjayP’s name as CEO leaves me with an unsettling feeling.  If he did believe, he no longer does.  One doesn’t place bets with real money on things they don’t believe in.  Perhaps he never did believe, and was a corporate creature seeking to find a niche for himself after which he manipulated me and others.  Or perhaps… anger… be it passive aggression or an outright “in your face F*** you” to his former masters. I guess in the end, only he knows the true reason… But I have my theory...

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  • Formal Languages, Inductive Proofs &amp; Regular Expressions

    - by MarkPearl
    So I am slogging away at my UNISA stuff. I have just finished doing the initial once non stop read through the first 11 chapters of my COS 201 Textbook - “Introduction to Computer Theory 2nd Edition” by Daniel Cohen. It has been an interesting couple of days, with familiar concepts coming up as well as some new territory. In this posting I am going to cover the first couple of chapters of the book. Let start with Formal Languages… What exactly is a formal language? Pretty much a no duh question for me but still a good one to ask – a formal language is a language that is defined in a precise mathematical way. Does that mean that the English language is a formal language? I would say no – and my main motivation for this is that one can have an English sentence that is correct grammatically that is also ambiguous. For example the ambiguous sentence: "I once shot an elephant in my pyjamas.” For this and possibly many other reasons that I am unaware of, English is termed a “Natural Language”. So why the importance of formal languages in computer science? Again a no duh question in my mind… If we want computers to be effective and useful tools then we need them to be able to evaluate a series of commands in some form of language that when interpreted by the device no confusion will exist as to what we were requesting. Imagine the mayhem that would exist if a computer misinterpreted a command to print a document and instead decided to delete it. So what is a Formal Language made up of… For my study purposes a language is made up of a finite alphabet. For a formal language to exist there needs to be a specification on the language that will describe whether a string of characters has membership in the language or not. There are two basic ways to do this: By a “machine” that will recognize strings of the language (e.g. Finite Automata). By a rule that describes how strings of a language can be formed (e.g. Regular Expressions). When we use the phrase “string of characters”, we can also be referring to a “word”. What is an Inductive Proof? So I am not to far into my textbook and of course it starts referring to proofs and different types. I have had to go through several different approaches of proofs in the past, but I can never remember their formal names , so when I saw “inductive proof” I thought to myself – what the heck is that? Google to the rescue… An inductive proof is like a normal proof but it employs a neat trick which allows you to prove a statement about an arbitrary number n by first proving it is true when n is 1 and then assuming it is true for n=k and showing it is true for n=k+1. The idea is that if you want to show that someone can climb to the nth floor of a fire escape, you need only show that you can climb the ladder up to the fire escape (n=1) and then show that you know how to climb the stairs from any level of the fire escape (n=k) to the next level (n=k+1). Does this sound like a form of recursion? No surprise then that in the same chapter they deal with recursive definitions. An example of a recursive definition for the language EVEN would the 3 rules below: 2 is in EVEN If x is in EVEN then so is x+2 The only elements in the set EVEN are those that be produced by the rules above. Nothing to exciting… So if a definition for a language is done recursively, then it makes sense that the language can be proved using induction. Regular Expressions So I am wondering to myself what use is this all – in fact – I find this the biggest challenge to any university material is that it is quite hard to find the immediate practical applications of some theory in real life stuff. How great was my joy when I suddenly saw the word regular expression being introduced. I had been introduced to regular expressions on Stack Overflow where I was trying to recognize if some text measurement put in by a user was in a valid form or not. For instance, the imperial system of measurement where you have feet and inches can be represented in so many different ways. I had eventually turned to regular expressions as an easy way to check if my parser could correctly parse the text or not and convert it to a normalize measurement. So some rules about languages and regular expressions… Any finite language can be represented by at least one if not more regular expressions A regular expressions is almost a rule syntax for expressing how regular languages can be formed regular expressions are cool For a regular expression to be valid for a language it must be able to generate all the words in the language and no other words. This is important. It doesn’t help me if my regular expression parses 100% of my measurement texts but also lets one or two invalid texts to pass as well. Okay, so this posting jumps around a bit – but introduces some very basic fundamentals for the subject which will be built on in later postings… Time to go and do some practical examples now…

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  • Initial Review - Mastering Unreal Technology I: Introduction to Level Design with Unreal Engine 3

    - by Matt Christian
    Recently I purchased 3 large volumes on using the Unreal 3 Engine to create levels and custom games.  This past weekend I cracked the spine of the first and started reading.  Here are my early impressions (I'm ~250 pages into it, with appendices it's about 900). Pros Interestingly, the book starts with an overview of the Unreal engines leading up to Unreal 3 (including Gears of War) and follows with some discussion on planning a mod and what goes into the game development process.  This is nice for an intro to the book and is much preferred rather than a simple chapter detailing what is on the included CD, how to install and setup UnrealEd, etc...  While the chapter on Unreal history and planning can be considered 'fluff', it's much less 'fluffy' than most books provide. I need to mention one thing here that is pretty crucial in the way I'm going to continue reviewing this book.  Most technical books like this are used as a shelf reference; as a thick volume you use for looking up techniques every now and again.  Even so, I prefer reading from cover to cover, including chapters I may already be knowledgable on (I'm sure this is typical for most people).  If there was a chapter on installing UnrealEd (the previously mentioned 'fluff'), I would probably force myself to read it, even though I've installed the game and engine multiple times on different systems. Chapter 3 is where we really get to the introduction piece of UnrealEd, creating your first basic level.  This large chapter details creating two small rooms, adding static meshes, adding lighting, creating and adding particle emitters, creating a door that animates with Unreal Matinee and Kismet, static meshes with physics, and other little additions to make your level look less beginner.  This really is a chapter that overviews the entire rest of the book, as each chapter following details the creation and intermediate usages of Static Meshes, Materials, Lighting, etc... One other very nice part to this book is the way the tutorials are setup.  Each tutorial builds off the previous and all are step-by-step.  If you haven't completed one yet, you can find all the starting files on the CD that comes with the book. Cons While the description of the overview chapter (Chapter 3) is fresh in your mind, let me start the cons by saying this chapter is setup extremely confusing for the noob.  At one point, you end up creating a door mesh and setting it up as a InteropMesh so that it is ready to be animated, only to switch to particles and spend a good portion of time working on a different piece of the level.  Yes, this is actually how I develop my levels (jumping back and forth), though it's very odd for a book to jump out of sequence. The next item might be a positive or a negative depending on your skill level with UnrealEd.  Most of the introduction to the editor layout is found in one of the Appendices instead of before Chapter 3.  For new readers, this might lead to confusion as Appendix A would typically be read between Chapter 2 and 3.  However, this is a positive for those with some experience in UnrealEd as they don't have to force themselves through a 'learn every editor button' chapter.  I'm listing this in the Cons section as the book is 'Introduction to...' and is probably going to be directed toward a lot of very beginner developers. Finally, there's a lack of general description to a lot of the underlying engine and what each piece in UnrealEd is or does.  Sometimes you'll be performing Tutorial after Tutorial with barely a paragraph in between describing ANY of what you've just done.  Tutorial 1.1 Step 6 says to press Button X, so you do.  But why?  This is in part a problem with the structure of the tutorials rather than the content of the book.  Since the tutorials are so focused on a step-by-step (or procedural) description of a process, you learn the process and not why you're doing that.  For example, you might learn how to size a material to a surface, but will only learn what buttons to press and not what each one does. This becomes extremely apparent in the chapter on Static Meshes as most of the chapter is spent in 3D Studio Max.  Since there are books on 3DSM and modelling, the book really only tells you the steps and says to go grab a book on modelling if you're really interested in 3DSM.  Again, I've learned the process to develop my own meshes in 3DSM, but I don't know the why behind the steps. Conclusion So far the book is very good though I would have a hard time recommending it to a complete beginner.  I would suggest anyone looking at this book (obviously including the other 2, more advanced volumes) to pick up a copy of UDK or Unreal 3 (available online or via download services such as Steam) and watch some online tutorials and play with it first.  You'll find plenty of online videos available that were created by the authors and may suit as a better introduction to the editor.

