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  • Chef: Load Attributes from encrypted databag in json role

    - by jcvj
    I'm want to use the postfix cookbook for chef. The sasl password is expected to be in an attribute. So usually you would do this: "default_attributes": { "postfix": { "sasl": { "smtp_sasl_passwd": "somepassword" } } } The thing is: I don't want to have the password in the repository in plain text. So I put it in an encrypted data bag. Now I want to access it. This can be done with this: Chef::EncryptedDataBagItem.load("passwords", "postfix")['password'] The problem: This only works in a .rb file, but my role is in json; all my roles are in json! I don't want to change that just for this purpose. Does anybody have an idea what to do here? Help is very appreciated.

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  • database design help for game / user levels / progress

    - by sprugman
    Sorry this got long and all prose-y. I'm creating my first truly gamified web app and could use some help thinking about how to structure the data. The Set-up Users need to accomplish tasks in each of several categories before they can move up a level. I've got my Users, Tasks, and Categories tables, and a UserTasks table which joins the three. ("User 3 has added Task 42 in Category 8. Now they've completed it.") That's all fine and working wonderfully. The Challenge I'm not sure of the best way to track the progress in the individual categories toward each level. The "business" rules are: You have to achieve a certain number of points in each category to move up. If you get the number of points needed in Cat 8, but still have other work to do to complete the level, any new Cat 8 points count toward your overall score, but don't "roll over" into the next level. The number of Categories is small (five currently) and unlikely to change often, but by no means absolutely fixed. The number of points needed to level-up will vary per level, probably by a formula, or perhaps a lookup table. So the challenge is to track each user's progress toward the next level in each category. I've thought of a few potential approaches: Possible Solutions Add a column to the users table for each category and reset them all to zero each time a user levels-up. Have a separate UserProgress table with a row for each category for each user and the number of points they have. (Basically a Many-to-Many version of #1.) Add a userLevel column to the UserTasks table and use that to derive their progress with some kind of SUM statement. Their current level will be a simple int in the User table. Pros & Cons (1) seems like by far the most straightforward, but it's also the least flexible. Perhaps I could use a naming convention based on the category ids to help overcome some of that. (With code like "select cats; for each cat, get the value from Users.progress_{cat.id}.") It's also the one where I lose the most data -- I won't know which points counted toward leveling up. I don't have a need in mind for that, so maybe I don't care about that. (2) seems complicated: every time I add or subtract a user or a category, I have to maintain the other table. I foresee synchronization challenges. (3) Is somewhere in between -- cleaner than #2, but less intuitive than #1. In order to find out where a user is, I'd have mildly complex SQL like: SELECT categoryId, SUM(points) from UserTasks WHERE userId={user.id} & countsTowardLevel={user.level} groupBy categoryId Hmm... that doesn't seem so bad. I think I'm talking myself into #3 here, but would love any input, advice or other ideas. P.S. Sorry for the cross-post. I wrote this up on SO and then remembered that there was a game dev-focused one. Curious to see if I get different answers one place than the other....

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  • Context switch time - Role of RTOS and Processor

    - by S.M
    Does the RTOS play a major role or processor play a major role in determining the time for context switch ? What is the percentage of share between these two major players in determining the context switch time . Can anyone tell with respect to uC/OS-II RTOS ?

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  • A viewmodel's role beyond databinding?

    - by DeanMc
    I'm a bit confused as to what a viewmodel's role is beyond databinding. I have a menu built in silverlight. The menu has x number of menu items which is determined at runtime. One of the features I would like to add to this is that each menuitem has a different text colour when hovered over. Is it the role of the view to have a colour selector method or should the view handle this in it's code behind?

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  • 256 Windows Azure Worker Roles, Windows Kinect and a 90's Text-Based Ray-Tracer

