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• Xobni Free Powers Up Outlook’s Search and Contacts

  - by Matthew Guay

  Want to find out more about your contacts, discover email trends, and even sync Yahoo! email accounts in Outlook?  Here’s how you can do this and more with Xobni Free. Email is one of the most important communications mediums today, but even with all of the advances in Outlook over the years it can still be difficult to keep track of conversations, files, and contacts.  Xobni makes it easy by indexing your emails and organizing them by sender.  You can use its powerful search to quickly find any email, find related messages, and then view more information about that contact with information from social networks.  And, to top it off, it even lets you view your Yahoo! emails directly in Outlook without upgrading to a Yahoo! Plus account.  Xobni runs in Outlook 2003, 2007, and 2010, including the 64 bit version of Outlook 2010, and users of older versions will especially enjoy the new features Xobni brings for free. Getting started Download the Xobni Free installer (link below), and run to start the installation.  Make sure to exit Outlook before installing.  Xobni may need to download additional files which may take a few moments. When the download is finished, proceed with the install as normal.  You can opt out of the Product Improvement Program at the end of the installation by unchecking the box.  Additionally, you are asked to share Xobni with your friends on social networks, but this is not required.   Next time you open Outlook, you’ll notice the new Xobni sidebar in Outlook.  You can choose to watch an introduction video that will help you quickly get up to speed on how Xobni works. While this is playing, Xobni is working at indexing your email in the background.  Once the first indexing is finished, click Let’s Go! to start using Xobni. Here’s how Xobni looks in Outlook 2010: Advanced Email Information Select an email, and now you can see lots of info about it in your new Xobni sidebar.   On the top of the sidebar, select the graph icon to see when and how often you email with a contact.  Each contact is given an Xobni rank so you can quickly see who you email the most.   You can see all related emails sorted into conversations, and also all attachments in the conversation, not just this email. Xobni can also show you all scheduled appointments and links exchanged with a contact, but this is only available in the Plus version.  If you’d rather not see the tab for a feature you can’t use, click Don’t show this tab to banish it from Xobni for good.   Searching emails from the Xobni toolbar is very fast, and you can preview a message by simply hovering over it from the search pane. Get More Information About Your Contacts Xobni’s coolest feature is its social integration.  Whenever you select an email, you may see a brief bio, picture, and more, all pulled from social networks.   Select one of the tabs to find more information.  You may need to login to view information on your contacts from certain networks. The Twitter tab lets you see recent tweets.  Xobni will search for related Twitter accounts, and will ask you to confirm if the choice is correct.   Now you can see this contact’s recent Tweets directly from Outlook.   The Hoovers tab can give you interesting information about the businesses you’re in contact with. If the information isn’t correct, you can edit it and add your own information.  Click the Edit button, and the add any information you want.   You can also remove a network you don’t wish to see.  Right-click on the network tabs, select Manage Extensions, and uncheck any you don’t want to see. But sometimes online contact just doesn’t cut it.  For these times, click on the orange folder button to request a contact’s phone number or schedule a time with them. This will open a new email message ready to send with the information you want.  Edit as you please, and send. Add Yahoo! Email to Outlook for Free One of Xobni’s neatest features is that it let’s you add your Yahoo! email account to Outlook for free.  Click the gear icon in the bottom of the Xobni sidebar and select Options to set it up. Select the Integration tab, and click Enable to add Yahoo! mail to Xobni. Sign in with your Yahoo! account, and make sure to check the Keep me signed in box. Note that you may have to re-signin every two weeks to keep your Yahoo! account connected.  Select I agree to finish setting it up. Xobni will now download and index your recent Yahoo! mail. Your Yahoo! messages will only show up in the Xobni sidebar.  Whenever you select a contact, you will see related messages from your Yahoo! account as well.  Or, you can search from the sidebar to find individual messages from your Yahoo! account.  Note the Y! logo beside Yahoo! messages.   Select a message to read it in the Sidebar.  You can open the email in Yahoo! in your browser, or can reply to it using your default Outlook email account. If you have many older messages in your Yahoo! account, make sure to go back to the Integration tab and select Index Yahoo! Mail to index all of your emails. Conclusion Xobni is a great tool to help you get more out of your daily Outlook experience.  Whether you struggle to find attachments a coworker sent you or want to access Yahoo! email from Outlook, Xobni might be the perfect tool for you.  And with the extra things you learn about your contacts with the social network integration, you might boost your own PR skills without even trying! Link Download Xobni Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Speed up Windows Vista Start Menu Search By Limiting ResultsFix for New Contact Group Button Not Displaying in VistaGet Maps and Directions to Your Contacts in Outlook 2007Backup Windows Mail Messages and Contacts in VistaHow to Import Gmail Contacts Into Outlook 2007 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows iFixit Offers Gadget Repair Manuals Online Vista style sidebar for Windows 7 Create Nice Charts With These Web Based Tools Track Daily Goals With 42Goals Video Toolbox is a Superb Online Video Editor Fun with 47 charts and graphs

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• TFS, G.I. Joe and Under-doing

  If I were to rank the most consistently irritating parts of my work day, using TFS would come in first by a wide margin. Even repeated network outages this week seem like a pleasant reprieve from this monolithic beast. This is not a reflexive anti-Microsoft feeling, that attitude just wouldnt work for a consultant who does .NET development. It is also not an utter dismissal of TFS as worthless; Ive seen people use it effectively on several projects. So why? Ill start with a laundry list of shortcomings. An out of the box UI for work items that is insultingly bad, a source control system that is confoundingly fragile when handling merges, folder renames and long file names, the arcane XML wizardry necessary to customize a template and a build system that adds an extra layer of oddness on top of msbuild. Im sure my legion of readers will soon point out to me how I can work around all these issues, how this is fixed in TFS 2010 or with this add-in, and how once you have everything set up, youre fine. And theyd be right, any one of these problems could be worked around. If not dirty laundry, what else? I thought about it for a while, and came to the conclusion that TFS is so irritating to me because it represents a vision of software development that I find unappealing. To expand upon this, lets start with some wisdom from those great PSAs at the end of the G.I. Joe cartoons of the 80s: Now you know, and knowing is half the battle. In software development, Id go further and say knowing is more than half the battle. Understanding the dimensions of the problem you are trying to solve, the needs of the users, the value that your software can provide are more than half the battle. Implementation of this understanding is not easy, but it is not even possible without this knowledge. Assuming we have a fixed amount of time and mental energy for any project, why does this spell trouble for TFS? If you think about what TFS is doing, its offering you a huge array of options to track the day to day implementation of your project. From tasks, to code churn, to test coverage. All valuable metrics, but only in exchange for valuable time to get it all working. In addition, when you have a shiny toy like TFS, the temptation is to feel obligated to use it. So the push from TFS is to encourage a project manager and team to focus on process and metrics around process. You can get great visibility, and graphs to show your project stakeholders, but none of that is important if you are not implementing the right product. Not just unimportant, these activities can be harmful as they drain your time and sap your creativity away from the rest of the project. To be more concrete, lets suppose your organization has invested the time to create a template for your projects and trained people in how to use it, so there is no longer a big investment of time for each project to get up and running. First, Id challenge if that template could be specific enough to be full featured and still applicable for any project. Second, the very existence of this template would be a indication to a project manager that the success of their project was somehow directly related to fitting management of that project into this format. Again, while the capabilities are wonderful, the mirage is there; just get everything into TFS and your project will run smoothly. Ill close the loop on this first topic by proposing a thought experiment. Think of the projects youve worked on. How many times have you been chagrined to discover youve implemented the wrong feature, misunderstood how a feature should work or just plain spent too much time on a screen that nobody uses? That sounds like a really worthwhile area to invest time in improving. How about going back to these projects and thinking about how many times you wished you had optimized the state change flow of your tasks or been embarrassed to not have a code churn report linked back to the latest changeset? With thanks to the Real American Heroes, Ill move on to a more current influence, that of the developers at 37signals, and their philosophy towards software development. This philosophy, fully detailed in the books Getting Real and Rework, is a vision of software that under does the competition. This is software that is deliberately limited in functionality in order to concentrate fully on making sure ever feature that is there is awesome and needed. Why is this relevant? Well, in one of those fun seeming paradoxes in life, constraints can be a spark for creativity. Think Twitter, the small screen of an iPhone, the limitations of HTML for applications, the low memory limits of older or embedded system. As long as there is some freedom within those constraints, amazing things emerge. For project management, some of the most respected people in the industry recommend using just index cards, pens and tape. They argue that with change the constant in software development, your process should be as limited (yet rigorous) as possible. Looking at TFS, this is not a system designed to under do anybody. It is a big jumble of components and options, with every feature you could think of. Predictably this means many basic functions are hard to use. For task management, many people just use an Excel spreadsheet linked up to TFS. Not a stirring endorsement of the tooling there. TFS as a whole would be far more appealing to me if there was less of it, but better. Id cut 50% of the features to make the other half really amaze and inspire me. And thats really the heart of the matter. TFS has great promise and I want to believe it can work better. But ultimately it focuses your attention on a lot of stuff that doesnt really matter and then clamps down your creativity in a mess of forms and dialogs obscuring what does.   --- Relevant Links --- All those great G.I. Joe PSAs are on YouTube, including lots of mashed up versions. A simple Google search will get you on the right track.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #050

  - by Pinal Dave

  Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Executing Remote Stored Procedure – Calling Stored Procedure on Linked Server In this example we see two different methods of how to call Stored Procedures remotely.  Connection Property of SQL Server Management Studio SSMS A very simple example of the how to build connection properties for SQL Server with the help of SSMS. Sample Example of RANKING Functions – ROW_NUMBER, RANK, DENSE_RANK, NTILE SQL Server has a total of 4 ranking functions. Ranking functions return a ranking value for each row in a partition. All the ranking functions are non-deterministic. T-SQL Script to Add Clustered Primary Key Jr. DBA asked me three times in a day, how to create Clustered Primary Key. I gave him following sample example. That was the last time he asked “How to create Clustered Primary Key to table?” 2008 2008 – TRIM() Function – User Defined Function SQL Server does not have functions which can trim leading or trailing spaces of any string at the same time. SQL does have LTRIM() and RTRIM() which can trim leading and trailing spaces respectively. SQL Server 2008 also does not have TRIM() function. User can easily use LTRIM() and RTRIM() together and simulate TRIM() functionality. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-hhApy6MHM 2009 Earlier I have written two different articles on the subject Remove Bookmark Lookup. This article is as part 3 of original article. Please read the first two articles here before continuing reading this article. Query Optimization – Remove Bookmark Lookup – Remove RID Lookup – Remove Key Lookup Query Optimization – Remove Bookmark Lookup – Remove RID Lookup – Remove Key Lookup – Part 2 Query Optimization – Remove Bookmark Lookup – Remove RID Lookup – Remove Key Lookup – Part 3 Interesting Observation – Query Hint – FORCE ORDER SQL Server never stops to amaze me. As regular readers of this blog already know that besides conducting corporate training, I work on large-scale projects on query optimizations and server tuning projects. In one of the recent projects, I have noticed that a Junior Database Developer used the query hint Force Order; when I asked for details, I found out that the basic concept was not properly understood by him. Queries Waiting for Memory Allocation to Execute In one of the recent projects, I was asked to create a report of queries that are waiting for memory allocation. The reason was that we were doubtful regarding whether the memory was sufficient for the application. The following query can be useful in similar cases. Queries that do not have to wait on a memory grant will not appear in the result set of following query. 2010 Quickest Way to Identify Blocking Query and Resolution – Dirty Solution As the title suggests, this is quite a dirty solution; it’s not as elegant as you expect. However, it works totally fine. Simple Explanation of Data Type Precedence While I was working on creating a question for SQL SERVER – SQL Quiz – The View, The Table and The Clustered Index Confusion, I had actually created yet another question along with this question. However, I felt that the one which is posted on the SQL Quiz is much better than this one because what makes that more challenging question is that it has a multiple answer. Encrypted Stored Procedure and Activity Monitor I recently had received questionable if any stored procedure is encrypted can we see its definition in Activity Monitor.Answer is - No. Let us do a quick test. Let us create following Stored Procedure and then launch the Activity Monitor and check the text. Indexed View always Use Index on Table A single table can have maximum 249 non clustered indexes and 1 clustered index. In SQL Server 2008, a single table can have maximum 999 non clustered indexes and 1 clustered index. It is widely believed that a table can have only 1 clustered index, and this belief is true. I have some questions for all of you. Let us assume that I am creating view from the table itself and then create a clustered index on it. In my view, I am selecting the complete table itself. 2011 Detecting Database Case Sensitive Property using fn_helpcollations() I received a question on how to determine the case sensitivity of the database. The quick answer to this is to identify the collation of the database and check the properties of the collation. I have previously written how one can identify database collation. Once you have figured out the collation of the database, you can put that in the WHERE condition of the following T-SQL and then check the case sensitivity from the description. Server Side Paging in SQL Server CE (Compact Edition) SQL Server Denali is coming up with new T-SQL of Paging. I have written about the same earlier.SQL SERVER – Server Side Paging in SQL Server Denali – A Better Alternative,  SQL SERVER – Server Side Paging in SQL Server Denali Performance Comparison, SQL SERVER – Server Side Paging in SQL Server Denali – Part2 What is very interesting is that SQL Server CE 4.0 have the same feature introduced. Here is the quick example of the same. To run the script in the example, you will have to do installWebmatrix 4.0 and download sample database. Once done you can run following script. Why I am Going to Attend PASS Summit Unite 2011 The four-day event will be marked by a lot of learning, sharing, and networking, which will help me increase both my knowledge and contacts. Every year, PASS Summit provides me a golden opportunity to build my network as well as to identify and meet potential customers or employees. 2012 Manage Help Settings – CTRL + ALT + F1 This is very interesting read as my daughter once accidently came across a screen in SQL Server Management Studio. It took me 2-3 minutes to figure out how she has created the same screen. Recover the Accidentally Renamed Table “I accidentally renamed table in my SSMS. I was scrolling very fast and I made mistakes. It was either because I double clicked or clicked on F2 (shortcut key for renaming). However, I have made the mistake and now I have no idea how to fix this. If you have renamed the table, I think you pretty much is out of luck. Here are few things which you can do which can give you an idea about what your table name can be if you are lucky. Identify Numbers of Non Clustered Index on Tables for Entire Database Here is the script which will give you numbers of non clustered indexes on any table in entire database. Identify Most Resource Intensive Queries – SQL in Sixty Seconds #029 – Video Here is the complete complete script which I have used in the SQL in Sixty Seconds Video. Thanks Harsh for important Tip in the comment. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kDHC_Tjrns Advanced Data Quality Services with Melissa Data – Azure Data Market For the purposes of the review, I used a database I had in an Excel spreadsheet with name and address information. Upon a cursory inspection, there are miscellaneous problems with these records; some addresses are missing ZIP codes, others missing a city, and some records are slightly misspelled or have unparsed suites. With DQS, I can easily add a knowledge base to help standardize my values, such as for state abbreviations. But how do I know that my address is correct? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• parallel_for_each from amp.h – part 1

  - by Daniel Moth

  This posts assumes that you've read my other C++ AMP posts on index<N> and extent<N>, as well as about the restrict modifier. It also assumes you are familiar with C++ lambdas (if not, follow my links to C++ documentation). Basic structure and parameters Now we are ready for part 1 of the description of the new overload for the concurrency::parallel_for_each function. The basic new parallel_for_each method signature returns void and accepts two parameters: a grid<N> (think of it as an alias to extent) a restrict(direct3d) lambda, whose signature is such that it returns void and accepts an index of the same rank as the grid So it looks something like this (with generous returns for more palatable formatting) assuming we are dealing with a 2-dimensional space: // some_code_A parallel_for_each( g, // g is of type grid<2> [ ](index<2> idx) restrict(direct3d) { // kernel code } ); // some_code_B The parallel_for_each will execute the body of the lambda (which must have the restrict modifier), on the GPU. We also call the lambda body the "kernel". The kernel will be executed multiple times, once per scheduled GPU thread. The only difference in each execution is the value of the index object (aka as the GPU thread ID in this context) that gets passed to your kernel code. The number of GPU threads (and the values of each index) is determined by the grid object you pass, as described next. You know that grid is simply a wrapper on extent. In this context, one way to think about it is that the extent generates a number of index objects. So for the example above, if your grid was setup by some_code_A as follows: extent<2> e(2,3); grid<2> g(e); ...then given that: e.size()==6, e[0]==2, and e[1]=3 ...the six index<2> objects it generates (and hence the values that your lambda would receive) are:    (0,0) (1,0) (0,1) (1,1) (0,2) (1,2) So what the above means is that the lambda body with the algorithm that you wrote will get executed 6 times and the index<2> object you receive each time will have one of the values just listed above (of course, each one will only appear once, the order is indeterminate, and they are likely to call your code at the same exact time). Obviously, in real GPU programming, you'd typically be scheduling thousands if not millions of threads, not just 6. If you've been following along you should be thinking: "that is all fine and makes sense, but what can I do in the kernel since I passed nothing else meaningful to it, and it is not returning any values out to me?" Passing data in and out It is a good question, and in data parallel algorithms indeed you typically want to pass some data in, perform some operation, and then typically return some results out. The way you pass data into the kernel, is by capturing variables in the lambda (again, if you are not familiar with them, follow the links about C++ lambdas), and the way you use data after the kernel is done executing is simply by using those same variables. In the example above, the lambda was written in a fairly useless way with an empty capture list: [ ](index<2> idx) restrict(direct3d), where the empty square brackets means that no variables were captured. If instead I write it like this [&](index<2> idx) restrict(direct3d), then all variables in the some_code_A region are made available to the lambda by reference, but as soon as I try to use any of those variables in the lambda, I will receive a compiler error. This has to do with one of the direct3d restrictions, where only one type can be capture by reference: objects of the new concurrency::array class that I'll introduce in the next post (suffice for now to think of it as a container of data). If I write the lambda line like this [=](index<2> idx) restrict(direct3d), all variables in the some_code_A region are made available to the lambda by value. This works for some types (e.g. an integer), but not for all, as per the restrictions for direct3d. In particular, no useful data classes work except for one new type we introduce with C++ AMP: objects of the new concurrency::array_view class, that I'll introduce in the post after next. Also note that if you capture some variable by value, you could use it as input to your algorithm, but you wouldn’t be able to observe changes to it after the parallel_for_each call (e.g. in some_code_B region since it was passed by value) – the exception to this rule is the array_view since (as we'll see in a future post) it is a wrapper for data, not a container. Finally, for completeness, you can write your lambda, e.g. like this [av, &ar](index<2> idx) restrict(direct3d) where av is a variable of type array_view and ar is a variable of type array - the point being you can be very specific about what variables you capture and how. So it looks like from a large data perspective you can only capture array and array_view objects in the lambda (that is how you pass data to your kernel) and then use the many threads that call your code (each with a unique index) to perform some operation. You can also capture some limited types by value, as input only. When the last thread completes execution of your lambda, the data in the array_view or array are ready to be used in the some_code_B region. We'll talk more about all this in future posts… (a)synchronous Please note that the parallel_for_each executes as if synchronous to the calling code, but in reality, it is asynchronous. I.e. once the parallel_for_each call is made and the kernel has been passed to the runtime, the some_code_B region continues to execute immediately by the CPU thread, while in parallel the kernel is executed by the GPU threads. However, if you try to access the (array or array_view) data that you captured in the lambda in the some_code_B region, your code will block until the results become available. Hence the correct statement: the parallel_for_each is as-if synchronous in terms of visible side-effects, but asynchronous in reality.   That's all for now, we'll revisit the parallel_for_each description, once we introduce properly array and array_view – coming next. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• PASS Summit Feedback

