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• USB Device Not Recognized (Mac)

  - by Nargis

  Fortunately, my Mac-pro also made one of my USB storage devices inoperable. My data loss in that USB device but such as another USB device and USB keyboard are unaffected. I have heard that my friend usually trigger this problem by having at least two devices plugged in - typically thumb drives/USB flash drives, and then once a second flash drive is plugged in that become unrecognized. I have only two USB ports and first I think port loose when I connect two USB devices. But later I found these hidden files (“.Spotlight-V100”, “.TemporaryItems”, “.Trashes”, and “._.Trashes”) are created by Mac OS. And before unrecognized that USB device I have deleted these files and my friend had also done the same action. Now I don’t want to test for next USB device to become unrecognized and I won’t deleted any hidden system file inside the flash drives. But I really want to know why these problems happened. Can I delete these hidden files when I only connect to virtual machine (Vista), because I used to delete all useless hidden files from USB flash drives? Any suggestions or thoughts to prevent this or alternative suggestions to fix the problem that take lossless would be much appreciated.

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• Mac OS X will only upload zero-byte files through FTP

  - by tabacitu

  I'm using Mac OS X Lion and i've been having this problem with FTP (any FTP client, mind you. I tried Transmit, FileZilla, Cyberduck and the Terminal, all with the same result) I can browse files in my FTP Client, but when I upload files, the client hangs for a few seconds, then thinks it uploaded the files successfully, but it only creates a new file with one blank line in it. Sometimes, it manages to upload 4-5 lines. It then returns: 226 - Error during read from data connection 226 Transfer aborted But 2xx is a success message. It is not a server issue, since any Windows machine will upload just fine using the same network. Can anybody figure out what the problem is? It renders my mac useless for web development. The problem persists with SFTP and FTP with SSL/TLS. Later edit: Solved! Ok, turns out the problem goes away when I take out my router and connect directly through PPPoE. So the problem is with the router, I thought. But no, the problem is with the mac that connects through a router that connects through a PPPoE and tries to upload using FTP. Pretty specific, I know. The problem is with the MTU (maximum transmission unit). Apparently, mac os x breaks the file into chunks that are too large for the router to send, because the router's MTU was set lower than Mac OS X's. My router's was 1492, which is ok, but my Mac's MTU was 1500, which is unacceptable. I don't even understand why it works directly with PPPoE. Anyway, if you encounter the same problem, this is how you diagnose and fix it: In terminal, run: ifconfig | grep mtu to see what the MTU is for en0 (or en1, mine was en0) If it's 1500, run sudo ifconfig en0 mtu 1300 This should solve it. If so, it may only be until the next restart. You can also change the MTU in System Preferences \ Network \ Ethernet - Advanced \ Hardware

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• Linux: 3 Monitor PCI-e Graphics card (without tremendous pain)?

  - by N Rahl

  As we are all painfully aware, the only way to get multiple monitors AND compositing (Compiz) on Linux is to use a single graphics card that can drive both (or in my case all three) screens. I bought a Radeon 5750 specifically because it claims to able to drive 3 monitors. I can plug in 3 monitors (2 DVI, 1 HDMI) and the Catalyst Control Center shows all 3, but only 2 can be enabled at a time. I'll post the exact error message here soon, but it's very useless. So I'm going to assume that either the 5750 doesn't support 3 monitors, OR, more likely, ATI couldn't be bothered to add that support to their Linux drivers. So this is a multipart question: First, can anyone suggest a PCI Express Graphics card that can run 3 screens on linux without tremendous pain? I'm looking for something where you install the driver and all three screens "just work". Does such a card exist? Second, if you have a 5750, have you been able to get it to do 3 monitors? I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 at the moment. Thanks, Nick

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• Outlook 2010 - Missing New Mail Envelope Icon

  - by sdoca

  I've seen a number of posts related to this issue, but none with a solution that works for me. I have: Windows 7 Professional 64 bit Office/Outlook 2010 "Show an envelope icon in the taskbar" checked "Hide When Minmized" selected "Show icon and notifications" selected for Outlook in my taskbar settings This used to show me the envelope icon in my notifications area. Then something happened with my user profile and the sys admins created me a new one. Since then, the envelope only displays if Outlook is not minimized. It doesn't matter if I unselect "Hide When Minmized", the icon still doesn't display when new mail arrives. If I select "Display a Desktop Alert", then the icon is displayed. However, I HATE the desktop alert as I find it too intrusive/distracting. Is there some way to just get the envelope icon working (again)? UPDATE More testing and sometimes I will and sometimes I won't get an envelope icon with the desktop alert turned on. This is driving me nuts!! UPDATE TWO I like my notification area of the taskbar to be clean. So, all icons are set to "Only show notifications" except for Outlook as noted above. I've noticed the envelope icon is being displayed in the expanded notification area when I click on the up arrow to view all icons. So, it is being added to the notification area, but not displayed. It's a rather useless feature now...

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• Safe to remove Python2.6 files?