    - by Alan Smith
    For a couple of years I have been demoing a simple render farm hosted in Windows Azure using worker roles and the Azure Storage service. At the start of the presentation I deploy an Azure application that uses 16 worker roles to render a 1,500 frame 3D ray-traced animation. At the end of the presentation, when the animation was complete, I would play the animation delete the Azure deployment. The standing joke with the audience was that it was that it was a “$2 demo”, as the compute charges for running the 16 instances for an hour was $1.92, factor in the bandwidth charges and it’s a couple of dollars. The point of the demo is that it highlights one of the great benefits of cloud computing, you pay for what you use, and if you need massive compute power for a short period of time using Windows Azure can work out very cost effective. The “$2 demo” was great for presenting at user groups and conferences in that it could be deployed to Azure, used to render an animation, and then removed in a one hour session. I have always had the idea of doing something a bit more impressive with the demo, and scaling it from a “$2 demo” to a “$30 demo”. The challenge was to create a visually appealing animation in high definition format and keep the demo time down to one hour.  This article will take a run through how I achieved this. Ray Tracing Ray tracing, a technique for generating high quality photorealistic images, gained popularity in the 90’s with companies like Pixar creating feature length computer animations, and also the emergence of shareware text-based ray tracers that could run on a home PC. In order to render a ray traced image, the ray of light that would pass from the view point must be tracked until it intersects with an object. At the intersection, the color, reflectiveness, transparency, and refractive index of the object are used to calculate if the ray will be reflected or refracted. Each pixel may require thousands of calculations to determine what color it will be in the rendered image. Pin-Board Toys Having very little artistic talent and a basic understanding of maths I decided to focus on an animation that could be modeled fairly easily and would look visually impressive. I’ve always liked the pin-board desktop toys that become popular in the 80’s and when I was working as a 3D animator back in the 90’s I always had the idea of creating a 3D ray-traced animation of a pin-board, but never found the energy to do it. Even if I had a go at it, the render time to produce an animation that would look respectable on a 486 would have been measured in months. PolyRay Back in 1995 I landed my first real job, after spending three years being a beach-ski-climbing-paragliding-bum, and was employed to create 3D ray-traced animations for a CD-ROM that school kids would use to learn physics. I had got into the strange and wonderful world of text-based ray tracing, and was using a shareware ray-tracer called PolyRay. PolyRay takes a text file describing a scene as input and, after a few hours processing on a 486, produced a high quality ray-traced image. The following is an example of a basic PolyRay scene file. background Midnight_Blue   static define matte surface { ambient 0.1 diffuse 0.7 } define matte_white texture { matte { color white } } define matte_black texture { matte { color dark_slate_gray } } define position_cylindrical 3 define lookup_sawtooth 1 define light_wood <0.6, 0.24, 0.1> define median_wood <0.3, 0.12, 0.03> define dark_wood <0.05, 0.01, 0.005>     define wooden texture { noise surface { ambient 0.2  diffuse 0.7  specular white, 0.5 microfacet Reitz 10 position_fn position_cylindrical position_scale 1  lookup_fn lookup_sawtooth octaves 1 turbulence 1 color_map( [0.0, 0.2, light_wood, light_wood] [0.2, 0.3, light_wood, median_wood] [0.3, 0.4, median_wood, light_wood] [0.4, 0.7, light_wood, light_wood] [0.7, 0.8, light_wood, median_wood] [0.8, 0.9, median_wood, light_wood] [0.9, 1.0, light_wood, dark_wood]) } } define glass texture { surface { ambient 0 diffuse 0 specular 0.2 reflection white, 0.1 transmission white, 1, 1.5 }} define shiny surface { ambient 0.1 diffuse 0.6 specular white, 0.6 microfacet Phong 7  } define steely_blue texture { shiny { color black } } define chrome texture { surface { color white ambient 0.0 diffuse 0.2 specular 0.4 microfacet Phong 10 reflection 0.8 } }   viewpoint {     from <4.000, -1.000, 1.000> at <0.000, 0.000, 0.000> up <0, 1, 0> angle 60     resolution 640, 480 aspect 1.6 image_format 0 }       light <-10, 30, 20> light <-10, 30, -20>   object { disc <0, -2, 0>, <0, 1, 0>, 30 wooden }   object { sphere <0.000, 0.000, 0.000>, 1.00 chrome } object { cylinder <0.000, 0.000, 0.000>, <0.000, 0.000, -4.000>, 0.50 chrome }   After setting up the background and defining colors and textures, the viewpoint is specified. The “camera” is located at a point in 3D space, and it looks towards another point. The angle, image resolution, and aspect ratio are specified. Two lights are present in the image at defined coordinates. The three objects in the image are a wooden disc to represent a table top, and a sphere and cylinder that intersect to form a pin that will be used for the pin board toy in the final animation. When the image is rendered, the following image is produced. The pins are modeled with a chrome surface, so they reflect the environment around them. Note that the scale of the pin shaft is not correct, this will be fixed later. Modeling the Pin Board The frame of the pin-board is made up of three boxes, and six cylinders, the front box is modeled using a clear, slightly reflective solid, with the same refractive index of glass. The other shapes are modeled as metal. object { box <-5.5, -1.5, 1>, <5.5, 5.5, 1.2> glass } object { box <-5.5, -1.5, -0.04>, <5.5, 5.5, -0.09> steely_blue } object { box <-5.5, -1.5, -0.52>, <5.5, 5.5, -0.59> steely_blue } object { cylinder <-5.2, -1.2, 1.4>, <-5.2, -1.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <5.2, -1.2, 1.4>, <5.2, -1.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <-5.2, 5.2, 1.4>, <-5.2, 5.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <5.2, 5.2, 1.4>, <5.2, 5.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <0, -1.2, 1.4>, <0, -1.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <0, 5.2, 1.4>, <0, 5.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue }   In order to create the matrix of pins that make up the pin board I used a basic console application with a few nested loops to create two intersecting matrixes of pins, which models the layout used in the pin boards. The resulting image is shown below. The pin board contains 11,481 pins, with the scene file containing 23,709 lines of code. For the complete animation 2,000 scene files will be created, which is over 47 million lines of code. Each pin in the pin-board will slide out a specific distance when an object is pressed into the back of the board. This is easily modeled by setting the Z coordinate of the pin to a specific value. In order to set all of the pins in the pin-board to the correct position, a bitmap image can be used. The position of the pin can be set based on the color of the pixel at the appropriate position in the image. When the Windows Azure logo is used to set the Z coordinate of the pins, the following image is generated. The challenge now was to make a cool animation. The Azure Logo is fine, but it is static. Using a normal video to animate the pins would not work; the colors in the video would not be the same as the depth of the objects from the camera. In order to simulate the pin board accurately a series of frames from a depth camera could be used. Windows Kinect The Kenect controllers for the X-Box 360 and Windows feature a depth camera. The Kinect SDK for Windows provides a programming interface for Kenect, providing easy access for .NET developers to the Kinect sensors. The Kinect Explorer provided with the Kinect SDK is a great starting point for exploring Kinect from a developers perspective. Both the X-Box 360 Kinect and the Windows Kinect will work with the Kinect SDK, the Windows Kinect is required for commercial applications, but the X-Box Kinect can be used for hobby projects. The Windows Kinect has the advantage of providing a mode to allow depth capture with objects closer to the camera, which makes for a more accurate depth image for setting the pin positions. Creating a Depth Field Animation The depth field animation used to set the positions of the pin in the pin board was created using a modified version of the Kinect Explorer sample application. In order to simulate the pin board accurately, a small section of the depth range from the depth sensor will be used. Any part of the object in front of the depth range will result in a white pixel; anything behind the depth range will be black. Within the depth range the pixels in the image will be set to RGB values from 0,0,0 to 255,255,255. A screen shot of the modified Kinect Explorer application is shown below. The Kinect Explorer sample application was modified to include slider controls that are used to set the depth range that forms the image from the depth stream. This allows the fine tuning of the depth image that is required for simulating the position of the pins in the pin board. The Kinect Explorer was also modified to record a series of images from the depth camera and save them as a sequence JPEG files that will be used to animate the pins in the animation the Start and Stop buttons are used to start and stop the image recording. En example of one of the depth images is shown below. Once a series of 2,000 depth images has been captured, the task of creating the animation can begin. Rendering a Test Frame In order to test the creation of frames and get an approximation of the time required to render each frame a test frame was rendered on-premise using PolyRay. The output of the rendering process is shown below. The test frame contained 23,629 primitive shapes, most of which are the spheres and cylinders that are used for the 11,800 or so pins in the pin board. The 1280x720 image contains 921,600 pixels, but as anti-aliasing was used the number of rays that were calculated was 4,235,777, with 3,478,754,073 object boundaries checked. The test frame of the pin board with the depth field image applied is shown below. The tracing time for the test frame was 4 minutes 27 seconds, which means rendering the2,000 frames in the animation would take over 148 hours, or a little over 6 days. Although this is much faster that an old 486, waiting almost a week to see the results of an animation would make it challenging for animators to create, view, and refine their animations. It would be much better if the animation could be rendered in less than one hour. Windows Azure Worker Roles The cost of creating an on-premise render farm to render animations increases in proportion to the number of servers. The table below shows the cost of servers for creating a render farm, assuming a cost of $500 per server. Number of Servers Cost 1 $500 16 $8,000 256 $128,000   As well as the cost of the servers, there would be additional costs for networking, racks etc. Hosting an environment of 256 servers on-premise would require a server room with cooling, and some pretty hefty power cabling. The Windows Azure compute services provide worker roles, which are ideal for performing processor intensive compute tasks. With the scalability available in Windows Azure a job that takes 256 hours to complete could be perfumed using different numbers of worker roles. The time and cost of using 1, 16 or 256 worker roles is shown below. Number of Worker Roles Render Time Cost 1 256 hours $30.72 16 16 hours $30.72 256 1 hour $30.72   Using worker roles in Windows Azure provides the same cost for the 256 hour job, irrespective of the number of worker roles used. Provided the compute task can be broken down into many small units, and the worker role compute power can be used effectively, it makes sense to scale the application so that the task is completed quickly, making the results available in a timely fashion. The task of rendering 2,000 frames in an animation is one that can easily be broken down into 2,000 individual pieces, which can be performed by a number of worker roles. Creating a Render Farm in Windows Azure The architecture of the render farm is shown in the following diagram. The render farm is a hybrid application with the following components: ·         On-Premise o   Windows Kinect – Used combined with the Kinect Explorer to create a stream of depth images. o   Animation Creator – This application uses the depth images from the Kinect sensor to create scene description files for PolyRay. These files are then uploaded to the jobs blob container, and job messages added to the jobs queue. o   Process Monitor – This application queries the role instance lifecycle table and displays statistics about the render farm environment and render process. o   Image Downloader – This application polls the image queue and downloads the rendered animation files once they are complete. ·         Windows Azure o   Azure Storage – Queues and blobs are used for the scene description files and completed frames. A table is used to store the statistics about the rendering environment.   The architecture of each worker role is shown below.   The worker role is configured to use local storage, which provides file storage on the worker role instance that can be use by the applications to render the image and transform the format of the image. The service definition for the worker role with the local storage configuration highlighted is shown below. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="CloudRay" >   <WorkerRole name="CloudRayWorkerRole" vmsize="Small">     <Imports>     </Imports>     <ConfigurationSettings>       <Setting name="DataConnectionString" />     </ConfigurationSettings>     <LocalResources>       <LocalStorage name="RayFolder" cleanOnRoleRecycle="true" />     </LocalResources>   </WorkerRole> </ServiceDefinition>     The two executable programs, PolyRay.exe and DTA.exe are included in the Azure project, with Copy Always set as the property. PolyRay will take the scene description file and render it to a Truevision TGA file. As the TGA format has not seen much use since the mid 90’s it is converted to a JPG image using Dave's Targa Animator, another shareware application from the 90’s. Each worker roll will use the following process to render the animation frames. 