  - by Rob Farley

  PASS Feedback came in last week. I also saw my dentist for some fillings... At the PASS Summit this year, I delivered a couple of regular sessions and a Lightning Talk. People told me they enjoyed it, but when the rankings came out, they showed that I didn’t score particularly well. Brent Ozar was keen to discuss it with me. Brent: PASS speaker feedback is out. You did two sessions and a Lightning Talk. How did you go? Rob: Not so well actually, thanks for asking. Brent: Ha! Sorry. Of course you know that's why I wanted to discuss this with you. I was in one of your sessions at SQLBits in the UK a month before PASS, and I thought you rocked. You've got a really good and distinctive delivery style.  Then I noticed your talks were ranked in the bottom quarter of the Summit ratings and wanted to discuss it. Rob: Yeah, I know. You did ask me if we could do this...  I should explain – my presentation style is not the stereotypical IT conference one. I throw in jokes, and try to engage the audience thoroughly. I find many talks amazingly dry, and I guess I try to buck that trend. I also run training courses, and find that I get a lot of feedback from people thanking me for keeping things interesting. That said, I also get feedback criticising me for my style, and that’s basically what’s happened here. For the rest of this discussion, let’s focus on my talk about the Incredible Shrinking Execution Plan, which I considered to be my main talk. Brent: I thought that session title was the very best one at the entire Summit, and I had it on my recommended sessions list.  In four words, you managed to sum up the topic and your sense of humor.  I read that and immediately thought, "People need to be in this session," and then it didn't score well.  Tell me about your scores. Rob: The questions on the feedback form covered the usefulness of the information, the speaker’s presentation skills, their knowledge of the subject, how well the session was described, the amount of time allocated, and the quality of the presentation materials. Brent: Presentation materials? But you don’t do slides.  Did they rate your thong? Rob: No-one saw my flip-flops in this talk, Brent. I created a script in Management Studio, and published that afterwards, but I think people will have scored that question based on the lack of slides. I wasn’t expecting to do particularly well on that one. That was the only section that didn’t have 5/5 as the most popular score. Brent: See, that sucks, because cookbook-style scripts are often some of my favorites.  Adam Machanic's Service Broker workbench series helped me immensely when I was prepping for the MCM.  As an attendee, I'd rather have a commented script than a slide deck.  So how did you rank so low? Rob: When I look at the scores that you got (based on your blog post), you got very few scores below 3 – people that felt strong enough about your talk to post a negative score. In my scores, between 5% and 10% were below 3 (except on the question about whether I knew my stuff – I guess I came as knowledgeable). Brent: Wow – so quite a few people really didn’t like your talk then? Rob: Yeah. Mind you, based on the comments, some people really loved it. I’d like to think that there would be a certain portion of the room who may have rated the talk as one of the best of the conference. Some of my comments included “amazing!”, “Best presentation so far!”, “Wow, best session yet”, “fantastic” and “Outstanding!”. I think lots of talks can be “Great”, but not so many talks can be “Outstanding” without the word losing its meaning. One wrote “Pretty amazing presentation, considering it was completely extemporaneous.” Brent: Extemporaneous, eh? Rob: Yeah. I guess they don’t realise how much preparation goes into coming across as unprepared. In many ways it’s much easier to give a written speech than to deliver a presentation without slides as a prompt. Brent: That delivery style, the really relaxed, casual, college-professor approach was one of the things I really liked about your presentation at SQLbits.  As somebody who presents a lot, I "get" it - I know how hard it is to come off as relaxed and comfortable with your own material.  It's like improv done by jazz players and comedians - if you've never tried it, you don't realize how hard it is.  People also don't realize how hard it is to make a tough subject fun. Rob: Yeah well... There will be people writing comments on this post that say I wasn't trying to make the subject fun, and that I was making it all about me. Sometimes the style works, sometimes it doesn't. Most of the comments mentioned the fact that I tell jokes, some in a nice way, but some not so much (and it wasn't just a PASS thing - that's the mix of feedback I generally get). One comment at PASS was: “great stand up comedian - not what I'm looking for at pass”, and there were certainly a few that said “too many jokes”. I’m not trying to do stand-up – jokes are my way of engaging with the audience while I demonstrate some of the amazing things that the Query Optimizer can do if you write your queries the right way. Some people didn’t think it was technical enough, but I’ve also had some people tell me that the concepts I’m explaining are deep and profound. Brent: To me, that's a hallmark of a great explanation - when someone says, "But of course it has to work that way - how could it work any other way?  It seems so simple and logical."  Well, sure it does when it's explained correctly, but now pick up any number of thick SQL Server books and try to understand the Redundant Joins concept.  I guarantee it'll take more than 45 minutes. Rob: Some people in my audiences realise that, but definitely not everyone. There's only so much you can tell someone that something is profound. Generally it's something that they either have an epiphany on or not. I like to lull my audience into knowing what's going on, and do something that surprises them. Gain their trust, build a rapport, and then show them the deeper truth of what just happened. Brent: So you've learned your lesson about presentation scores, right?  From here on out, you're going to be dry, humorless, and all your presentations will consist of you reading bullet points off the screen. Rob: No Brent, I’m not. I'm also not going to suggest that most presentations at PASS are like that. No-one tries to present like that. There's a big space to occupy between what "dry and humourless" and me. My difference is to focus on the relationship I have with the crowd, rather than focussing on delivering the perfect session. I want to see people smiling and know they're relaxed. I think most presenters focus on the material, which is completely reasonable and safe. I remember once hearing someone talking about product creation. They talked about mediocrity. They said that one of the worst things that people can ever say about your product is that it’s “good”. What you want is for 10% of the world to love it enough to want to buy it. If 10% the world gave me a dollar, I’d have more money than I could ever use (assuming it wasn’t the SAME dollar they were giving me I guess). Brent: It's the Raving Fans theory.  It's better to have a small number of raving customers than a large number of almost-but-not-really customers who don't care that much about your product or service.  I know exactly how you feel - when I got survey feedback from my Quest video presentation when I was dressed up in a Richard Simmons costume, some of the attendees said I was unprofessional and distracting.  Some of the attendees couldn't get enough and Photoshopped all kinds of stuff into the screen captures.  On a whole, I probably didn't score that well, and I'm fine with that.  It sucks to look at the scores though - do those lower scores bother you? Rob: Of course they do. It hurts deeply. I open myself up and give presentations in a very personal way. All presenters do that, and we all feel the pain of negative feedback. I hate coming 146th & 162nd out of 185, but have to acknowledge that many sessions did worse still. Plus, once I feel the wounds have healed, I’ll be able to remember that there are people in the world that rave about my presentation style, and figure that people will hopefully talk about me. One day maybe those people that don’t like my presentation style will stay away and I might be able to score better. You don’t pay to hear country music if you prefer western... Lots of people find chili too spicy, but it’s still a popular food. Brent: But don’t you want to appeal to everyone? Rob: I do, but I don’t want to be lukewarm as in Revelation 3:16. I’d rather disgust and be discussed. Well, maybe not ‘disgust’, but I don’t want to conform. Conformity just isn’t the same any more. I’m not sure I’ve ever been one to do that. I try not to offend, but definitely like to be different. Brent: Count me among your raving fans, sir.  Where can we see you next? Rob: Considering I live in Adelaide in Australia, I’m not about to appear at anyone’s local SQL Saturday. I’m still trying to plan which events I’ll get to in 2011. I’ve submitted abstracts for TechEd North America, but won’t hold my breath. I’m also considering the SQLBits conferences in the UK in April, PASS in October, and I’m sure I’ll do some LiveMeeting presentations for user groups. Online, people download some of my recent SQLBits presentations at http://bit.ly/RFSarg and http://bit.ly/Simplification though. And they can download a 5-minute MP3 of my Lightning Talk at http://www.lobsterpot.com.au/files/Collation.mp3, in which I try to explain the idea behind collation, using thongs as an example. Brent: I was in the audience for http://bit.ly/RFSarg. That was a great presentation. Rob: Thanks, Brent. Now where’s my dollar?

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• Help me alter this query to get the desired results - New*

  - by sandeepan

  Please dump these data first CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `all_tag_relations` ( `id_tag_rel` int(10) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, `id_tag` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0', `id_tutor` int(10) DEFAULT NULL, `id_wc` int(10) unsigned DEFAULT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (`id_tag_rel`), KEY `All_Tag_Relations_FKIndex1` (`id_tag`), KEY `id_wc` (`id_wc`) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=19 ; INSERT INTO `all_tag_relations` (`id_tag_rel`, `id_tag`, `id_tutor`, `id_wc`) VALUES (1, 1, 1, NULL), (2, 2, 1, NULL), (3, 6, 2, NULL), (4, 7, 2, NULL), (8, 3, 1, 1), (9, 4, 1, 1), (10, 5, 2, 2), (11, 4, 2, 2), (15, 8, 1, 3), (16, 9, 1, 3), (17, 10, 1, 4), (18, 4, 1, 4), (19, 1, 2, 5), (20, 4, 2, 5); CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `tags` ( `id_tag` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, `tag` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (`id_tag`), UNIQUE KEY `tag` (`tag`), KEY `id_tag` (`id_tag`), KEY `tag_2` (`tag`), KEY `tag_3` (`tag`), KEY `tag_4` (`tag`), FULLTEXT KEY `tag_5` (`tag`) ) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=11 ; INSERT INTO `tags` (`id_tag`, `tag`) VALUES (1, 'Sandeepan'), (2, 'Nath'), (3, 'first'), (4, 'class'), (5, 'new'), (6, 'Bob'), (7, 'Cratchit'), (8, 'more'), (9, 'fresh'), (10, 'second'); CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `webclasses` ( `id_wc` int(10) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, `id_author` int(10) NOT NULL, `name` varchar(50) DEFAULT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (`id_wc`) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=5 ; INSERT INTO `webclasses` (`id_wc`, `id_author`, `name`) VALUES (1, 1, 'first class'), (2, 2, 'new class'), (3, 1, 'more fresh'), (4, 1, 'second class'), (5, 2, 'sandeepan class'); About the system - The system consists of tutors and classes. - The data in the table All_Tag_Relations stores tag relations for each tutor registered and each class created by a tutor. The tag relations are used for searching classes. The current data dump corresponds to tutor "Sandeepan Nath" who has created classes named "first class", "more fresh", "second class" and tutor "Bob Cratchit" who has created classes "new class" and "Sandeepan class". I am trying for a search query performs AND logic on the search keywords and returns wvery such class for which the search terms are present in the class name or its tutor name To make it easy, following is the list of search terms and desired results:- Search term result classes (check the id_wc in the results) first class 1 Sandeepan Nath class 1 Sandeepan Nath 1,3 Bob Cratchit 2 Sandeepan Nath bob none Sandeepan Class 1,4,5 I have so far reached upto this query -- Two keywords search SET @tag1 = 4, @tag2 = 1; -- Setting some user variables to see where the ids go. SELECT wc.id_wc, sum( DISTINCT ( wtagrels.id_tag = @tag1 ) ) AS key_1_class_matches, sum( DISTINCT ( wtagrels.id_tag = @tag2 ) ) AS key_2_class_matches, sum( DISTINCT ( ttagrels.id_tag = @tag1 ) ) AS key_1_tutor_matches, sum( DISTINCT ( ttagrels.id_tag = @tag2 ) ) AS key_2_tutor_matches, sum( DISTINCT ( ttagrels.id_tag = wtagrels.id_tag ) ) AS key_class_tutor_matches FROM WebClasses as wc join all_tag_relations AS wtagrels on wc.id_wc = wtagrels.id_wc join all_tag_relations as ttagrels on (wc.id_author = ttagrels.id_tutor) WHERE ( wtagrels.id_tag = @tag1 OR wtagrels.id_tag = @tag2 OR ttagrels.id_tag = @tag1 OR ttagrels.id_tag = @tag2 ) GROUP BY wtagrels.id_wc LIMIT 0 , 20 For search with 1 or 3 terms, remove/add the variable part in this query. Tabulating my observation of the values of key_1_class_matches, key_2_class_matches,key_1_tutor_matches (say, class keys),key_2_tutor_matches for various cases (say, tutor keys). Search term expected result Observation first class 1 for class 1, all class keys+all tutor keys =1 Sandeepan Nath class 1 for class 1, one class key+ all tutor keys = 1 Sandeepan Nath 1,3 both tutor keys =1 for these classes Bob Cratchit 2 both tutor keys = 1 Sandeepan Nath bob none no complete tutor matches for any class I found a pattern that, for any case, the class(es) which should appear in the result have the highest number of matches (all class keys and tutor keys). E.g. searching "first class", only for class =1, total of key matches = 4(1+1+1+1) searching "Sandeepan Nath", for classes 1, 3,4(all classes by Sandeepan Nath) have all the tutor keys matching. But no pattern in the search for "Sandeepan Class" - classes 1,4,5 should match. Now, how do I put a condition into the query, based on that pattern so that only those classes are returned. Do I need to use full text search here because it gives a scoring/rank value indicating the strength of the match? Any sample query would help. Please note - I have already found solution for showing classes when any/all of the search terms match with the class name. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3030022/mysql-help-me-alter-this-search-query-to-get-desired-results But if all the search terms are in tutor name, it does not work. So, I am modifying the query and experimenting.

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• Help me alter this query to get the desired results

  - by sandeepan

  Please dump these data first CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `all_tag_relations` ( `id_tag_rel` int(10) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, `id_tag` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0', `id_tutor` int(10) DEFAULT NULL, `id_wc` int(10) unsigned DEFAULT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (`id_tag_rel`), KEY `All_Tag_Relations_FKIndex1` (`id_tag`), KEY `id_wc` (`id_wc`) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=19 ; INSERT INTO `all_tag_relations` (`id_tag_rel`, `id_tag`, `id_tutor`, `id_wc`) VALUES (1, 1, 1, NULL), (2, 2, 1, NULL), (3, 6, 2, NULL), (4, 7, 2, NULL), (8, 3, 1, 1), (9, 4, 1, 1), (10, 5, 2, 2), (11, 4, 2, 2), (15, 8, 1, 3), (16, 9, 1, 3), (17, 10, 1, 4), (18, 4, 1, 4), (19, 1, 2, 5), (20, 4, 2, 5); CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `tags` ( `id_tag` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, `tag` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (`id_tag`), UNIQUE KEY `tag` (`tag`), KEY `id_tag` (`id_tag`), KEY `tag_2` (`tag`), KEY `tag_3` (`tag`), KEY `tag_4` (`tag`), FULLTEXT KEY `tag_5` (`tag`) ) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=11 ; INSERT INTO `tags` (`id_tag`, `tag`) VALUES (1, 'Sandeepan'), (2, 'Nath'), (3, 'first'), (4, 'class'), (5, 'new'), (6, 'Bob'), (7, 'Cratchit'), (8, 'more'), (9, 'fresh'), (10, 'second'); CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `webclasses` ( `id_wc` int(10) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, `id_author` int(10) NOT NULL, `name` varchar(50) DEFAULT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (`id_wc`) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=5 ; INSERT INTO `webclasses` (`id_wc`, `id_author`, `name`) VALUES (1, 1, 'first class'), (2, 2, 'new class'), (3, 1, 'more fresh'), (4, 1, 'second class'), (5, 2, 'sandeepan class'); About the system - The system consists of tutors and classes. - The data in the table All_Tag_Relations stores tag relations for each tutor registered and each class created by a tutor. The tag relations are used for searching classes. The current data dump corresponds to tutor "Sandeepan Nath" who has created classes named "first class", "more fresh", "second class" and tutor "Bob Cratchit" who has created classes "new class" and "Sandeepan class". I am trying for a search query performs AND logic on the search keywords and returns wvery such class for which the search terms are present in the class name or its tutor name To make it easy, following is the list of search terms and desired results:- Search term result classes (check the id_wc in the results) first class 1 Sandeepan Nath class 1 Sandeepan Nath 1,3 Bob Cratchit 2 Sandeepan Nath bob none Sandeepan Class 1,4,5 I have so far reached upto this query -- Two keywords search SET @tag1 = 4, @tag2 = 1; -- Setting some user variables to see where the ids go. SELECT wc.id_wc, sum( DISTINCT ( wtagrels.id_tag = @tag1 ) ) AS key_1_class_matches, sum( DISTINCT ( wtagrels.id_tag = @tag2 ) ) AS key_2_class_matches, sum( DISTINCT ( ttagrels.id_tag = @tag1 ) ) AS key_1_tutor_matches, sum( DISTINCT ( ttagrels.id_tag = @tag2 ) ) AS key_2_tutor_matches, sum( DISTINCT ( ttagrels.id_tag = wtagrels.id_tag ) ) AS key_class_tutor_matches FROM WebClasses as wc join all_tag_relations AS wtagrels on wc.id_wc = wtagrels.id_wc join all_tag_relations as ttagrels on (wc.id_author = ttagrels.id_tutor) WHERE ( wtagrels.id_tag = @tag1 OR wtagrels.id_tag = @tag2 OR ttagrels.id_tag = @tag1 OR ttagrels.id_tag = @tag2 ) GROUP BY wtagrels.id_wc LIMIT 0 , 20 For search with 1 or 3 terms, remove/add the variable part in this query. Tabulating my observation of the values of key_1_class_matches, key_2_class_matches,key_1_tutor_matches (say, class keys),key_2_tutor_matches for various cases (say, tutor keys). Search term expected result Observation first class 1 for class 1, all class keys+all tutor keys =1 Sandeepan Nath class 1 for class 1, one class key+ all tutor keys = 1 Sandeepan Nath 1,3 both tutor keys =1 for these classes Bob Cratchit 2 both tutor keys = 1 Sandeepan Nath bob none no complete tutor matches for any class I found a pattern that, for any case, the class(es) which should appear in the result have the highest number of matches (all class keys and tutor keys). E.g. searching "first class", only for class =1, total of key matches = 4(1+1+1+1) searching "Sandeepan Nath", for classes 1, 3,4(all classes by Sandeepan Nath) have all the tutor keys matching. But no pattern in the search for "Sandeepan Class" - classes 1,4,5 should match. Now, how do I put a condition into the query, based on that pattern so that only those classes are returned. Do I need to use full text search here because it gives a scoring/rank value indicating the strength of the match? Any sample query would help. Please note - I have already found solution for showing classes when any/all of the search terms match with the class name. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3030022/mysql-help-me-alter-this-search-query-to-get-desired-results But if all the search terms are in tutor name, it does not work. So, I am modifying the query and experimenting.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, August 15, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, August 15, 2012Popular ReleasesTFS Workbench: TFS Workbench v2.2.0.10: Compiled installers for TFS Workbench 2.2.0.10 Bug Fix Fixed bug that stopped the change workspace action from working.MoltenMercury: MoltenMercury 1.0 beta 1: This is initial implementation of the MoltenMercury with everything running but not throughoutly tested. Release contains a zip file with program binaries and a zip file containing resources. Before using please create a new directory named data in the same directory with program executables and extract DefaultCharacter zip file in there. If you have ???????????, you can simply place executables into the same directory with the program mentioned above. MoltenMercury supports character resour...SharePoint Column & View Permission: SharePoint Column and View Permission v1.0: Version 1.0 of this project. If you will find any bugs please let me know at enti@zoznam.sk or post your findings in Issue TrackerSPListViewFilter: Version 1.6: Layout selection: http://blog.vitalyzhukov.ru/imagelibrary/120815/Settings_Layouts.pngConsoleHoster: ConsoleHoster Version 1.2: Cleanup some logging UI impreovements: Fixed the bug with _ character in project-name Fixed the bug with tab close button to be X style Fixed the style of search content bar Fixed the bug with disappearing Edit project window Moved the Clear History button to the taskbar and added also a menu item Changed the QC button to CH Applied project colors to tab headersMicrosoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.60: Allow for CSS3 grid-column and grid-row repeat syntax. Provide option for -analyze scope-report output to be in XML for easier programmatic processing; also allow for report to be saved to a separate output file.Diablo III Drop Statistics Service: 1.0: Client OnlyClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.67.2: v0.67.2 Fix when copying conditional formats with relative formulas v0.67.1 Misc fixes to the conditional formats v0.67.0 Conditional formats now accept formulas. Major performance improvement when opening files with merged ranges. Misc fixes.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.8.1: Whats newBug fixes: Fixed: When upgrading to 4.8.0, the database upgrade didn't run Update: unfortunately, upgrading with SQLCE is problematic, there's a workaround here: http://bit.ly/TEmMJN The changes to the <imaging> section in umbracoSettings.config caused errors when you didn't apply them during the upgrade. Defaults will now be used if any keys are missing Scheduled unpublishes now only unpublishes nodes set to published rather than newest Work item: 30937 - Fixed problem with Fi...MySqlBackup.NET - MySQL Backup Solution for C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET: MySqlBackup.NET 1.4.4 Beta: MySqlBackup.NET 1.4.4 beta Fix bug: If the target database's default character set is not UTF8, UTF8 character will be encoded wrongly during Import. Now, database default character set will be recorded into Dump File at line of "SET NAMES". During import(restore), MySqlBackup will again detect and use the target database default character char set. MySqlBackup.NET 1.4.2 beta Fix bug: MySqlConnection is not closed when AutoCloseConnection set to true after Export or Import completed/halted. M...patterns & practices - Unity: Unity 3.0 for .NET 4.5 and WinRT - Preview: The Unity 3.0.1208.0 Preview enables Unity to work on .NET 4.5 with both the WinRT and desktop profiles. This is an updated version of the port after the .NET Framework 4.5 and Windows 8 have RTM'ed. Please see the Release Notes Providing feedback Post your feedback on the Unity forum Submit and vote on new features for Unity on our Uservoice site.LiteBlog (MVC): LiteBlog 1.31: Features of this release Windows8 styled UI Namespace and code refactoring Resolved the deployment issues in the previous release Added documentation Help file Help file is HTML based built using SandCastle Help file works in all browsers except IE10Self-Tracking Entity Generator for WPF and Silverlight: Self-Tracking Entity Generator v 2.0.0 for VS11: Self-Tracking Entity Generator for WPF and Silverlight v 2.0.0 for Entity Framework 5.0 and Visual Studio 2012Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.6.0: New Stuff ImageTile Control - think People Tile MicrophoneRecorder - Coding4Fun.Phone.Audio GzipWebClient - Coding4Fun.Phone.Net Serialize - Coding4Fun.Phone.Storage this is code I've written countless times. JSON.net is another alternative ChatBubbleTextBox - Added in Hint TimeSpan languages added: Pl Bug Fixes RoundToggleButton - Enable Visual State not being respected OpacityToggleButton - Enable Visual State not being respected Prompts VS Crash fix for IsPrompt=true More...AssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5.2 Unnamed: Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, please wait while we try to pack it. Try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compile your own for Linux (source included) Added 3rd person Added mario jumps Fixed nextprimary code exploit ...NPOI: NPOI 2.0: New features a. Implement OpenXml4Net (same as System.Packaging from Microsoft). It supports both .NET 2.0 and .NET 4.0 b. Excel 2007 read/write library (NPOI.XSSF) c. Word 2007 read/write library(NPOI.XWPF) d. NPOI.SS namespace becomes the interface shared between XSSF and HSSF e. Load xlsx template and save as new xlsx file (partially supported) f. Diagonal line in cell both in xls and xlsx g. Support isRightToLeft and setRightToLeft on the common spreadsheet Sheet interface, as per existin...BugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 1.1: This release includes bug fixes from the 1.0 release for email notifications, RSS feeds, and several other issues. Please see the change log for a full list of changes. http://support.bugnetproject.com/Projects/ReleaseNotes.aspx?pid=1&m=76 Upgrade Notes The following changes to the web.config in the profile section have occurred: Removed <add name="NotificationTypes" type="String" defaultValue="Email" customProviderData="NotificationTypes;nvarchar;255" />Added <add name="ReceiveEmailNotifi...????: ????2.0.5: 1、?????????????。RiP-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.01: changes NEW: Added Support for Clipboard Function in Mono Version NEW: Added Support for "ImgBox.com" links FIXED: "PixHub.eu" links FIXED: "ImgChili.com" links FIXED: Kitty-Kats Forum loginPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (Preview 5): Support for Smooth Streaming SDK beta 2 Support for live playback New bitrate meter and SD/HD indicators Auto smooth streaming track restriction for snapped mode to conserve bandwidth New "Go Live" button and SeekToLive API Support for offset start times Support for Live position unique from end time Support for multiple audio streams (smooth and progressive content) Improved intellisense in JS version Support for Windows 8 RTM ADDITIONAL DOWNLOADSSmooth Streaming Client SD...New ProjectsA Java Open Platform: A Java Open PlatformAutomation Tools: noneAzManPermissions: Allows AzMan (Authorization Manager) operation permission checks declaratively and imperatively. It can connect to AzMan stores directly or through a service.Configuration Manager 2012 Automation: Configuration Manager 2012 Automation is a powershell project to help perform the basic implementation of a CM12 infrastructure...Dynamicweb Blog Engine 2012: A simple blog engine built on Dynamicweb.E Lixo: Projeto E_LIXOEasy Windows Service Manager: Easy Windows Service Manager (ewsm) is a desktop utility that enables the easily management of Windows services. flexwork: A Flex Pluggable Extension FrameworkGit On Codeplex: Just trying git on CodePlexGT.BlogBox: Blogsite-Webtemplate for SharePoint 2010gvPoco: gvPoco is a .NET class library for the Google Visualization Charts API. IAllenSoft: IAllenSoft is a silverlight control library, which originates from some idea. Its target is to improve development productivity for silverlight projects. ListNetRanker: ListNetRanker is a listwise ranker based on machine learning. Given documents and query's feature set, ListNetRanker will rank these documents by ranking score.lvyao: stillMetro Tic-Tac-Toe: Tic-Tac-Toe is a Windows 8 developed using MonoGame for Windows 8. The intent of this code is to help XNA developers with porting their XNA apps to Windows 8myProject: my private code Nintemulator: Nintemulator is a work in progress multi-system emulator. Plans for emulated systems are NES, SNES, GB/GBC, GBA.Picnic Game: Picnic Game is a 2D game written in Small Basic. The objective is to get the pizza to the basket before you get stung or time runs out.Picnic Level Editor: Picnic Game is a 2D 3rd person game where you are an ant, and you have to gather the pizza and bring it to the basket before you get stung by a bee.ResCom: ResCom is a community response system for Windows Phone 8Scalable Object Persistence (SOP) Framework: Scalable object persistence (SOP) framework. RDBMS "index" like performance and scale on data Stores but without the unnecessary baggage, fine grained control.self-balancing-avl-tree: Self balancing AVL tree with Concat and Split operations.SEMS(synthetical evaluation management system): that's itsergionadal-mvc: Mvc para sistemas AndroidTFS Test Plan Builder: TFS Test plan builder is a tool to assis users of Microst Test Manager to build new test plans then moving from sprint to sprint or release to release The Excel Library: DExcelLibrary is a project that allows you to load and display "any" excel file given a specificaction of with areas/grids to loadTimePunch Metro Wpf Library: This library contains WPF controls and MVVM Implementation to create touch optimized applications in the new Windows 8 UI style formerly known as "Metro". UniPie: UniPie is a system wide pie menu system for sending key-mouse button combinations to certain applications. It can also convert one combo to another.xref: This is an extension of the classic FizzBuzz problem.ZombieRPG: Basic Zombie RPG game made using Game Maker??????: ZHJP