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  • XNA Notes 005

    - by George Clingerman
    Another week and another crazy amount of activity going on in the XNA community. I’m fairly certain I missed over half of it. In fact, if I am missing things, make sure to email me and I’ll try and make sure I catch it next week! ([email protected]). Also, if you’ve got any advice, things you like/don’t like about the way these XNA Notes are going let me know. I always appreciate feedback (currently spammers are leaving me the nicest comments so you guys have work to do!) Without further ado, here’s this week’s notes! Time Critical XNA News The XNA Team Blob reminds us that February 7th is the last day to submit XNA 3.1 games to peer review! http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2011/01/31/7-days-left-to-submit-xna-gs-3-1-games-on-app-hub.aspx XNA MVPS Chris Williams kicks off the marketing campaign for our book http://geekswithblogs.net/cwilliams/archive/2011/01/28/143680.aspx Catalin Zima posts the comparison cheat sheet for why Angry Birds is different than Chickens Can’t Fly http://www.amusedsloth.com/2011/02/comparison-cheat-sheet-for-chickens-cant-fly-and-angry-birds/ Jim Perry congratulates the developers selected by Game Developer Magazine for Best Xbox LIVE Indie Games of 2010 http://machxgames.com/blog/?p=24 @NemoKrad posts his XNAKUUG talks for all to enjoy http://twitter.com/NemoKrad/statuses/33142362502864896 http://xna-uk.net/blogs/randomchaos/archive/2011/02/03/xblig-uk-2011-january-amp-february-talk.aspx George  (that’s me!) preps for his XNA talk coming up on the 8th http://twitter.com/clingermangw/statuses/32669550554124288 http://www.portlandsilverlight.net/Meetings/Details/15 XNA Developers FireFly posts the last tutorial in his XNA Tower Defense tutorial series http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/26442/451460.aspx#451460 http://xnatd.blogspot.com/2011/01/tutorial-14-polishing-game.html @fredericmy posts the main difference when porting a game from Windows Phone 7 to Xbox 360 http://fairyengine.blogspot.com/2011/01/main-differences-when-porting-game-from.html @ElementCy creates a pretty rad video of a MineCraft type terrain created using XNA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Waw1f7wnl9I Andrew Russel gets the first XNA badge on gamedev.stackexchange http://twitter.com/_AndrewRussell/statuses/32322877004972032 http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/badges?tab=tags And his funding for ExEn has passed $7000 only $3000 to go http://twitter.com/_AndrewRussell/statuses/33042412804771840 Subodh Pushpak blogs about his Windows Phone 7 XNA talk http://geekswithblogs.net/subodhnpushpak/archive/2011/02/01/windows-phone-7-silverlight--xna-development-talk.aspx Slyprid releases the latest version of Transmute and needs more people to test http://twitter.com/slyprid/statuses/32452488418299904 http://forgottenstarstudios.com/ SpynDoctorGames celebrates the 1 year anniversary of Your Doodles Are Bugged! Congrats! http://twitter.com/SpynDoctorGames/statuses/32511689068908544 Noogy (creator of Dust the Elysian Tail) prepares his conversion to XNA 4.0 http://twitter.com/NoogyTweet/statuses/32522008449253376 @philippedasilva posts about the Indiefreaks Game Framework v0.2.0.0 Input management system http://twitter.com/philippedasilva/statuses/32763393957957632 http://indiefreaks.com/2011/02/02/behind-smart-input-system-feature/ Mommy’s Best Games debates what to do about High Scores with their new update http://mommysbest.blogspot.com/2011/02/high-score-shake-up.html @BinaryTweedDeej want to know if there’s anything the community needs to make XNA games for the PC. Give him some feedback! http://twitter.com/BinaryTweedDeej/status/32895453863354368 @mikebmcl promises to write us all a book (I can’t wait to read it!) http://twitter.com/mikebmcl/statuses/33206499102687233 @werezompire is going to live, LIVE, thanks to all the generosity and support from the community! http://twitter.com/werezompire/statuses/32840147644977153 Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG) Making money in Xbox 360 indie game development. Is it possible? http://www.bitmob.com/articles/making-money-in-xbox-360-indie-game-development-is-it-possible @AlejandroDaJ posts some thoughts abut the bitmob article http://twitter.com/AlejandroDaJ/statuses/31068552165330944 http://www.apathyworks.com/blog/view.php?id=00215 Kobun gets my respect as an XBLIG champion. I’m not sure who Kobun is, but if you’ve every read through the comment sections any time Kotaku writes about XBLIGs you’ll see a lot of confusion, disinformation in there. Kobun has been waging a secret war battling that lack of knowledge and he does it well. Also he’s running a pretty kick ass site for Xbox LIVE Indie Game reviews http://xboxindies.teamkobun.com/ @radiangames releases his last Xbox LIVE Indie Game...for now http://bit.ly/gMK6lE Playing Avaglide with the Kinect controller http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqAYbHww53o http://www.joystiq.com/2011/01/30/kinect-hacks-take-to-the-skies-with-avaglide/ Luke Schneider of Radiangames interviewed in Edge magazine http://www.next-gen.biz/features/radiangames-venture Digital Quarters posts thoughts on why XBLIG’s online requirement kills certain genres http://digitalquarters.blogspot.com/2011/02/thoughts-why-xbligs-online-requirement.html Mommy’s Best Games shares the news that several XBLIGs were featured in the March 2011 issue of Famitsu 360 http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/33455/451487.aspx#451487 NaviFairy continues with his Indie-Game-A-Day http://gaygamer.net/2011/02/indie_game_a_day_epic_dungeon.html http://gaygamer.net/2011/02/indie_game_a_day_break_limit_r.html and more every day...that’s kind of the point! Keep your eye on this series! VVGTV continues with it’s awesome reviews/promotions for XBLIGs http://vvgtv.com/ http://vvgtv.com/2011/02/03/iredia-atrams-secret-xblig-review-2/ http://vvgtv.com/2011/02/02/poopocalypse-coming-soon-to-xblig/ ….and even more, you get the point. Magicka is an Indie Game doing really well on Steam AND it’s made using XNA http://www.magickagame.com/ http://twitter.com/Magickagame/statuses/32712762580799488 GameMarx reviews Antipole http://www.gamemarx.com/reviews/73/antipole-is-vvvvvvery-good.aspx Armless Octopus review Alpha Squad http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/01/28/xbox-indie-review-alpha-squad/ An interesting article about Kodu that Jim Perry found http://twitter.com/MachXGames/statuses/32848044105924608 http://www.develop-online.net/news/36915/10-year-old-Jordan-makes-games-The-UK-needs-more-like-her XNA Game Development Sgt. Conker posts about the Natur beta, a new book and whether you can make money with XBLIG http://www.sgtconker.com/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/a-new-book-on-the-block-and-a-new-natur-beta/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/making-money-in-xbox-360-indie-game-development-is-it-possible/ Tips for setting up SVN http://bit.ly/fKxgFh @bsimser found tons of royalty free music and soundfx for your XNA Games http://twitter.com/bsimser/statuses/31426632933711872 Post on the new features in the next Sunburn Editor http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/fivesidedbarrel/archive/2011/01/28/new-editor-features-prefabs-components-and-more.aspx @jasons_novaleaf posts source code for light pre-pass optimizations for #xna http://twitter.com/jasons_novaleaf/statuses/33348855403642880 http://jcoluna.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/xna-4-0-light-pre-pass-optimization-round-one/ I’ve been learning about doing an A.I. for turn based games and this article was a great resource. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1535/designing_ai_algorithms_for_.php?print=1

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  • DVD not detected?

    - by Benjamin
    As i insert a DVD in my drive (on a laptop) using Kubuntu 12.04, the DVD is not detected. The drive takes the DVD, I can hear it munching on it for a while, and then nothing. Even ejecting the DVD becomes a hassle, I need to do that at boot time otherwise the OS won't allow me to eject. Kubuntu 12.04 used to read and mount the same DVDs just fine a week ago. Edit: since I am able to boot from CD, can I safely assume the issue is not a hardware issue? How can I fix this? wodim --devices returns: wodim: Overview of accessible drives (1 found) : ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 0 dev='/dev/sg1' rwrw-- : 'Optiarc' 'DVD+-RW AD-7640A' ------------------------------------------------------------------------- sudo lshw -class disk returns: *-cdrom description: DVD-RAM writer product: DVD+-RW AD-7640A vendor: Optiarc physical id: 0.0.0 bus info: scsi@3:0.0.0 logical name: /dev/cdrom2 logical name: /dev/cdrw2 logical name: /dev/dvd2 logical name: /dev/dvdrw2 logical name: /dev/sr0 version: JD06 capabilities: removable audio cd-r cd-rw dvd dvd-r dvd-ram configuration: ansiversion=5 status=open lspci returns: 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 0c) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (primary) (rev 0c) 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (secondary) (rev 0c) 00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03) 00:1a.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03) 00:1a.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 03) 00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 03) 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03) 00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03) 00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03) 00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f3) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HM (ICH8M) LPC Interface Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 03) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03) 06:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01) 07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 02) 08:05.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): O2 Micro, Inc. Firewire (IEEE 1394) (rev 02) 08:05.2 SD Host controller: O2 Micro, Inc. Integrated MMC/SD Controller (rev 02) 08:05.3 Mass storage controller: O2 Micro, Inc. Integrated MS/xD Controller (rev 01) and lsusb: Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0c45:63e0 Microdia Sonix Integrated Webcam Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0483:2016 SGS Thomson Microelectronics Fingerprint Reader The /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf contains: # This file lists those modules which we don't want to be loaded by # alias expansion, usually so some other driver will be loaded for the # device instead. # evbug is a debug tool that should be loaded explicitly blacklist evbug # these drivers are very simple, the HID drivers are usually preferred blacklist usbmouse blacklist usbkbd # replaced by e100 blacklist eepro100 # replaced by tulip blacklist de4x5 # causes no end of confusion by creating unexpected network interfaces blacklist eth1394 # snd_intel8x0m can interfere with snd_intel8x0, doesn't seem to support much # hardware on its own (Ubuntu bug #2011, #6810) blacklist snd_intel8x0m # Conflicts with dvb driver (which is better for handling this device) blacklist snd_aw2 # causes failure to suspend on HP compaq nc6000 (Ubuntu: #10306) blacklist i2c_i801 # replaced by p54pci blacklist prism54 # replaced by b43 and ssb. blacklist bcm43xx # most apps now use garmin usb driver directly (Ubuntu: #114565) blacklist garmin_gps # replaced by asus-laptop (Ubuntu: #184721) blacklist asus_acpi # low-quality, just noise when being used for sound playback, causes # hangs at desktop session start (Ubuntu: #246969) blacklist snd_pcsp # ugly and loud noise, getting on everyone's nerves; this should be done by a # nice pulseaudio bing (Ubuntu: #77010) blacklist pcspkr # EDAC driver for amd76x clashes with the agp driver preventing the aperture # from being initialised (Ubuntu: #297750). Blacklist so that the driver # continues to build and is installable for the few cases where its # really needed. blacklist amd76x_edac