  - by darkfeline

  I'm using Linux Mint 11 (will upgrade soon), and I've noticed that, even though I don't have any python2.6 packages installed with apt, there's a bunch of residual python2.6 files scattered around my drive, including, but not limited to, dist-packages in /usr/lib/python2.6 and various /usr/share stuff. Is there any way to test if these files are still being used? I'm tempted to sudo rm -rf the lot of them, but I'm scared it'll break stuff. Also, does anyone have any idea where these files could have come from? I believe I had python2.6 installed once upon a time, but I made sure to --purge them, so there shouldn't be any trace of them left, right? EDIT: after using a quick script to check all of the files, it appears most of them belong to important packages, so I won't try weeding out the few which I know are probably useless. Although I am curious why so many packages have python2.6 files when I don't even have it installed. These files are not associated with any packages and I'm not sure if they are safe to remove: /usr/bin/ipython2.6 /usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/distribute-0.6.15.egg-info /usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/easy_install.py /usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/IPython /usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/ipython-0.10.1.egg-info /usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/setuptools /usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/setuptools.egg-info /usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/setuptools.pth /usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/site.py /usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/wx.pth /usr/local/lib/python2.6 /usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages /usr/local/lib/python2.6/site-packages /usr/share/man/man1/ipython2.6.1.gz

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• Tuning Linux + HAProxy

  - by react

  I'm currently rolling out HAProxy on Centos 6 which will send requests to some Apache HTTPD servers and I'm having issues with performance. I've spent the last couple of days googling and still can't seem to get past 10k/sec connections consistently when benchmarking (sometimes I do get 30k/sec though). I've pinned the IRQ's of the TX/RX queues for both the internal and external NICS to separate CPU cores and made sure HAProxy is pinned to it's own core. I've also made the following adjustments to sysctl.conf: # Max open file descriptors fs.file-max = 331287 # TCP Tuning net.ipv4.tcp_tw_reuse = 1 net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65023 net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog = 10240 net.ipv4.tcp_max_tw_buckets = 400000 net.ipv4.tcp_max_orphans = 60000 net.ipv4.tcp_synack_retries = 3 net.core.somaxconn = 40000 net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 4096 8192 16384 net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 4096 8192 16384 net.ipv4.tcp_mem = 65536 98304 131072 net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 40000 net.ipv4.tcp_tw_reuse = 1 If I use AB to hit the a webserver directly I easily get 30k/s connections. If I stop the webservers and use AB to hit HAProxy then I get 30k/s connections but obviously it's useless. I've also disabled iptables for now since I read that nf_conntrack can slow everything down, no change. I've also disabled the irqbalance service. The fact that I can hit each individual device with 30k/s makes me believe the tuning of the servers is OK and that it must be some HAProxy config? Here's the config which I've built from reading tuning articles, etc http://pastebin.com/zsCyAtgU The server is a dual Xeon CPU E5-2620 (6 cores) with 32GB of RAM. Running Centos 6.2 x64. The private and public interfaces are on separate NICS. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks.

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• Does Google sometimes ignore "special" characters, possibly depending on your location or font type settings? [closed]

  - by RLH

  TLDR Google tends to ignore special characters in my search strings. Is there anything that I can do about it and is it, possibly, happening because Google makes certain assumptions based off of my default text-encoding settings and my location? I just posted this question over at StackOverflow. I had found a C preprocessor that I'd never seen before. As I should have done, I Googled it and tried to find out further information. I attempted various search terms which were all variations of "C Operator ##" (some times with and some times without the double-quotes.) Google didn't bring back anything of use so I posted my question on SO. As you can see from the comments, someone mentioned a search string (ironically one which I did try to search) and stated that I could have even hit the "I'm feeling lucky" button and have gotten my answer. The problem is I did search that, and the results that I received were far more basic and even after following the top results and searching the resulting pages, I could find nothing referencing the string "##". I'm not posting this question to complain but it does provide an empirical example of something I've seen before that really bugs me-- Google often ignores special characters in my search strings and the results are often useless. As a developer I often need to search for string values containing non-alphanumeric characters. Some characters (like the underscore or hyphen) can be used without trouble. However, other characters (such as the ampersand, carat, tilde and pound sign) are often ignored in my query strings. Is there a way to prevent this from happening so that I can get meaningful results from Google? NOTE I stay logged into Google and I live in the US. I wonder if Google detects some form of text-encoding setting or derives my results based off of certain, localized text-based assumptions. Regardless, I would like to for Google to search for what I give it. Is there anything that I can do to improve my results?

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• How do you permanently disable the 'This Connection is Untrusted' page on Firefox

  - by TheIronChef9

  I'm going insane. Can someone please help me to COMPLETELY DISABLE the 'This Connection is Untrusted' page on Firefox. Facts: I am running Firefox 23.0 on an Ubuntu machine (downloaded and installed ubuntu today) It is a work computer and I have to use my employer's proxy While visiting Webpages/webapps like Gmail or Google brings up the 'This Connection is Untrusted' page and I have to go through the whole tedious task of selecting 'I understand the Risks' and add Exceptions, etc. etc. The fact is, I don't care about the risks. I would rather this computer melt into the ground than have to see that page ever again. I want to dance naked in untrusted pages and not give a damn about the consequences. I just never want to see that page again. Ever. For some sites (eg. wikipedia), the css doesn't load and I end up seeing them in plain text. As a result these sites are completely useless. Wasted hours trying to solve this for stackoverflow.com. These issues happen on the Firefox on my Windows XP machine as well (also using the same proxy). I don't want to export/import certificates or create exceptions for every site that shows this bloody page. I just want this page gone. I don't want Firefox to tell me what's safe and what's not. Also, my system time and date are correct. I've also tried the lies on this page too with no good results. Edit: I've also tried the whole going into the Advance-Certificates-validation setup page and unchecked 'Use the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) to confirm the current validity of certificates' checkbox. Nothing happened even after restarting firefox or rebooting. I need help. Thanks.

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• Does OS X support linux-like features?