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• Clean Code Development & Flexible work environment - MSCC 26.10.2013

  Finally, some spare time to summarize my impressions and experiences of the recent meetup of Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community. I already posted my comment on the event and on our social media networks: Professional - It's getting better with our meetups and I really appreciated that 'seniors' and 'juniors' were present today. Despite running a little bit out of time it was really great to see more students coming to the gathering. This time we changed location for our Saturday meetup and it worked out very well. A big thank you to Ebene Accelerator, namely Mrs Poonum, for the ability to use their meeting rooms for our community get-together. Already some weeks ago I had a very pleasant conversation with her about the MSCC aims, 'mission' and how we organise things. Additionally, I think that an environment like the Ebene Accelerator is a good choice as it acts as an incubator for young developers and start-ups. Reactions from other craftsmen Before I put my thoughts about our recent meeting down, I'd like to mention and cross-link to some of the other craftsmen that were present: "MSCC meet up is a massive knowledge gaining strategies for students, future entrepreneurs, or for geeks all around. Knowledge sharing becomes a fun. For those who have not been able to made it do subscribe on our MSCC meet up group at meetup.com." -- Nitin on Learning is fun with #MSCC #Ebene Accelerator "We then talked about the IT industry in Mauritius, salary issues in various field like system administration, software development etc. We analysed the reasons why people tend to hop from one company to another. That was a fun debate." -- Ish on MSCC meetup - Gang of Geeks "Flexible Learning Environment was quite interesting since these lines struck cords : "You're not a secretary....9 to 5 shouldn't suit you"....This allowed reflection...deep reflection....especially regarding the local mindset...which should be changed in a way which would promote creativity rather than choking it till death..." -- Yannick on 2nd MSCC Monthly Meet-up And others on Facebook... ;-) Visual impressions are available on our Meetup event page. More first time attendees We great pleasure I noticed that we have once again more first time visitors. A quick overlook showed that we had a majority of UoM students in first, second or last year. Some of them are already participating in the UoM Computer Club or are nominated as members of the Microsoft Student Partner (MSP) programme. Personally, I really appreciate the fact that the MSCC is able to gather such a broad audience. And as I wrote initially, the MSCC is technology-agnostic; we want IT people from any segment of this business. Of course, students which are about to delve into the 'real world' of working are highly welcome, and I hope that they might get one or other glimpse of experience or advice from employees. Sticking to the schedule? No, not really... And honestly, it was a good choice to go a little bit of the beaten tracks. I mean, yes we have a 'rough' agenda of topics that we would like to talk about or having a presentation about. But we keep it 'agile'. Due to the high number of new faces, we initiated another quick round of introductions and I gave a really brief overview of the MSCC. Next, we started to reflect on the Clean Code Developer (CCD) - Red Grade which we introduced on the last meetup. Nirvan was the lucky one and he did a good job on summarizing the various abbreviations of the first level of being a CCD. Actually, more interesting, we exchanged experience about the principles and practices of Red Grade, and it was very informative to get to know that Yann actually 'interviewed' a couple of friends, other students, local guys working in IT companies as well as some IT friends from India in order to counter-check on what he learned first-hand about Clean Code. Currently, he is reading the book of Robert C. Martin on that topic and I'm looking forward to his review soon. More output generates more input What seems to be like a personal mantra is working out pretty well for me since the beginning of this year. Being more active on social media networks, writing more article on my blog, starting the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community, and contributing more to other online communities has helped me to receive more project requests, job offers and possibilities to expand my business at IOS Indian Ocean Software Ltd. Actually, it is not a coincidence that one of the questions new craftsmen should answer during registration asks about having a personal blog. Whether you are just curious about IT, right in the middle of your Computer Studies, or already working in software development or system administration since a while you should consider to advertise and market yourself online. Easiest way to resolve this are to have online profiles on professional social media networks like LinkedIn, Xing, Twitter, and Google+ (no Facebook should be considered for private only), and considering to have a personal blog. Why? -- Be yourself, be proud of your work, and let other people know that you're passionate about your profession. Trust me, this is going to open up opportunities you might not have dreamt about... Exchanging ideas about having a professional online presence - MSCC meetup on the 26th October 2013 Furthermore, consider to put your Curriculum Vitae online, too. There are quite a number of service providers like 1ClickCV, Stack Overflow Careers 2.0, etc. which give you the ability to have an up to date CV online. At least put it on your site, next to your personal blog. Similar to what you would be able to see on my site here. Cyber Island Mauritius - are we there? A couple of weeks ago I got a 'cold' message on LinkedIn from someone living in the U.S. asking about the circumstances and conditions of the IT world of Mauritius. He has a great business idea, venture capital and is currently looking for a team of software developers (mainly mobile - iOS) for a new startup here in Mauritius. Since then we exchanged quite some details through private messages and Skype conversations, and I suggested that it might be a good chance to join our meetup through a conference call and see for yourself about potential candidates. During approximately 30 to 40 minutes the brief idea of the new startup was presented - very promising state-of-the-art technology aspects and integration of various public APIs -, and we had a good Q&A session about it. Also thanks to the excellent bandwidth provided by the Ebene Accelerator the video conference between three parties went absolutely well. Clean Code Developer - Orange Grade Hahaha - nice one... Being at the Orange Tower at Ebene and then talking about an Orange Grade as CCD. Well, once again I provided an overview of the principles and practices in that rank of Clean Code, and similar to our last meetup we discussed on the various aspect of each principle, whether someone already got in touch with it during studies or work, and how it could affect their future view on their source code. Following are the principles and practices of Clean Code Developer - Orange Grade: CCD Orange Grade - Principles Single Level of Abstraction (SLA) Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) Separation of Concerns (SoC) Source Code conventions CCD Orange Grade - Practices Issue Tracking Automated Integration Tests Reading, Reading, Reading Reviews Especially the part on reading technical books got some extra attention. We quickly gathered our views on that and came up with a result that ranges between Zero (0) and up to Fifteen (15) book titles per year. Personally, I'm keeping my progress between Six (6) and Eight (8) titles per year, but at least One (1) per quarter of a year. Which is also connected to the fact that I'm participating in the O'Reilly Reader Review Program and have a another benefit to get access to free books only by writing and publishing a review afterwards. We also had a good exchange on the extended topic of 'Reviews' - which to my opinion is abnormal difficult here in Mauritius for various reasons. As far as I can tell from my experience working with Mauritian software developers, either as colleagues, employees or during consulting services there are unfortunately two dominant pattern on that topic: Keeping quiet Running away Honestly, I have no evidence about why these are the two 'solutions' on reviews but that's the situation that I had to face over the last couple of years. Sitting together and talking about problematic issues, tackling down root causes of de-motivational activities and working on general improvements doesn't seem to have a ground within the IT world of Mauritius. Are you a typist or a creative software craftsman? - MSCC meetup on the 26th October 2013 One very good example that we talked about was the fact of 'job hoppers' as you can easily observe it on someone's CV - those people change job every single year; for no obvious reason! Frankly speaking, I wouldn't even consider an IT person like to for an interview. As a company you're investing money and effort into the abilities of your employees. Hiring someone that won't stay for a longer period is out of question. And sorry to say, these kind of IT guys smell fishy about their capabilities and more likely to cause problems than actually produce productive results. One of the reasons why there is a probation period on an employment contract is to give you the liberty to leave as early as possible in case that you don't like your new position. Don't fool yourself or waste other people's time and money by hanging around a full year only to snatch off the bonus payment... Future outlook: Developer's Conference Even though it is not official yet I already mentioned it several times during our weekly Code & Coffee sessions. The MSCC is looking forward to be able to organise or to contribute to an upcoming IT event. Currently, the rough schedule is set for April 2014 but this mainly depends on availability of location(s), a decent time frame for preparations, and the underlying procedures with public bodies to have it approved and so on. As soon as the information about date and location has been fixed there will be a 'Call for Papers' period in order to attract local IT enthusiasts to apply for a session slot and talk about their field of work and their passion in IT. More to come for sure... My resume of the day It was a great gathering and I am very pleased about the fact that we had another 15 craftsmen (plus 2 businessmen on conference call plus 2 young apprentices) in the same room, talking about IT related topics and sharing their experience as employees and students. Personally, I really appreciated the feedback from the students about their current view on their future career, and I really hope that some of them are going to pursue their dreams. Start promoting yourself and it will happen... Looking forward to your blogs! And last but not least our numbers on Meetup and Facebook have been increased as a direct consequence of this meetup. Please, spread the word about the MSCC and get your friends and colleagues to join our official site. The higher the number of craftsmen we have the better chances we have t achieve something great! Thanks!

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• JSON Paring - How to show second Level ListView

  - by Sophie

  I am parsing JSON data into ListView, and successfully parsed first level of JSON in MainActivity.java, where i am showing list of Main Locations, like: Inner Locations Outer Locations Now i want whenever i do tap on Inner Locations then in SecondActivity it should show Delhi and NCR in a List, same goes for Outer Locations as well, in this case whenever user do tap need to show USA JSON look like: { "all": [ { "title": "Inner Locations", "maps": [ { "title": "Delhi", "markers": [ { "name": "Connaught Place", "latitude": 28.632777800000000000, "longitude": 77.219722199999980000 }, { "name": "Lajpat Nagar", "latitude": 28.565617900000000000, "longitude": 77.243389100000060000 } ] }, { "title": "NCR", "markers": [ { "name": "Gurgaon", "latitude": 28.440658300000000000, "longitude": 76.987347699999990000 }, { "name": "Noida", "latitude": 28.570000000000000000, "longitude": 77.319999999999940000 } ] } ] }, { "title": "Outer Locations", "maps": [ { "title": "United States", "markers": [ { "name": "Virgin Islands", "latitude": 18.335765000000000000, "longitude": -64.896335000000020000 }, { "name": "Vegas", "latitude": 36.114646000000000000, "longitude": -115.172816000000010000 } ] } ] } ] } Note: But whenever i do tap on any of the ListItem in first activity, not getting any list in SecondActivity, why ? MainActivity.java:- @Override protected Void doInBackground(Void... params) { // Create an array arraylist = new ArrayList<HashMap<String, String>>(); // Retrieve JSON Objects from the given URL address jsonobject = JSONfunctions .getJSONfromURL("http://10.0.2.2/locations.json"); try { // Locate the array name in JSON jsonarray = jsonobject.getJSONArray("all"); for (int i = 0; i < jsonarray.length(); i++) { HashMap<String, String> map = new HashMap<String, String>(); jsonobject = jsonarray.getJSONObject(i); // Retrieve JSON Objects map.put("title", jsonobject.getString("title")); arraylist.add(map); } } catch (JSONException e) { Log.e("Error", e.getMessage()); e.printStackTrace(); } return null; } @Override protected void onPostExecute(Void args) { // Locate the listview in listview_main.xml listview = (ListView) findViewById(R.id.listview); // Pass the results into ListViewAdapter.java adapter = new ListViewAdapter(MainActivity.this, arraylist); // Set the adapter to the ListView listview.setAdapter(adapter); // Close the progressdialog mProgressDialog.dismiss(); listview.setOnItemClickListener(new OnItemClickListener() { @Override public void onItemClick(AdapterView<?> parent, View view, int position, long id) { Toast.makeText(MainActivity.this, String.valueOf(position), Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show(); // TODO Auto-generated method stub Intent sendtosecond = new Intent(MainActivity.this, SecondActivity.class); // Pass all data rank sendtosecond.putExtra("title", arraylist.get(position).get(MainActivity.TITLE)); Log.d("Tapped Item::", arraylist.get(position).get(MainActivity.TITLE)); startActivity(sendtosecond); } }); } } } SecondActivity.java: @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); // Get the view from listview_main.xml setContentView(R.layout.listview_main); Intent in = getIntent(); strReceived = in.getStringExtra("title"); Log.d("Received Data::", strReceived); // Execute DownloadJSON AsyncTask new DownloadJSON().execute(); } // DownloadJSON AsyncTask private class DownloadJSON extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, Void> { @Override protected void onPreExecute() { super.onPreExecute(); } @Override protected Void doInBackground(Void... params) { // Create an array arraylist = new ArrayList<HashMap<String, String>>(); // Retrieve JSON Objects from the given URL address jsonobject = JSONfunctions .getJSONfromURL("http://10.0.2.2/locations.json"); try { // Locate the array name in JSON jsonarray = jsonobject.getJSONArray("maps"); for (int i = 0; i < jsonarray.length(); i++) { HashMap<String, String> map = new HashMap<String, String>(); jsonobject = jsonarray.getJSONObject(i); // Retrieve JSON Objects map.put("title", jsonobject.getString("title")); arraylist.add(map); } } catch (JSONException e) { Log.e("Error", e.getMessage()); e.printStackTrace(); } return null; }

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• Rails ActiveRecord friendly code from a Complex Join, Sum, and Group query

  - by Chad M

  PROBLEM Hello, I am having no luck trying to break down this SQL statement into ActiveRecord/Rails friendly code and I'd like to learn how I can avoid a find_by_sql statement in this situation. Scenario I have users that create audits when they perform an action. Each audit is of a specific audit_activity. Each audit_activity is worth a certain number of points, based on score_weight. I need to find the total scores of each user, based on their total accumulated audit_activity score_weights. Eventually I'll need to rank them which means adding a sort to this as well. My Code Here is my sql and simplified versions of the tables in question. Any thoughts? SQL with full column names (for clarity) SELECT users.id, u.email, SUM(audit_activity.score_weight) FROM users JOIN audits ON users.id = audits.user_id JOIN audit_activities ON audit_activities.id = audits.audit_activity_id GROUP BY users.id; Models: User, Audit, AuditActivity User fields: id, email class User < ActiveRecord::Base include Clearance::User has_many :audits end Audit fields: id, user_id, audit_activity_id class Audit < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :user belongs_to :audit_activity end AuditActivity fields: id, score_weight class AuditActivity < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :audits end Example Data Here is a set of SQL statements so you can play with similar data I'm working with and see what comes up when the concerned query is run. You should just be able to copy/paste the whole thing into a database query browser. CREATE TABLE users( id INTEGER NOT NULL, email TEXT (25), PRIMARY KEY (id) ); CREATE TABLE audits( id INTEGER NOT NULL, user_id INTEGER, audit_activity_id INTEGER, PRIMARY KEY (id) ); CREATE TABLE audit_activities( id INTEGER NOT NULL, score_weight INTEGER, PRIMARY KEY (id) ); INSERT INTO users(id, email) VALUES(1, "[email protected]"); INSERT INTO users(id, email) VALUES(2, "[email protected]"); INSERT INTO users(id, email) VALUES(3, "[email protected]"); INSERT INTO audits(id, user_id, audit_activity_id) VALUES(1, 1, 1); INSERT INTO audits(id, user_id, audit_activity_id) VALUES(2, 1, 2); INSERT INTO audits(id, user_id, audit_activity_id) VALUES(3, 1, 1); INSERT INTO audits(id, user_id, audit_activity_id) VALUES(4, 1, 3); INSERT INTO audits(id, user_id, audit_activity_id) VALUES(5, 1, 1); INSERT INTO audits(id, user_id, audit_activity_id) VALUES(6, 1, 4); INSERT INTO audits(id, user_id, audit_activity_id) VALUES(7, 2, 4); INSERT INTO audits(id, user_id, audit_activity_id) VALUES(8, 2, 4); INSERT INTO audits(id, user_id, audit_activity_id) VALUES(9, 2, 4); INSERT INTO audits(id, user_id, audit_activity_id) VALUES(10, 3, 3); INSERT INTO audits(id, user_id, audit_activity_id) VALUES(11, 3, 2); INSERT INTO audits(id, user_id, audit_activity_id) VALUES(12, 3, 2); INSERT INTO audits(id, user_id, audit_activity_id) VALUES(13, 3, 2); INSERT INTO audits(id, user_id, audit_activity_id) VALUES(14, 3, 3); INSERT INTO audits(id, user_id, audit_activity_id) VALUES(15, 3, 1); INSERT INTO audits(id, user_id, audit_activity_id) VALUES(16, 3, 1); INSERT INTO audit_activities(id, score_weight) VALUES(1, 1); INSERT INTO audit_activities(id, score_weight) VALUES(2, 2); INSERT INTO audit_activities(id, score_weight) VALUES(3, 7); INSERT INTO audit_activities(id, score_weight) VALUES(4, 11); The Query Again, here is the query. SELECT u.id, u.email, SUM(aa.score_weight) FROM users u JOIN audits a ON u.id = a.user_id JOIN audit_activities aa ON aa.id = a.audit_activity_id GROUP BY u.id; Many Thanks, Chad

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• 10 Essential Tools for building ASP.NET Websites