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  • IBM Keynote: (hardware,software)–>{IBM.java.patterns}

    - by Janice J. Heiss
    On Sunday evening, September 30, 2012, Jason McGee, IBM Distinguished Engineer and Chief Architect Cloud Computing, along with John Duimovich IBM Distinguished Engineer and Java CTO, gave an information- and idea-rich keynote that left Java developers with much to ponder.Their focus was on the challenges to make Java more efficient and productive given the hardware and software environments of 2012. “One idea that is very interesting is the idea of multi-tenancy,” said McGee, “and how we can move up the spectrum. In traditional systems, we ran applications on dedicated middleware, operating systems and hardware. A lot of customers still run that way. Now people introduce hardware virtualization and share the hardware. That is good but there is a lot more we can do. We can share middleware and the application itself.” McGee challenged developers to better enable the Java language to function in these higher density models. He spoke about the need to describe patterns that help us grasp the full environment that an application needs, whether it’s a web or full enterprise application. Developers need to understand the resources that an application interacts with in a way that is simple and straightforward. The task is to then automate that deployment so that the complexity of infrastructure can be by-passed and developers can live in a simpler world where the cloud can automatically configure the needed environment. McGee argued that the key, something IBM has been working on, is to use a simpler pattern that allows a cloud-based architecture to embrace the entire infrastructure required for an application and make it highly available, scalable and able to recover from failure. The cloud-based architecture would automate the complexity of setting up and managing the infrastructure. IBM has been trying to realize this vision for customers so they can describe their Java application environment simply and allow the cloud to automate the deployment and management of applications. “The point,” explained McGee, “is to package the executable used to describe applications, to drop it into a shared system and let that system provide some intelligence about how to deploy and manage those applications.”John Duimovich on Improvements in JavaMcGee then brought onstage IBM’s Distinguished Engineer and CTO for Java, John Duimovich, who showed the audience ways to deploy Java applications more efficiently.Duimovich explained that, “When you run lots of copies of Java in the cloud or any hypervisor virtualized system, there are a lot of duplications of code and jar files. IBM has a facility called ‘shared classes’ where we put shared code, read only artefacts in a cache that is sharable across hypervisors.” By putting JIT code in ahead of time, he explained that the application server will use 20% less memory and operate 30% faster.  He described another example of how the JVM allows for the maximum amount of sharing that manages the tenants and file sockets and memory use through throttling and control. Duimovich touched on the “thin is in” model and IBM’s Liberty Profile and lightweight runtime for the cloud, which allows for greater efficiency in interacting with the cloud.Duimovich discussed the confusion Java developers experience when, for example, the hypervisor tells them that that they have 8 and then 4 and then 16 cores. “Because hypervisors are virtualized, they can change based on resource needs across the hypervisor layer. You may have 10 instances of an operation system and you may need to reallocate memory, " explained Duimovich.  He showed how to resize LPARs, reallocate CPUs and migrate applications as needed. He explained how application servers can resize thread pools and better use resources based on information from the hypervisors.Java Challenges in Hardware and SoftwareMcGee ended the keynote with a summary of upcoming hardware and software challenges for the Java platform. He noted that one reason developers love Java is it allows them to ignore differences in hardware. He stated that the most important things happening in hardware were in network and storage – in developments such as the speed of SSD, the exploitation of high-speed, low-latency networking, and recent developments such as storage-class memory, and non-volatile main memory. “So we are challenged to maintain the benefits of Java and the abstraction it provides from hardware while still exploiting the new innovations in hardware,” said McGee.McGee discussed transactional messaging applications where developers send messages transactionally persist a message to storage, something traditionally done by backing messages on spinning disks, something mostly outdated. “Now,” he pointed out, “we would use SSD and store it in Flash and get 70,000 messages a second. If we stored it using a PCI express-based flash memory device, it is still Flash but put on a PCI express bus on a card closer to the CPU. This way I get 300,000 messages a second and 25% improvement in latency.” McGee’s central point was that hardware has a huge impact on the performance and scalability of applications. New technologies are enabling developers to build classes of Java applications previously unheard of. “We need to be able to balance these things in Java – we need to maintain the abstraction but also be able to exploit the evolution of hardware technology,” said McGee. According to McGee, IBM's current focus is on systems wherein hardware and software are shipped together in what are called Expert Integrated Systems – systems that are pre-optimized, and pre-integrated together. McGee closed IBM’s engaging and thought-provoking keynote by pointing out that the use of Java in complex applications is increasingly being augmented by a host of other languages with strong communities around them – JavaScript, JRuby, Scala, Python and so forth. Java developers now must understand the strengths and weaknesses of such newcomers as applications increasingly involve a complex interconnection of languages.

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  • Kendo UI Mobile with Knockout for Master-Detail Views

    - by Steve Michelotti
    Lately I’ve been playing with Kendo UI Mobile to build iPhone apps. It’s similar to jQuery Mobile in that they are both HTML5/JavaScript based frameworks for buildings mobile apps. The primary thing that drew me to investigate Kendo UI was its innate ability to adaptively render a native looking app based on detecting the device it’s currently running on. In other words, it will render to look like a native iPhone app if it’s running on an iPhone and it will render to look like a native Droid app if it’s running on a Droid. This is in contrast to jQuery Mobile which looks the same on all devices and, therefore, it can never quite look native for whatever device it’s running on. My first impressions of Kendo UI were great. Using HTML5 data-* attributes to define “roles” for UI elements is easy, the rendering looked great, and the basic navigation was simple and intuitive. However, I ran into major confusion when trying to figure out how to “correctly” build master-detail views. Since I was already very family with KnockoutJS, I set out to use that framework in conjunction with Kendo UI Mobile to build the following simple scenario: I wanted to have a simple “Task Manager” application where my first screen just showed a list of tasks like this:   Then clicking on a specific task would navigate to a detail screen that would show all details of the specific task that was selected:   Basic navigation between views in Kendo UI is simple. The href of an <a> tag just needs to specify a hash tag followed by the ID of the view to navigate to as shown in this jsFiddle (notice the href of the <a> tag matches the id of the second view):   Direct link to jsFiddle: here. That is all well and good but the problem I encountered was: how to pass data between the views? Specifically, I need the detail view to display all the details of whichever task was selected. If I was doing this with my typical technique with KnockoutJS, I know exactly what I would do. First I would create a view model that had my collection of tasks and a property for the currently selected task like this: 1: function ViewModel() { 2: var self = this; 3: self.tasks = ko.observableArray(data); 4: self.selectedTask = ko.observable(null); 5: } Then I would bind my list of tasks to the unordered list - I would attach a “click” handler to each item (each <li> in the unordered list) so that it would select the “selectedTask” for the view model. The problem I found is this approach simply wouldn’t work for Kendo UI Mobile. It completely ignored the click handlers that I was trying to attach to the <a> tags – it just wanted to look at the href (at least that’s what I observed). But if I can’t intercept this, then *how* can I pass data or any context to the next view? The only thing I was able to find in the Kendo documentation is that you can pass query string arguments on the view name you’re specifying in the href. This enabled me to do the following: Specify the task ID in each href – something like this: <a href=”#taskDetail?id=3></a> Attach an “init method” (via the “data-show” attribute on the details view) that runs whenever the view is activated Inside this “init method”, grab the task ID passed from the query string to look up the item from my view model’s list of tasks in order to set the selected task I was able to get all that working with about 20 lines of JavaScript as shown in this jsFiddle. If you click on the Results tab, you can navigate between views and see the the detail screen is correctly binding to the selected item:   Direct link to jsFiddle: here.   With all that being done, I was very happy to get it working with the behavior I wanted. However, I have no idea if that is the “correct” way to do it or if there is a “better” way to do it. I know that Kendo UI comes with its own data binding framework but my preference is to be able to use (the well-documented) KnockoutJS since I’m already familiar with that framework rather than having to learn yet another new framework. While I think my solution above is probably “acceptable”, there are still a couple of things that bug me about it. First, it seems odd that I have to loop through my items to *find* my selected item based on the ID that was passed on the query string - normally, with Knockout I can just refer directly to my selected item from where it was used. Second, it didn’t feel exactly right that I had to rely on the “data-show” method of the details view to set my context – normally with Knockout, I could just attach a click handler to the <a> tag that was actually clicked by the user in order to set the “selected item.” I’m not sure if I’m being too picky. I know there are many people that have *way* more expertise in Kendo UI compared to me – I’d be curious to know if there are better ways to achieve the same results.