1.       The worker process polls the job queue, if a job is available the scene description file is downloaded from blob storage to local storage. 2.       PolyRay.exe is started in a process with the appropriate command line arguments to render the image as a TGA file. 3.       DTA.exe is started in a process with the appropriate command line arguments convert the TGA file to a JPG file. 4.       The JPG file is uploaded from local storage to the images blob container. 5.       A message is placed on the images queue to indicate a new image is available for download. 6.       The job message is deleted from the job queue. 7.       The role instance lifecycle table is updated with statistics on the number of frames rendered by the worker role instance, and the CPU time used. The code for this is shown below. public override void Run() {     // Set environment variables     string polyRayPath = Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), PolyRayLocation);     string dtaPath = Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), DTALocation);       LocalResource rayStorage = RoleEnvironment.GetLocalResource("RayFolder");     string localStorageRootPath = rayStorage.RootPath;       JobQueue jobQueue = new JobQueue("renderjobs");     JobQueue downloadQueue = new JobQueue("renderimagedownloadjobs");     CloudRayBlob sceneBlob = new CloudRayBlob("scenes");     CloudRayBlob imageBlob = new CloudRayBlob("images");     RoleLifecycleDataSource roleLifecycleDataSource = new RoleLifecycleDataSource();       Frames = 0;       while (true)     {         // Get the render job from the queue         CloudQueueMessage jobMsg = jobQueue.Get();           if (jobMsg != null)         {             // Get the file details             string sceneFile = jobMsg.AsString;             string tgaFile = sceneFile.Replace(".pi", ".tga");             string jpgFile = sceneFile.Replace(".pi", ".jpg");               string sceneFilePath = Path.Combine(localStorageRootPath, sceneFile);             string tgaFilePath = Path.Combine(localStorageRootPath, tgaFile);             string jpgFilePath = Path.Combine(localStorageRootPath, jpgFile);               // Copy the scene file to local storage             sceneBlob.DownloadFile(sceneFilePath);               // Run the ray tracer.             string polyrayArguments =                 string.Format("\"{0}\" -o \"{1}\" -a 2", sceneFilePath, tgaFilePath);             Process polyRayProcess = new Process();             polyRayProcess.StartInfo.FileName =                 Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), polyRayPath);             polyRayProcess.StartInfo.Arguments = polyrayArguments;             polyRayProcess.Start();             polyRayProcess.WaitForExit();               // Convert the image             string dtaArguments =                 string.Format(" {0} /FJ /P{1}", tgaFilePath, Path.GetDirectoryName (jpgFilePath));             Process dtaProcess = new Process();             dtaProcess.StartInfo.FileName =                 Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), dtaPath);             dtaProcess.StartInfo.Arguments = dtaArguments;             dtaProcess.Start();             dtaProcess.WaitForExit();               // Upload the image to blob storage             imageBlob.UploadFile(jpgFilePath);               // Add a download job.             downloadQueue.Add(jpgFile);               // Delete the render job message             jobQueue.Delete(jobMsg);               Frames++;         }         else         {             Thread.Sleep(1000);         }           // Log the worker role activity.         roleLifecycleDataSource.Alive             ("CloudRayWorker", RoleLifecycleDataSource.RoleLifecycleId, Frames);     } }     Monitoring Worker Role Instance Lifecycle In order to get more accurate statistics about the lifecycle of the worker role instances used to render the animation data was tracked in an Azure storage table. The following class was used to track the worker role lifecycles in Azure storage.   public class RoleLifecycle : TableServiceEntity {     public string ServerName { get; set; }     public string Status { get; set; }     public DateTime StartTime { get; set; }     public DateTime EndTime { get; set; }     public long SecondsRunning { get; set; }     public DateTime LastActiveTime { get; set; }     public int Frames { get; set; }     public string Comment { get; set; }       public RoleLifecycle()     {     }       public RoleLifecycle(string roleName)     {         PartitionKey = roleName;         RowKey = Utils.GetAscendingRowKey();         Status = "Started";         StartTime = DateTime.UtcNow;         LastActiveTime = StartTime;         EndTime = StartTime;         SecondsRunning = 0;         Frames = 0;     } }     A new instance of this class is created and added to the storage table when the role starts. It is then updated each time the worker renders a frame to record the total number of frames rendered and the total processing time. These statistics are used be the monitoring application to determine the effectiveness of use of resources in the render farm. Rendering the Animation The Azure solution was deployed to Windows Azure with the service configuration set to 16 worker role instances. This allows for the application to be tested in the cloud environment, and the performance of the application determined. When I demo the application at conferences and user groups I often start with 16 instances, and then scale up the application to the full 256 instances. The configuration to run 16 instances is shown below. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="CloudRay" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="1" osVersion="*">   <Role name="CloudRayWorkerRole">     <Instances count="16" />     <ConfigurationSettings>       <Setting name="DataConnectionString"         value="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=cloudraydata;AccountKey=..." />     </ConfigurationSettings>   </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>     About six minutes after deploying the application the first worker roles become active and start to render the first frames of the animation. The CloudRay Monitor application displays an icon for each worker role instance, with a number indicating the number of frames that the worker role has rendered. The statistics on the left show the number of active worker roles and statistics about the render process. The render time is the time since the first worker role became active; the CPU time is the total amount of processing time used by all worker role instances to render the frames.   Five minutes after the first worker role became active the last of the 16 worker roles activated. By this time the first seven worker roles had each rendered one frame of the animation.   With 16 worker roles u and running it can be seen that one hour and 45 minutes CPU time has been used to render 32 frames with a render time of just under 10 minutes.     At this rate it would take over 10 hours to render the 2,000 frames of the full animation. In order to complete the animation in under an hour more processing power will be required. Scaling the render farm from 16 instances to 256 instances is easy using the new management portal. The slider is set to 256 instances, and the configuration saved. We do not need to re-deploy the application, and the 16 instances that are up and running will not be affected. Alternatively, the configuration file for the Azure service could be modified to specify 256 instances.   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="CloudRay" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="1" osVersion="*">   <Role name="CloudRayWorkerRole">     <Instances count="256" />     <ConfigurationSettings>       <Setting name="DataConnectionString"         value="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=cloudraydata;AccountKey=..." />     </ConfigurationSettings>   </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>     Six minutes after the new configuration has been applied 75 new worker roles have activated and are processing their first frames.   Five minutes later the full configuration of 256 worker roles is up and running. We can see that the average rate of frame rendering has increased from 3 to 12 frames per minute, and that over 17 hours of CPU time has been utilized in 23 minutes. In this test the time to provision 140 worker roles was about 11 minutes, which works out at about one every five seconds.   We are now half way through the rendering, with 1,000 frames complete. This has utilized just under three days of CPU time in a little over 35 minutes.   The animation is now complete, with 2,000 frames rendered in a little over 52 minutes. The CPU time used by the 256 worker roles is 6 days, 7 hours and 22 minutes with an average frame rate of 38 frames per minute. The rendering of the last 1,000 frames took 16 minutes 27 seconds, which works out at a rendering rate of 60 frames per minute. The frame counts in the server instances indicate that the use of a queue to distribute the workload has been very effective in distributing the load across the 256 worker role instances. The first 16 instances that were deployed first have rendered between 11 and 13 frames each, whilst the 240 instances that were added when the application was scaled have rendered between 6 and 9 frames each.   Completed Animation I’ve uploaded the completed animation to YouTube, a low resolution preview is shown below. Pin Board Animation Created using Windows Kinect and 256 Windows Azure Worker Roles   The animation can be viewed in 1280x720 resolution at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5jy6bvSxWc Effective Use of Resources According to the CloudRay monitor statistics the animation took 6 days, 7 hours and 22 minutes CPU to render, this works out at 152 hours of compute time, rounded up to the nearest hour. As the usage for the worker role instances are billed for the full hour, it may have been possible to render the animation using fewer than 256 worker roles. When deciding the optimal usage of resources, the time required to provision and start the worker roles must also be considered. In the demo I started with 16 worker roles, and then scaled the application to 256 worker roles. It would have been more optimal to start the application with maybe 200 worker roles, and utilized the full hour that I was being billed for. This would, however, have prevented showing the ease of scalability of the application. The new management portal displays the CPU usage across the worker roles in the deployment. The average CPU usage across all instances is 93.27%, with over 99% used when all the instances are up and running. This shows that the worker role resources are being used very effectively. Grid Computing Scenarios Although I am using this scenario for a hobby project, there are many scenarios where a large amount of compute power is required for a short period of time. Windows Azure provides a great platform for developing these types of grid computing applications, and can work out very cost effective. ·         Windows Azure can provide massive compute power, on demand, in a matter of minutes. ·         The use of queues to manage the load balancing of jobs between role instances is a simple and effective solution. ·         Using a cloud-computing platform like Windows Azure allows proof-of-concept scenarios to be tested and evaluated on a very low budget. ·         No charges for inbound data transfer makes the uploading of large data sets to Windows Azure Storage services cost effective. (Transaction charges still apply.) Tips for using Windows Azure for Grid Computing Scenarios I found the implementation of a render farm using Windows Azure a fairly simple scenario to implement. I was impressed by ease of scalability that Azure provides, and by the short time that the application took to scale from 16 to 256 worker role instances. In this case it was around 13 minutes, in other tests it took between 10 and 20 minutes. The following tips may be useful when implementing a grid computing project in Windows Azure. ·         Using an Azure Storage queue to load-balance the units of work across multiple worker roles is simple and very effective. The design I have used in this scenario could easily scale to many thousands of worker role instances. ·         Windows Azure accounts are typically limited to 20 cores. If you need to use more than this, a call to support and a credit card check will be required. ·         Be aware of how the billing model works. You will be charged for worker role instances for the full clock our in which the instance is deployed. Schedule the workload to start just after the clock hour has started. ·         Monitor the utilization of the resources you are provisioning, ensure that you are not paying for worker roles that are idle. ·         If you are deploying third party applications to worker roles, you may well run into licensing issues. Purchasing software licenses on a per-processor basis when using hundreds of processors for a short time period would not be cost effective. ·         Third party software may also require installation onto the worker roles, which can be accomplished using start-up tasks. Bear in mind that adding a startup task and possible re-boot will add to the time required for the worker role instance to start and activate. An alternative may be to use a prepared VM and use VM roles. ·         Consider using the Windows Azure Autoscaling Application Block (WASABi) to autoscale the worker roles in your application. When using a large number of worker roles, the utilization must be carefully monitored, if the scaling algorithms are not optimal it could get very expensive!