  - by Stephen Walther

  I recently put together a simple public website created with ASP.NET for my company at Superexpert.com. I was surprised by the number of free tools that I ended up using to put together the website. Therefore, I thought it would be interesting to create a list of essential tools for building ASP.NET websites. These tools work equally well with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. Performance Tools After reading Steve Souders two (very excellent) books on front-end website performance High Performance Web Sites and Even Faster Web Sites, I have been super sensitive to front-end website performance. According to Souders’ Performance Golden Rule: “Optimize front-end performance first, that's where 80% or more of the end-user response time is spent” You can use the tools below to reduce the size of the images, JavaScript files, and CSS files used by an ASP.NET application. 1. Sprite and Image Optimization Framework CSS sprites were first described in an article written for A List Apart entitled CSS sprites: Image Slicing’s Kiss of Death. When you use sprites, you combine multiple images used by a website into a single image. Next, you use CSS trickery to display particular sub-images from the combined image in a webpage. The primary advantage of sprites is that they reduce the number of requests required to display a webpage. Requesting a single large image is faster than requesting multiple small images. In general, the more resources – images, JavaScript files, CSS files – that must be moved across the wire, the slower your website. However, most people avoid using sprites because they require a lot of work. You need to combine all of the images and write just the right CSS rules to display the sub-images. The Microsoft Sprite and Image Optimization Framework enables you to avoid all of this work. The framework combines the images for you automatically. Furthermore, the framework includes an ASP.NET Web Forms control and an ASP.NET MVC helper that makes it easy to display the sub-images. You can download the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework from CodePlex at http://aspnet.codeplex.com/releases/view/50869. The Sprite and Image Optimization Framework was written by Morgan McClean who worked in the office next to mine at Microsoft. Morgan was a scary smart Intern from Canada and we discussed the Framework while he was building it (I was really excited to learn that he was working on it). Morgan added some great advanced features to this framework. For example, the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework supports something called image inlining. When you use image inlining, the actual image is stored in the CSS file. Here’s an example of what image inlining looks like: .Home_StephenWalther_small-jpg { width:75px; height:100px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAEsAAABkCAIAAABB1lpeAAAAB GdBTUEAALGOfPtRkwAAACBjSFJNAACHDwAAjA8AAP1SAACBQAAAfXkAAOmLAAA85QAAGcxzPIV3AAAKL s+zNfREAAAAASUVORK5CYII=) no-repeat 0% 0%; } The actual image (in this case a picture of me that is displayed on the home page of the Superexpert.com website) is stored in the CSS file. If you visit the Superexpert.com website then very few separate images are downloaded. For example, all of the images with a red border in the screenshot below take advantage of CSS sprites: Unfortunately, there are some significant Gotchas that you need to be aware of when using the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework. There are workarounds for these Gotchas. I plan to write about these Gotchas and workarounds in a future blog entry. 2. Microsoft Ajax Minifier Whenever possible you should combine, minify, compress, and cache with a far future header all of your JavaScript and CSS files. The Microsoft Ajax Minifier makes it easy to minify JavaScript and CSS files. Don’t confuse minification and compression. You need to do both. According to Souders, you can reduce the size of a JavaScript file by an additional 20% (on average) by minifying a JavaScript file after you compress the file. When you minify a JavaScript or CSS file, you use various tricks to reduce the size of the file before you compress the file. For example, you can minify a JavaScript file by replacing long JavaScript variables names with short variables names and removing unnecessary white space and comments. You can minify a CSS file by doing such things as replacing long color names such as #ffffff with shorter equivalents such as #fff. The Microsoft Ajax Minifier was created by Microsoft employee Ron Logan. Internally, this tool was being used by several large Microsoft websites. We also used the tool heavily on the ASP.NET team. I convinced Ron to publish the tool on CodePlex so that everyone in the world could take advantage of it. You can download the tool from the ASP.NET Ajax website and read documentation for the tool here. I created the installer for the Microsoft Ajax Minifier. When creating the installer, I also created a Visual Studio build task to make it easy to minify all of your JavaScript and CSS files whenever you do a build within Visual Studio automatically. Read the Ajax Minifier Quick Start to learn how to configure the build task. 3. ySlow The ySlow tool is a free add-on for Firefox created by Yahoo that enables you to test the front-end of your website. For example, here are the current test results for the Superexpert.com website: The Superexpert.com website has an overall score of B (not perfect but not bad). The ySlow tool is not perfect. For example, the Superexpert.com website received a failing grade of F for not using a Content Delivery Network even though the website using the Microsoft Ajax Content Delivery Network for JavaScript files such as jQuery. Uptime After publishing a website live to the world, you want to ensure that the website does not encounter any issues and that it stays live. I use the following tools to monitor the Superexpert.com website now that it is live. 4. ELMAH ELMAH stands for Error Logging Modules and Handlers for ASP.NET. ELMAH enables you to record any errors that happen at your website so you can review them in the future. You can download ELMAH for free from the ELMAH project website. ELMAH works great with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. You can configure ELMAH to store errors in a number of different stores including XML files, the Event Log, an Access database, a SQL database, an Oracle database, or in computer RAM. You also can configure ELMAH to email error messages to you when they happen. By default, you can access ELMAH by requesting the elmah.axd page from a website with ELMAH installed. Here’s what the elmah page looks like from the Superexpert.com website (this page is password-protected because secret information can be revealed in an error message): If you click on a particular error message, you can view the original Yellow Screen ASP.NET error message (even when the error message was never displayed to the actual user). I installed ELMAH by taking advantage of the new package manager for ASP.NET named NuGet (originally named NuPack). You can read the details about NuGet in the following blog entry by Scott Guthrie. You can download NuGet from CodePlex. 5. Pingdom I use Pingdom to verify that the Superexpert.com website is always up. You can sign up for Pingdom by visiting Pingdom.com. You can use Pingdom to monitor a single website for free. At the Pingdom website, you configure the frequency that your website gets pinged. I verify that the Superexpert.com website is up every 5 minutes. I have the Pingdom service verify that it can retrieve the string “Contact Us” from the website homepage. If your website goes down, you can configure Pingdom so that it sends an email, Twitter, SMS, or iPhone alert. I use the Pingdom iPhone app which looks like this: 6. Host Tracker If your website does go down then you need some way of determining whether it is a problem with your local network or if your website is down for everyone. I use a website named Host-Tracker.com to check how badly a website is down. Here’s what the Host-Tracker website displays for the Superexpert.com website when the website can be successfully pinged from everywhere in the world: Notice that Host-Tracker pinged the Superexpert.com website from 68 locations including Roubaix, France and Scranton, PA. Debugging I mean debugging in the broadest possible sense. I use the following tools when building a website to verify that I have not made a mistake. 7. HTML Spell Checker Why doesn’t Visual Studio have a built-in spell checker? Don’t know – I’ve always found this mysterious. Fortunately, however, a former member of the ASP.NET team wrote a free spell checker that you can use with your ASP.NET pages. I find a spell checker indispensible. It is easy to delude yourself that you are capable of perfect spelling. I’m always super embarrassed when I actually run the spell checking tool and discover all of my spelling mistakes. The fastest way to add the HTML Spell Checker extension to Visual Studio is to select the menu option Tools, Extension Manager within Visual Studio. Click on Online Gallery and search for HTML Spell Checker: 8. IIS SEO Toolkit If people cannot find your website through Google then you should not even bother to create it. Microsoft has a great extension for IIS named the IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit that you can use to identify issue with your website that would hurt its page rank. You also can use this tool to quickly create a sitemap for your website that you can submit to Google or Bing. You can even generate the sitemap for an ASP.NET MVC website. Here’s what the report overview for the Superexpert.com website looks like: Notice that the Sueprexpert.com website had plenty of violations. For example, there are 65 cases in which a page has a broken hyperlink. You can drill into these violations to identity the exact page and location where these violations occur. 9. LinqPad If your ASP.NET website accesses a database then you should be using LINQ to Entities with the Entity Framework. Using LINQ involves some magic. LINQ queries written in C# get converted into SQL queries for you. If you are not careful about how you write your LINQ queries, you could unintentionally build a really badly performing website. LinqPad is a free tool that enables you to experiment with your LINQ queries. It even works with Microsoft SQL CE 4 and Azure. You can use LinqPad to execute a LINQ to Entities query and see the results. You also can use it to see the resulting SQL that gets executed against the database: 10. .NET Reflector I use .NET Reflector daily. The .NET Reflector tool enables you to take any assembly and disassemble the assembly into C# or VB.NET code. You can use .NET Reflector to see the “Source Code” of an assembly even when you do not have the actual source code. You can download a free version of .NET Reflector from the Redgate website. I use .NET Reflector primarily to help me understand what code is doing internally. For example, I used .NET Reflector with the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework to better understand how the MVC Image helper works. Here’s part of the disassembled code from the Image helper class: Summary In this blog entry, I’ve discussed several of the tools that I used to create the Superexpert.com website. These are tools that I use to improve the performance, improve the SEO, verify the uptime, or debug the Superexpert.com website. All of the tools discussed in this blog entry are free. Furthermore, all of these tools work with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. Let me know if there are any tools that you use daily when building ASP.NET websites.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, January 20, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, January 20, 2011Popular ReleasesAutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.4: Added champion: Renekton Removed automatic file association Fix: The recent files combobox didn't always open a file when an item was selected Fix: Removing a recently opened file caused an errorRazorEngine: RazorEngine v2.0: IMPORTANT RazorEngine v2 is a complete rewrite of the templating framework. Because of this, there are no guarantees that code written around v1.2 will run without modification. The v2 framework is cleaner and refined. Please check the forthcoming codeplex site updates which will detail the new functionality. Features in v2: ASP.NET Medium Trust Support Custom Template Activation with Dependency Injection Support Subtemplating using the new @Include method. Known issues: @Include doe...AutoSPInstaller: AutoSPInstaller for SharePoint 2010 (v2 Beta): New package consisting of AutoSPInstaller v2 files. If you have not previously downloaded AutoSPInstaller, or are interested in the new functionality and format, this is the recommended release.DotNetNuke® Community Edition: 05.06.01: Major Highlights Fixed issue to remove preCondition checks when upgrading to .Net 4.0 Fixed issue where some valid domains were failing email validation checks. Fixed issue where editing Host menu page settings assigns the page to a Portal. Fixed issue which caused XHTML validation problems in 5.6.0 Fixed issue where an aspx page in any subfolder was inaccessible. Fixed issue where Config.Touch method signature had an unintentional breaking change in 5.6.0 Fixed issue which caused...MiniTwitter: 1.65: MiniTwitter 1.65 ???? ?? List ????? in-reply-to ???????? ????????????????????????? ?? OAuth ????????????????????????????Opalis Community Releases: Integration Pack for Windows Tasks: NOTE: There are two objects in this Integration Pack, each one has multiple uses. Each object comes with its own documentation. See below for a brief description of each: The Integration Pack Object - File System MaintenanceThis object extends the current Foundation Object Functionality within OIS. Specifically, this object extends the functionality of the Delete File, Delete Folder, and Get File Status Objects. It also works well with many of the Foundation Objects which can process the inf...ASP.net Ribbon: Version 2.1: Tadaaa... So Version 2.1 brings a lot of things... Have a look at the homepage to see what's new. Also, I wanted to (really) improve the Designer. I wanted to add great things... but... it took to much time. And as some of you were waiting for fixes, I decided just to fix bugs and add some features. So have a look at the demo app to see new features. Thanks ! (You can expect some realeses if bugs are not fixed correctly... 2.2, 2.3, 2.4....)iTracker Asp.Net Starter Kit: Version 3.0.0: This is the inital release of the version 3.0.0 Visual Studio 2010 (.Net 4.0) remake of the ITracker application. I connsider this a working, stable application but since there are still some features missing to make it "complete" I'm leaving it listed as a "beta" release. I am hoping to make it feature complete for v3.1.0 but anything is possible.mytrip.mvc (CMS & e-Commerce): mytrip.mvc 1.0.52.1 beta 2: New MVC3 RTM fix bug: Dropdown select fix bug: Add Store/Department and Add Store/Produser WEB.mytrip.mvc 1.0.52.1 Web for install hosting System Requirements: NET 4.0, MSSQL 2008 or MySql (auto creation table to database) if .\SQLEXPRESS auto creation database (App_Data folder) SRC.mytrip.mvc 1.0.52.1 System Requirements: Visual Studio 2010 or Web Deweloper 2010 MSSQL 2008 or MySql (auto creation table to database) if .\SQLEXPRESS auto creation database (App_Data folder) Connector/Net...ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome, jQuery Ajax helpers (controls): 1.6.1: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form, Popup and Pager changes: RenderView controller extension works for razor also live demo switched to razorBloodSim: BloodSim - 1.3.3.1: - Priority update to resolve a bug that was causing Boss damage to ignore Blood Shields entirelyRawr: Rawr 4.0.16 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 As of this release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you have a problem, please follow the Posting Guidelines and put it into the Issue Tracker. W...MvcContrib: an Outer Curve Foundation project: MVC 3 - 3.0.51.0: Please see the Change Log for a complete list of changes. MVC BootCamp Description of the releases: MvcContrib.Release.zip MvcContrib.dll MvcContrib.TestHelper.dll MvcContrib.Extras.Release.zip T4MVC. The extra view engines / controller factories and other functionality which is in the project. This file includes the main MvcContrib assembly. Samples are included in the release. You do not need MvcContrib if you download the Extras.N2 CMS: 2.1.1: N2 is a lightweight CMS framework for ASP.NET. It helps you build great web sites that anyone can update. 2.1.1 Maintenance release List of changes 2.1 Major Changes Support for auto-implemented properties ({get;set;}, based on contribution by And Poulsen) File manager improvements (multiple file upload, resize images to fit) New image gallery Infinite scroll paging on news Content templates First time with N2? Try the demo site Download one of the template packs (above) and open...DNN Menu Provider: 01.00.00 (DNN 5.X and newer): DNN Menu Provider v1.0.0Our first release build is a stable release. It requires at least DotNetNuke 5.1.0. Previous DNN versions are not suported. Major Highlights: Easy to use template system build on a selfmade and powerful engine. Ready for multilingual websites. A flexible translation integration based on the ASP.NET Provider Model as well as an build in provider for DNN Localization (DNN 5.5.X > required) and an provider for EALO Translation API. Advanced in-memory caching function...TweetSharp: TweetSharp v2.0.0.0 - Preview 8: Documentation for this release may be found at http://tweetsharp.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=UserGuide&referringTitle=Documentation. Note: This code is currently preview quality. Preview 8 ChangesUpgraded library references to address reported regressions Third Party Library VersionsHammock v1.1.6: http://hammock.codeplex.com Json.NET 4.0 Release 1: http://json.codeplex.comVidCoder: 0.8.1: Adds ability to choose an arbitrary range (in seconds or frames) to encode. Adds ability to override the title number in the output file name when enqueing multiple titles. Updated presets: Added iPhone 4, Apple TV 2, fixed some existing presets that should have had weightp=0 or trellis=0 on them. Added {parent} option to auto-name format. Use {parent:2} to refer to a folder 2 levels above the input file. Added {title:2} option to auto-name format. Adds leading zeroes to reach the sp...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks2008R2 without filestream: This download contains a version of the AdventureWorks2008R2 OLTP database without FILESTREAM properties. You do not need to have filestream enabled to attach this database. No additional schema or data changes have been made. To install the version of AdventureWorks2008R2 that includes filestream, use the SR1 installer available here. Prerequisites: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 must be installed. Full-Text Search must be enabled. Installing the AdventureWorks2008R2 OLTP database: 1. Cl...ASP.NET: ASP.NET MVC 3 Application Upgrader: This standalone application upgrades ASP.NET MVC 2 applications to ASP.NET MVC 3. It works for both ASP.NET MVC 3 RC 2 and RTM. The tool only supports Visual Studio 2010 solutions and MVC 2 projects targeting .NET 4. It will not work with VS 2008 solutions, MVC 1 projects, or projects targeting .NET 3.5. Those projects will first have to be upgraded using Visual Studio 2010 and/or retargeted for .NET 4. The tool will: Create a backup of your entire solution Update all Web Applications and ...NuGet: NuGet 1.0 RTM: NuGet is a free, open source developer focused package management system for the .NET platform intent on simplifying the process of incorporating third party libraries into a .NET application during development. This release is a Visual Studio 2010 extension and contains the the Package Manager Console and the Add Package Dialog. The URL to the package OData feed is: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=206669New ProjectsAnyDbTest: AnyDbTest is the first and only automated DB unit testing tool available using XML as test case. AnyDbTest is just designed for DBA/DB developers. It supports all kinds of popular database, such as Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL etc. BizTalk Context Adder Pipeline Component: Context Property Adder pipeline component, which utilize XML configuration.BOQ: Bill Of Quantity... WinForms ProjectCascading System: The cascading components of the CASA simulation system. This is to be used with the CASA System.Condobook: Projeto para estudo de ASP.NET MVC do grupo SharpShooters.Crystal Report WCF Services: This project is a mini WCF web services i built which allow web-server which does not have Crystal report server installed to generate crystal report via WCFCultiv Photometadata for Umbraco: The PhotoMetaData package will extract meta data from images that you upload in your Umbraco media section. Dots and Boxes: boxesEasy Sound Miage: Projet d'année M1File Encoding Checker: File Encoding Checker is a GUI tool that allows you to validate the text encoding of one or more files. The tool can display the encoding for all selected files, or only the files that do not have the encodings you specify. File Encoding Checker requires .NET 2 or above to run.Intuition Logic C++ Library: A C++ library of computer vision, machine learning and optimization, etc. based on design patterns that make it easy to integrate to your existing project. LingDong: LingDong is an open-source search engine implanted by C#&ASP.NET. It includes Index, Rank and Query, but not Crawler.LiveSpaceBackupTool: This tool helps you to back up your Windows Live Spaces blogs and comments before they are forever gone. Options offered by Microsoft are to download a local copy or migrate to wordpress.com, but unfortunately some details will be lost if you do that. Use this tool to avoid it.My IE Accelerators: 1. dict.cn ie accelaratorOrchard Anti Spam Module: The Orchard Anti Spam Module is an API used by other Orchard modules to prevent users from entering messages categorized as spam in forms. It uses online spam services like Akismet and TypePad.Orchard Contact User Module: Orchard module for users to be able to contact each other through messages.PortfolioEngine.Net: PortfolioEngine.Net is an easy to use showcase engine to present the projects you worked on. It is developed in C#, using asp.net mvc 2 on top of .Net 3.5PoshWSUS: This is a module designed to help fill in a gap where a System Administrator can perform WSUS commands against the server via the command line vs working using the GUI. Script Helper: Easily run large and continuously changing batches of scripts.SetDefaultAudioEndpoint: SetDefaultAudioEndpoint (Set Default Audio Endpoint) allows users to set the default audio playback device using computer code. The solution opens the Sound Control Panel and uses the Microsoft UI Automation accessibility framework to make changes.SharePoint 2010 Acknowledgement Page: SharePoint 2010 Acknowledgement Solution. Solution deploys an acknowledgement page using HTTP module to check SharePoint 2010 user profile every time user goes to site and presents users with acknowledgement page they must accept prior to accessing site.SimpleML: SimpleML is an efficient non-extractive parser for an XML-like markup language. It supports navigation similar to SAX and DOM, ability to add/delete elements, and full macro expansion similar to PHP using Lua. It is programmed in C++ and is fully Unicode compliant.SLRTC#: To be continuedStreamBase Community Extensions: StreamBase Community Extensions (SBCX) is aimed at providing a Microsoft Rx-based .NET class library, code-generator (like SQL metal), and a widely useful set of Windows PowerShell cmdlets, providers, aliases, filters, functions and scripts for StreamBase.VS2010 Context Menu Fix: This utility fixes annoying quirk of context menu in VS2010 Document Editor which impedes context menu navigation via keyboard.WinEye: A combonation between spy++ and hawkeye, its meant to pull apart native and managed windows for further investigation