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  • Why is my Ubuntu system not using the correct kernel?

    - by Brooks Moses
    We're having a bit of confusion on a Ubuntu remote system -- /boot/grub/menu.lst suggests the system should boot into kernel 2.6.35-30-generic, but it is actually running kernel 2.6.32-27-generic. Where should I look to start figuring out why this is happening and how to fix it? Specifically, /boot/grub/menu.lst has default 0 and the first entry is title Ubuntu 10.10, kernel 2.6.35-30-generic uuid 67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-30-generic root=UUID=67717ee3-cbf9-45d2- ae97-820256f4c4fd ro quiet splash initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-30-generic Further, I've confirmed that /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-30-generic and /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-30-generic exist and have appropriate permissions. Meanwhile, uname -a returns: $ uname -a Linux cuda2 2.6.32-27-generic #49-Ubuntu SMP Thu Dec 2 00:51:09 UTC 2010 x86_64 GNU/Linux Edit: I've also tried re-running update-grub, and rebooting; no luck. Here's the full menu.lst, as requested by a commenter: # menu.lst - See: grub(8), info grub, update-grub(8) # grub-install(8), grub-floppy(8), # grub-md5-crypt, /usr/share/doc/grub # and /usr/share/doc/grub-legacy-doc/. ## default num # Set the default entry to the entry number NUM. Numbering starts from 0, and # the entry number 0 is the default if the command is not used. # # You can specify 'saved' instead of a number. In this case, the default entry # is the entry saved with the command 'savedefault'. # WARNING: If you are using dmraid do not use 'savedefault' or your # array will desync and will not let you boot your system. default 0 ## timeout sec # Set a timeout, in SEC seconds, before automatically booting the default entry # (normally the first entry defined). timeout 3 ## hiddenmenu # Hides the menu by default (press ESC to see the menu) hiddenmenu # Pretty colours #color cyan/blue white/blue ## password ['--md5'] passwd # If used in the first section of a menu file, disable all interactive editing # control (menu entry editor and command-line) and entries protected by the # command 'lock' # e.g. password topsecret # password --md5 $1$gLhU0/$aW78kHK1QfV3P2b2znUoe/ # password topsecret # # examples # # title Windows 95/98/NT/2000 # root (hd0,0) # makeactive # chainloader +1 # # title Linux # root (hd0,1) # kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/hda2 ro # # # Put static boot stanzas before and/or after AUTOMAGIC KERNEL LIST ### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST ## lines between the AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST markers will be modified ## by the debian update-grub script except for the default options below ## DO NOT UNCOMMENT THEM, Just edit them to your needs ## ## Start Default Options ## ## default kernel options ## default kernel options for automagic boot options ## If you want special options for specific kernels use kopt_x_y_z ## where x.y.z is kernel version. Minor versions can be omitted. ## e.g. kopt=root=/dev/hda1 ro ## kopt_2_6_8=root=/dev/hdc1 ro ## kopt_2_6_8_2_686=root=/dev/hdc2 ro # kopt=root=UUID=67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd ro ## default grub root device ## e.g. groot=(hd0,0) # groot=67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd ## should update-grub create alternative automagic boot options ## e.g. alternative=true ## alternative=false # alternative=true ## should update-grub lock alternative automagic boot options ## e.g. lockalternative=true ## lockalternative=false # lockalternative=false ## additional options to use with the default boot option, but not with the ## alternatives ## e.g. defoptions=vga=791 resume=/dev/hda5 # defoptions=quiet splash ## should update-grub lock old automagic boot options ## e.g. lockold=false ## lockold=true # lockold=false ## Xen hypervisor options to use with the default Xen boot option # xenhopt= ## Xen Linux kernel options to use with the default Xen boot option # xenkopt=console=tty0 ## altoption boot targets option ## multiple altoptions lines are allowed ## e.g. altoptions=(extra menu suffix) extra boot options ## altoptions=(recovery) single # altoptions=(recovery mode) single ## controls how many kernels should be put into the menu.lst ## only counts the first occurence of a kernel, not the ## alternative kernel options ## e.g. howmany=all ## howmany=7 # howmany=all ## specify if running in Xen domU or have grub detect automatically ## update-grub will ignore non-xen kernels when running in domU and vice versa ## e.g. indomU=detect ## indomU=true ## indomU=false # indomU=detect ## should update-grub create memtest86 boot option ## e.g. memtest86=true ## memtest86=false # memtest86=true ## should update-grub adjust the value of the default booted system ## can be true or false # updatedefaultentry=false ## should update-grub add savedefault to the default options ## can be true or false # savedefault=false ## ## End Default Options ## title Ubuntu 10.10, kernel 2.6.35-30-generic uuid 67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-30-generic root=UUID=67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd ro quiet splash initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-30-generic title Ubuntu 10.10, kernel 2.6.35-30-generic (recovery mode) uuid 67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-30-generic root=UUID=67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd ro single initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-30-generic title Ubuntu 10.10, kernel 2.6.32-32-server uuid 67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-32-server root=UUID=67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd ro quiet splash initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-32-server title Ubuntu 10.10, kernel 2.6.32-32-server (recovery mode) uuid 67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-32-server root=UUID=67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd ro single initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-32-server title Ubuntu 10.10, kernel 2.6.32-27-generic uuid 67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-27-generic root=UUID=67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd ro quiet splash initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-27-generic title Ubuntu 10.10, kernel 2.6.32-27-generic (recovery mode) uuid 67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-27-generic root=UUID=67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd ro single initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-27-generic title Chainload into GRUB 2 root 67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd kernel /boot/grub/core.img title Ubuntu 10.10, memtest86+ uuid 67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin ### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST To add complication and joy to my life, this is a desktop machine in a remote datacenter; we don't have either local access or serial-console access. Suggestions?

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  • When does "proper" programming no longer matter?

    - by Kai Qing
    I've been a full time programmer for about 8 years now. Web based mostly, ranging in weird jobs for clients. Never anything I "want" to do. So my experience is limited to what I've been contracted to do, having no real incentive to master anything in particular. So here's my scenario and ultimately what I wonder about... I've been building an android game in my spare time. It's using the libgdx library so quite a bit of the heavy lifting is done for me. I don't read much of the docs cause unless it's in tutorial format I will just not care, and ultimately most of my questions have already been asked on stackoverflow. I get along fine and my game works as expected... Suspiciously well, even. So much so that I wonder why one should bother to be "proper" when coding if the end result is ultimately the same. To be more specific, I used a hashtable because I wanted something close to an associative array. Human readable key values. In other places to achieve similar things, I use a vector. I know libgdx has vector2 and vector3 classes, but I've never used them. When I come across weird problems and search stackoverflow for help, I see a lot of people just reaming the questions that use a certain datatype when another one is technically "proper." Like using an ArrayList because it does not require defined bounds versus re-defining an int[] with new known boundaries. Or even something trivial like this: for(int i = 0; i < items.length; i ++) { // do something } I know it evaluates item.length on every iteration. I just don't care. I know items will never be more than 15 to 20 items. So why bother caring if I evaluate items.length on every iteration? So I wonder - why does everyone get all up in arms over this? Who cares if I use a less efficient datatype to get the job done? I ran some tests to see how the app performs using the lazy, get it done fast and don't look back method I just described versus the proper, follow the tutorial and use the exact data types suggested by the community. The results: Same thing. Average 45 fps. I opened every app on the phone and galaxy tab. Same deal. No difference. My game is pretty graphic intensive. It's not like it's just a simple thing. I expected it to perform kind of badly since I don't care to optimize image assets or... well, you probably get the idea. I'm making the game for fun. As a joke, really. But in doing so I'm working outside the normal scope of my job, which is to always follow the rules and do it the right way. So to say, I am without bounds here and this has caused me to wonder why I ever really care to be "proper" So I guess my question to you is this: Is there a threshold when it no longer matters to be proper? Is there a lasting, longer term consequence to the lazy, get it done and don't look back route? Is it ok to say - "so long as it gets the job done, I don't care?" Disclaimer: When I program my game, I am almost always drunk. I do it to remember why I got into this stuff to begin with because the monotony of client based web work will make you hate being a programmer. I'm having a blast and my game is not crashing, tests well, performs well, looks good on all devices so far and has no noticeable negative impact on any of my testing devices. I expected failure because I was being so drunkenly careless with my code, but to my surprise, it had no noticeable impact. I am now starting to question the need to be careful. Help me regain the ability to care! ... or explain why it's not a bad thing to not care. Secondary disclaimer: I am aware of the benefits of maintainability. For myself and others. Agreed. But it's not like someone happening across my inefficient int[] loop won't know what it does. As an experienced programmer those kinds of things are just clear on sight. I document the complex stuff for myself knowing I was drunk and will probably need a reminder. Those notes would clarify any confusion for someone who might ever gaze upon my ridiculous game - though the reality is that either I maintain it myself or it fades into time. I'm ok with that. But if it doesn't slow the device down, or crash, then crossing the t's and dotting the i's might actually require more time than it's worth.