  - by Xeoncross

  I have been using XP for almost a decade. Contrary to popular belief, it has served me well. In the last 4 years I don't remember ever having it crash on me. It has the most stable GUI I have ever used. However, an OS is only as good as it's GUI AND command line combined. Windows command line is awful and totally useless. So I have been using Ubuntu for a couple years and Debian on my servers. The only problem is that Gnome applications (ubuntu 6-10) constantly crash on me (Ubuntu Studio was the most unstable OS I ever used). I have high quality Gigabyte, MSI, and Asus motherboards and CPU's from old Semprons/Athlons to Celerons/Core 2 Quads. What are the odds that every PC I have ever owned can't remain stable with a linux GUI? Not to mention that Adobe CSx Suite doesn't work on linux. Anyway, I am now looking at moving to a MAC in the hope of finding a stable GUI and a feature-packed command line. Does Mac OS have an integrated command line where I can do linux-like-awesomeness like rsync, ssh, wget, crong jobs, package updates, and git without having an unstable GUI? Basically, until the linux GUI applications get a little better, is OS X what I need?

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• How to get a list of Dovecot IMAP users

  - by Colt McCormack

  How do you get a list of users for a dovecot email server that connect via IMAP (as opposed to POP)? Our server is setup to authenticate via LDAP/PAM. Is there an easy way to get a list of the users who are accessing their mail via IMAP, rather than POP? I am about to migrate our server to Google Apps and want to migrate all of the mail for my IMAP users only (couple hundred out of several hundred total users). POP mail will be migrated separately from the client end obviously. I would much rather migrate only the IMAP users rather than the whole domain which would include migrating a bunch of POP mail left in the server that has already been read/sorted/deleted in the client's email program. Migrating all of that extra useless leftover POP mail could waste weeks of migration time. I suppose parsing some logs to see who has connected on an IMAP port (995 or 993) would give me a list would work if someone could help me do that. I know I have the raw dovecot logs, but am hoping for a cleaner solution.

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• Subversion: Secure connection truncated

  - by Nick

  Hi, I'm trying to set-up a subversion server with apache2/webdav access. I've created the repository and configure Apache according to the official book, and I can see the repository in a webbrowser. The browser shows: conf/ db/ hooks/ locks/ Although clicking any of those links gives an empty xml document like: <D:error> <C:error/> <m:human-readable errcode="2"> Could not open the requested SVN filesystem </m:human-readable> </D:error> I've never used subversion before so I assume this is correct? Anyway, when I try to connect via a command line client, it asks for my password, I give it, then I get the (useless) error message: svn: OPTIONS of 'https://svn.mysite.com': Could not read status line: Secure connection truncated (https://svn.mysite.com) The command I'm using is: svn checkout https://svn.mysite.com/ svn.mysite.com Subversion was installed using Ubuntu's package manager. It's version 1.6.6 on Ubuntu 10.04. My Virtualhost Cofiguration: <VirtualHost 123.123.12.12:443> ServerAdmin [email protected] ServerName svn.mysite.com <Location /> DAV svn SVNParentPath /var/svn/repos SVNListParentPath On AuthType Basic AuthName "Subversion Repository" AuthUserFile /etc/subversion/passwd Require valid-user </Location> # Setup The SSL Certificate Paths SSLEngine On SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/mysite.com.crt SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/dmysite.com.key </VirtualHost>

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• What character can be safely used for naming files on unix/linux?

  - by Eric DANNIELOU

  Before yesterday, I used only lower case letters, numbers, dot (.) and underscore(_) for directories and file naming. Today I would like to start using more special characters. Which ones are safe (by safe I mean I will never have any problem)? ps : I can't believe this question hasn't been asked already on this site, but I've searched for the word "naming" and read canonical questions without success (mosts are about computer names). Edit #1 : (btw, I don't use upper case letters for file names. I don't remember why. But since a few month, I have production problems with upper case letters : Some OS do not support ascii!) Here's what happened yesterday at work : As usual, I had to create a self signed SSL certificate. As usual, I used the name of the website for the files : www2.example.com.key www2.example.com.crt www2.example.com.csr. Then comes the problem : Generate a wildcard self signed certificate. I did that and named the files example.com.key example.com.crt example.com.csr, which is misleading (it's a certificate for *.example.com). I came back home, started putting some stars in apache configuration files filenames and see if it works (on a useless home computer, not even stagging). Stars in file names really scares me : Some coworkers/vendors/... can do some script using rm find xarg that would lead to http://www.ucs.cam.ac.uk/support/unix-support/misc/horror, and already one answer talks about disaster. Edit #2 : Just figured that : does not need to be escaped. Anyone knows why it is not used in file names?

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• Partition Magic 8 made TrueCrypt partition invisible

  - by gmancoda

  Partition Magic 8 took a dump on my TrueCrypt partition... and I let it happen! And now I am left with cleaning up the mess. In short, my encrypted partition is now invisible. TestDisk analysis says of the disk containing the encrypted partition: "Space conflict between the following two partitions". From the googling and searching on various sites, I have learned the following: Hex editing is beyond me. Partition recovery tools are useless. I am not ready to drop the big bucks for professional help. ... that I should have kept an external backup of the Volume header. Now, to get back the volume header, I am planning on recreating the exact same partitions on a new disk of the exact same model, and then encrypting it with the exact same password/keyfiles, and then exporting its volume header to a file. Finally, I hope to be able to restore this volume header on to my damaged drive. Before I undertake this plan, I would like to know if anyone else out there has tried it and, if so, how successful they were. All other suggestions and tips and welcome!! Thanks.