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  • Who writes the words? A rant with graphs.

    - by Roger Hart
    If you read my rant, you'll know that I'm getting a bit of a bee in my bonnet about user interface text. But rather than just yelling about the way the world should be (short version: no UI text would suck), it seemed prudent to actually gather some data. Rachel Potts has made an excellent first foray, by conducting a series of interviews across organizations about how they write user interface text. You can read Rachel's write up here. She presents the facts as she found them, and doesn't editorialise. The result is insightful, but impartial isn't really my style. So here's a rant with graphs. My method, and how it sucked I sent out a short survey. Survey design is one of my hobby-horses, and since some smartarse in the comments will mention it if I don't, I'll step up and confess: I did not design this one well. It was potentially ambiguous, implicitly excluded people, and since I only really advertised it on Twitter and a couple of mailing lists the sample will be chock full of biases. Regardless, these were the questions: What do you do? Select the option that best describes your role What kind of software does your organization make? (optional) In your organization, who writes the text on your software user interfaces? (for example: button names, static text, tooltips, and so on) Tick all that apply. In your organization who is responsible for user interface text? Who "owns" it? The most glaring issue (apart from question 3 being a bit broken) was that I didn't make it clear that I was asking about applications. Desktop, mobile, or web, I wouldn't have minded. In fact, it might have been interesting to categorize and compare. But a few respondents commented on the seeming lack of relevance, since they didn't really make software. There were some other issues too. It wasn't the best survey. So, you know, pinch of salt time with what follows. Despite this, there were 100 or so respondents. This post covers the overview, and you can look at the raw data in this spreadsheet What did people do? Boring graph number one: I wasn't expecting that. Given I pimped the survey on twitter and a couple of Tech Comms discussion lists, I was more banking on and even Content Strategy/Tech Comms split. What the "Others" specified: Three people chipped in with Technical Writer. Author, apparently, doesn't cut it. There's a "nobody reads the instructions" joke in there somewhere, I'm sure. There were a couple of hybrid roles, including Tech Comms and Testing, which sounds gruelling and thankless. There was also, an Intranet Manager, a Creative Director, a Consultant, a CTO, an Information Architect, and a Translator. That's a pretty healthy slice through the industry. Who wrote UI text? Boring graph number two: Annoyingly, I made this a "tick all that apply" question, so I can't make crude and inflammatory generalizations about percentages. This is more about who gets involved in user interface wording. So don't panic about the number of developers writing UI text. First off, it just means they're involved. Second, they might be good at it. What? It could happen. Ours are involved - they write a placeholder and flag it to me for changes. Sometimes I don't make any. It's also not surprising that there's so much UX in the mix. Some of that will be people taking care, and crafting an understandable interface. Some of it will be whatever text goes on the wireframe making it into production. I'm going to assume that's what happened at eBay, when their iPhone app purportedly shipped with the placeholder text "Some crappy content goes here". Ahem. Listing all 17 "other" responses would make this post lengthy indeed, but you can read them in the raw data spreadsheet. The award for the approach that sounds the most like a good idea yet carries the highest risk of ending badly goes to whoever offered up "External agencies using focus groups". If you're reading this, and that actually works, leave a comment. I'm fascinated. Who owned UI text Stop. Bar chart time: Wow. Let's cut to the chase, and by "chase", I mean those inflammatory generalizations I was talking about: In around 60% of cases the person responsible for user interface text probably lacks the relevant expertise. Even in the categories I count as being likely to have relevant skills (Marketing Copywriters, Content Strategists, Technical Authors, and User Experience Designers) there's a case for each role being unsuited, as you'll see in Rachel's blog post So it's not as simple as my headline. Does that mean that you personally, Mr Developer reading this, write bad button names? Of course not. I know nothing about you. It rather implies that as a category, the majority of people looking after UI text have neither communication nor user experience as their primary skill set, and as such will probably only be good at this by happy accident. I don't have a way of measuring those frequency of those accidents. What the Others specified: I don't know who owns it. I assume the project manager is responsible. "copywriters" when they wish to annoy me. the client's web maintenance person, often PR or MarComm That last one chills me to the bone. Still, at least nobody said "the work experience kid". You can see the rest in the spreadsheet. My overwhelming impression here is of user interface text as an unloved afterthought. There were fewer "nobody" responses than I expected, and a much broader split. But the relative predominance of developers owning and writing UI text suggests to me that organizations don't see it as something worth dedicating attention to. If true, that's bothersome. Because the words on the screen, particularly the names of things, are fundamental to the ability to understand an use software. It's also fascinating that Technical Authors and Content Strategists are neck and neck. For such a nascent discipline, Content Strategy appears to have made a mark on software development. Or my sample is skewed. But it feels like a bit of validation for my rant: Content Strategy is eating Tech Comms' lunch. That's not a bad thing. Well, not if the UI text is getting done well. And that's the caveat to this whole post. I couldn't care less who writes UI text, provided they consider the user and don't suck at it. I care that it may be falling by default to people poorly disposed to doing it right. And I care about that because so much user interface text sucks. The most interesting question Was one I forgot to ask. It's this: Does your organization have technical authors/writers? Like a lot of survey data, that doesn't tell you much on its own. But once we get a bit dimensional, it become more interesting. So taken with the other questions, this would have let me find out what I really want to know: What proportion of organizations have Tech Comms professionals but don't use them for UI text? Who writes UI text in their place? Why this happens? It's possible (feasible is another matter) that hundreds of companies have tech authors who don't work on user interfaces because they've empirically discovered that someone else, say the Marketing Copywriter, is better at it. And once we've all finished laughing, I'll point out that I've met plenty of tech authors who just aren't used to thinking about users at the point of need in the way UI text and embedded user assistance require. If you've got what I regard, perhaps unfairly, as the bad kind of tech author - the old-school kind with the thousand-page pdf and the grammar obsession - if you've got one of those then you probably are better off getting the UX folk or the copywriters to do your UI text. At the very least, they'll derive terminology from user research.