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  • Professional Development – Difference Between Bio, CV and Resume

    - by Pinal Dave
    Applying for work can be very stressful – you want to put your best foot forward, and it can be very hard to sell yourself to a potential employer while highlighting your best characteristics and answering questions.  On top of that, some jobs require different application materials – a biography (or bio), a curriculum vitae (or CV), or a resume.  These things seem so interchangeable, so what is the difference? Let’s start with the one most of us have heard of – the resume.  A resume is a summary of your job and education history.  If you have ever applied for a job, you will have used a resume.  The ability to write a good resume that highlights your best characteristics and emphasizes your qualifications for a specific job is a skill that will take you a long way in the world.  For such an essential skill, unfortunately it is one that many people struggle with. RESUME So let’s discuss what makes a great resume.  First, make sure that your name and contact information are at the top, in large print (slightly larger font than the rest of the text, size 14 or 16 if the rest is size 12, for example).  You need to make sure that if you catch the recruiter’s attention and they know how to get a hold of you. As for qualifications, be quick and to the point.  Make your job title and the company the headline, and include your skills, accomplishments, and qualifications as bullet points.  Use good action verbs, like “finished,” “arranged,” “solved,” and “completed.”  Include hard numbers – don’t just say you “changed the filing system,” say that you “revolutionized the storage of over 250 files in less than five days.”  Doesn’t that sentence sound much more powerful? Curriculum Vitae (CV) Now let’s talk about curriculum vitae, or “CVs”.  A CV is more like an expanded resume.  The same rules are still true: put your name front and center, keep your contact info up to date, and summarize your skills with bullet points.  However, CVs are often required in more technical fields – like science, engineering, and computer science.  This means that you need to really highlight your education and technical skills. Difference between Resume and CV Resumes are expected to be one or two pages long – CVs can be as many pages as necessary.  If you are one of those people lucky enough to feel limited by the size constraint of resumes, a CV is for you!  On a CV you can expand on your projects, highlight really exciting accomplishments, and include more educational experience – including GPA and test scores from the GRE or MCAT (as applicable).  You can also include awards, associations, teaching and research experience, and certifications.  A CV is a place to really expand on all your experience and how great you will be in this particular position. Biography (Bio) Chances are, you already know what a bio is, and you have even read a few of them.  Think about the one or two paragraphs that every author includes in the back flap of a book.  Think about the sentences under a blogger’s photo on every “About Me” page.  That is a bio.  It is a way to quickly highlight your life experiences.  It is essentially the way you would introduce yourself at a party. Where a bio is required for a job, chances are they won’t want to know about where you were born and how many pets you have, though.  This is a way to summarize your entire job history in quick-to-read format – and sometimes during a job hunt, being able to get to the point and grab the recruiter’s interest is the best way to get your foot in the door.  Think of a bio as your entire resume put into words. Most bios have a standard format.  In paragraph one, talk about your most recent position and accomplishments there, specifically how they relate to the job you are applying for.  If you have teaching or research experience, training experience, certifications, or management experience, talk about them in paragraph two.  Paragraph three and four are for highlighting publications, education, certifications, associations, etc.  To wrap up your bio, provide your contact info and availability (dates and times). Where to use What? For most positions, you will know exactly what kind of application to use, because the job announcement will state what materials are needed – resume, CV, bio, cover letter, skill set, etc.  If there is any confusion, choose whatever the industry standard is (CV for technical fields, resume for everything else) or choose which of your documents is the strongest. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: About Me, PostADay, Professional Development, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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  • Using Windows Previous Versions to access ZFS Snapshots (July 14, 2009)

    - by user12612012
    The Previous Versions tab on the Windows desktop provides a straightforward, intuitive way for users to view or recover files from ZFS snapshots.  ZFS snapshots are read-only, point-in-time instances of a ZFS dataset, based on the same copy-on-write transactional model used throughout ZFS.  ZFS snapshots can be used to recover deleted files or previous versions of files and they are space efficient because unchanged data is shared between the file system and its snapshots.  Snapshots are available locally via the .zfs/snapshot directory and remotely via Previous Versions on the Windows desktop. Shadow Copies for Shared Folders was introduced with Windows Server 2003 but subsequently renamed to Previous Versions with the release of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.  Windows shadow copies, or snapshots, are based on the Volume Snapshot Service (VSS) and, as the [Shared Folders part of the] name implies, are accessible to clients via SMB shares, which is good news when using the Solaris CIFS Service.  And the nice thing is that no additional configuration is required - it "just works". On Windows clients, snapshots are accessible via the Previous Versions tab in Windows Explorer using the Shadow Copy client, which is available by default on Windows XP SP2 and later.  For Windows 2000 and pre-SP2 Windows XP, the client software is available for download from Microsoft: Shadow Copies for Shared Folders Client. Assuming that we already have a shared ZFS dataset, we can create ZFS snapshots and view them from a Windows client. zfs snapshot tank/home/administrator@snap101zfs snapshot tank/home/administrator@snap102 To view the snapshots on Windows, map the dataset on the client then right click on a folder or file and select Previous Versions.  Note that Windows will only display previous versions of objects that differ from the originals.  So you may have to modify files after creating a snapshot in order to see previous versions of those files. The screenshot above shows various snapshots in the Previous Versions window, created at different times.  On the left panel, the .zfs folder is visible, illustrating that this is a ZFS share.  The .zfs setting can be toggled as desired, it makes no difference when using previous versions.  To make the .zfs folder visible: zfs set snapdir=visible tank/home/administrator To hide the .zfs folder: zfs set snapdir=hidden tank/home/administrator The following screenshot shows the Previous Versions panel when a file has been selected.  In this case the user is prompted to view, copy or restore the file from one of the available snapshots. As can be seen from the screenshots above, the Previous Versions window doesn't display snapshot names: snapshots are listed by snapshot creation time, sorted in time order from most recent to oldest.  There's nothing we can do about this, it's the way that the interface works.  Perhaps one point of note, to avoid confusion, is that the ZFS snapshot creation time isnot the same as the root directory creation timestamp. In ZFS, all object attributes in the original dataset are preserved when a snapshot is taken, including the creation time of the root directory.  Thus the root directory creation timestamp is the time that the directory was created in the original dataset. # ls -d% all /home/administrator         timestamp: atime         Mar 19 15:40:23 2009         timestamp: ctime         Mar 19 15:40:58 2009         timestamp: mtime         Mar 19 15:40:58 2009         timestamp: crtime         Mar 19 15:18:34 2009 # ls -d% all /home/administrator/.zfs/snapshot/snap101         timestamp: atime         Mar 19 15:40:23 2009         timestamp: ctime         Mar 19 15:40:58 2009         timestamp: mtime         Mar 19 15:40:58 2009         timestamp: crtime         Mar 19 15:18:34 2009 The snapshot creation time can be obtained using the zfs command as shown below. # zfs get all tank/home/administrator@snap101NAME                             PROPERTY  VALUEtank/home/administrator@snap101  type      snapshottank/home/administrator@snap101  creation  Mon Mar 23 18:21 2009 In this example, the dataset was created on March 19th and the snapshot was created on March 23rd. In conclusion, Shadow Copies for Shared Folders provides a straightforward way for users to view or recover files from ZFS snapshots.  The Windows desktop provides an easy to use, intuitive GUI and no configuration is required to use or access previous versions of files or folders. REFERENCES FOR MORE INFORMATION ZFS ZFS Learning Center Introduction to Shadow Copies of Shared Folders Shadow Copies for Shared Folders Client

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  • Computer Networks UNISA - Chap 15 &ndash; Network Management