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• ip6tables blocking output traffic

  - by jmccrohan

  My OpenVZ VPS is blocking outbound IPv6 traffic, but correctly filtering inbound IPv6 traffic. Below is my ip6tables-restore script. *filter :INPUT ACCEPT [0:0] :FORWARD ACCEPT [0:0] :OUTPUT ACCEPT [0:0] -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -p ipv6-icmp -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 1194 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 51413 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 51413 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -m limit --limit 5/min -A INPUT -j REJECT --reject-with icmp6-adm-prohibited -A FORWARD -j ACCEPT -A OUTPUT -j ACCEPT COMMIT ICMPv6 traffic is still able to pass both inbound and outbound. When I flush these rules using -F, outbound traffic flows fine. What am I missing here? EDIT: It appears that ip6tables is marking ESTABLISHED packets as INVALID. Consequently, the outbound traffic is NOT actually being blocked. The reply packets are not allowed inbound again, hence appearing like blocked outbound traffic. Allowing INVALID packets inbound solves the outbound issue, but also renders the inbound filter useless.

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• cannot connect to my nginx server from remote machine

  - by margincall

  I thought that it's iptables problem.. but it seems not. I really have no idea about this situation. I'm getting a server hosting(CentOS). I installed Nginx + Django and nginx uses 8080 port. A domain is connected to the server. When I executed "wget [domain]:8080/[app name]/" in the server, it worked. Of course, "wget 127.0.0.1:8080/[app name]/" has no problem. (wget [server ip]:8080/[app name]/, either) However, from other computers, connecting was failed. (message says, no route) I checked my firewall setting. I excuted these commands. iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 8080 -j ACCEPT iptables -I OUTPUT -p tcp --sport 8080 -j ACCEPT iptables -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 8080 -j ACCEPT /etc/init.d/iptables restart I don't really understand all options of commands and I think there were useless commands, but I just tried all googled iptables settings. But still I cannot connect to my server. What should I check, first? I don't know this is important, but add to this post. On 80 port, an apache server is running. It works fine, I can connect to apache from other computers. There is DB connecting issue, (PHP to MySQL) but I think that it is just PHP coding bug. please excuse my low-level English. I'm not native English speaker.. but I tried to explane well as far as possible. Thank you for reading this question.

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• What makes them click ?

  - by Piet

  The other day (well, actually some weeks ago while relaxing at the beach in Kos) I read ‘Neuro Web Design - What makes them click?’ by Susan Weinschenk. (http://neurowebbook.com) The book is a fast and easy read (no unnecessary filler) and a good introduction on how your site’s visitors can be steered in the direction you want them to go. The Obvious The book handles some of the more known/proven techniques, like for example that ratings/testimonials of other people can help sell your product or service. Another well known technique it talks about is inducing a sense of scarcity/urgency in the visitor. Only 2 seats left! Buy now and get 33% off! It’s not because these are known techniques that they stop working. Luckily 2/3rd of the book handles less obvious techniques, otherwise it wouldn’t be worth buying. The Not So Obvious A less known influencing technique is reciprocity. And then I’m not talking about swapping links with another website, but the fact that someone is more likely to do something for you after you did something for them first. The book cites some studies (I always love the facts and figures) and gives some actual examples of how to implement this in your site’s design, which is less obvious when you think about it. Want to know more ? Buy the book! Other interesting sources For a more general introduction to the same principles, I’d suggest ‘Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion’. ‘Yes!…’ cites some of the same studies (it seems there’s a rather limited pool of studies covering this subject), but of course doesn’t show how to implement these techniques in your site’s design. I read ‘Yes!…’ last year, making ‘Neuro Web Design’ just a little bit less interesting. !!!Always make sure you’re able to measure your changes. If you haven’t yet, check out the advanced segmentation in Google Analytics (don’t be afraid because it says ‘beta’, it works just fine) and Google Website Optimizer. Worth Buying? Can I recommend it ? Sure, why not. I think it can be useful for anyone who ever had to think about the design or content of a site. You don’t have to be a marketing guy to want a site you’re involved with to be successful. The content/filler ratio is excellent too: you don’t need to wade through dozens of pages to filter out the interesting bits. (unlike ‘The Design of Sites’, which contains too much useless info and because it’s in dead-tree format, you can’t google it) If you like it, you might also check out ‘Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion’. Tip for people living in Europe: check Amazon UK for your book buying needs. Because of the low UK Pound exchange rate, it’s usually considerably cheaper and faster to get a book delivered to your doorstep by Amazon UK compared to having to order it at the local book store or web-shop.

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• Pie Charts Just Don't Work When Comparing Data - Number 10 of Top 10 Reasons to Never Ever Use a Pie

  - by Tony Wolfram

  When comparing data, which is what a pie chart is for, people have a hard time judging the angles and areas of the multiple pie slices in order to calculate how much bigger one slice is than the others. Pie Charts Don't Work A slice of pie is good for serving up a portion of desert. It's not good for making a judgement about how big the slice is, what percentage of 100 it is, or how it compares to other slices. People have trouble comparing angles and areas to each other. Controlled studies show that people will overestimate the percentage that a pie slice area represents. This is because we have trouble calculating the area based on the space between the two angles that define the slice. This picture shows how a pie chart is useless in determing the largest value when you have to compare pie slices.   You can't compare angles and slice areas to each other. Human perception and cognition is poor when viewing angles and areas and trying to make a mental comparison. Pie charts overload the working memory, forcing the person to make complicated calculations, and at the same time make a decision based on those comparisons. What's the point of showing a pie chart when you want to compare data, except to say, "well, the slices are almost the same, but I'm not really sure which one is bigger, or by how much, or what order they are from largest to smallest. But the colors sure are pretty. Plus, I like round things. Oh,was I suppose to make some important business decision? Sorry." Bad Choices and Bad Decisions Interaction Designers, Graphic Artists, Report Builders, Software Developers, and Executives have all made the decision to use pie charts in their reports, software applications, and dashboards. It was a bad decision. It was a poor choice. There are always better options and choices, yet the designer still made the decision to use a pie chart. I'll expore why people make such poor choices in my upcoming blog entires. (Hint: It has more to do with emotions than with analytical thinking.) I've outlined my opinions and arguments about the evils of using pie charts in "Countdown of Top 10 Reasons to Never Ever Use a Pie Chart." Each of my next 10 blog entries will support these arguments with illustrations, examples, and references to studies. But my goal is not to continuously and endlessly rage against the evils of using pie charts. This blog is not about pie charts. This blog is about understanding why designers choose to use a pie chart. Why, when give better alternatives, and acknowledging the shortcomings of pie charts, do designers over and over again still freely choose to place a pie chart in a report? As an extra treat and parting shot, check out the nice pie chart that Wikipedia uses to illustrate the United States population by state.   Remember, somebody chose to use this pie chart, with all its glorious colors, and post it on Wikipedia for all the world to see. My next blog will give you a better alternative for displaying comparable data - the sorted bar chart.