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  • What's the best way to do user profile/folder redirect/home directory archiving?

    - by tpederson
    My company is in dire need of a redesign around how we handle user account administration. I've been tasked with automating the process. The end goal is to have the whole works triggered by the business, and IT only looking in when there's an error reported. The interim phase is going to be semi-manual. That is a level 2 tech inputs the user's info and supervises the process. The current hurdle I'm facing is user profile archiving. Our security team requires us to archive the profile directories for any terminated user for 60 days in case the legal team requires access to their files. Our AD is as much a mess as everything else, so there are some users with home directories and some with profiles. Anyone who has a profile dir in AD also has a good deal of their profile redirected to our file servers over DFS. In order to complete the process manually you find the user in AD, disable them, find their home/profile dir, go there and take ownership, create an archive folder, move all their files over, then delete the old dir. Some users have many many gigs of nonsense and this can take quite some time. Even automated the process would not be a quick one. I'm thinking that I need to have a client side C# GUI for the quick stuff and some server side batch script or console app to offload this long running process. I have a batch script that works decently using takeown and robocopy, but I wonder if a C# console app would do a better job. So, my question at long last is, what do you think is the best way to handle this? I can't imagine this is a unique problem, how do other admins get this done? The last place I worked was easily 10x larger than the place I'm in now. If we would have been doing this manual crap there, they'd have needed a team of at least 30 full time workers to keep up. I have decent skills in C#.net and batch scripting, but am a quick study and I have used most every language once or twice. Thank you for reading this and I look forward to seeing what imaginative solutions you all can come up with.