    - by MarkPearl
    After reading this section you should be able to Understand network management and the importance of documentation, baseline measurements, policies, and regulations to assess and maintain a network’s health. Manage a network’s performance using SNMP-based network management software, system and event logs, and traffic-shaping techniques Identify the reasons for and elements of an asset managements system Plan and follow regular hardware and software maintenance routines Fundamentals of Network Management Network management refers to the assessment, monitoring, and maintenance of all aspects of a network including checking for hardware faults, ensuring high QoS, maintaining records of network assets, etc. Scope of network management differs depending on the size and requirements of the network. All sub topics of network management share the goals of enhancing the efficiency and performance while preventing costly downtime or loss. Documentation The way documentation is stored may vary, but to adequately manage a network one should at least record the following… Physical topology (types of LAN and WAN topologies – ring, star, hybrid) Access method (does it use Ethernet 802.3, token ring, etc.) Protocols Devices (Switches, routers, etc) Operating Systems Applications Configurations (What version of operating system and config files for serve / client software) Baseline Measurements A baseline is a report of the network’s current state of operation. Baseline measurements might include the utilization rate for your network backbone, number of users logged on per day, etc. Baseline measurements allow you to compare future performance increases or decreases caused by network changes or events with past network performance. Obtaining baseline measurements is the only way to know for certain whether a pattern of usage has changed, or whether a network upgrade has made a difference. There are various tools available for measuring baseline performance on a network. Policies, Procedures, and Regulations Following rules helps limit chaos, confusion, and possibly downtime. The following policies and procedures and regulations make for sound network management. Media installations and management (includes designing physical layout of cable, etc.) Network addressing policies (includes choosing and applying a an addressing scheme) Resource sharing and naming conventions (includes rules for logon ID’s) Security related policies Troubleshooting procedures Backup and disaster recovery procedures In addition to internal policies, a network manager must consider external regulatory rules. Fault and Performance Management After documenting every aspect of your network and following policies and best practices, you are ready to asses you networks status on an on going basis. This process includes both performance management and fault management. Network Management Software To accomplish both fault and performance management, organizations often use enterprise-wide network management software. There various software packages that do this, each collect data from multiple networked devices at regular intervals, in a process called polling. Each managed device runs a network management agent. So as not to affect the performance of a device while collecting information, agents do not demand significant processing resources. The definition of a managed devices and their data are collected in a MIB (Management Information Base). Agents communicate information about managed devices via any of several application layer protocols. On modern networks most agents use SNMP which is part of the TCP/IP suite and typically runs over UDP on port 161. Because of the flexibility and sophisticated network management applications are a challenge to configure and fine-tune. One needs to be careful to only collect relevant information and not cause performance issues (i.e. pinging a device every 5 seconds can be a problem with thousands of devices). MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher) is a simple command line utility that uses SNMP to poll devices and collects data in a log file. MRTG can be used with Windows, UNIX and Linux. System and Event Logs Virtually every condition recognized by an operating system can be recorded. This is typically done using event logs. In Windows there is a GUI event log viewer. Similar information is recorded in UNIX and Linux in a system log. Much of the information collected in event logs and syslog files does not point to a problem, even if it is marked with a warning so it is important to filter your logs appropriately to reduce the noise. Traffic Shaping When a network must handle high volumes of network traffic, users benefit from performance management technique called traffic shaping. Traffic shaping involves manipulating certain characteristics of packets, data streams, or connections to manage the type and amount of traffic traversing a network or interface at any moment. Its goals are to assure timely delivery of the most important traffic while offering the best possible performance for all users. Several types of traffic prioritization exist including prioritizing traffic according to any of the following characteristics… Protocol IP address User group DiffServr VLAN tag in a Data Link layer frame Service or application Caching In addition to traffic shaping, a network or host might use caching to improve performance. Caching is the local storage of frequently needed files that would otherwise be obtained from an external source. By keeping files close to the requester, caching allows the user to access those files quickly. The most common type of caching is Web caching, in which Web pages are stored locally. To an ISP, caching is much more than just convenience. It prevents a significant volume of WAN traffic, thus improving performance and saving money. Asset Management Another key component in managing networks is identifying and tracking its hardware. This is called asset management. The first step to asset management is to take an inventory of each node on the network. You will also want to keep records of every piece of software purchased by your organization. Asset management simplifies maintaining and upgrading the network chiefly because you know what the system includes. In addition, asset management provides network administrators with information about the costs and benefits of certain types of hardware or software. Change Management Networks are always in a stage of flux with various aspects including… Software changes and patches Client Upgrades Shared Application Upgrades NOS Upgrades Hardware and Physical Plant Changes Cabling Upgrades Backbone Upgrades For a detailed explanation on each of these read the textbook (Page 750 – 761)

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  • GameplayScreen does not contain a definition for GraphicsDevice

    - by Dave Voyles
    Long story short: I'm trying to intergrate my game with Microsoft's Game State Management. In doing so I've run into some errors, and the latest one is in the title. I'm not able to display my HUD for the reasons listed above. Previously, I had much of my code in my Game.cs class, but the GSM has a bit of it in Game1, and most of what you have drawn for the main screen in your GameplayScreen class, and that is what is causing confusion on my part. I've created an instance of the GameplayScreen class to be used in the HUD class (as you can see below). Before integrating with the GSM however, I created an instance of my Game class, and all worked fine. It seems that I need to define my graphics device somewhere, but I am not sure of where exactly. I've left some code below to help you understand. public class GameStateManagementGame : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game { #region Fields GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; ScreenManager screenManager; // Creates a new intance, which is used in the HUD class public static Game Instance; // By preloading any assets used by UI rendering, we avoid framerate glitches // when they suddenly need to be loaded in the middle of a menu transition. static readonly string[] preloadAssets = { "gradient", }; #endregion #region Initialization /// <summary> /// The main game constructor. /// </summary> public GameStateManagementGame() { Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth = 1280; graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight = 720; graphics.IsFullScreen = false; graphics.ApplyChanges(); // Create the screen manager component. screenManager = new ScreenManager(this); Components.Add(screenManager); // Activate the first screens. screenManager.AddScreen(new BackgroundScreen(), null); //screenManager.AddScreen(new MainMenuScreen(), null); screenManager.AddScreen(new PressStartScreen(), null); } namespace Pong { public class HUD { public void Update(GameTime gameTime) { // Used in the Draw method titleSafeRectangle = new Rectangle (GameplayScreen.Instance.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.TitleSafeArea.X, GameplayScreen.Instance.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.TitleSafeArea.Y, GameplayScreen.Instance.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.TitleSafeArea.Width, GameplayScreen.Instance.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.TitleSafeArea.Height); } } } class GameplayScreen : GameScreen { #region Fields ContentManager content; public static GameStates gamestate; private GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; public int screenWidth; public int screenHeight; private Texture2D backgroundTexture; private SpriteBatch spriteBatch; private Menu menu; private SpriteFont arial; private HUD hud; Animation player; // Creates a new intance, which is used in the HUD class public static GameplayScreen Instance; public GameplayScreen() { TransitionOnTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1.5); TransitionOffTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5); } protected void Initialize() { lastScored = false; menu = new Menu(); resetTimer = 0; resetTimerInUse = true; ball = new Ball(content, new Vector2(screenWidth, screenHeight)); SetUpMulti(); input = new Input(); hud = new HUD(); // Places the powerup animation inside of the surrounding box // Needs to be cleaned up, instead of using hard pixel values player = new Animation(content.Load<Texture2D>(@"gfx/powerupSpriteSheet"), new Vector2(103, 44), 64, 64, 4, 5); // Used by for the Powerups random = new Random(); vec = new Vector2(100, 50); vec2 = new Vector2(100, 100); promptVec = new Vector2(50, 25); timer = 10000.0f; // Starting value for the cooldown for the powerup timer timerVector = new Vector2(10, 10); //JEP - one time creation of powerup objects playerOnePowerup = new Powerup(); playerOnePowerup.Activated += PowerupActivated; playerOnePowerup.Deactivated += PowerupDeactivated; playerTwoPowerup = new Powerup(); playerTwoPowerup.Activated += PowerupActivated; playerTwoPowerup.Deactivated += PowerupDeactivated; //JEP - moved from events since these only need set once activatedVec = new Vector2(100, 125); deactivatedVec = new Vector2(100, 150); powerupReady = false; }

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  • Access Control Service v2: Registering Web Identities in your Applications [concepts]