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• Multiplayer / Networking options for a 2D game with physics

  - by lahmas

  Summary: My 50% finished 2D sidescroller with Box2D as physics engine should have multiplayer support in the final version. However, the current code is just a singleplayer game. What should I do now? And more important, how should I implement multiplayer and combine it with singleplayer? Is it a bad idea to code the singleplayer mode separated from multiplayer mode (like Notch did it with Minecraft)? The performance in singleplayer should be as good as possible (Simulating physics with using a loopback server to implement singleplayer mode would be a problem there) Full background / questions: I'm working on a relatively large 2D game project in C++, with physics as a core element of it. (I use Box2D for that) The finished game should have full multiplayer support, however I made the mistake that I didn't plan the networking part properly and basically worked on a singleplayer game until now. I thought that multiplayer support could be added to the almost finished singleplayer game in a relatively easy and clear way, but apparently, from what I have read this is wrong. I even read that a multiplayer game should be programmed as one from the beginning, with the singleplayer mode actually just consisting of hosting an invisible local server and connecting to it via loopback. (I found out that most FPS game engines do it that way, an example would be Source) So here I am, with my half finished 2D sidescroller game, and I don't really know how to go on. Simply continueing to work on the singleplayer / client seems useless to me now, as I'd have to recode and refactor even more later. First, a general question to anybody who possibly found himself in a situation like this: How should I proceed? Then, the more specific one - I have been trying to find out how I can approach the networking part for my game: (Possible solutions:) Invisible / loopback server for singleplayer This would have the advantage that there basically is no difference between singleplayer and multiplayer mode. Not much additional code would be needed. A big disadvantage: Performance and other limitations in singleplayer. There would be two physics simulations running. One for the client and one for the loopback server. Even if you work around by providing a direct path for the data from the loopback server, through direct communcation by the threads for example, the singleplayer would be limited. This is a problem because people should be allowed to play around with masses of objects at once. Separated singleplayer / Multiplayer mode There would be no server involved in singleplayer mode. I'm not really sure how this would work. But at least I think that there would be a lot of additional work, because all of the singleplayer features would have to be re-implemented or glued to multiplayer mode. Multiplayer mode as a module for singleplayer This is merely a quick thought I had. Multiplayer could consist of a singleplayer game, with an additional networking module loaded and connected to a server, which sends and receives data and updates the singleplayer world. In the retrospective, I regret not having planned the multiplayer mode earlier. I'm really stuck at this point and I hope that somebody here is able to help me!

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• Cross platform application revolution

  - by anirudha

  Every developer know that if they make a windows application that they work only on windows. that’s a small pity thing we all know. this is a lose point for windows application who make developer thing small means only for windows and other only for mac. this is a big point behind success of web because who purchase a operating system if they want to use a application on other platform. why they purchase when they can’t try them. that’s a thing better in Web means IE 6 no problem IE 6 to IE 8 chrome to chrome 8 Firefox to Firefox 3.6.13 even that’s beta no problem the good website is shown as same as other browser. some minor difference may be can see. the cross platform application development thinking is much big then making a application who is only for some audience. the difference between audience make by OS what they use Windows or mac. if they use mac they can’t use this they use windows they can’t use this. Web for Everyone starting from a children to grandfather. male and female Everyone can use internet.no worrying what you have even you have Windows or mac , any browser even as silly IE 6. the cross platform have a good thing that “People”. everyone can use them without a problem that. just like some time problem come in windows that “some component is missing click here to get them” , you can’t use this [apps] software because you have windows sp1 , sp2  sp3. you need to install this first before this. this stupidity mainly comes in Microsoft software. in last year i found a issue on WPI that they force user to install another software when they get them from WPI. ex:- you need to install Visual studio 2008 before installing Visual studio 2010 express. are anyone tell me why user get old version 2008 when they get latest and express version. i never try again their to check the issue is solved or not. a another thing is you can’t get IE 9 on windows XP version. in that’case don’t thing and worrying about them because Firefox and Chrome is much better. the stupidity from Microsoft is too much. they never told you about Firebug even sometime they discuss about damage tool in IE they called them developer tool because they are Microsoft and they only thing how they can market their products. you need to install many thing without any reason such as many SQL server component even you use other RDBMS. you can’t say no to them because you need a tool and tool require a useless component called SQL server. i never found any software force me to install this for this and this for this before install me. that’s another good thing in WEB that no thing require i means you not need to install dotnet framework 4 before enjoy facebook or twitter. may be you found out that Microsoft's fail project Window planet force you to get silverlight before going their. i never hear about them. some month ago my friend talked to me about them i found nothing better their. Wha’t user do when facebook force user to install silverlight or adobe flash or may be Microsoft dotnet framework 4. if you not install them facebook tell  you bye bye tata ! never come here before installing Microsoft dotnet framework 4. the door is open for you after installing them not before. the story is same as “ tell me sorry before coming in home” as mother says to their child when they do something wrong. the web never force you to do something for them. sometime they allow you to use other website account their that’s very fast login for you. because they know the importance of your time.