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, February 02, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, February 02, 2011Popular ReleasesTweetSharp: TweetSharp v2.0.0.0 - Preview 10: Documentation for this release may be found at http://tweetsharp.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=UserGuide&referringTitle=Documentation. Note: This code is currently preview quality. Preview 9 ChangesAdded support for trends Added support for Silverlight 4 Elevated WP7 fixes Third Party Library VersionsHammock v1.1.7: http://hammock.codeplex.com Json.NET 4.0 Release 1: http://json.codeplex.comFacebook C# SDK: 5.0.0 (BETA): This is our first BETA release of the version 5 branch of the Facebook C# SDK. Remember this is a BETA build. Some things may change or not work exactly as planned. We are absolutely looking for feedback on this release to help us improve the final 5.X.X release. This release contains some breaking changes. Particularly with authentication. After spending time reviewing the trouble areas that people are having using this SDK (and Facebook in general) we decided to spend a good deal of time w...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 2.0 (February 2011): Next release of Phalanger; again faster, more stable and ready for daily use. Based on many user experiences this release is one more step closer to be perfect compiler and runtime of your old PHP applications; or perfect platform for migrating to .NET. February 2011 release of Phalanger introduces several changes, enhancements and fixes. See complete changelist for all the changes. To improve the performance of your application using MySQL, please use Managed MySQL Extension for Phalanger....Chemistry Add-in for Word: Chemistry Add-in for Word - Version 1.0: On February 1, 2011, we announced the availability of version 1 of the Chemistry Add-in for Word, as well as the assignment of the open source project to the Outercurve Foundation by Microsoft Research and the University of Cambridge. System RequirementsHardware RequirementsAny computer that can run Office 2007 or Office 2010. Software RequirementsYour computer must have the following software: Any version of Windows that can run Office 2007 or Office 2010, which includes Windows XP SP3 and...StyleCop for ReSharper: StyleCop for ReSharper 5.1.15005.000: Applied patch from rodpl for merging of stylecop setting files with settings in parent folder. Previous release: A considerable amount of work has gone into this release: Huge focus on performance around the violation scanning subsystem: - caching added to reduce IO operations around reading and merging of settings files - caching added to reduce creation of expensive objects Users should notice condsiderable perf boost and a decrease in memory usage. Bug Fixes: - StyleCop's new Objec...Minecraft Tools: Minecraft Topographical Survey 1.4: MTS requires version 4 of the .NET Framework - you must download it from Microsoft if you have not previously installed it. This version of MTS adds MCRegion support and fixes bugs that caused rendering to fail for some users. New in this version of MTS: Support for rendering worlds compressed with MCRegion Fixed rendering failure when encountering non-NBT files with the .dat extension Fixed rendering failure when encountering corrupt NBT files Minor GUI updates Note that the command...MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 0.8: Fixed the following bugs: *Variable name error in the jvascript file that prevented the use of the deleted item template of the Datagrid *Now after the changes applied to an item of the DataGrid are cancelled all input fields are reset to the very initial value they had. *Other minor bugs. Added: *This version is available both for MVC2, and MVC 3. The MVC 3 version has a release number of 0.85. This way one can install both version. *Client Validation support has been added to all control...Office Web.UI: Beta preview (Source): This is the first Beta. it includes full source code and all available controls. Some designers are not ready, and some features are not finalized allready (missing properties, draft styles) ThanksASP.net Ribbon: Version 2.2: This release brings some new controls (part of Office Web.UI). A few bugs are fixed and it includes the "auto resize" feature as you resize the window. (It can cause an infinite loop when the window is too reduced, it's why this release is not marked as "stable"). I will release more versions 2.3, 2.4... until V3 which will be the official launch of Office Web.UI. Both products will evolve at the same speed. Thanks.Barcode Rendering Framework: 2.1.1.0: Finally fixed bugs with code 128 symbology. It was envisioned that this would be the last release to target VS2008 but support will continue due in no small part to a desire to add SSRS support in the future.xUnit.net - Unit Testing for .NET: xUnit.net 1.7: xUnit.net release 1.7Build #1540 Important notes for Resharper users: Resharper support has been moved to the xUnit.net Contrib project. Important note for TestDriven.net users: If you are having issues running xUnit.net tests in TestDriven.net, especially on 64-bit Windows, we strongly recommend you upgrade to TD.NET version 3.0 or later. This release adds the following new features: Added support for ASP.NET MVC 3 Added Assert.Equal(double expected, double actual, int precision) Ad...Spark View Engine: Spark v1.5: Release Notes There have been a lot of minor changes going on since version 1.1, but most important to note are the major changes which include: Support for HTML5 "section" tag. Spark has now renamed its own section tag to "segment" instead to avoid clashes. You can still use "section" in a Spark sense for legacy support by specifying ParseSectionAsSegment = true if needed while you transition Bindings - this is a massive feature that further simplifies your views by giving you a powerful ...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.3: Version: 2.0.0.3 (Milestone 3): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...Rawr: Rawr 4.0.17 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 and on the Version Notes page: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes As of the 4.0.16 release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you...Squiggle - A Free open source LAN Messenger: Squiggle 2.5 Beta: In this release following are the new features: Localization: Support for Arabic, French, German and Chinese (Simplified) Bridge: Connect two Squiggle nets across the WAN or different subnets Aliases: Special codes with special meaning can be embedded in message like (version),(datetime),(time),(date),(you),(me) Commands: cls, /exit, /offline, /online, /busy, /away, /main Sound notifications: Get audio alerts on contact online, message received, buzz Broadcast for group: You can ri...VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.4.2: Version 7.4.2 of VivoSocial has been released. If you experienced any issues with the previous version, please update your modules to the 7.4.2 release and see if they persist. If you have any questions about this release, please post them in our Support forums. If you are experiencing a bug or would like to request a new feature, please submit it to our issue tracker. Web Controls * Updated Business Objects and added a new SQL Data Provider File. Groups * Fixed a security issue whe...PHP Manager for IIS: PHP Manager 1.1.1 for IIS 7: This is a minor release of PHP Manager for IIS 7. It contains all the functionality available in 56962 plus several bug fixes (see change list for more details). Also, this release includes Russian language support. SHA1 codes for the downloads are: PHPManagerForIIS-1.1.0-x86.msi - 6570B4A8AC8B5B776171C2BA0572C190F0900DE2 PHPManagerForIIS-1.1.0-x64.msi - 12EDE004EFEE57282EF11A8BAD1DC1ADFD66A654BloodSim: WControls.dll update: Priority Update It's just come to my attention that the latest version of WControls.dll was not included in the 1.4 release and as a result, BloodSim has been unuseable. Please download WControls.dll from here, and this will rectify the issue.VFPX: VFP2C32 2.0.0.8 Release Candidate: This release includes several bugfixes, new functions and finally a CHM help file for the complete library.DB>doc for Microsoft SQL Server: 1.0.0.0: Initial release Supported output HTML WikiPlex markup Raw XML Supported objects Tables Primary Keys Foreign Keys ViewsNew ProjectsAlay Plugin for Windows Live Writer: a project for creating an alay languageAnalyse Rapide des Droits sur une Arborescence du Système de Fichiers: Outil permettant une analyse simple sur une arborescence du système de fichier. L'idée étant de repérer rapidement les parties de l'arborescence qui changent de droits (arrêt de la propagation des droits). Developpement en C#, Interface WPF.Asp.Net Chat 4 All: Asp.Net Chat Application made easy By VaibhavBlogEngine.NET Image Picker: The image picker for BlogEngine.NET An utitilty to pick previously uploaded images in BlogEngine.NET blog posts. CMS for the kubert.info web-site: CMS for the kubert.info web-siteCommonRepositoryInterface: <project name> is a interface for abstracting away the details of the underlying data store behind a repositoryDragon Library Lite: This is a free version of my game engine missing some of its components, and parts of some, to make it so I could put this up for free without giving away all my source code. Also, any developers that show an interest here may be able to get access to the full version and help meeBookInfoGrabber: eBookInfoGrabber is a simple program designed to quickly grab any possible information you could desire on a given eBook using ISBN-10, ISBN-13, or by Title. It uses the Sony eBook store to gather all the data, and is developed in C#.Japanese Character Sets - Input, Identification and Comparison: Basic application written in C# which demonstrates the input, identification and comparison of specific Hiragana (half- and full-width), Katakana (half- and full-width), Kanji and Romaji Japanese characters. May be useful for developers beginning a project for Japanese users.Lighting UP 2011: 2011 NDSU Capstone project. Developing a Windows Phone 7 service application.Localization for SharePoint: Localize for SharePoint gives you the flexibility of localizing any site collection to any language. You don't need to have any language packs installed on your server. Any page on your site will be instantly translated to your preferred language.mzXML Corrupted Scans Remover: This application makes fast error correction on mzXML files. Each empty scan is being replaced by previous one. Program is optimized to work with large files (>2GB) with very small amout of memory needed while processing.Net Rank BR: Um projeto para criar analises sobre o log do jogo Urban Terror, um centro de encontro de players para jogo em time, um editor e criador de configs para Urt.NGinn.BPM: NGinn.BPM - a BPM / Workflow engine for Microsoft.NetOmegaEngine: A simple, light weight and easy to use Game Engine created in XNA. Intended to help reduce time needed with coding and focus more on game creation.Open Intel: Open Intel (OI) is an accelerator for rapidly building open data solutions with business intelligence and spatial analysis capabilities.Peekaboo - Proxy Server StarterKit: Peekaboo is a proxy server starterkit made in Java. Its a HTTP proxy server with a Swing UI to peek into the application/browser <-> server communication. Red Arrow: Turn based space strategy game. Source is published, but assets are considered private. Developed with C# / XNA FrameworkRPG engine: RPG engine for RPG games!Sancer: This is a school project which aids the teachers/advisers in choosing a students class depending on their grade on the placement test. Scaffold it !: "Scaffold it !" is a Visual Studio 2010 extension that enable you to scaffold elements from your entities. It's a time saver tool that leverage T4 templates and Visual Studio extensibility. SharePoint 2010 Design Guides for Developers: This projects holds visual guides to help developers and software architects take the best decision when building SharePoint ApplicationsSmith Image Converter: An easy-to-use tool to convert images format. At present, it supports bmp, png and jpeg type conversion.TFS Process Dashboard Integration: Small tool which allows integration of Team Foundation Server source control with the Process Dashboard line counter.Tibco Team Foundation Server (TFS) plugin: This project creates a Team Foundation Server plugin for Tibco BW Designer. It can be used from Tibco Designer as RCS adapter and manipulates the project files that are stored-version controlled- in TFS. ubotia: ubotiaXNA 4.0 Content Compiler: <project name> Compile to .xnb your texture files, audio files and SpriteFont files without adding to the Content project. Very Usefull in tools to create content for a game.

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• python- scipy optimization

  - by pear

  In scipy fmin_slsqp (Sequential Least Squares Quadratic Programming), I tried reading the code 'slsqp.py' provided with the scipy package, to find what are the criteria to get the exit_modes 0? I cannot find which statements in the code produce this exit mode? Please help me 'slsqp.py' code as follows, exit_modes = { -1 : "Gradient evaluation required (g & a)", 0 : "Optimization terminated successfully.", 1 : "Function evaluation required (f & c)", 2 : "More equality constraints than independent variables", 3 : "More than 3*n iterations in LSQ subproblem", 4 : "Inequality constraints incompatible", 5 : "Singular matrix E in LSQ subproblem", 6 : "Singular matrix C in LSQ subproblem", 7 : "Rank-deficient equality constraint subproblem HFTI", 8 : "Positive directional derivative for linesearch", 9 : "Iteration limit exceeded" } def fmin_slsqp( func, x0 , eqcons=[], f_eqcons=None, ieqcons=[], f_ieqcons=None, bounds = [], fprime = None, fprime_eqcons=None, fprime_ieqcons=None, args = (), iter = 100, acc = 1.0E-6, iprint = 1, full_output = 0, epsilon = _epsilon ): # Now do a lot of function wrapping # Wrap func feval, func = wrap_function(func, args) # Wrap fprime, if provided, or approx_fprime if not if fprime: geval, fprime = wrap_function(fprime,args) else: geval, fprime = wrap_function(approx_fprime,(func,epsilon)) if f_eqcons: # Equality constraints provided via f_eqcons ceval, f_eqcons = wrap_function(f_eqcons,args) if fprime_eqcons: # Wrap fprime_eqcons geval, fprime_eqcons = wrap_function(fprime_eqcons,args) else: # Wrap approx_jacobian geval, fprime_eqcons = wrap_function(approx_jacobian, (f_eqcons,epsilon)) else: # Equality constraints provided via eqcons[] eqcons_prime = [] for i in range(len(eqcons)): eqcons_prime.append(None) if eqcons[i]: # Wrap eqcons and eqcons_prime ceval, eqcons[i] = wrap_function(eqcons[i],args) geval, eqcons_prime[i] = wrap_function(approx_fprime, (eqcons[i],epsilon)) if f_ieqcons: # Inequality constraints provided via f_ieqcons ceval, f_ieqcons = wrap_function(f_ieqcons,args) if fprime_ieqcons: # Wrap fprime_ieqcons geval, fprime_ieqcons = wrap_function(fprime_ieqcons,args) else: # Wrap approx_jacobian geval, fprime_ieqcons = wrap_function(approx_jacobian, (f_ieqcons,epsilon)) else: # Inequality constraints provided via ieqcons[] ieqcons_prime = [] for i in range(len(ieqcons)): ieqcons_prime.append(None) if ieqcons[i]: # Wrap ieqcons and ieqcons_prime ceval, ieqcons[i] = wrap_function(ieqcons[i],args) geval, ieqcons_prime[i] = wrap_function(approx_fprime, (ieqcons[i],epsilon)) # Transform x0 into an array. x = asfarray(x0).flatten() # Set the parameters that SLSQP will need # meq = The number of equality constraints if f_eqcons: meq = len(f_eqcons(x)) else: meq = len(eqcons) if f_ieqcons: mieq = len(f_ieqcons(x)) else: mieq = len(ieqcons) # m = The total number of constraints m = meq + mieq # la = The number of constraints, or 1 if there are no constraints la = array([1,m]).max() # n = The number of independent variables n = len(x) # Define the workspaces for SLSQP n1 = n+1 mineq = m - meq + n1 + n1 len_w = (3*n1+m)*(n1+1)+(n1-meq+1)*(mineq+2) + 2*mineq+(n1+mineq)*(n1-meq) \ + 2*meq + n1 +(n+1)*n/2 + 2*m + 3*n + 3*n1 + 1 len_jw = mineq w = zeros(len_w) jw = zeros(len_jw) # Decompose bounds into xl and xu if len(bounds) == 0: bounds = [(-1.0E12, 1.0E12) for i in range(n)] elif len(bounds) != n: raise IndexError, \ 'SLSQP Error: If bounds is specified, len(bounds) == len(x0)' else: for i in range(len(bounds)): if bounds[i][0] > bounds[i][1]: raise ValueError, \ 'SLSQP Error: lb > ub in bounds[' + str(i) +'] ' + str(bounds[4]) xl = array( [ b[0] for b in bounds ] ) xu = array( [ b[1] for b in bounds ] ) # Initialize the iteration counter and the mode value mode = array(0,int) acc = array(acc,float) majiter = array(iter,int) majiter_prev = 0 # Print the header if iprint >= 2 if iprint >= 2: print "%5s %5s %16s %16s" % ("NIT","FC","OBJFUN","GNORM") while 1: if mode == 0 or mode == 1: # objective and constraint evaluation requird # Compute objective function fx = func(x) # Compute the constraints if f_eqcons: c_eq = f_eqcons(x) else: c_eq = array([ eqcons[i](x) for i in range(meq) ]) if f_ieqcons: c_ieq = f_ieqcons(x) else: c_ieq = array([ ieqcons[i](x) for i in range(len(ieqcons)) ]) # Now combine c_eq and c_ieq into a single matrix if m == 0: # no constraints c = zeros([la]) else: # constraints exist if meq > 0 and mieq == 0: # only equality constraints c = c_eq if meq == 0 and mieq > 0: # only inequality constraints c = c_ieq if meq > 0 and mieq > 0: # both equality and inequality constraints exist c = append(c_eq, c_ieq) if mode == 0 or mode == -1: # gradient evaluation required # Compute the derivatives of the objective function # For some reason SLSQP wants g dimensioned to n+1 g = append(fprime(x),0.0) # Compute the normals of the constraints if fprime_eqcons: a_eq = fprime_eqcons(x) else: a_eq = zeros([meq,n]) for i in range(meq): a_eq[i] = eqcons_prime[i](x) if fprime_ieqcons: a_ieq = fprime_ieqcons(x) else: a_ieq = zeros([mieq,n]) for i in range(mieq): a_ieq[i] = ieqcons_prime[i](x) # Now combine a_eq and a_ieq into a single a matrix if m == 0: # no constraints a = zeros([la,n]) elif meq > 0 and mieq == 0: # only equality constraints a = a_eq elif meq == 0 and mieq > 0: # only inequality constraints a = a_ieq elif meq > 0 and mieq > 0: # both equality and inequality constraints exist a = vstack((a_eq,a_ieq)) a = concatenate((a,zeros([la,1])),1) # Call SLSQP slsqp(m, meq, x, xl, xu, fx, c, g, a, acc, majiter, mode, w, jw) # Print the status of the current iterate if iprint > 2 and the # major iteration has incremented if iprint >= 2 and majiter > majiter_prev: print "%5i %5i % 16.6E % 16.6E" % (majiter,feval[0], fx,linalg.norm(g)) # If exit mode is not -1 or 1, slsqp has completed if abs(mode) != 1: break majiter_prev = int(majiter) # Optimization loop complete. Print status if requested if iprint >= 1: print exit_modes[int(mode)] + " (Exit mode " + str(mode) + ')' print " Current function value:", fx print " Iterations:", majiter print " Function evaluations:", feval[0] print " Gradient evaluations:", geval[0] if not full_output: return x else: return [list(x), float(fx), int(majiter), int(mode), exit_modes[int(mode)] ]

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• Specifying $(this).val() for two different elements (by class)

  - by Chaya Cooper

  What would be the correct syntax for specifying 2 elements by class to evaluate their values when they have different classes? This snippet adds and/or removes values from "increase_priority1" when the user has selected both a complaint and ranked the importance level of the issue, however when I added the 2nd element (".complaint select") to the If Statement it stopped working properly and only accepts input from the 2nd item (Waist) after the 1rst item (Shoulders) has been selected. I believe the problem is that it's unable to determine which ".complaint select" to use, but I haven't been able to figure out how to use (this) for the 2nd element, or another similar approach. The complete function includes apx. 20 similar pairs of If Statements to set & unset other elements, and a working example with 4 pairs is available at http://jsfiddle.net/chayacooper/vWLEn/168/ I'm trying to avoid using ID's because that becomes pretty cumbersome to do for 25 Select elements and each of their values (ID's were also problematic because it stopped working when I added a 2nd element to the If Statement for removing/unsetting a value) Javascript var $increase_priority1 = $(".increase_priority1"); // If value is "Shoulders", complaint was Shoulders too small (select name=Shoulders value=Too_small) and it was assigned a level 1 priority (select class="ranking shoulders" value=1). // var's for other issues and priority levels go here $(".ranking, .complaint select").change(function() { var name = $(this).data("name"); //get priority name if ($(".complaint select").val() === "Too_small" && $(this).val() == 1 && !$(this).data("increase_priority1")) { //rank is 1, and not yet added to priority list $("<option>", {text:name, val:name}).appendTo($increase_priority1); $(this).data("increase_priority1", true); //flag as a priority item } if ($(this).data("increase_priority1") && ($(this).val() != 1 || $(".complaint select").val() != "Too_small")) { //is in priority list, but now demoted $("option[value=" + name + "]", $increase_priority1).remove(); $(this).removeData("increase_priority1"); //no longer a priority item } // Similar If Statements to set & unset other elements go here }); HTML <div> <label>To Increase - 1rst Priority <select name="modify_increase_1rst[]" class="increase_priority1" multiple> </select></label> </div> <div> <span class="complaint"> <label>Shoulders</label> <select name=Shoulders> <option value="null">Select</option><option value="Too_small">Too Small</option><option value="Too_big">Too Big</option><option value="Too_expensive">Too expensive</option> </select> </span> <label>Ranking</label> <select name="importance_bother_shoulders" class="ranking shoulders" data-name="Shoulders"> <option value="Null">Select</option><option value="1">1</option><option value="2">2</option><option value="3">3</option><option value="4">4</option> <option value="5">5</option> </select> </div> <div> <span class="complaint"> <label>Waist</label> <select name=Waist> <option value="null">Select</option><option value="Too_small">Too Small</option><option value="Too_big">Too Big</option><option value="Too_expensive">Too expensive</option> </select> </span> <label>Ranking</label> <select name="importance_bother_waist" class="ranking waist" data-name="Waist"> <option value="Null">Select</option><option value="1">1</option><option value="2">2</option><option value="3">3</option><option value="4">4</option> <option value="5">5</option> </select> </div>