    - by Your DisplayName here!
    ACS v2 support two fundamental types of client identities– I like to call them “enterprise identities” (WS-*) and “web identities” (Google, LiveID, OpenId in general…). I also see two different “mind sets” when it comes to application design using the above identity types: Enterprise identities – often the fact that a client can present a token from a trusted identity provider means he is a legitimate user of the application. Trust relationships and authorization details have been negotiated out of band (often on paper). Web identities – the fact that a user can authenticate with Google et al does not necessarily mean he is a legitimate (or registered) user of an application. Typically additional steps are necessary (like filling out a form, email confirmation etc). Sometimes also a mixture of both approaches exist, for the sake of this post, I will focus on the web identity case. I got a number of questions how to implement the web identity scenario and after some conversations it turns out it is the old authentication vs. authorization problem that gets in the way. Many people use the IsAuthenticated property on IIdentity to make security decisions in their applications (or deny user=”?” in ASP.NET terms). That’s a very natural thing to do, because authentication was done inside the application and we knew exactly when the IsAuthenticated condition is true. Been there, done that. Guilty ;) The fundamental difference between these “old style” apps and federation is, that authentication is not done by the application anymore. It is done by a third party service, and in the case of web identity providers, in services that are not under our control (nor do we have a formal business relationship with these providers). Now the issue is, when you switch to ACS, and someone with a Google account authenticates, indeed IsAuthenticated is true – because that’s what he is! This does not mean, that he is also authorized to use the application. It just proves he was able to authenticate with Google. Now this obviously leads to confusion. How can we solve that? Easy answer: We have to deal with authentication and authorization separately. Job done ;) For many application types I see this general approach: Application uses ACS for authentication (maybe both enterprise and web identities, we focus on web identities but you could easily have a dual approach here) Application offers to authenticate (or sign in) via web identity accounts like LiveID, Google, Facebook etc. Application also maintains a database of its “own” users. Typically you want to store additional information about the user In such an application type it is important to have a unique identifier for your users (think the primary key of your user database). What would that be? Most web identity provider (and all the standard ACS v2 supported ones) emit a NameIdentifier claim. This is a stable ID for the client (scoped to the relying party – more on that later). Furthermore ACS emits a claims identifying the identity provider (like the original issuer concept in WIF). When you combine these two values together, you can be sure to have a unique identifier for the user, e.g.: Facebook-134952459903700\799880347 You can now check on incoming calls, if the user is already registered and if yes, swap the ACS claims with claims coming from your user database. One claims would maybe be a role like “Registered User” which can then be easily used to do authorization checks in the application. The WIF claims authentication manager is a perfect place to do the claims transformation. If the user is not registered, show a register form. Maybe you can use some claims from the identity provider to pre-fill form fields. (see here where I show how to use the Facebook API to fetch additional user properties). After successful registration (which may include other mechanisms like a confirmation email), flip the bit in your database to make the web identity a registered user. This is all very theoretical. In the next post I will show some code and provide a download link for the complete sample. More on NameIdentifier Identity providers “guarantee” that the name identifier for a given user in your application will always be the same. But different applications (in the case of ACS – different ACS namespaces) will see different name identifiers. This is by design to protect the privacy of users because identical name identifiers could be used to create “profiles” of some sort for that user. In technical terms they create the name identifier approximately like this: name identifier = Hash((Provider Internal User ID) + (Relying Party Address)) Why is this important to know? Well – when you change the name of your ACS namespace, the name identifiers will change as well and you will will lose your “connection” to your existing users. Oh an btw – never use any other claims (like email address or name) to form a unique ID – these can often be changed by users.

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  • SQL SERVER – Backing Up and Recovering the Tail End of a Transaction Log – Notes from the Field #042

    - by Pinal Dave
    [Notes from Pinal]: The biggest challenge which people face is not taking backup, but the biggest challenge is to restore a backup successfully. I have seen so many different examples where users have failed to restore their database because they made some mistake while they take backup and were not aware of the same. Tail Log backup was such an issue in earlier version of SQL Server but in the latest version of SQL Server, Microsoft team has fixed the confusion with additional information on the backup and restore screen itself. Now they have additional information, there are a few more people confused as they have no clue about this. Previously they did not find this as a issue and now they are finding tail log as a new learning. Linchpin People are database coaches and wellness experts for a data driven world. In this 42nd episode of the Notes from the Fields series database expert Tim Radney (partner at Linchpin People) explains in a very simple words, Backing Up and Recovering the Tail End of a Transaction Log. Many times when restoring a database over an existing database SQL Server will warn you about needing to make a tail end of the log backup. This might be your reminder that you have to choose to overwrite the database or could be your reminder that you are about to write over and lose any transactions since the last transaction log backup. You might be asking yourself “What is the tail end of the transaction log”. The tail end of the transaction log is simply any committed transactions that have occurred since the last transaction log backup. This is a very crucial part of a recovery strategy if you are lucky enough to be able to capture this part of the log. Most organizations have chosen to accept some amount of data loss. You might be shaking your head at this statement however if your organization is taking transaction logs backup every 15 minutes, then your potential risk of data loss is up to 15 minutes. Depending on the extent of the issue causing you to have to perform a restore, you may or may not have access to the transaction log (LDF) to be able to back up those vital transactions. For example, if the storage array or disk that holds your transaction log file becomes corrupt or damaged then you wouldn’t be able to recover the tail end of the log. If you do have access to the physical log file then you can still back up the tail end of the log. In 2013 I presented a session at the PASS Summit called “The Ultimate Tail Log Backup and Restore” and have been invited back this year to present it again. During this session I demonstrate how you can back up the tail end of the log even after the data file becomes corrupt. In my demonstration I set my database offline and then delete the data file (MDF). The database can’t become more corrupt than that. I attempt to bring the database back online to change the state to RECOVERY PENDING and then backup the tail end of the log. I can do this by specifying WITH NO_TRUNCATE. Using NO_TRUNCATE is equivalent to specifying both COPY_ONLY and CONTINUE_AFTER_ERROR. It as its name says, does not try to truncate the log. This is a great demo however how could I achieve backing up the tail end of the log if the failure destroys my entire instance of SQL and all I had was the LDF file? During my demonstration I also demonstrate that I can attach the log file to a database on another instance and then back up the tail end of the log. If I am performing proper backups then my most recent full, differential and log files should be on a server other than the one that crashed. I am able to achieve this task by creating new database with the same name as the failed database. I then set the database offline, delete my data file and overwrite the log with my good log file. I attempt to bring the database back online and then backup the log with NO_TRUNCATE just like in the first example. I encourage each of you to view my blog post and watch the video demonstration on how to perform these tasks. I really hope that none of you ever have to perform this in production, however it is a really good idea to know how to do this just in case. It really isn’t a matter of “IF” you will have to perform a restore of a production system but more of a “WHEN”. Being able to recover the tail end of the log in these sever cases could be the difference of having to notify all your business customers of data loss or not. If you want me to take a look at your server and its settings, or if your server is facing any issue we can Fix Your SQL Server. Note: Tim has also written an excellent book on SQL Backup and Recovery, a must have for everyone. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Notes from the Field, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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  • Social Engagement: One Size Doesn't Fit Anyone

    - by Mike Stiles
    The key to achieving meaningful social engagement is to know who you’re talking to, know what they like, and consistently deliver that kind of material to them. Every magazine for women knows this. When you read the article titles promoted on their covers, there’s no mistaking for whom that magazine is intended. And yet, confusion still reigns at many brands as to exactly whom they want to talk to, what those people want to hear, and what kind of content they should be creating for them. In most instances, the root problem is brands want to be all things to all people. Their target audience…the world! Good luck with that. It’s 2012, the age of aggregation and custom content delivery. To cope with the modern day barrage of information, people have constructed technological filters so that content they regard as being “for them” is mostly what gets through. Even if your brand is for men and women, young and old, you may want to consider social properties that divide men from women, and young from old. Yes, a man might find something in a women’s magazine that interests him. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to subscribe to it, or buy even one issue. In fact he’ll probably never see the article he’d otherwise be interested in, because in his mind, “This isn’t for me.” It wasn’t packaged for him. News Flash: men and women are different. So it’s a tall order to craft your Facebook Page or Twitter handle to simultaneously exude the motivators for both. The Harris Interactive study “2012 Connecting and Communicating Online: State of Social Media” sheds light on the differing social behaviors and drivers. -65% of women (vs. 59% of men) stay glued to social because they don’t want to miss anything. -25% of women check social when they wake up, before they check email. Only 18% of men check social before e-mail. -95% of women surveyed belong to Facebook vs. 86% of men. -67% of women log in to Facebook once a day or more vs. 54% of men. -Conventional wisdom is Pinterest is mostly a woman-thing, right? That may be true for viewing, but not true for sharing. Men are actually more likely to share on Pinterest than women, 23% to 10%. -The sharing divide extends to YouTube. 68% of women use it mainly for consumption, as opposed to 52% of men. -Women are as likely to have a Twitter account as men, but they’re much less likely to check it often. 54% of women check it once a week compared to 2/3 of men. Obviously, there are some takeaways from this depending on your target. Women don’t want to miss out on anything, so serialized content might be a good idea, right? Promotional posts that lead to a big payoff could keep them hooked. Posts for women might be better served first thing in the morning. If sharing is your goal, maybe male-targeted content is more likely to get those desired shares. And maybe Twitter is a better place to aim your male-targeted content than Facebook. Some grocery stores started experimenting with male-only aisles. The results have been impressive. Why? Because while it’s true men were finding those same items in the store just fine before, now something has been created just for them. They have a place in the store where they belong. Each brand’s strategy and targets are going to differ. The point is…know who you’re talking to, know how they behave, know what they like, and deliver content using any number of social relationship management targeting tools that meets their expectations. If, however, you’re committed to a one-size-fits-all, “our content is for everybody” strategy (or even worse, a “this is what we want to put out and we expect everybody to love it” strategy), your content will miss the mark for more often than it hits. @mikestilesPhoto via stock.schng

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  • Clouds, Clouds, Clouds Everywhere, Not a Drop of Rain!