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• Asynchrony in C# 5: Dataflow Async Logger Sample

  - by javarg

  Check out this (very simple) code examples for TPL Dataflow. Suppose you are developing an Async Logger to register application events to different sinks or log writers. The logger architecture would be as follow: Note how blocks can be composed to achieved desired behavior. The BufferBlock<T> is the pool of log entries to be process whereas linked ActionBlock<TInput> represent the log writers or sinks. The previous composition would allows only one ActionBlock to consume entries at a time. Implementation code would be something similar to (add reference to System.Threading.Tasks.Dataflow.dll in %User Documents%\Microsoft Visual Studio Async CTP\Documentation): TPL Dataflow Logger var bufferBlock = new BufferBlock<Tuple<LogLevel, string>>(); ActionBlock<Tuple<LogLevel, string>> infoLogger =     new ActionBlock<Tuple<LogLevel, string>>(         e => Console.WriteLine("Info: {0}", e.Item2)); ActionBlock<Tuple<LogLevel, string>> errorLogger =     new ActionBlock<Tuple<LogLevel, string>>(         e => Console.WriteLine("Error: {0}", e.Item2)); bufferBlock.LinkTo(infoLogger, e => (e.Item1 & LogLevel.Info) != LogLevel.None); bufferBlock.LinkTo(errorLogger, e => (e.Item1 & LogLevel.Error) != LogLevel.None); bufferBlock.Post(new Tuple<LogLevel, string>(LogLevel.Info, "info message")); bufferBlock.Post(new Tuple<LogLevel, string>(LogLevel.Error, "error message")); Note the filter applied to each link (in this case, the Logging Level selects the writer used). We can specify message filters using Predicate functions on each link. Now, the previous sample is useless for a Logger since Logging Level is not exclusive (thus, several writers could be used to process a single message). Let´s use a Broadcast<T> buffer instead of a BufferBlock<T>. Broadcast Logger var bufferBlock = new BroadcastBlock<Tuple<LogLevel, string>>(     e => new Tuple<LogLevel, string>(e.Item1, e.Item2)); ActionBlock<Tuple<LogLevel, string>> infoLogger =     new ActionBlock<Tuple<LogLevel, string>>(         e => Console.WriteLine("Info: {0}", e.Item2)); ActionBlock<Tuple<LogLevel, string>> errorLogger =     new ActionBlock<Tuple<LogLevel, string>>(         e => Console.WriteLine("Error: {0}", e.Item2)); ActionBlock<Tuple<LogLevel, string>> allLogger =     new ActionBlock<Tuple<LogLevel, string>>(     e => Console.WriteLine("All: {0}", e.Item2)); bufferBlock.LinkTo(infoLogger, e => (e.Item1 & LogLevel.Info) != LogLevel.None); bufferBlock.LinkTo(errorLogger, e => (e.Item1 & LogLevel.Error) != LogLevel.None); bufferBlock.LinkTo(allLogger, e => (e.Item1 & LogLevel.All) != LogLevel.None); bufferBlock.Post(new Tuple<LogLevel, string>(LogLevel.Info, "info message")); bufferBlock.Post(new Tuple<LogLevel, string>(LogLevel.Error, "error message")); As this block copies the message to all its outputs, we need to define the copy function in the block constructor. In this case we create a new Tuple, but you can always use the Identity function if passing the same reference to every output. Try both scenarios and compare the results.

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• Anatomy of a serialization killer

  - by Brian Donahue

  As I had mentioned last month, I have been working on a project to create an easy-to-use managed debugger. It's still an internal tool that we use at Red Gate as part of product support to analyze application errors on customer's computers, and as such, should be easy to use and not require installation. Since the project has got rather large and important, I had decided to use SmartAssembly to protect all of my hard work. This was trivial for the most part, but the loading and saving of results was broken by SA after using the obfuscation, rendering the loading and saving of XML results basically useless, although the merging and error reporting was an absolute godsend and definitely worth the price of admission. (Well, I get my Red Gate licenses for free, but you know what I mean!)My initial reaction was to simply exclude the serializable results class and all of its' members from obfuscation, and that was just dandy, but a few weeks on I decided to look into exactly why serialization had broken and change the code to work with SA so I could write any new code to be compatible with SmartAssembly and save me some additional testing and changes to the SA project.In simple terms, SA does all that it can to prevent serialization problems, for instance, it will not obfuscate public members of a DLL and it will exclude any types with the Serializable attribute from obfuscation. This prevents public members and properties from being made private and having the name changed. If the serialization is done inside the executable, however, public members have the access changed to private and are renamed. That was my first problem, because my types were in the executable assembly and implemented ISerializable, but did not have the Serializable attribute set on them!public class RedFlagResults : ISerializable        {        }The second problem caused by the pruning feature. Although RedFlagResults had public members, they were not truly properties, and used the GetObjectData() method of ISerializable to serialize the members. For that reason, SA could not exclude these members from pruning and further broke the serialization. public class RedFlagResults : ISerializable        {                public List<RedFlag.Exception> Exceptions;                 #region ISerializable Members                 public void GetObjectData(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)                {                                info.AddValue("Exceptions", Exceptions);                }                 #endregionSo to fix this, it was necessary to make Exceptions a proper property by implementing get and set on it. Also, I added the Serializable attribute so that I don't have to exclude the class from obfuscation in the SA project any more. The DoNotPrune attribute means I do not need to exclude the class from pruning.[Serializable, SmartAssembly.Attributes.DoNotPrune]        public class RedFlagResults        {                public List<RedFlag.Exception> Exceptions {get;set;}        }Similarly, the Exception class gets the Serializable and DoNotPrune attributes applied so all of its' properties are excluded from obfuscation.Now my project has some protection from prying eyes by scrambling up the code so it's harder to reverse-engineer, without breaking anything. SmartAssembly has also provided the benefit of merging so that the end-user doesn't need to extract all of the DLL files needed by RedFlag into a directory, and can be run directly from the .zip archive. When an error occurs (hey, I'm only human!), an exception report can be sent to me so I can see what went wrong without having to, er, debug the debugger.