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• Toorcon14

  - by danx

  Toorcon 2012 Information Security Conference San Diego, CA, http://www.toorcon.org/ Dan Anderson, October 2012 It's almost Halloween, and we all know what that means—yes, of course, it's time for another Toorcon Conference! Toorcon is an annual conference for people interested in computer security. This includes the whole range of hackers, computer hobbyists, professionals, security consultants, press, law enforcement, prosecutors, FBI, etc. We're at Toorcon 14—see earlier blogs for some of the previous Toorcon's I've attended (back to 2003). This year's "con" was held at the Westin on Broadway in downtown San Diego, California. The following are not necessarily my views—I'm just the messenger—although I could have misquoted or misparaphrased the speakers. Also, I only reviewed some of the talks, below, which I attended and interested me. MalAndroid—the Crux of Android Infections, Aditya K. Sood Programming Weird Machines with ELF Metadata, Rebecca "bx" Shapiro Privacy at the Handset: New FCC Rules?, Valkyrie Hacking Measured Boot and UEFI, Dan Griffin You Can't Buy Security: Building the Open Source InfoSec Program, Boris Sverdlik What Journalists Want: The Investigative Reporters' Perspective on Hacking, Dave Maas & Jason Leopold Accessibility and Security, Anna Shubina Stop Patching, for Stronger PCI Compliance, Adam Brand McAfee Secure & Trustmarks — a Hacker's Best Friend, Jay James & Shane MacDougall MalAndroid—the Crux of Android Infections Aditya K. Sood, IOActive, Michigan State PhD candidate Aditya talked about Android smartphone malware. There's a lot of old Android software out there—over 50% Gingerbread (2.3.x)—and most have unpatched vulnerabilities. Of 9 Android vulnerabilities, 8 have known exploits (such as the old Gingerbread Global Object Table exploit). Android protection includes sandboxing, security scanner, app permissions, and screened Android app market. The Android permission checker has fine-grain resource control, policy enforcement. Android static analysis also includes a static analysis app checker (bouncer), and a vulnerablity checker. What security problems does Android have? User-centric security, which depends on the user to grant permission and make smart decisions. But users don't care or think about malware (the're not aware, not paranoid). All they want is functionality, extensibility, mobility Android had no "proper" encryption before Android 3.0 No built-in protection against social engineering and web tricks Alternative Android app markets are unsafe. Simply visiting some markets can infect Android Aditya classified Android Malware types as: Type A—Apps. These interact with the Android app framework. For example, a fake Netflix app. Or Android Gold Dream (game), which uploads user files stealthy manner to a remote location. Type K—Kernel. Exploits underlying Linux libraries or kernel Type H—Hybrid. These use multiple layers (app framework, libraries, kernel). These are most commonly used by Android botnets, which are popular with Chinese botnet authors What are the threats from Android malware? These incude leak info (contacts), banking fraud, corporate network attacks, malware advertising, malware "Hackivism" (the promotion of social causes. For example, promiting specific leaders of the Tunisian or Iranian revolutions. Android malware is frequently "masquerated". That is, repackaged inside a legit app with malware. To avoid detection, the hidden malware is not unwrapped until runtime. The malware payload can be hidden in, for example, PNG files. Less common are Android bootkits—there's not many around. What they do is hijack the Android init framework—alteering system programs and daemons, then deletes itself. For example, the DKF Bootkit (China). Android App Problems: no code signing! all self-signed native code execution permission sandbox — all or none alternate market places no robust Android malware detection at network level delayed patch process Programming Weird Machines with ELF Metadata Rebecca "bx" Shapiro, Dartmouth College, NH https://github.com/bx/elf-bf-tools @bxsays on twitter Definitions. "ELF" is an executable file format used in linking and loading executables (on UNIX/Linux-class machines). "Weird machine" uses undocumented computation sources (I think of them as unintended virtual machines). Some examples of "weird machines" are those that: return to weird location, does SQL injection, corrupts the heap. Bx then talked about using ELF metadata as (an uintended) "weird machine". Some ELF background: A compiler takes source code and generates a ELF object file (hello.o). A static linker makes an ELF executable from the object file. A runtime linker and loader takes ELF executable and loads and relocates it in memory. The ELF file has symbols to relocate functions and variables. ELF has two relocation tables—one at link time and another one at loading time: .rela.dyn (link time) and .dynsym (dynamic table). GOT: Global Offset Table of addresses for dynamically-linked functions. PLT: Procedure Linkage Tables—works with GOT. The memory layout of a process (not the ELF file) is, in order: program (+ heap), dynamic libraries, libc, ld.so, stack (which includes the dynamic table loaded into memory) For ELF, the "weird machine" is found and exploited in the loader. ELF can be crafted for executing viruses, by tricking runtime into executing interpreted "code" in the ELF symbol table. One can inject parasitic "code" without modifying the actual ELF code portions. Think of the ELF symbol table as an "assembly language" interpreter. It has these elements: instructions: Add, move, jump if not 0 (jnz) Think of symbol table entries as "registers" symbol table value is "contents" immediate values are constants direct values are addresses (e.g., 0xdeadbeef) move instruction: is a relocation table entry add instruction: relocation table "addend" entry jnz instruction: takes multiple relocation table entries The ELF weird machine exploits the loader by relocating relocation table entries. The loader will go on forever until told to stop. It stores state on stack at "end" and uses IFUNC table entries (containing function pointer address). The ELF weird machine, called "Brainfu*k" (BF) has: 8 instructions: pointer inc, dec, inc indirect, dec indirect, jump forward, jump backward, print. Three registers - 3 registers Bx showed example BF source code that implemented a Turing machine printing "hello, world". More interesting was the next demo, where bx modified ping. Ping runs suid as root, but quickly drops privilege. BF modified the loader to disable the library function call dropping privilege, so it remained as root. Then BF modified the ping -t argument to execute the -t filename as root. It's best to show what this modified ping does with an example: $ whoami bx $ ping localhost -t backdoor.sh # executes backdoor $ whoami root $ The modified code increased from 285948 bytes to 290209 bytes. A BF tool compiles "executable" by modifying the symbol table in an existing ELF executable. The tool modifies .dynsym and .rela.dyn table, but not code or data. Privacy at the Handset: New FCC Rules? "Valkyrie" (Christie Dudley, Santa Clara Law JD candidate) Valkyrie talked about mobile handset privacy. Some background: Senator Franken (also a comedian) became alarmed about CarrierIQ, where the carriers track their customers. Franken asked the FCC to find out what obligations carriers think they have to protect privacy. The carriers' response was that they are doing just fine with self-regulation—no worries! Carriers need to collect data, such as missed calls, to maintain network quality. But carriers also sell data for marketing. Verizon sells customer data and enables this with a narrow privacy policy (only 1 month to opt out, with difficulties). The data sold is not individually identifiable and is aggregated. But Verizon recommends, as an aggregation workaround to "recollate" data to other databases to identify customers indirectly. The FCC has regulated telephone privacy since 1934 and mobile network privacy since 2007. Also, the carriers say mobile phone privacy is a FTC responsibility (not FCC). FTC is trying to improve mobile app privacy, but FTC has no authority over carrier / customer relationships. As a side note, Apple iPhones are unique as carriers have extra control over iPhones they don't have with other smartphones. As a result iPhones may be more regulated. Who are the consumer advocates? Everyone knows EFF, but EPIC (Electrnic Privacy Info Center), although more obsecure, is more relevant. What to do? Carriers must be accountable. Opt-in and opt-out at any time. Carriers need incentive to grant users control for those who want it, by holding them liable and responsible for breeches on their clock. Location information should be added current CPNI privacy protection, and require "Pen/trap" judicial order to obtain (and would still be a lower standard than 4th Amendment). Politics are on a pro-privacy swing now, with many senators and the Whitehouse. There will probably be new regulation soon, and enforcement will be a problem, but consumers will still have some benefit. Hacking Measured Boot and UEFI Dan Griffin, JWSecure, Inc., Seattle, @JWSdan Dan talked about hacking measured UEFI boot. First some terms: UEFI is a boot technology that is replacing BIOS (has whitelisting and blacklisting). UEFI protects devices against rootkits. TPM - hardware security device to store hashs and hardware-protected keys "secure boot" can control at firmware level what boot images can boot "measured boot" OS feature that tracks hashes (from BIOS, boot loader, krnel, early drivers). "remote attestation" allows remote validation and control based on policy on a remote attestation server. Microsoft pushing TPM (Windows 8 required), but Google is not. Intel TianoCore is the only open source for UEFI. Dan has Measured Boot Tool at http://mbt.codeplex.com/ with a demo where you can also view TPM data. TPM support already on enterprise-class machines. UEFI Weaknesses. UEFI toolkits are evolving rapidly, but UEFI has weaknesses: assume user is an ally trust TPM implicitly, and attached to computer hibernate file is unprotected (disk encryption protects against this) protection migrating from hardware to firmware delays in patching and whitelist updates will UEFI really be adopted by the mainstream (smartphone hardware support, bank support, apathetic consumer support) You Can't Buy Security: Building the Open Source InfoSec Program Boris Sverdlik, ISDPodcast.com co-host Boris talked about problems typical with current security audits. "IT Security" is an oxymoron—IT exists to enable buiness, uptime, utilization, reporting, but don't care about security—IT has conflict of interest. There's no Magic Bullet ("blinky box"), no one-size-fits-all solution (e.g., Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs)). Regulations don't make you secure. The cloud is not secure (because of shared data and admin access). Defense and pen testing is not sexy. Auditors are not solution (security not a checklist)—what's needed is experience and adaptability—need soft skills. Step 1: First thing is to Google and learn the company end-to-end before you start. Get to know the management team (not IT team), meet as many people as you can. Don't use arbitrary values such as CISSP scores. Quantitive risk assessment is a myth (e.g. AV*EF-SLE). Learn different Business Units, legal/regulatory obligations, learn the business and where the money is made, verify company is protected from script kiddies (easy), learn sensitive information (IP, internal use only), and start with low-hanging fruit (customer service reps and social engineering). Step 2: Policies. Keep policies short and relevant. Generic SANS "security" boilerplate policies don't make sense and are not followed. Focus on acceptable use, data usage, communications, physical security. Step 3: Implementation: keep it simple stupid. Open source, although useful, is not free (implementation cost). Access controls with authentication & authorization for local and remote access. MS Windows has it, otherwise use OpenLDAP, OpenIAM, etc. Application security Everyone tries to reinvent the wheel—use existing static analysis tools. Review high-risk apps and major revisions. Don't run different risk level apps on same system. Assume host/client compromised and use app-level security control. Network security VLAN != segregated because there's too many workarounds. Use explicit firwall rules, active and passive network monitoring (snort is free), disallow end user access to production environment, have a proxy instead of direct Internet access. Also, SSL certificates are not good two-factor auth and SSL does not mean "safe." Operational Controls Have change, patch, asset, & vulnerability management (OSSI is free). For change management, always review code before pushing to production For logging, have centralized security logging for business-critical systems, separate security logging from administrative/IT logging, and lock down log (as it has everything). Monitor with OSSIM (open source). Use intrusion detection, but not just to fulfill a checkbox: build rules from a whitelist perspective (snort). OSSEC has 95% of what you need. Vulnerability management is a QA function when done right: OpenVas and Seccubus are free. Security awareness The reality is users will always click everything. Build real awareness, not compliance driven checkbox, and have it integrated into the culture. Pen test by crowd sourcing—test with logging COSSP http://www.cossp.org/ - Comprehensive Open Source Security Project What Journalists Want: The Investigative Reporters' Perspective on Hacking Dave Maas, San Diego CityBeat Jason Leopold, Truthout.org The difference between hackers and investigative journalists: For hackers, the motivation varies, but method is same, technological specialties. For investigative journalists, it's about one thing—The Story, and they need broad info-gathering skills. J-School in 60 Seconds: Generic formula: Person or issue of pubic interest, new info, or angle. Generic criteria: proximity, prominence, timeliness, human interest, oddity, or consequence. Media awareness of hackers and trends: journalists becoming extremely aware of hackers with congressional debates (privacy, data breaches), demand for data-mining Journalists, use of coding and web development for Journalists, and Journalists busted for hacking (Murdock). Info gathering by investigative journalists include Public records laws. Federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is good, but slow. California Public Records Act is a lot stronger. FOIA takes forever because of foot-dragging—it helps to be specific. Often need to sue (especially FBI). CPRA is faster, and requests can be vague. Dumps and leaks (a la Wikileaks) Journalists want: leads, protecting ourselves, our sources, and adapting tools for news gathering (Google hacking). Anonomity is important to whistleblowers. They want no digital footprint left behind (e.g., email, web log). They don't trust encryption, want to feel safe and secure. Whistleblower laws are very weak—there's no upside for whistleblowers—they have to be very passionate to do it. Accessibility and Security or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Halting Problem Anna Shubina, Dartmouth College Anna talked about how accessibility and security are related. Accessibility of digital content (not real world accessibility). mostly refers to blind users and screenreaders, for our purpose. Accessibility is about parsing documents, as are many security issues. "Rich" executable content causes accessibility to fail, and often causes security to fail. For example MS Word has executable format—it's not a document exchange format—more dangerous than PDF or HTML. Accessibility is often the first and maybe only sanity check with parsing. They have no choice because someone may want to read what you write. Google, for example, is very particular about web browser you use and are bad at supporting other browsers. Uses JavaScript instead of links, often requiring mouseover to display content. PDF is a security nightmare. Executible format, embedded flash, JavaScript, etc. 15 million lines of code. Google Chrome doesn't handle PDF correctly, causing several security bugs. PDF has an accessibility checker and PDF tagging, to help with accessibility. But no PDF checker checks for incorrect tags, untagged content, or validates lists or tables. None check executable content at all. The "Halting Problem" is: can one decide whether a program will ever stop? The answer, in general, is no (Rice's theorem). The same holds true for accessibility checkers. Language-theoretic Security says complicated data formats are hard to parse and cannot be solved due to the Halting Problem. W3C Web Accessibility Guidelines: "Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust" Not much help though, except for "Robust", but here's some gems: * all information should be parsable (paraphrasing) * if not parsable, cannot be converted to alternate formats * maximize compatibility in new document formats Executible webpages are bad for security and accessibility. They say it's for a better web experience. But is it necessary to stuff web pages with JavaScript for a better experience? A good example is The Drudge Report—it has hand-written HTML with no JavaScript, yet drives a lot of web traffic due to good content. A bad example is Google News—hidden scrollbars, guessing user input. Solutions: Accessibility and security problems come from same source Expose "better user experience" myth Keep your corner of Internet parsable Remember "Halting Problem"—recognize false solutions (checking and verifying tools) Stop Patching, for Stronger PCI Compliance Adam Brand, protiviti @adamrbrand, http://www.picfun.com/ Adam talked about PCI compliance for retail sales. Take an example: for PCI compliance, 50% of Brian's time (a IT guy), 960 hours/year was spent patching POSs in 850 restaurants. Often applying some patches make no sense (like fixing a browser vulnerability on a server). "Scanner worship" is overuse of vulnerability scanners—it gives a warm and fuzzy and it's simple (red or green results—fix reds). Scanners give a false sense of security. In reality, breeches from missing patches are uncommon—more common problems are: default passwords, cleartext authentication, misconfiguration (firewall ports open). Patching Myths: Myth 1: install within 30 days of patch release (but PCI §6.1 allows a "risk-based approach" instead). Myth 2: vendor decides what's critical (also PCI §6.1). But §6.2 requires user ranking of vulnerabilities instead. Myth 3: scan and rescan until it passes. But PCI §11.2.1b says this applies only to high-risk vulnerabilities. Adam says good recommendations come from NIST 800-40. Instead use sane patching and focus on what's really important. From NIST 800-40: Proactive: Use a proactive vulnerability management process: use change control, configuration management, monitor file integrity. Monitor: start with NVD and other vulnerability alerts, not scanner results. Evaluate: public-facing system? workstation? internal server? (risk rank) Decide:on action and timeline Test: pre-test patches (stability, functionality, rollback) for change control Install: notify, change control, tickets McAfee Secure & Trustmarks — a Hacker's Best Friend Jay James, Shane MacDougall, Tactical Intelligence Inc., Canada "McAfee Secure Trustmark" is a website seal marketed by McAfee. A website gets this badge if they pass their remote scanning. The problem is a removal of trustmarks act as flags that you're vulnerable. Easy to view status change by viewing McAfee list on website or on Google. "Secure TrustGuard" is similar to McAfee. Jay and Shane wrote Perl scripts to gather sites from McAfee and search engines. If their certification image changes to a 1x1 pixel image, then they are longer certified. Their scripts take deltas of scans to see what changed daily. The bottom line is change in TrustGuard status is a flag for hackers to attack your site. Entire idea of seals is silly—you're raising a flag saying if you're vulnerable.

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• Large Object Heap Fragmentation

  - by Paul Ruane

  The C#/.NET application I am working on is suffering from a slow memory leak. I have used CDB with SOS to try to determine what is happening but the data does not seem to make any sense so I was hoping one of you may have experienced this before. The application is running on the 64 bit framework. It is continuously calculating and serialising data to a remote host and is hitting the Large Object Heap (LOH) a fair bit. However, most of the LOH objects I expect to be transient: once the calculation is complete and has been sent to the remote host, the memory should be freed. What I am seeing, however, is a large number of (live) object arrays interleaved with free blocks of memory, e.g., taking a random segment from the LOH: 0:000> !DumpHeap 000000005b5b1000 000000006351da10 Address MT Size ... 000000005d4f92e0 0000064280c7c970 16147872 000000005e45f880 00000000001661d0 1901752 Free 000000005e62fd38 00000642788d8ba8 1056 <-- 000000005e630158 00000000001661d0 5988848 Free 000000005ebe6348 00000642788d8ba8 1056 000000005ebe6768 00000000001661d0 6481336 Free 000000005f214d20 00000642788d8ba8 1056 000000005f215140 00000000001661d0 7346016 Free 000000005f9168a0 00000642788d8ba8 1056 000000005f916cc0 00000000001661d0 7611648 Free 00000000600591c0 00000642788d8ba8 1056 00000000600595e0 00000000001661d0 264808 Free ... Obviously I would expect this to be the case if my application were creating long-lived, large objects during each calculation. (It does do this and I accept there will be a degree of LOH fragmentation but that is not the problem here.) The problem is the very small (1056 byte) object arrays you can see in the above dump which I cannot see in code being created and which are remaining rooted somehow. Also note that CDB is not reporting the type when the heap segment is dumped: I am not sure if this is related or not. If I dump the marked (<--) object, CDB/SOS reports it fine: 0:015> !DumpObj 000000005e62fd38 Name: System.Object[] MethodTable: 00000642788d8ba8 EEClass: 00000642789d7660 Size: 1056(0x420) bytes Array: Rank 1, Number of elements 128, Type CLASS Element Type: System.Object Fields: None The elements of the object array are all strings and the strings are recognisable as from our application code. Also, I am unable to find their GC roots as the !GCRoot command hangs and never comes back (I have even tried leaving it overnight). So, I would very much appreciate it if anyone could shed any light as to why these small (<85k) object arrays are ending up on the LOH: what situations will .NET put a small object array in there? Also, does anyone happen to know of an alternative way of ascertaining the roots of these objects? Thanks in advance. Update 1 Another theory I came up with late yesterday is that these object arrays started out large but have been shrunk leaving the blocks of free memory that are evident in the memory dumps. What makes me suspicious is that the object arrays always appear to be 1056 bytes long (128 elements), 128 * 8 for the references and 32 bytes of overhead. The idea is that perhaps some unsafe code in a library or in the CLR is corrupting the number of elements field in the array header. Bit of a long shot I know... Update 2 Thanks to Brian Rasmussen (see accepted answer) the problem has been identified as fragmentation of the LOH caused by the string intern table! I wrote a quick test application to confirm this: static void Main() { const int ITERATIONS = 100000; for (int index = 0; index < ITERATIONS; ++index) { string str = "NonInterned" + index; Console.Out.WriteLine(str); } Console.Out.WriteLine("Continue."); Console.In.ReadLine(); for (int index = 0; index < ITERATIONS; ++index) { string str = string.Intern("Interned" + index); Console.Out.WriteLine(str); } Console.Out.WriteLine("Continue?"); Console.In.ReadLine(); } The application first creates and dereferences unique strings in a loop. This is just to prove that the memory does not leak in this scenario. Obviously it should not and it does not. In the second loop, unique strings are created and interned. This action roots them in the intern table. What I did not realise is how the intern table is represented. It appears it consists of a set of pages -- object arrays of 128 string elements -- that are created in the LOH. This is more evident in CDB/SOS: 0:000> .loadby sos mscorwks 0:000> !EEHeap -gc Number of GC Heaps: 1 generation 0 starts at 0x00f7a9b0 generation 1 starts at 0x00e79c3c generation 2 starts at 0x00b21000 ephemeral segment allocation context: none segment begin allocated size 00b20000 00b21000 010029bc 0x004e19bc(5118396) Large object heap starts at 0x01b21000 segment begin allocated size 01b20000 01b21000 01b8ade0 0x00069de0(433632) Total Size 0x54b79c(5552028) ------------------------------ GC Heap Size 0x54b79c(5552028) Taking a dump of the LOH segment reveals the pattern I saw in the leaking application: 0:000> !DumpHeap 01b21000 01b8ade0 ... 01b8a120 793040bc 528 01b8a330 00175e88 16 Free 01b8a340 793040bc 528 01b8a550 00175e88 16 Free 01b8a560 793040bc 528 01b8a770 00175e88 16 Free 01b8a780 793040bc 528 01b8a990 00175e88 16 Free 01b8a9a0 793040bc 528 01b8abb0 00175e88 16 Free 01b8abc0 793040bc 528 01b8add0 00175e88 16 Free total 1568 objects Statistics: MT Count TotalSize Class Name 00175e88 784 12544 Free 793040bc 784 421088 System.Object[] Total 1568 objects Note that the object array size is 528 (rather than 1056) because my workstation is 32 bit and the application server is 64 bit. The object arrays are still 128 elements long. So the moral to this story is to be very careful interning. If the string you are interning is not known to be a member of a finite set then your application will leak due to fragmentation of the LOH, at least in version 2 of the CLR. In our application's case, there is general code in the deserialisation code path that interns entity identifiers during unmarshalling: I now strongly suspect this is the culprit. However, the developer's intentions were obviously good as they wanted to make sure that if the same entity is deserialised multiple times then only one instance of the identifier string will be maintained in memory.

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• BSOD Before Windows Will Loads - Graphics Related