    - by sxkumar
    At the recently concluded Oracle OpenWorld 2012, the center of discussion was clearly Cloud. Over the five action packed days, I got to meet a large number of customers and most of them had serious interest in all things cloud.  Public Cloud - particularly the Oracle Cloud - clearly got a lot of attention and interest. I think the use cases and the value proposition for public cloud is pretty straight forward. However, when it comes to private cloud, there were some interesting revelations.  Well, I shouldn’t really call them revelations since they are pretty consistent with what I have heard from customers at other conferences as well as during 1:1 interactions. While the interest in enterprise private cloud remains to be very high, only a handful of enterprises have truly embarked on a journey to create what the purists would call true private cloud - with capabilities such as self-service and chargeback/show back. For a large majority, today's reality is simply consolidation and virtualization - and they are quite far off from creating an agile, self-service and transparent IT infrastructure which is what the enterprise cloud is all about.  Even a handful of those who have actually implemented a close-to-real enterprise private cloud have taken an infrastructure centric approach and are seeing only limited business upside. Quite a few were frank enough to admit that chargeback and self-service isn’t something that they see an immediate need for.  This is in quite contrast to the picture being painted by all those surveys out there that show a large number of enterprises having already implemented an enterprise private cloud.  On the face of it, this seems quite contrary to the observations outlined above. So what exactly is the reality? Well, the reality is that there is undoubtedly a huge amount of interest among enterprises about transforming their legacy IT environment - which is often seen as too rigid, too fragmented, and ultimately too expensive - to something more agile, transparent and business-focused. At the same time however, there is a great deal of confusion among CIOs and architects about how to get there. This isn't very surprising given all the buzz and hype surrounding cloud computing. Every IT vendor claims to have the most unique solution and there isn't a single IT product out there that does not have a cloud angle to it. Add to this the chatter on the blogosphere, it will get even a sane mind spinning.  Consequently, most  enterprises are still struggling to fully understand the concept and value of enterprise private cloud.  Even among those who have chosen to move forward relatively early, quite a few have made their decisions more based on vendor influence/preferences rather than what their businesses actually need.  Clearly, there is a disconnect between the promise of the enterprise private cloud and the current adoption trends.  So what is the way forward?  I certainly do not claim to have all the answers. But here is a perspective that many cloud practitioners have found useful and thus worth sharing. To take a step back, the fundamental premise of the enterprise private cloud is IT transformation. It is the quest to create a more agile, transparent and efficient IT infrastructure that is driven more by business needs rather than constrained by operational and procedural inefficiencies. It is the new way of delivering and consuming IT services - where the IT organizations operate more like enablers of  strategic services rather than just being the gatekeepers of IT resources. In an enterprise private cloud environment, IT organizations are expected to empower the end users via self-service access/control and provide the business stakeholders a transparent view of how the resources are being used, what’s the cost of delivering a given service, how well are the customers being served, etc.  But the most important thing to note here is the enterprise private cloud is not just an IT project, rather it is a business initiative to create an IT setup that is more aligned with the needs of today's dynamic and highly competitive business environment. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Just remember how the business users have been at the forefront of public cloud adoption within enterprises and private cloud is no exception.   Such a broad-based transformation makes cloud more than a technology initiative. It requires people (organizational) and process changes as well, and these changes are as critical as is the choice of right tools and technology. In my next blog,  I will share how essential it is for enterprise cloud technology to go hand-in hand with process re-engineering and organization changes to unlock true value of  enterprise cloud. I am sharing a short video from my session "Managing your private Cloud" at Oracle OpenWorld 2012. More videos from this session will be posted at the recently introduced Zero to Cloud resource page. Many other experts of Oracle enterprise private cloud solution will join me on this blog "Zero to Cloud"  and share best practices , deployment tips and information on how to plan, build, deploy, monitor, manage , meter and optimize the enterprise private cloud. We look forward to your feedback, suggestions and having an engaging conversion with you on this blog.

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  • Which functions in the C standard library commonly encourage bad practice?

    - by Ninefingers
    Hello all, This is inspired by this question and the comments on one particular answer in that I learnt that strncpy is not a very safe string handling function in C and that it pads zeros, until it reaches n, something I was unaware of. Specifically, to quote R.. strncpy does not null-terminate, and does null-pad the whole remainder of the destination buffer, which is a huge waste of time. You can work around the former by adding your own null padding, but not the latter. It was never intended for use as a "safe string handling" function, but for working with fixed-size fields in Unix directory tables and database files. snprintf(dest, n, "%s", src) is the only correct "safe strcpy" in standard C, but it's likely to be a lot slower. By the way, truncation in itself can be a major bug and in some cases might lead to privilege elevation or DoS, so throwing "safe" string functions that truncate their output at a problem is not a way to make it "safe" or "secure". Instead, you should ensure that the destination buffer is the right size and simply use strcpy (or better yet, memcpy if you already know the source string length). And from Jonathan Leffler Note that strncat() is even more confusing in its interface than strncpy() - what exactly is that length argument, again? It isn't what you'd expect based on what you supply strncpy() etc - so it is more error prone even than strncpy(). For copying strings around, I'm increasingly of the opinion that there is a strong argument that you only need memmove() because you always know all the sizes ahead of time and make sure there's enough space ahead of time. Use memmove() in preference to any of strcpy(), strcat(), strncpy(), strncat(), memcpy(). So, I'm clearly a little rusty on the C standard library. Therefore, I'd like to pose the question: What C standard library functions are used inappropriately/in ways that may cause/lead to security problems/code defects/inefficiencies? In the interests of objectivity, I have a number of criteria for an answer: Please, if you can, cite design reasons behind the function in question i.e. its intended purpose. Please highlight the misuse to which the code is currently put. Please state why that misuse may lead towards a problem. I know that should be obvious but it prevents soft answers. Please avoid: Debates over naming conventions of functions (except where this unequivocably causes confusion). "I prefer x over y" - preference is ok, we all have them but I'm interested in actual unexpected side effects and how to guard against them. As this is likely to be considered subjective and has no definite answer I'm flagging for community wiki straight away. I am also working as per C99.

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  • Bazaar newbie question about repository structures

    - by esc1729
    I want to use Bazaar on Windows XP for web-development and related tasks. Most of the files are edited locally and then transferred via FTP to the server. Just now the repository sits on my local workstation. Later on it should be shared locally with some co-workers. Perhaps we will use a local Linux server as a centralized repository, but this structure is not decided for now. But first I need to understand the impacts of the different repository setups, which I do not at all. Using Bazaar-Explorer on Windows XP I’ve created a ‘shared tree repository’ from the option list of the init-dialogue in some location dev-filter/. Bazaar Explorer tells me: Created repository with treeless branches at F:/bzr.local/dev-filter Created branch at F:/bzr.local/dev-filter/trunk Created working tree at F:/bzr.local/dev-filter/work OK so far. Now I move a bunch of files into the work directory and add and commit them as Rev 1 ‘Start Revision’. Then I work on some of these files and commit them again as Rev 2. Here my confusion starts. Shouldn’t both revisions go into the trunk? The trunk is still empty, beside the .bzr directory which only holds some management information. If I delete my working directory, which I have tried during these first experiments, everything is gone. There’s obviously no hidden storage of those files. OK. Perhaps I need to push it into the trunk? This does not work either. Entering the work/ directory and initializing the ‘push’ to the trunk, Bazaar-Explorer tells me No new revisions to push. So what? This looks like a severe conceptual misunderstanding about what should happen on my side. Edit, 2010-02-03: Some conclusions What I learned meanwhile is this: I think I should switch to the command line until I really understand what’s going on, at least for creating the repositories and branches. Bazaar Explorer introduces a new level of abstraction which I only can handle if I understand the level beneath One of the secrets of working with Bazaar at least for me is to understand those .bzr directories, their particular properties and states when created with ‘bzr init’, ‘bzr init-repository’, ‘bzr branch’ etc. in all their variants and how they are plumped together. While there’s a whole chapter of ‘Organizing your workspace’ in the Bazaar User Guide, it’s more or less workflow oriented. The manual contains a lot of directory structures for the given examples. What I would prefer beside this and have not (or only rudimentary) found so far is some graphical representation of those ‘Lego like’ .bzr building blocks which create the linking of all the parts. So I started to invent some simple notation while working through the examples and looking into the .bzr directories to document what information is stored there, where does it come from, how and to what is it linked, is it complete or shared, etc. Erich Schreiber

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  • UTF8 encoding not working when using ajax.

    - by Ronedog
    I recently changed some of my pages to be displayed via ajax and I am having some confusion as to why the utf8 encoding is now displaying a question mark inside of a box, whereas before it wasn't. Fore example. The oringal page was index.php. charset was explicitly set to utf8 and is in the <head>. I then used php to query the database Heres is the original index.php page: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> <title>Title here</title> </head> <body class='body_bgcolor' > <div id="main_container"> <?php Data displayed via php was simply a select statement that output the HTML. ?> </div> However, when I made the change to add a menu that populated the "main_container" via ajax all the utf8 encoding stopped working. Here's the new code: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> <title>Title here</title> </head> <body class='body_bgcolor' > <a href="#" onclick="display_html('about_us');"> About Us </a> <div id="main_container"></div> The "display_html()" function calls the javascript page which uses jquery ajax call to retrieve the html stored inside a php page, then places the html inside the div with an id of "main_container". I'm setting the charset in jquery to be utf8 like: $.ajax({ async: false, type: "GET", url: url, contentType: "charset=utf-8", success: function(data) { $("#main_container").html(data); } }); What am I doing wrong?

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