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• How the "migrations" approach makes database continuous integration possible

  - by David Atkinson

  Testing a database upgrade script as part of a continuous integration process will only work if there is an easy way to automate the generation of the upgrade scripts. There are two common approaches to managing upgrade scripts. The first is to maintain a set of scripts as-you-go-along. Many SQL developers I've encountered will store these in a folder prefixed numerically to ensure they are ordered as they are intended to be run. Occasionally there is an accompanying document or a batch file that ensures that the scripts are run in the defined order. Writing these scripts during the course of development requires discipline. It's all too easy to load up the table designer and to make a change directly to the development database, rather than to save off the ALTER statement that is required when the same change is made to production. This discipline can add considerable overhead to the development process. However, come the end of the project, everything is ready for final testing and deployment. The second development paradigm is to not do the above. Changes are made to the development database without considering the incremental update scripts required to effect the changes. At the end of the project, the SQL developer or DBA, is tasked to work out what changes have been made, and to hand-craft the upgrade scripts retrospectively. The end of the project is the wrong time to be doing this, as the pressure is mounting to ship the product. And where data deployment is involved, it is prudent not to feel rushed. Schema comparison tools such as SQL Compare have made this latter technique more bearable. These tools work by analyzing the before and after states of a database schema, and calculating the SQL required to transition the database. Problem solved? Not entirely. Schema comparison tools are huge time savers, but they have their limitations. There are certain changes that can be made to a database that can't be determined purely from observing the static schema states. If a column is split, how do we determine the algorithm required to copy the data into the new columns? If a NOT NULL column is added without a default, how do we populate the new field for existing records in the target? If we rename a table, how do we know we've done a rename, as we could equally have dropped a table and created a new one? All the above are examples of situations where developer intent is required to supplement the script generation engine. SQL Source Control 3 and SQL Compare 10 introduced a new feature, migration scripts, allowing developers to add custom scripts to replace the default script generation behavior. These scripts are committed to source control alongside the schema changes, and are associated with one or more changesets. Before this capability was introduced, any schema change that required additional developer intent would break any attempt at auto-generation of the upgrade script, rendering deployment testing as part of continuous integration useless. SQL Compare will now generate upgrade scripts not only using its diffing engine, but also using the knowledge supplied by developers in the guise of migration scripts. In future posts I will describe the necessary command line syntax to leverage this feature as part of an automated build process such as continuous integration.

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• Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and things I were more intuitive

  - by pjohnson

  I've started using Windows Workflow Foundation, and so far ran into a few things that aren't incredibly obvious. Microsoft did a good job of providing a ton of samples, which is handy because you need them to get anywhere with WF. The docs are thin, so I've been bouncing between samples and downloadable labs to figure out how to implement various activities in a workflow. Code separation or not? You can create a workflow and activity in Visual Studio with or without code separation, i.e. just a .cs "Component" style object with a Designer.cs file, or a .xoml XML markup file with code behind (beside?) it. Absence any obvious advantage to one or the other, I used code separation for workflows and any complex custom activities, and without code separation for custom activities that just inherit from the Activity class and thus don't have anything special in the designer. So far, so good. Service - In the WF world, this is simply a class that talks to the workflow about things outside the workflow, not to be confused with how the term "service" is used in every other context I've seen in the Windows and .NET world, i.e. an executable that waits for events or requests from a client and services them (Windows service, web service, WCF service, etc.). ListenActivity - Such a great concept, yet so unintuitive. It seems you need at least two branches (EventDrivenActivity instances), one for your positive condition and one for a timeout. The positive condition has a HandleExternalEventActivity, and the timeout has a DelayActivity followed by however you want to handle the delay, e.g. a ThrowActivity. The timeout is simple enough; wiring up the HandleExternalEventActivity is where things get fun. You need to create a service (see above), and an interface for that service (this seems more complex than should be necessary--why not have activities just wire to a service directly?). And you need to create a custom EventArgs class that inherits from ExternalDataEventArgs--you can't create an ExternalDataEventArgs event handler directly, even if you don't need to add any more information to the event args, despite ExternalDataEventArgs not being marked as an abstract class, nor a compiler error nor warning nor any other indication that you're doing something wrong, until you run it and find that it always times out and get to check every place mentioned here to see why. Your interface and service need an event that consumes your custom EventArgs class, and a method to fire that event. You need to call that method from somewhere. Then you get to hope that you did everything just right, or that you can step through code in the debugger before your Delay timeout expires. Yes, it's as much fun as it sounds. TransactionScopeActivity - I had the bright idea of putting one in as a placeholder, then filling in the database updates later. That caused this error: The workflow hosting environment does not have a persistence service as required by an operation on the workflow instance "[GUID]". ...which is about as helpful as "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" and even more fun to debug. Google led me to this Microsoft Forums hit, and from there I figured out it didn't like that the activity had no children. Again, a Validator on TransactionScopeActivity would have pointed this out to me at design time, rather than handing me a nearly useless error at runtime. Easily enough, I disabled the activity and that fixed it. I still see huge potential in my work where WF could make things easier and more flexible, but there are some seriously rough edges at the moment. Maybe I'm just spoiled by how much easier and more intuitive development elsewhere in the .NET Framework is.