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  • Change the User Interface Language in Ubuntu

    - by Matthew Guay
    Would you like to use your Ubuntu computer in another language?  Here’s how you can easily change your interface language in Ubuntu. Ubuntu’s default install only includes a couple languages, but it makes it easy to find and add a new interface language to your computer.  To get started, open the System menu, select Administration, and then click Language Support. Ubuntu may ask if you want to update or add components to your current default language when you first open the dialog.  Click Install to go ahead and install the additional components, or you can click Remind Me Later to wait as these will be installed automatically when you add a new language. Now we’re ready to find and add an interface language to Ubuntu.  Click Install / Remove Languages to add the language you want. Find the language you want in the list, and click the check box to install it.  Ubuntu will show you all the components it will install for the language; this often includes spellchecking files for OpenOffice as well.  Once you’ve made your selection, click Apply Changes to install your new language.  Make sure you’re connected to the internet, as Ubuntu will have to download the additional components you’ve selected. Enter your system password when prompted, and then Ubuntu will download the needed languages files and install them.   Back in the main Language & Text dialog, we’re now ready to set our new language as default.  Find your new language in the list, and then click and drag it to the top of the list. Notice that Thai is the first language listed, and English is the second.  This will make Thai the default language for menus and windows in this account.  The tooltip reminds us that this setting does not effect system settings like currency or date formats. To change these, select the Text Tab and pick your new language from the drop-down menu.  You can preview the changes in the bottom Example box. The changes we just made will only affect this user account; the login screen and startup will not be affected.  If you wish to change the language in the startup and login screens also, click Apply System-Wide in both dialogs.  Other user accounts will still retain their original language settings; if you wish to change them, you must do it from those accounts. Once you have your new language settings all set, you’ll need to log out of your account and log back in to see your new interface language.  When you re-login, Ubuntu may ask you if you want to update your user folders’ names to your new language.  For example, here Ubuntu is asking if we want to change our folders to their Thai equivalents.  If you wish to do so, click Update or its equivalents in your language. Now your interface will be almost completely translated into your new language.  As you can see here, applications with generic names are translated to Thai but ones with specific names like Shutter keep their original name. Even the help dialogs are translated, which makes it easy for users around to world to get started with Ubuntu.  Once again, you may notice some things that are still in English, but almost everything is translated. Adding a new interface language doesn’t add the new language to your keyboard, so you’ll still need to set that up.  Check out our article on adding languages to your keyboard to get this setup. If you wish to revert to your original language or switch to another new language, simply repeat the above steps, this time dragging your original or new language to the top instead of the one you chose previously. Conclusion Ubuntu has a large number of supported interface languages to make it user-friendly to people around the globe.  And since you can set the language for each user account, it’s easy for multi-lingual individuals to share the same computer. Or, if you’re using Windows, check out our article on how you can Change the User Interface Language in Vista or Windows 7, too! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Restart the Ubuntu Gnome User Interface QuicklyChange the User Interface Language in Vista or Windows 7Create a Samba User on UbuntuInstall Samba Server on UbuntuSee Which Groups Your Linux User Belongs To 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 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro FetchMp3 Can Download Videos & Convert Them to Mp3 Use Flixtime To Create Video Slideshows Creating a Password Reset Disk in Windows Bypass Waiting Time On Customer Service Calls With Lucyphone MELTUP – "The Beginning Of US Currency Crisis And Hyperinflation" Enable or Disable the Task Manager Using TaskMgrED

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  • User Lockout & WLST

    - by Bala Kothandaraman
    WebLogic server provides an option to lockout users to protect accounts password guessing attack. It is implemented with a realm-wide Lockout Manager. This feature can be used with custom authentication provider also. But if you implement your own authentication provider and wish to implement your own lockout manager that is possible too. If your domain is configured to use the user lockout manager the following WLST script will help you to: - check whether a user is locked using a WLST script - find out the number of locked users in the realm #Define constants url='t3://localhost:7001' username='weblogic' password='weblogic' checkuser='test-deployer' #Connect connect(username,password,url) #Get Lockout Manager Runtime serverRuntime() dr = cmo.getServerSecurityRuntime().getDefaultRealmRuntime() ulmr = dr.getUserLockoutManagerRuntime() print '-------------------------------------------' #Check whether a user is locked if (ulmr.isLockedOut(checkuser) == 0): islocked = 'NOT locked' else: islocked = 'locked' print 'User ' + checkuser + ' is ' + islocked #Print number of locked users print 'No. of locked user - ', Integer(ulmr.getUserLockoutTotalCount()) print '-------------------------------------------' print '' #Disconnect & Exit disconnect() exit()

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  • Google I/O 2010 - Creating positive user experiences

    Google I/O 2010 - Creating positive user experiences Google I/O 2010 - Beyond design: Creating positive user experiences Tech Talks John Zeratsky, Matt Shobe Good user experience isn't just about good design. Learn how to create a positive user experience by being fast, open, engaged, surprising, polite, and, well... being yourself. Chock full of examples from the web and beyond, this talk is a practical introduction for developers who are passionate about user experience but may not have a background in design. For all I/O 2010 sessions, please go to code.google.com From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 185 6 ratings Time: 52:11 More in Science & Technology

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  • HTG Explains: What’s a Browser User Agent?

    - by Chris Hoffman
    Your browser sends its user agent to every website you connect to. We’ve written about changing your browser’s user agent before – but what exactly is a user agent, anyway? A user agent is a “string” – that is, a line of text – identifying the browser and operating system to the web server. This sounds simple, but user agents have become a mess over time. How To Customize Your Wallpaper with Google Image Searches, RSS Feeds, and More 47 Keyboard Shortcuts That Work in All Web Browsers How To Hide Passwords in an Encrypted Drive Even the FBI Can’t Get Into

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  • Pgagent startup script (under the postgres user)

    - by Dominique Guardiola
    Hello, I'm trying to make a clean startup script for pgagent I found one here but I don't see how I can change this : if start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile /var/run/pgagent.pid \ --exec /usr/bin/pgagent "hostaddr=127.0.0.1 dbname=postgres user=postgres \ password=XXXXXXX";then to launch something like this : su - postgres -c /usr/bin/pgagent "hostaddr=127.0.0.1 dbname=postgres user=postgres" in order to avoid to hard-code the PG password in the script. This is possible using the .pgpass file feature. It works when I'm logged under the postgres user. So my only problem left is how to launch this command under the postgres user tried to add --user=postgres in the call, like mentioned here but it does not work.

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  • Adding user to chroot environment

    - by Neo
    I've created a chroot system in my Ubuntu using schroot and debrootstrap, based on minimal ubuntu. However whenever I can't seem to add a new user into this chroot environment. Here is what happens. I enter schroot as root and add a new user 'Bob'.(Tried both adduser and useradd commands) The username 'Bob' lists up in /etc/passwd file and I can 'su' into the user 'Bob'. So far so good. When I log out of schroot, and re-enter schroot, the user 'Bob' has vanished!! There is no mention of Bob in /etc/passwd either. How do I make the new user permanent?