  - by Brian

  Alright deep breath here: (Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit btw) Today I installed Star Craft 2 Beta. After trying to log in, it had some issues where it said my device stopped working (referring to my video device I have to imagine). After I force quit the game there were some random "hot" (various colors if i remember correctly) pixels on the screen. I decided to reboot and try again with similar results. I figured that maybe my display drivers could stand to be updated (I don't frequently update them as I don't often run into problems). I went out to nVidia's website and grabbed the latest drivers for Windows 7 64 bit GeForce 9 series. (I have SLi-ed 9800 GTs). Everything seemed to install fine and I performed the restart. This is when things went from bad (can't play SC2 beta ;) ) to worse (can't boot into windows!). Initially the very first splash screen - I think it's the bios splash screen - had lines of colored pixels covering it. It then displayed a screen that had lots of "(" on it. After that it showed the normal windows 7 splash screen as if it were going to load into Windows. Before getting much further, it BSODed on me. It was a 0x0000003B stop error. At nvlddmkm.sys. A little digging let verified that this was a problem with an nVidia graphics device, not a real shocker. Windows decided it would try to help me diagnose the problem, which it's only answer to was a System Restore, which did nothing to alleviate the problem. I was able to boot up fine in safe mode and was not able to roll back the driver, however I did uninstall the driver and reboot. I still had the graphical anomalies during the first two screens (same colored "."'s and weird "("'s), but there was NOT a stop error. Windows loaded up, found a default driver for the device and installed it and I restarted to let it load - and had yet another BSOD Stop error. Repeat driver uninstall, this time I reloaded the same version (I think it's possible that I was running a 32 bit version or a vista versus windows 7 version, but I don't have that information handy) of the nVidia driver from their website. Restart, same anomalies, same Stop Error. I am at a loss - At this point all I can think is that the firmware for the Video cards got fried or there's actual damage to the cards which I sincerely hope is not the case but the sooner I know the better. Any insight into what I might be able to do to troubleshoot/fix this problem would be most helpful. Attached below is a dump from DxDiag. Please let me know if there is more info that I could provide. ------------------ System Information ------------------ Time of this report: 3/18/2010, 23:22:48 Machine name: BRIAN-PC Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7600) (7600.win7_rtm.090713-1255) Language: English (Regional Setting: English) System Manufacturer: Dell Inc System Model: XPS 630i BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q8200 @ 2.33GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.3GHz Memory: 8192MB RAM Available OS Memory: 8190MB RAM Page File: 1855MB used, 14521MB available Windows Dir: C:\Windows DirectX Version: DirectX 11 DX Setup Parameters: Not found User DPI Setting: Using System DPI System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent) DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled DxDiag Version: 6.01.7600.16385 32bit Unicode DxDiag Previously: Crashed in DirectShow (stage 1). Re-running DxDiag with "dontskip" command line parameter or choosing not to bypass information gathering when prompted might result in DxDiag successfully obtaining this information ------------ DxDiag Notes ------------ Display Tab 1: No problems found. Sound Tab 1: No problems found. Sound Tab 2: No problems found. Sound Tab 3: No problems found. Input Tab: No problems found. -------------------- DirectX Debug Levels -------------------- Direct3D: 0/4 (retail) DirectDraw: 0/4 (retail) DirectInput: 0/5 (retail) DirectMusic: 0/5 (retail) DirectPlay: 0/9 (retail) DirectSound: 0/5 (retail) DirectShow: 0/6 (retail) --------------- Display Devices --------------- Card name: Manufacturer: Chip type: DAC type: Device Key: Enum\ Display Memory: n/a Dedicated Memory: n/a Shared Memory: n/a Current Mode: 1600 x 1200 (32 bit) (1Hz) Driver Name: Driver File Version: () Driver Version: DDI Version: unknown Driver Model: unknown Driver Attributes: Final Retail Driver Date/Size: , 0 bytes WHQL Logo'd: n/a WHQL Date Stamp: n/a Device Identifier: {D7B70EE0-4340-11CF-B123-B03DAEC2CB35} Vendor ID: 0x0000 Device ID: 0x0000 SubSys ID: 0x00000000 Revision ID: 0x0000 Driver Strong Name: Unknown Rank Of Driver: Unknown Video Accel: Deinterlace Caps: n/a D3D9 Overlay: n/a DXVA-HD: n/a DDraw Status: Not Available D3D Status: Not Available AGP Status: Not Available ------------- Sound Devices ------------- Description: Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio) Default Sound Playback: Yes Default Voice Playback: Yes Hardware ID: HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0888&SUBSYS_10280249&REV_1001 Manufacturer ID: 1 Product ID: 100 Type: WDM Driver Name: RTKVHD64.sys Driver Version: 6.00.0001.5667 (English) Driver Attributes: Final Retail WHQL Logo'd: n/a Date and Size: 8/18/2008 04:05:28, 1485592 bytes Other Files: Driver Provider: Realtek Semiconductor Corp. HW Accel Level: Basic Cap Flags: 0x0 Min/Max Sample Rate: 0, 0 Static/Strm HW Mix Bufs: 0, 0 Static/Strm HW 3D Bufs: 0, 0 HW Memory: 0 Voice Management: No EAX(tm) 2.0 Listen/Src: No, No I3DL2(tm) Listen/Src: No, No Sensaura(tm) ZoomFX(tm): No Description: Realtek Digital Output (Realtek High Definition Audio) Default Sound Playback: No Default Voice Playback: No Hardware ID: HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0888&SUBSYS_10280249&REV_1001 Manufacturer ID: 1 Product ID: 100 Type: WDM Driver Name: RTKVHD64.sys Driver Version: 6.00.0001.5667 (English) Driver Attributes: Final Retail WHQL Logo'd: n/a Date and Size: 8/18/2008 04:05:28, 1485592 bytes Other Files: Driver Provider: Realtek Semiconductor Corp. HW Accel Level: Basic Cap Flags: 0x0 Min/Max Sample Rate: 0, 0 Static/Strm HW Mix Bufs: 0, 0 Static/Strm HW 3D Bufs: 0, 0 HW Memory: 0 Voice Management: No EAX(tm) 2.0 Listen/Src: No, No I3DL2(tm) Listen/Src: No, No Sensaura(tm) ZoomFX(tm): No Description: Realtek HDMI Output (Realtek High Definition Audio) Default Sound Playback: No Default Voice Playback: No Hardware ID: HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0888&SUBSYS_10280249&REV_1001 Manufacturer ID: 1 Product ID: 100 Type: WDM Driver Name: RTKVHD64.sys Driver Version: 6.00.0001.5667 (English) Driver Attributes: Final Retail WHQL Logo'd: n/a Date and Size: 8/18/2008 04:05:28, 1485592 bytes Other Files: Driver Provider: Realtek Semiconductor Corp. HW Accel Level: Basic Cap Flags: 0x0 Min/Max Sample Rate: 0, 0 Static/Strm HW Mix Bufs: 0, 0 Static/Strm HW 3D Bufs: 0, 0 HW Memory: 0 Voice Management: No EAX(tm) 2.0 Listen/Src: No, No I3DL2(tm) Listen/Src: No, No Sensaura(tm) ZoomFX(tm): No --------------------- Sound Capture Devices --------------------- Description: Microphone (Realtek High Definition Audio) Default Sound Capture: Yes Default Voice Capture: Yes Driver Name: RTKVHD64.sys Driver Version: 6.00.0001.5667 (English) Driver Attributes: Final Retail Date and Size: 8/18/2008 04:05:28, 1485592 bytes Cap Flags: 0x0 Format Flags: 0x0 Description: Realtek Digital Input (Realtek High Definition Audio) Default Sound Capture: No Default Voice Capture: No Driver Name: RTKVHD64.sys Driver Version: 6.00.0001.5667 (English) Driver Attributes: Final Retail Date and Size: 8/18/2008 04:05:28, 1485592 bytes Cap Flags: 0x0 Format Flags: 0x0 ------------------- DirectInput Devices ------------------- Device Name: Mouse Attached: 1 Controller ID: n/a Vendor/Product ID: n/a FF Driver: n/a Device Name: Keyboard Attached: 1 Controller ID: n/a Vendor/Product ID: n/a FF Driver: n/a Device Name: ESA FW Update Attached: 1 Controller ID: 0x0 Vendor/Product ID: 0x0955, 0x000A FF Driver: n/a Poll w/ Interrupt: No ----------- USB Devices ----------- + USB Root Hub | Vendor/Product ID: 0x10DE, 0x026D | Matching Device ID: usb\root_hub | Service: usbhub | +-+ USB Input Device | | Vendor/Product ID: 0x0955, 0x000A | | Location: Port_#0002.Hub_#0001 | | Matching Device ID: generic_hid_device | | Service: HidUsb | | | +-+ HID-compliant device | | | Vendor/Product ID: 0x0955, 0x000A | | | Matching Device ID: hid_device | | +-+ USB Input Device | | Vendor/Product ID: 0x046D, 0xC01E | | Location: Port_#0003.Hub_#0001 | | Matching Device ID: generic_hid_device | | Service: HidUsb | | | +-+ HID-compliant mouse | | | Vendor/Product ID: 0x046D, 0xC01E | | | Matching Device ID: hid_device_system_mouse | | | Service: mouhid ---------------- Gameport Devices ---------------- ------------ PS/2 Devices ------------ + Standard PS/2 Keyboard | Matching Device ID: *pnp0303 | Service: i8042prt | + Terminal Server Keyboard Driver | Matching Device ID: root\rdp_kbd | Upper Filters: kbdclass | Service: TermDD | + Terminal Server Mouse Driver | Matching Device ID: root\rdp_mou | Upper Filters: mouclass | Service: TermDD ------------------------ Disk & DVD/CD-ROM Drives ------------------------ Drive: C: Free Space: 324.3 GB Total Space: 608.4 GB File System: NTFS Model: WDC WD64 00AAKS-75A7B SCSI Disk Device Drive: D: Free Space: 1.0 GB Total Space: 2.0 GB File System: NTFS Model: WDC WD64 00AAKS-75A7B SCSI Disk Device Drive: E: Model: TSSTcorp DVD+-RW TS-H653F SCSI CdRom Device Driver: c:\windows\system32\drivers\cdrom.sys, 6.01.7600.16385 (English), , 0 bytes -------------- System Devices -------------- Name: PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_03B7&SUBSYS_000010DE&REV_A1\3&2411E6FE&1&18 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard RAM Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_03AF&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A1\3&2411E6FE&1&0A Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard host CPU bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_03A3&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A2\3&2411E6FE&1&00 Driver: n/a Name: NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0267&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A1\3&2411E6FE&1&78 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard RAM Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_03B6&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A1\3&2411E6FE&1&10 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard RAM Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_03AE&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A1\3&2411E6FE&1&09 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard RAM Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0272&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A3\3&2411E6FE&1&52 Driver: n/a Name: NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0266&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A1\3&2411E6FE&1&70 Driver: n/a Name: LSI 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_11C1&DEV_5811&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_70\4&14591D7E&0&2880 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard RAM Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_03B5&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A1\3&2411E6FE&1&06 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard RAM Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_03AD&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A1\3&2411E6FE&1&08 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard RAM Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0270&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A2\3&2411E6FE&1&48 Driver: n/a Name: Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0265&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A1\3&2411E6FE&1&68 Driver: n/a Name: NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0605&SUBSYS_062D10DE&REV_A2\4&4BABE2A&0&0028 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard RAM Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_03B4&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A1\3&2411E6FE&1&07 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard RAM Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_03AC&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A1\3&2411E6FE&1&01 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_026F&SUBSYS_CB8410DE&REV_A2\3&2411E6FE&1&80 Driver: n/a Name: NVIDIA nForce PCI System Management Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0264&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A3\3&2411E6FE&1&51 Driver: n/a Name: NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0605&SUBSYS_062D10DE&REV_A2\4&10BD3C89&0&0018 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard RAM Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_03B3&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A1\3&2411E6FE&1&0E Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard RAM Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_03AB&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A1\3&2411E6FE&1&04 Driver: n/a Name: Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_026E&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A3\3&2411E6FE&1&59 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard ISA bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0260&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A3\3&2411E6FE&1&50 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard RAM Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_03BC&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A1\3&2411E6FE&1&11 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard RAM Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_03B2&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A1\3&2411E6FE&1&0D Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard RAM Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_03AA&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A1\3&2411E6FE&1&02 Driver: n/a Name: Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_026D&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A3\3&2411E6FE&1&58 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard RAM Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_03BA&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A1\3&2411E6FE&1&12 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard RAM Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_03B1&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A1\3&2411E6FE&1&0C Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard RAM Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_03A9&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A1\3&2411E6FE&1&03 Driver: n/a Name: High Definition Audio Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_026C&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A2\3&2411E6FE&1&81 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_03B8&SUBSYS_000010DE&REV_A1\3&2411E6FE&1&28 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard RAM Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_03B0&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A1\3&2411E6FE&1&0B Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard RAM Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_03A8&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A2\3&2411E6FE&1&05 Driver: n/a Name: NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0269&SUBSYS_02491028&REV_A3\3&2411E6FE&1&A0 Driver: n/a --------------- EVR Power Information --------------- Current Setting: {5C67A112-A4C9-483F-B4A7-1D473BECAFDC} (Quality) Quality Flags: 2576 Enabled: Force throttling Allow half deinterlace Allow scaling Decode Power Usage: 100 Balanced Flags: 1424 Enabled: Force throttling Allow batching Force half deinterlace Force scaling Decode Power Usage: 50 PowerFlags: 1424 Enabled: Force throttling Allow batching Force half deinterlace Force scaling Decode Power Usage: 0

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• DirectX works for 64-bit but not 32-bit

  - by dtbarne

  I'm trying to play a game (Civilization 5) which was previously working but no longer. I believe I've narrowed it down to a DirectX issue because I get an error running dxdiag.exe in 32 bit mode. My goal (at least I believe) is to get Direct3D Acceleration "Enabled" in dxdiag (as it is in 64 bit dxdiag). A very similar issue is here: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-gaming/direct3d-acceleration-is-not-available-in-windows/4c345e6e-dc68-e011-8dfc-68b599b31bf5?page=1 The proposed answer, which looks very promising, doesn't seem to work for me. Like other users in that thread, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Direct3D\Drivers does not have a SoftwareOnly key to change. I even tried manually adding it as a string and dword, to no avail. I have a NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M, and before you ask, yes I've tried updating (also uninstalling, reinstalling) my drivers. I've also tried doing the same with DirectX (and Civilization 5 for that matter). Been debugging for some 4+ hours now after a full day of work and I've run out of ideas. I'm hoping somebody knows the solution here! :) Here's what I see when I open dxdiag: DxDiag has detected that there mgiht have been a problem accessing Direct3D the last time this program was used. Would you like to bypass Direct3D this time? No - Crash Yes - Works, but in Display tab: DirectDraw Acceleration: Disabled Direct3D Acceleration: Not Available AGP Texture Acceleration: Not Available If I click "Run 64-bit DxDiag", all three are "Enabled". I should also note that I've tried the following steps as Microsoft suggests, but I'm not able to do so as the "Change Settings" button is disabled. Some programs run very slowly—or not at all—unless Microsoft DirectDraw or Direct3D hardware acceleration is turned on. To determine this, click the Display tab, and then under DirectX Features, check to see whether DirectDraw, Direct3D, and AGP Texture Acceleration appear as Enabled. If not, try turning on hardware acceleration. Click to open Screen Resolution. Click Advanced settings. Click the Troubleshoot tab, and then click Change settings. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation. Move the Hardware Acceleration slider to Full. Full dxdiag dump: ------------------ System Information ------------------ Time of this report: 11/8/2012, 23:13:24 Machine name: DTBARNE Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.120830-0333) Language: English (Regional Setting: English) System Manufacturer: Dell Inc. System Model: Dell System XPS L502X BIOS: Default System BIOS Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2450M CPU @ 2.50GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.5GHz Memory: 8192MB RAM Available OS Memory: 8086MB RAM Page File: 2466MB used, 13704MB available Windows Dir: C:\Windows DirectX Version: DirectX 11 DX Setup Parameters: Not found User DPI Setting: Using System DPI System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent) DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled DxDiag Version: 6.01.7601.17514 32bit Unicode DxDiag Previously: Crashed in Direct3D (stage 2). Re-running DxDiag with "dontskip" command line parameter or choosing not to bypass information gathering when prompted might result in DxDiag successfully obtaining this information ------------ DxDiag Notes ------------ Display Tab 1: No problems found. Sound Tab 1: No problems found. Sound Tab 2: No problems found. Input Tab: No problems found. -------------------- DirectX Debug Levels -------------------- Direct3D: 0/4 (retail) DirectDraw: 0/4 (retail) DirectInput: 0/5 (retail) DirectMusic: 0/5 (retail) DirectPlay: 0/9 (retail) DirectSound: 0/5 (retail) DirectShow: 0/6 (retail) --------------- Display Devices --------------- Card name: Intel(R) HD Graphics 3000 Manufacturer: Chip type: DAC type: Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0126&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_09 Display Memory: Dedicated Memory: n/a Shared Memory: n/a Current Mode: 1920 x 1080 (32 bit) (60Hz) Monitor Name: Generic PnP Monitor Monitor Model: Monitor Id: Native Mode: Output Type: Driver Name: Driver File Version: () Driver Version: DDI Version: Driver Model: WDDM 1.1 Driver Attributes: Final Retail Driver Date/Size: , 0 bytes WHQL Logo'd: n/a WHQL Date Stamp: n/a Device Identifier: Vendor ID: Device ID: SubSys ID: Revision ID: Driver Strong Name: oem11.inf:IntelGfx.NTamd64.6.0:iSNBM0:8.15.10.2696:pci\ven_8086&dev_0126&subsys_04b61028 Rank Of Driver: 00E60001 Video Accel: Deinterlace Caps: n/a D3D9 Overlay: DXVA-HD: DDraw Status: Disabled D3D Status: Not Available AGP Status: Not Available ------------- Sound Devices ------------- Description: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device) Default Sound Playback: Yes Default Voice Playback: Yes Hardware ID: HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0665&SUBSYS_102804B6&REV_1000 Manufacturer ID: 1 Product ID: 65535 Type: WDM Driver Name: HdAudio.sys Driver Version: 6.01.7601.17514 (English) Driver Attributes: Final Retail WHQL Logo'd: Yes Date and Size: 11/20/2010 22:23:47, 350208 bytes Other Files: Driver Provider: Microsoft HW Accel Level: Basic Cap Flags: 0xF1F Min/Max Sample Rate: 100, 200000 Static/Strm HW Mix Bufs: 1, 0 Static/Strm HW 3D Bufs: 0, 0 HW Memory: 0 Voice Management: No EAX(tm) 2.0 Listen/Src: No, No I3DL2(tm) Listen/Src: No, No Sensaura(tm) ZoomFX(tm): No Description: Digital Audio (S/PDIF) (High Definition Audio Device) Default Sound Playback: No Default Voice Playback: No Hardware ID: HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0665&SUBSYS_102804B6&REV_1000 Manufacturer ID: 1 Product ID: 65535 Type: WDM Driver Name: HdAudio.sys Driver Version: 6.01.7601.17514 (English) Driver Attributes: Final Retail WHQL Logo'd: Yes Date and Size: 11/20/2010 22:23:47, 350208 bytes Other Files: Driver Provider: Microsoft HW Accel Level: Basic Cap Flags: 0xF1F Min/Max Sample Rate: 100, 200000 Static/Strm HW Mix Bufs: 1, 0 Static/Strm HW 3D Bufs: 0, 0 HW Memory: 0 Voice Management: No EAX(tm) 2.0 Listen/Src: No, No I3DL2(tm) Listen/Src: No, No Sensaura(tm) ZoomFX(tm): No --------------------- Sound Capture Devices --------------------- Description: Microphone (High Definition Audio Device) Default Sound Capture: Yes Default Voice Capture: Yes Driver Name: HdAudio.sys Driver Version: 6.01.7601.17514 (English) Driver Attributes: Final Retail Date and Size: 11/20/2010 22:23:47, 350208 bytes Cap Flags: 0x1 Format Flags: 0xFFFFF ------------------- DirectInput Devices ------------------- Device Name: Mouse Attached: 1 Controller ID: n/a Vendor/Product ID: n/a FF Driver: n/a Device Name: Keyboard Attached: 1 Controller ID: n/a Vendor/Product ID: n/a FF Driver: n/a Poll w/ Interrupt: No ----------- USB Devices ----------- + USB Root Hub | Vendor/Product ID: 0x8086, 0x1C26 | Matching Device ID: usb\root_hub20 | Service: usbhub | +-+ Generic USB Hub | | Vendor/Product ID: 0x8087, 0x0024 | | Location: Port_#0001.Hub_#0002 | | Matching Device ID: usb\class_09 | | Service: usbhub ---------------- Gameport Devices ---------------- ------------ PS/2 Devices ------------ + Standard PS/2 Keyboard | Matching Device ID: *pnp0303 | Service: i8042prt | + Terminal Server Keyboard Driver | Matching Device ID: root\rdp_kbd | Upper Filters: kbdclass | Service: TermDD | + Synaptics PS/2 Port TouchPad | Matching Device ID: *dll04b6 | Upper Filters: SynTP | Service: i8042prt | + Terminal Server Mouse Driver | Matching Device ID: root\rdp_mou | Upper Filters: mouclass | Service: TermDD ------------------------ Disk & DVD/CD-ROM Drives ------------------------ Drive: C: Free Space: 26.2 GB Total Space: 122.0 GB File System: NTFS Model: M4-CT128M4SSD2 ATA Device Drive: D: Model: Optiarc DVDRWBD BC-5540H ATA Device Driver: c:\windows\system32\drivers\cdrom.sys, 6.01.7601.17514 (English), , 0 bytes -------------- System Devices -------------- Name: High Definition Audio Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C20&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_05\3&11583659&0&D8 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard host CPU bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0104&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_09\3&11583659&0&00 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C1A&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_B5\3&11583659&0&E5 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0101&SUBSYS_20108086&REV_09\3&11583659&0&08 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C18&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_B5\3&11583659&0&E4 Driver: n/a Name: Intel(R) Centrino(R) Advanced-N 6230 Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0091&SUBSYS_52218086&REV_34\4&2634DE8D&0&00E1 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard ISA bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C4B&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_05\3&11583659&0&F8 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C16&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_B5\3&11583659&0&E3 Driver: n/a Name: Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8168&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_06\4&109EAB2F&0&00E5 Driver: n/a Name: Intel(R) Management Engine Interface Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C3A&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_04\3&11583659&0&B0 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C12&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_B5\3&11583659&0&E1 Driver: n/a Name: NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0DF5&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_A1\4&4DCA75F&0&0008 Driver: n/a Name: Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C2D&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_05\3&11583659&0&D0 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C10&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_B5\3&11583659&0&E0 Driver: n/a Name: Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C26&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_05\3&11583659&0&E8 Driver: n/a Name: Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C03&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_05\3&11583659&0&FA Driver: n/a Name: SM Bus Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C22&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_05\3&11583659&0&FB Driver: n/a Name: Intel(R) HD Graphics 3000 Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0126&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_09\3&11583659&0&10 Driver: n/a Name: Renesas Electronics USB 3.0 Host Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_1033&DEV_0194&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_04\4&3494AC3A&0&00E3 Driver: n/a ------------------ DirectShow Filters ------------------ DirectShow Filters: WMAudio Decoder DMO,0x00800800,1,1,WMADMOD.DLL,6.01.7601.17514 WMAPro over S/PDIF DMO,0x00600800,1,1,WMADMOD.DLL,6.01.7601.17514 WMSpeech Decoder DMO,0x00600800,1,1,WMSPDMOD.DLL,6.01.7601.17514 MP3 Decoder DMO,0x00600800,1,1,mp3dmod.dll,6.01.7600.16385 Mpeg4s Decoder DMO,0x00800001,1,1,mp4sdecd.dll,6.01.7600.16385 WMV Screen decoder DMO,0x00600800,1,1,wmvsdecd.dll,6.01.7601.17514 WMVideo Decoder DMO,0x00800001,1,1,wmvdecod.dll,6.01.7601.17514 Mpeg43 Decoder DMO,0x00800001,1,1,mp43decd.dll,6.01.7600.16385 Mpeg4 Decoder DMO,0x00800001,1,1,mpg4decd.dll,6.01.7600.16385 DV Muxer,0x00400000,0,0,qdv.dll,6.06.7601.17514 Color Space Converter,0x00400001,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 WM ASF Reader,0x00400000,0,0,qasf.dll,12.00.7601.17514 Screen Capture filter,0x00200000,0,1,wmpsrcwp.dll,12.00.7601.17514 AVI Splitter,0x00600000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 VGA 16 Color Ditherer,0x00400000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 SBE2MediaTypeProfile,0x00200000,0,0,sbe.dll,6.06.7601.17528 Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder,0x005fffff,2,4,msmpeg2vdec.dll,6.01.7140.0000 AC3 Parser Filter,0x00600000,1,1,mpg2splt.ax,6.06.7601.17528 StreamBufferSink,0x00200000,0,0,sbe.dll,6.06.7601.17528 MJPEG 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Codec,0x00600000,1,4,VBICodec.ax,6.06.7601.17514 BDA Transport Information Renderers: BDA MPEG2 Transport Information Filter,0x00600000,2,0,psisrndr.ax,6.06.7601.17669 MPEG-2 Sections and Tables,0x00600000,1,0,Mpeg2Data.ax,6.06.7601.17514 BDA CP/CA Filters: Decrypt/Tag,0x00600000,1,1,EncDec.dll,6.06.7601.17708 Encrypt/Tag,0x00200000,0,0,EncDec.dll,6.06.7601.17708 PTFilter,0x00200000,0,0,EncDec.dll,6.06.7601.17708 XDS Codec,0x00200000,0,0,EncDec.dll,6.06.7601.17708 WDM Streaming Communication Transforms: Tee/Sink-to-Sink Converter,0x00200000,1,1,ksproxy.ax,6.01.7601.17514 Audio Renderers: Speakers (High Definition Audio,0x00200000,1,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 Default DirectSound Device,0x00800000,1,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 Default WaveOut Device,0x00200000,1,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 Digital Audio (S/PDIF) (High De,0x00200000,1,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 DirectSound: Digital Audio (S/PDIF) (High Definition Audio Device),0x00200000,1,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 DirectSound: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device),0x00200000,1,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 --------------- EVR Power Information --------------- Current Setting: {651288E5-A7ED-4076-A96B-6CC62D848FE1} (Balanced) Quality Flags: 2576 Enabled: Force throttling Allow half deinterlace Allow scaling Decode Power Usage: 100 Balanced Flags: 1424 Enabled: Force throttling Allow batching Force half deinterlace Force scaling Decode Power Usage: 50 PowerFlags: 1424 Enabled: Force throttling Allow batching Force half deinterlace Force scaling Decode Power Usage: 0

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• Tip/Trick: Fix Common SEO Problems Using the URL Rewrite Extension