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• The theory of evolution applied to software

  - by Michel Grootjans

  I recently realized the many parallels you can draw between the theory of evolution and evolving software. Evolution is not the proverbial million monkeys typing on a million typewriters, where one of them comes up with the complete works of Shakespeare. We would have noticed by now, since the proverbial monkeys are now blogging on the Internet ;-) One of the main ideas of the theory of evolution is the balance between random mutations and natural selection. Random mutations happen all the time: millions of mutations over millions of years. Most of them are totally useless. Some of them are beneficial to the evolved species. Natural selection favors the beneficially mutated species. Less beneficial mutations die off. The mutated rabbit doesn't have to be faster than the fox. It just has to be faster than the other rabbits.   Theory of evolution Evolving software Random mutations happen all the time. Most of these mutations are so bad, the new species dies off, or cannot reproduce. Developers write new code all the time. New ideas come up during the act of writing software. The really bad ones don't get past the stage of idea. The bad ones don't get committed to source control. Natural selection favors the beneficial mutated species Good ideas and new code gets discussed in group during informal peer review. Less than good code gets refactored. Enhanced code makes it more readable, maintainable... A good set of traits makes the species superior to others. It becomes widespread A good design tends to make it easier to add new features, easier to understand the current implementations, easier to optimize for performance...thus superior. The best designs get carried over from project to project. They appear in blogs, articles and books about principles, patterns and practices.   Of course the act of writing software is deliberate. This can hardly be called random mutations. Though it sometimes might seem that code evolves through a will of its own ;-) Does this mean that evolving software (evolution) is better than a big design up front (creationism)? Not necessarily. It's a false idea to think that a project starts from scratch and everything evolves from there. Everyone carries his experience of what works and what doesn't. Up front design is necessary, but is best kept simple and minimal, just enough to get you started. Let the good experiences and ideas help to drive the process, whether they come from you or from others, from past experience or from the most junior developer on your team. Once again, balance is the keyword. Balance design up front with evolution on a daily basis. How do you know what balance is right? Through your own experience of what worked and what didn't (here's evolution again). Notes: The evolution of software can quickly degenerate without discipline. TDD is a discipline that leaves little to chance on that part. Write your test to describe the new behavior. Write just enough code to make it behave as specified. Refactor to evolve the code to a higher standard. The responsibility of good design rests continuously on each developers' shoulders. Promiscuous pair programming helps quickly spreading the design to the whole team.

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• Taking a screenshot from within a Silverlight #WP7 application

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  Often times, you want to take a screenshot of an application’s page. There can be multiple reasons. For instance, you can use this to provide an easy feedback method to beta testers. I find this super invaluable when working on integration of design in an app, and the user can take quick screenshots, attach them to an email and send them to me directly from the Windows Phone device. However, the same mechanism can also be used to provide screenshots are a feature of the app, for example if the user wants to save the current status of his application, etc. Caveats Note the following: The code requires an XNA library to save the picture to the media library. To have this, follow the steps: In your application (or class library), add a reference to Microsoft.Xna.Framework. In your code, add a “using” statement to Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Media. In the Properties folder, open WMAppManifest.xml and add the following capability: ID_CAP_MEDIALIB. The method call will fail with an exception if the device is connected to the Zune application on the PC. To avoid this, either disconnect the device when testing, or end the Zune application on the PC. While the method call will not fail on the emulator, there is no way to access the media library, so it is pretty much useless on this platform. This method only prints Silverlight elements to the output image. Other elements (such as a WebBrowser control’s content for instance) will output a black rectangle. The code public static void SaveToMediaLibrary( FrameworkElement element, string title) { try { var bmp = new WriteableBitmap(element, null); var ms = new MemoryStream(); bmp.SaveJpeg( ms, (int)element.ActualWidth, (int)element.ActualHeight, 0, 100); ms.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin); var lib = new MediaLibrary(); var filePath = string.Format(title + ".jpg"); lib.SavePicture(filePath, ms); MessageBox.Show( "Saved in your media library!", "Done", MessageBoxButton.OK); } catch { MessageBox.Show( "There was an error. Please disconnect your phone from the computer before saving.", "Cannot save", MessageBoxButton.OK); } } This method can save any FrameworkElement. Typically I use it to save a whole page, but you can pass any other element to it. On line 7, we create a new WriteableBitmap. This excellent class can render a visual tree into a bitmap. Note that for even more features, you can use the great WriteableBitmapEx class library (which is open source). On lines 9 to 16, we save the WriteableBitmap to a MemoryStream. The only format supported by default is JPEG, however it is possible to convert to other formats with the ImageTools library (also open source). Lines 18 to 20 save the picture to the Windows Phone device’s media library. Using the image To retrieve the image, simply launch the Pictures library on the phone. The image will be in Saved Pictures. From here, you can share the image (by email, for instance), or synchronize it with the PC using the Zune software. Saving to other platforms It is of course possible to save to other platforms than the media library. For example, you can send the image to a web service, or save it to the isolated storage on the device. To do this, instead of using a MemoryStream, you can use any other stream (such as a web request stream, or a file stream) and save to that instead. Hopefully this code will be helpful to you! Happy coding, Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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