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  • Best practices for upgrading user data when updating versions of software

    - by Javy
    In my code I check the current version of the software on launch and compare it to the version stored in the user's data file(s). If the version is newer, then I call different methods to update the old data to the newer data version, if necessary. I usually have to make a new method to convert the data with each update that changes user data in some way, and cannot remove the old ones in case there was someone who missed an update. So the app must be able to go through each method call and update their data until they get their data current. With larger data sets, this could be a problem. In addition, I recently had a brief discussion with another StackOverflow user this and he indicated he always appended a date stamp to the filename to manage data versions, although his reasoning as to why this was better than storing the version data in the file itself was unclear. Since I've rarely seen management of user data versions in books I've read, I'm curious what are the best practices for naming user data files and procedures for updating older data to newer versions.

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  • User script at logout

    - by GUI Junkie
    The problem: I'm sharing a directory with my wife. I've placed us both in a 'shared' group and the directory belongs to the 'shared' group as well. Whenever one of us creates a file, this file belongs to user:user, instead of user:shared... The solution: I can do sudo chown, but my wife can't. So, I want to run a script when I logout of the session. If I understand correctly, the startup scripts go in /etc/init.d/ and the runlevel scripts go /etc/rc0.d/ where 0 is the runlevel (0-6). Do the runlevel scripts execute only on exit/logout? Do these depend on the user, that is, I'd like to run it only for my user (not so important in this case, mind)? Should I place the script somewhere else? Also, I imagine that the script will be run by root, so there's no need for sudo within the script, is that correct?

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  • Samba user does not have folder read permission

    - by user289455
    I have set up a special user for read only samba shares. I set him up in Samba and as a system user. I shared a couple of folders but that user cannot access them. I know samba is working because I also shared them with the main user of the system which is an admin account and it works fine. How can I allow this user to have read permissions on all the directories I want to share without changing anything for any other users of the system? For example, I don't want to give him ownership of any of the files/directories. Just ongoing recursive read access. ongoing recursive is important. If someone adds a file or directory, I still want him to automatically be able to read it.

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  • After Upgrade from 13.04 to 13.10 missing user in login screen

    - by Mark
    I have upgraded to 13.10 from 13.04 now after booting (even after updates and rebooting) my user id is not listed. It has a uid higher than the minimum in lightdm.conf. I have the user light display manager , guest , and remote login options in the login screen but not my ususal user id that I have been using from ubuntu 9 something. It is a normal user and an administrator so that I could authorize drivers, updates, etc... I do not have any custom display manager setup. It has been standard unity since unity was available. I can login to my account by logging in as guest opening a termial and using su - user Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks

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  • How to eliminate the domain suffix off my user profile folder when migrating to a new domain?

    - by Jerry Dodge
    We have just upgraded a decade old SBS 2003 server to a brand new SBS 2011 machine. During the process, over 30 other client/server machines on that domain also needed to be dis-joined and re-joined from the old domain to the new one. These domains have different names and is not migrated in any way. It's built from scratch. Since each client machine had very unique user profiles under this domain, we needed to make sure these were all backed up and migrated over to the new domain. For the most part, profiles were migrated with no hassle, just by renaming the user profile folder names. However, in one case, when I log in to my domain account, it creates a profile folder with a suffix of the new domain name. I have replaced all the files in the profile's root which begin with "ntuser" with the files of the new profile. The only problem is half the applications can't find their data, because the folder name is different. How can I change this folder name and maintain this profile on the new domain? I have deleted every user account (except admin), deleted their profiles/folders, removed them from the registry, and made sure every trace of this account was gone. The computer was basically a dummy with only an admin account. Then, I log into the machine under my new domain user account (same username as the old domain). It creates a profile folder with my username plus a suffix extension of the new domain name. The client machine is Windows 7 Ultimate, the old server was SBS 2003, and the new server is SBS 2011.

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  • Profile System: User share the same id