  - by ScottGu

  Search engine optimization (SEO) is important for any publically facing web-site.  A large % of traffic to sites now comes directly from search engines, and improving your site’s search relevancy will lead to more users visiting your site from search engine queries.  This can directly or indirectly increase the money you make through your site. This blog post covers how you can use the free Microsoft URL Rewrite Extension to fix a bunch of common SEO problems that your site might have.  It takes less than 15 minutes (and no code changes) to apply 4 simple URL Rewrite rules to your site, and in doing so cause search engines to drive more visitors and traffic to your site.  The techniques below work equally well with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC based sites.  They also works with all versions of ASP.NET (and even work with non-ASP.NET content). [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] Measuring the SEO of your website with the Microsoft SEO Toolkit A few months ago I blogged about the free SEO Toolkit that we’ve shipped.  This useful tool enables you to automatically crawl/scan your site for SEO correctness, and it then flags any SEO issues it finds.  I highly recommend downloading and using the tool against any public site you work on.  It makes it easy to spot SEO issues you might have in your site, and pinpoint ways to optimize it further. Below is a simple example of a report I ran against one of my sites (www.scottgu.com) prior to applying the URL Rewrite rules I’ll cover later in this blog post:   Search Relevancy and URL Splitting Two of the important things that search engines evaluate when assessing your site’s “search relevancy” are: How many other sites link to your content.  Search engines assume that if a lot of people around the web are linking to your content, then it is likely useful and so weight it higher in relevancy. The uniqueness of the content it finds on your site.  If search engines find that the content is duplicated in multiple places around the Internet (or on multiple URLs on your site) then it is likely to drop the relevancy of the content. One of the things you want to be very careful to avoid when building public facing sites is to not allow different URLs to retrieve the same content within your site.  Doing so will hurt with both of the situations above.  In particular, allowing external sites to link to the same content with multiple URLs will cause your link-count and page-ranking to be split up across those different URLs (and so give you a smaller page rank than what it would otherwise be if it was just one URL).  Not allowing external sites to link to you in different ways sounds easy in theory – but you might wonder what exactly this means in practice and how you avoid it. 4 Really Common SEO Problems Your Sites Might Have Below are 4 really common scenarios that can cause your site to inadvertently expose multiple URLs for the same content.  When this happens external sites linking to yours will end up splitting their page links across multiple URLs - and as a result cause you to have a lower page ranking with search engines than you deserve. SEO Problem #1: Default Document IIS (and other web servers) supports the concept of a “default document”.  This allows you to avoid having to explicitly specify the page you want to serve at either the root of the web-site/application, or within a sub-directory.  This is convenient – but means that by default this content is available via two different publically exposed URLs (which is bad).  For example: http://scottgu.com/ http://scottgu.com/default.aspx SEO Problem #2: Different URL Casings Web developers often don’t realize URLs are case sensitive to search engines on the web.  This means that search engines will treat the following links as two completely different URLs: http://scottgu.com/Albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx SEO Problem #3: Trailing Slashes Consider the below two URLs – they might look the same at first, but they are subtly different. The trailing slash creates yet another situation that causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and so split search rankings: http://scottgu.com http://scottgu.com/ SEO Problem #4: Canonical Host Names Sometimes sites support scenarios where they support a web-site with both a leading “www” hostname prefix as well as just the hostname itself.  This causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and split search rankling: http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx/ http://www.scottgu.com/albums.aspx/ How to Easily Fix these SEO Problems in 10 minutes (or less) using IIS Rewrite If you haven’t been careful when coding your sites, chances are you are suffering from one (or more) of the above SEO problems.  Addressing these issues will improve your search engine relevancy ranking and drive more traffic to your site. The “good news” is that fixing the above 4 issues is really easy using the URL Rewrite Extension.  This is a completely free Microsoft extension available for IIS 7.x (on Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7 and Windows Vista).  The great thing about using the IIS Rewrite extension is that it allows you to fix the above problems *without* having to change any code within your applications.  You can easily install the URL Rewrite Extension in under 3 minutes using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer (a free tool we ship that automates setting up web servers and development machines).  Just click the green “Install Now” button on the URL Rewrite Spotlight page to install it on your Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 or Windows Vista machine: Once installed you’ll find that a new “URL Rewrite” icon is available within the IIS 7 Admin Tool: Double-clicking the icon will open up the URL Rewrite admin panel – which will display the list of URL Rewrite rules configured for a particular application or site: Notice that our rewrite rule list above is currently empty (which is the default when you first install the extension).  We can click the “Add Rule…” link button in the top-right of the panel to add and enable new URL Rewriting logic for our site.  Scenario 1: Handling Default Document Scenarios One of the SEO problems I discussed earlier in this post was the scenario where the “default document” feature of IIS causes you to inadvertently expose two URLs for the same content on your site.  For example: http://scottgu.com/ http://scottgu.com/default.aspx We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the second URL to instead go to the first one.  We will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve.  Let’s look at how we can create such a rule.  We’ll begin by clicking the “Add Rule” link in the screenshot above.  This will cause the below dialog to display: We’ll select the “Blank Rule” template within the “Inbound rules” section to create a new custom URL Rewriting rule.  This will display an empty pane like below: Don’t worry – setting up the above rule is easy.  The following 4 steps explain how to do so: Step 1: Name the Rule Our first step will be to name the rule we are creating.  Naming it with a descriptive name will make it easier to find and understand later.  Let’s name this rule our “Default Document URL Rewrite” rule: Step 2: Setup the Regular Expression that Matches this Rule Our second step will be to specify a regular expression filter that will cause this rule to execute when an incoming URL matches the regex pattern.   Don’t worry if you aren’t good with regular expressions - I suck at them too. The trick is to know someone who is good at them or copy/paste them from a web-site.  Below we are going to specify the following regular expression as our pattern rule: (.*?)/?Default\.aspx$ This pattern will match any URL string that ends with Default.aspx. The "(.*?)" matches any preceding character zero or more times. The "/?" part says to match the slash symbol zero or one times. The "$" symbol at the end will ensure that the pattern will only match strings that end with Default.aspx.  Combining all these regex elements allows this rule to work not only for the root of your web site (e.g. http://scottgu.com/default.aspx) but also for any application or subdirectory within the site (e.g. http://scottgu.com/photos/default.aspx.  Because the “ignore case” checkbox is selected it will match both “Default.aspx” as well as “default.aspx” within the URL.   One nice feature built-into the rule editor is a “Test pattern” button that you can click to bring up a dialog that allows you to test out a few URLs with the rule you are configuring: Above I've added a “products/default.aspx” URL and clicked the “Test” button.  This will give me immediate feedback on whether the rule will execute for it.  Step 3: Setup a Permanent Redirect Action We’ll then setup an action to occur when our regular expression pattern matches the incoming URL: In the dialog above I’ve changed the “Action Type” drop down to be a “Redirect” action.  The “Redirect Type” will be a HTTP 301 Permanent redirect – which means search engines will follow it. I’ve also set the “Redirect URL” property to be: {R:1}/ This indicates that we want to redirect the web client requesting the original URL to a new URL that has the originally requested URL path - minus the "Default.aspx" in it.  For example, requests for http://scottgu.com/default.aspx will be redirected to http://scottgu.com/, and requests for http://scottgu.com/photos/default.aspx will be redirected to http://scottgu.com/photos/ The "{R:N}" regex construct, where N >= 0, is called a back-reference and N is the back-reference index. In the case of our pattern "(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$", if the input URL is "products/Default.aspx" then {R:0} will contain "products/Default.aspx" and {R:1} will contain "products".  We are going to use this {R:1}/ value to be the URL we redirect users to.  Step 4: Apply and Save the Rule Our final step is to click the “Apply” button in the top right hand of the IIS admin tool – which will cause the tool to persist the URL Rewrite rule into our application’s root web.config file (under a <system.webServer/rewrite> configuration section): <configuration>     <system.webServer>         <rewrite>             <rules>                 <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" />                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>             </rules>         </rewrite>     </system.webServer> </configuration> Because IIS 7.x and ASP.NET share the same web.config files, you can actually just copy/paste the above code into your web.config files using Visual Studio and skip the need to run the admin tool entirely.  This also makes adding/deploying URL Rewrite rules with your ASP.NET applications really easy. Step 5: Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site.  Try the following two URLs on my site: http://scottgu.com/ http://scottgu.com/default.aspx Notice that the second URL automatically redirects to the first one.  Because it is a permanent redirect, search engines will follow the URL and should update the page ranking of http://scottgu.com to include links to http://scottgu.com/default.aspx as well. Scenario 2: Different URL Casing Another common SEO problem I discussed earlier in this post is that URLs are case sensitive to search engines on the web.  This means that search engines will treat the following links as two completely different URLs: http://scottgu.com/Albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the first URL to instead go to the second (all lower-case) one.  Like before, we will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve. To create such a rule we’ll click the “Add Rule” link in the URL Rewrite admin tool again.  This will cause the “Add Rule” dialog to appear again: Unlike the previous scenario (where we created a “Blank Rule”), with this scenario we can take advantage of a built-in “Enforce lowercase URLs” rule template.  When we click the “ok” button we’ll see the following dialog which asks us if we want to create a rule that enforces the use of lowercase letters in URLs: When we click the “Yes” button we’ll get a pre-written rule that automatically performs a permanent redirect if an incoming URL has upper-case characters in it – and automatically send users to a lower-case version of the URL: We can click the “Apply” button to use this rule “as-is” and have it apply to all incoming URLs to our site.  Because my www.scottgu.com site uses ASP.NET Web Forms, I’m going to make one small change to the rule we generated above – which is to add a condition that will ensure that URLs to ASP.NET’s built-in “WebResource.axd” handler are excluded from our case-sensitivity URL Rewrite logic.  URLs to the WebResource.axd handler will only come from server-controls emitted from my pages – and will never be linked to from external sites.  While my site will continue to function fine if we redirect these URLs to automatically be lower-case – doing so isn’t necessary and will add an extra HTTP redirect to many of my pages.  The good news is that adding a condition that prevents my URL Rewriting rule from happening with certain URLs is easy.  We simply need to expand the “Conditions” section of the form above We can then click the “Add” button to add a condition clause.  This will bring up the “Add Condition” dialog: Above I’ve entered {URL} as the Condition input – and said that this rule should only execute if the URL does not match a regex pattern which contains the string “WebResource.axd”.  This will ensure that WebResource.axd URLs to my site will be allowed to execute just fine without having the URL be re-written to be all lower-case. Note: If you have static resources (like references to .jpg, .css, and .js files) within your site that currently use upper-case characters you’ll probably want to add additional condition filter clauses so that URLs to them also don’t get redirected to be lower-case (just add rules for patterns like .jpg, .gif, .js, etc).  Your site will continue to work fine if these URLs get redirected to be lower case (meaning the site won’t break) – but it will cause an extra HTTP redirect to happen on your site for URLs that don’t need to be redirected for SEO reasons.  So setting up a condition clause makes sense to add. When I click the “ok” button above and apply our lower-case rewriting rule the admin tool will save the following additional rule to our web.config file: <configuration>     <system.webServer>         <rewrite>             <rules>                 <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" />                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Lower Case URLs" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="[A-Z]" ignoreCase="false" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{ToLower:{URL}}" />                 </rule>             </rules>         </rewrite>     </system.webServer> </configuration> Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site.  Try the following two URLs on my site: http://scottgu.com/Albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx Notice that the first URL (which has a capital “A”) automatically does a redirect to a lower-case version of the URL.  Scenario 3: Trailing Slashes Another common SEO problem I discussed earlier in this post is the scenario of trailing slashes within URLs.  The trailing slash creates yet another situation that causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and so split search rankings: http://scottgu.com http://scottgu.com/ We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the first URL (that does not have a trailing slash) to instead go to the second one that does.  Like before, we will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve.  To create such a rule we’ll click the “Add Rule” link in the URL Rewrite admin tool again.  This will cause the “Add Rule” dialog to appear again: The URL Rewrite admin tool has a built-in “Append or remove the trailing slash symbol” rule template.  When we select it and click the “ok” button we’ll see the following dialog which asks us if we want to create a rule that automatically redirects users to a URL with a trailing slash if one isn’t present: Like within our previous lower-casing rewrite rule we’ll add one additional condition clause that will exclude WebResource.axd URLs from being processed by this rule.  This will avoid an unnecessary redirect for happening for those URLs. When we click the “OK” button we’ll get a pre-written rule that automatically performs a permanent redirect if the URL doesn’t have a trailing slash – and if the URL is not processed by either a directory or a file.  This will save the following additional rule to our web.config file: <configuration>     <system.webServer>         <rewrite>             <rules>                 <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" />                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Lower Case URLs" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="[A-Z]" ignoreCase="false" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{ToLower:{URL}}" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Trailing Slash" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*[^/])$" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />                         <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>             </rules>         </rewrite>     </system.webServer> </configuration> Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site.  Try the following two URLs on my site: http://scottgu.com http://scottgu.com/ Notice that the first URL (which has no trailing slash) automatically does a redirect to a URL with the trailing slash.  Because it is a permanent redirect, search engines will follow the URL and update the page ranking. Scenario 4: Canonical Host Names The final SEO problem I discussed earlier are scenarios where a site works with both a leading “www” hostname prefix as well as just the hostname itself.  This causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and split search rankling: http://www.scottgu.com/albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the first URL (that has a www prefix) to instead go to the second URL.  Like before, we will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve.  To create such a rule we’ll click the “Add Rule” link in the URL Rewrite admin tool again.  This will cause the “Add Rule” dialog to appear again: The URL Rewrite admin tool has a built-in “Canonical domain name” rule template.  When we select it and click the “ok” button we’ll see the following dialog which asks us if we want to create a redirect rule that automatically redirects users to a primary host name URL: Above I’m entering the primary URL address I want to expose to the web: scottgu.com.  When we click the “OK” button we’ll get a pre-written rule that automatically performs a permanent redirect if the URL has another leading domain name prefix.  This will save the following additional rule to our web.config file: <configuration>     <system.webServer>         <rewrite>             <rules>                 <rule name="Cannonical Hostname">                     <match url="(.*)" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^scottgu\.com$" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="http://scottgu.com/{R:1}" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" />                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Lower Case URLs" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="[A-Z]" ignoreCase="false" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{ToLower:{URL}}" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Trailing Slash" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*[^/])$" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />                         <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>             </rules>         </rewrite>     </system.webServer> </configuration> Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site.  Try the following two URLs on my site: http://www.scottgu.com/albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx Notice that the first URL (which has the “www” prefix) now automatically does a redirect to the second URL which does not have the www prefix.  Because it is a permanent redirect, search engines will follow the URL and update the page ranking. 4 Simple Rules for Improved SEO The above 4 rules are pretty easy to setup and should take less than 15 minutes to configure on existing sites you already have.  The beauty of using a solution like the URL Rewrite Extension is that you can take advantage of it without having to change code within your web-site – and without having to break any existing links already pointing at your site.  Users who follow existing links will be automatically redirected to the new URLs you wish to publish.  And search engines will start to give your site a higher search relevancy ranking – which will list your site higher in search results and drive more traffic to it. Customizing your URL Rewriting rules further is easy to-do either by editing the web.config file directly, or alternatively, just double click the URL Rewrite icon within the IIS 7.x admin tool and it will list all the active rules for your web-site or application: Clicking any of the rules above will open the rules editor back up and allow you to tweak/customize/save them further. Summary Measuring and improving SEO is something every developer building a public-facing web-site needs to think about and focus on.  If you haven’t already, download and use the SEO Toolkit to analyze the SEO of your sites today. New URL Routing features in ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web Forms 4 make it much easier to build applications that have more control over the URLs that are published.  Tools like the URL Rewrite Extension that I’ve talked about in this blog post make it much easier to improve the URLs that are published from sites you already have built today – without requiring you to change a lot of code. The URL Rewrite Extension provides a bunch of additional great capabilities – far beyond just SEO - as well.  I’ll be covering these additional capabilities more in future blog posts. Hope this helps, Scott

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• Control layout using graphviz twopi

  - by vy32

  I am trying to draw a graph showing search prefixes using twopi. I have a simple input file and am getting this output: (full image) Here is the input file: digraph search { // ordering=out; // color=blue; // rank=same; // overlap=scale; rankdir=LR; root=root; ranksep=1.25; overlap=true; "root"; a [color=none,fontsize=12]; b [color=none,fontsize=12]; c [color=none,fontsize=12]; d [color=none,fontsize=12]; e [color=none,fontsize=12]; f [color=none,fontsize=12]; #g [color=none,fontsize=12]; h [color=none,fontsize=12]; i [color=none,fontsize=12]; j [color=none,fontsize=12]; k [color=none,fontsize=12]; l [color=none,fontsize=12]; m [color=none,fontsize=12]; n [color=none,fontsize=12]; o [color=none,fontsize=12]; p [color=none,fontsize=12]; q [color=none,fontsize=12]; r [color=none,fontsize=12]; s [color=none,fontsize=12]; t [color=none,fontsize=12]; u [color=none,fontsize=12]; v [color=none,fontsize=12]; w [color=none,fontsize=12]; x [color=none,fontsize=12]; y [color=none,fontsize=12]; #ga [color=none,fontsize=12]; gb [color=none,fontsize=12]; gc [color=none,fontsize=12]; gd [color=none,fontsize=12]; ge [color=none,fontsize=12]; gf [color=none,fontsize=12]; gg [color=none,fontsize=12]; gh [color=none,fontsize=12]; gi [color=none,fontsize=12]; gj [color=none,fontsize=12]; gk [color=none,fontsize=12]; gl [color=none,fontsize=12]; gm [color=none,fontsize=12]; gn [color=none,fontsize=12]; go [color=none,fontsize=12]; gp [color=none,fontsize=12]; gq [color=none,fontsize=12]; gr [color=none,fontsize=12]; gs [color=none,fontsize=12]; gt [color=none,fontsize=12]; gu [color=none,fontsize=12]; gv [color=none,fontsize=12]; gw [color=none,fontsize=12]; gx [color=none,fontsize=12]; gy [color=none,fontsize=12]; gaa [color=none,fontsize=12]; gab [color=none,fontsize=12]; gac [color=none,fontsize=12]; gad [color=none,fontsize=12]; gae [color=none,fontsize=12]; gaf [color=none,fontsize=12]; gag [color=none,fontsize=12]; gah [color=none,fontsize=12]; gai [color=none,fontsize=12]; gaj [color=none,fontsize=12]; gak [color=none,fontsize=12]; gal [color=none,fontsize=12]; gam [color=none,fontsize=12]; gan [color=none,fontsize=12]; gao [color=none,fontsize=12]; gap [color=none,fontsize=12]; gaq [color=none,fontsize=12]; #gaz [color=none,fontsize=12]; gas [color=none,fontsize=12]; gat [color=none,fontsize=12]; gau [color=none,fontsize=12]; gav [color=none,fontsize=12]; gaw [color=none,fontsize=12]; gax [color=none,fontsize=12]; gay [color=none,fontsize=12]; gaza [color=none,fontsize=12]; gazb [color=none,fontsize=12]; gazc [color=none,fontsize=12]; gazd [color=none,fontsize=12]; gaze [color=none,fontsize=12]; #gazf [color=none,fontsize=12]; gazg [color=none,fontsize=12]; gazh [color=none,fontsize=12]; gazi [color=none,fontsize=12]; gazj [color=none,fontsize=12]; gazk [color=none,fontsize=12]; gazl [color=none,fontsize=12]; gazm [color=none,fontsize=12]; gazn [color=none,fontsize=12]; gazo [color=none,fontsize=12]; gazp [color=none,fontsize=12]; gazq [color=none,fontsize=12]; gazr [color=none,fontsize=12]; gazs [color=none,fontsize=12]; gazt [color=none,fontsize=12]; gazu [color=none,fontsize=12]; gazv [color=none,fontsize=12]; gazw [color=none,fontsize=12]; gazx [color=none,fontsize=12]; gazy [color=none,fontsize=12]; root -> a [minlen=2]; root -> b [minlen=2]; root -> c [minlen=2]; root -> d [minlen=2]; root -> e [minlen=2]; root -> f [minlen=2]; root -> g [minlen=2]; root -> h [minlen=2]; root -> i [minlen=2]; root -> j [minlen=2]; root -> k [minlen=2]; root -> l [minlen=2]; root -> m [minlen=2]; root -> n [minlen=2]; root -> o [minlen=2]; root -> p [minlen=2]; root -> q [minlen=2]; root -> r [minlen=2]; root -> s [minlen=20]; root -> t [minlen=2]; root -> u [minlen=2]; root -> v [minlen=2]; root -> w [minlen=2]; root -> x [minlen=2]; root -> y [minlen=2]; root -> 0 [minlen=2]; root -> 1 [minlen=2]; root -> 2 [minlen=2]; root -> 3 [minlen=2]; root -> 4 [minlen=2]; root -> 5 [minlen=2]; root -> 6 [minlen=2]; root -> 7 [minlen=2]; root -> 8 [minlen=2]; root -> 9 [minlen=2]; root -> "." [minlen=2]; g -> ga ; g -> gb ; g -> gc ; g -> gd ; g -> ge ; g -> gf ; g -> gg ; g -> gh ; g -> gi ; g -> gj ; g -> gk ; g -> gl ; g -> gm ; g -> gn ; g -> go ; g -> gp ; g -> gq ; g -> gr ; g -> gs ; g -> gt ; g -> gu ; g -> gv ; g -> gw ; g -> gx ; g -> gy ; ga -> gaa ; ga -> gab ; ga -> gac ; ga -> gad ; ga -> gae ; ga -> gaf ; ga -> gag ; ga -> gah ; ga -> gai ; ga -> gaj ; ga -> gak ; ga -> gal ; ga -> gam ; ga -> gan ; ga -> gao ; ga -> gap ; ga -> gaq ; ga -> gaz ; ga -> gas ; ga -> gat ; ga -> gau ; ga -> gav ; ga -> gaw ; ga -> gax ; ga -> gay ; gaz -> gaza ; gaz -> gazb ; gaz -> gazc ; gaz -> gazd ; gaz -> gaze ; gaz -> gazf ; gaz -> gazg ; gaz -> gazh ; gaz -> gazi ; gaz -> gazj ; gaz -> gazk ; gaz -> gazl ; gaz -> gazm ; gaz -> gazn ; gaz -> gazo ; gaz -> gazp ; gaz -> gazq ; gaz -> gazr ; gaz -> gazs ; gaz -> gazt ; gaz -> gazu ; gaz -> gazv ; gaz -> gazw ; gaz -> gazx ; gaz -> gazy ; gazo -> "Blue Tuesday" ; "Blue Tuesday" [ fontsize=10]; // Layout engines: circo dot fdp neato nop nop1 nop2 osage patchwork sfdp twopi } This output is generated with: twopi -os1.png -Tpng s1.dot I'm posting here because the printout is pretty dreadful. All of the nodes hung of "gaz" are overlapping; I've tried specifying nodesep and it is simply ignored. I would like to see the lines from root to the single letters further apart, but again, I can't control that. This seems to be a bug in twopi. The documentation says it should clearly follow these directives, but it doesn't seem to. My questions: Is there any way to make twopi behave? Failing that, is there a better layout engine to use? Thanks.

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