    - by Malcolm Frexner
    I have a strange effect on my site when it is under heavy load. I randomly get the properties of other users settings. I have my own implementation of the profile system so I guess I can not blame the profile system itself. I just need a point to start debugging from. I guess there is a cookie-value that maps to an Profile entry somewhere. Is there any chance to see how this mapping works? Here is my profile provider: using System; using System.Text; using System.Configuration; using System.Web; using System.Web.Profile; using System.Collections; using System.Collections.Specialized; using B2CShop.Model; using log4net; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Diagnostics; using B2CShop.DAL; using B2CShop.Model.RepositoryInterfaces; [assembly: log4net.Config.XmlConfigurator()] namespace B2CShop.Profile { public class B2CShopProfileProvider : ProfileProvider { private static readonly ILog _log = LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(B2CShopProfileProvider)); // Get an instance of the Profile DAL using the ProfileDALFactory private static readonly B2CShop.DAL.UserRepository dal = new B2CShop.DAL.UserRepository(); // Private members private const string ERR_INVALID_PARAMETER = "Invalid Profile parameter:"; private const string PROFILE_USER = "User"; private static string applicationName = B2CShop.Model.Configuration.ApplicationConfiguration.MembershipApplicationName; /// <summary> /// The name of the application using the custom profile provider. /// </summary> public override string ApplicationName { get { return applicationName; } set { applicationName = value; } } /// <summary> /// Initializes the provider. /// </summary> /// <param name="name">The friendly name of the provider.</param> /// <param name="config">A collection of the name/value pairs representing the provider-specific attributes specified in the configuration for this provider.</param> public override void Initialize(string name, NameValueCollection config) { if (config == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("config"); if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(config["description"])) { config.Remove("description"); config.Add("description", "B2C Shop Custom Provider"); } if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(name)) name = "b2c_shop"; if (config["applicationName"] != null && !string.IsNullOrEmpty(config["applicationName"].Trim())) applicationName = config["applicationName"]; base.Initialize(name, config); } /// <summary> /// Returns the collection of settings property values for the specified application instance and settings property group. /// </summary> /// <param name="context">A System.Configuration.SettingsContext describing the current application use.</param> /// <param name="collection">A System.Configuration.SettingsPropertyCollection containing the settings property group whose values are to be retrieved.</param> /// <returns>A System.Configuration.SettingsPropertyValueCollection containing the values for the specified settings property group.</returns> public override SettingsPropertyValueCollection GetPropertyValues(SettingsContext context, SettingsPropertyCollection collection) { string username = (string)context["UserName"]; bool isAuthenticated = (bool)context["IsAuthenticated"]; //if (!isAuthenticated) return null; int uniqueID = dal.GetUniqueID(username, isAuthenticated, false, ApplicationName); SettingsPropertyValueCollection svc = new SettingsPropertyValueCollection(); foreach (SettingsProperty prop in collection) { SettingsPropertyValue pv = new SettingsPropertyValue(prop); switch (pv.Property.Name) { case PROFILE_USER: if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(username)) { pv.PropertyValue = GetUser(uniqueID); } break; default: throw new ApplicationException(ERR_INVALID_PARAMETER + " name."); } svc.Add(pv); } return svc; } /// <summary> /// Sets the values of the specified group of property settings. /// </summary> /// <param name="context">A System.Configuration.SettingsContext describing the current application usage.</param> /// <param name="collection">A System.Configuration.SettingsPropertyValueCollection representing the group of property settings to set.</param> public override void SetPropertyValues(SettingsContext context, SettingsPropertyValueCollection collection) { string username = (string)context["UserName"]; CheckUserName(username); bool isAuthenticated = (bool)context["IsAuthenticated"]; int uniqueID = dal.GetUniqueID(username, isAuthenticated, false, ApplicationName); if (uniqueID == 0) { uniqueID = dal.CreateProfileForUser(username, isAuthenticated, ApplicationName); } foreach (SettingsPropertyValue pv in collection) { if (pv.PropertyValue != null) { switch (pv.Property.Name) { case PROFILE_USER: SetUser(uniqueID, (UserInfo)pv.PropertyValue); break; default: throw new ApplicationException(ERR_INVALID_PARAMETER + " name."); } } } UpdateActivityDates(username, false); } // Profile gettters // Retrieve UserInfo private static UserInfo GetUser(int userID) { return dal.GetUser(userID); } // Update account info private static void SetUser(int uniqueID, UserInfo user) { user.UserID = uniqueID; dal.SetUser(user); } // UpdateActivityDates // Updates the LastActivityDate and LastUpdatedDate values // when profile properties are accessed by the // GetPropertyValues and SetPropertyValues methods. // Passing true as the activityOnly parameter will update // only the LastActivityDate. private static void UpdateActivityDates(string username, bool activityOnly) { dal.UpdateActivityDates(username, activityOnly, applicationName); } /// <summary> /// Deletes profile properties and information for the supplied list of profiles. /// </summary> /// <param name="profiles">A System.Web.Profile.ProfileInfoCollection of information about profiles that are to be deleted.</param> /// <returns>The number of profiles deleted from the data source.</returns> public override int DeleteProfiles(ProfileInfoCollection profiles) { int deleteCount = 0; foreach (ProfileInfo p in profiles) if (DeleteProfile(p.UserName)) deleteCount++; return deleteCount; } /// <summary> /// Deletes profile properties and information for profiles that match the supplied list of user names. /// </summary> /// <param name="usernames">A string array of user names for profiles to be deleted.</param> /// <returns>The number of profiles deleted from the data source.</returns> public override int DeleteProfiles(string[] usernames) { int deleteCount = 0; foreach (string user in usernames) if (DeleteProfile(user)) deleteCount++; return deleteCount; } // DeleteProfile // Deletes profile data from the database for the specified user name. private static bool DeleteProfile(string username) { CheckUserName(username); return dal.DeleteAnonymousProfile(username, applicationName); } // Verifies user name for sise and comma private static void CheckUserName(string userName) { if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(userName) || userName.Length > 256 || userName.IndexOf(",") > 0) throw new ApplicationException(ERR_INVALID_PARAMETER + " user name."); } /// <summary> /// Deletes all user-profile data for profiles in which the last activity date occurred before the specified date. /// </summary> /// <param name="authenticationOption">One of the System.Web.Profile.ProfileAuthenticationOption values, specifying whether anonymous, authenticated, or both types of profiles are deleted.</param> /// <param name="userInactiveSinceDate">A System.DateTime that identifies which user profiles are considered inactive. If the System.Web.Profile.ProfileInfo.LastActivityDate value of a user profile occurs on or before this date and time, the profile is considered inactive.</param> /// <returns>The number of profiles deleted from the data source.</returns> public override int DeleteInactiveProfiles(ProfileAuthenticationOption authenticationOption, DateTime userInactiveSinceDate) { string[] userArray = new string[0]; dal.GetInactiveProfiles((int)authenticationOption, userInactiveSinceDate, ApplicationName).CopyTo(userArray, 0); return DeleteProfiles(userArray); } /// <summary> /// Retrieves profile information for profiles in which the user name matches the specified user names. /// </summary> /// <param name="authenticationOption">One of the System.Web.Profile.ProfileAuthenticationOption values, specifying whether anonymous, authenticated, or both types of profiles are returned.</param> /// <param name="usernameToMatch">The user name to search for.</param> /// <param name="pageIndex">The index of the page of results to return.</param> /// <param name="pageSize">The size of the page of results to return.</param> /// <param name="totalRecords">When this method returns, contains the total number of profiles.</param> /// <returns>A System.Web.Profile.ProfileInfoCollection containing user-profile information // for profiles where the user name matches the supplied usernameToMatch parameter.</returns> public override ProfileInfoCollection FindProfilesByUserName(ProfileAuthenticationOption authenticationOption, string usernameToMatch, int pageIndex, int pageSize, out int totalRecords) { CheckParameters(pageIndex, pageSize); return GetProfileInfo(authenticationOption, usernameToMatch, null, pageIndex, pageSize, out totalRecords); } /// <summary> /// Retrieves profile information for profiles in which the last activity date occurred on or before the specified date and the user name matches the specified user name. /// </summary> /// <param name="authenticationOption">One of the System.Web.Profile.ProfileAuthenticationOption values, specifying whether anonymous, authenticated, or both types of profiles are returned.</param> /// <param name="usernameToMatch">The user name to search for.</param> /// <param name="userInactiveSinceDate">A System.DateTime that identifies which user profiles are considered inactive. If the System.Web.Profile.ProfileInfo.LastActivityDate value of a user profile occurs on or before this date and time, the profile is considered inactive.</param> /// <param name="pageIndex">The index of the page of results to return.</param> /// <param name="pageSize">The size of the page of results to return.</param> /// <param name="totalRecords">When this method returns, contains the total number of profiles.</param> /// <returns>A System.Web.Profile.ProfileInfoCollection containing user profile information for inactive profiles where the user name matches the supplied usernameToMatch parameter.</returns> public override ProfileInfoCollection FindInactiveProfilesByUserName(ProfileAuthenticationOption authenticationOption, string usernameToMatch, DateTime userInactiveSinceDate, int pageIndex, int pageSize, out int totalRecords) { CheckParameters(pageIndex, pageSize); return GetProfileInfo(authenticationOption, usernameToMatch, userInactiveSinceDate, pageIndex, pageSize, out totalRecords); } /// <summary> /// Retrieves user profile data for all profiles in the data source. /// </summary> /// <param name="authenticationOption">One of the System.Web.Profile.ProfileAuthenticationOption values, specifying whether anonymous, authenticated, or both types of profiles are returned.</param> /// <param name="pageIndex">The index of the page of results to return.</param> /// <param name="pageSize">The size of the page of results to return.</param> /// <param name="totalRecords">When this method returns, contains the total number of profiles.</param> /// <returns>A System.Web.Profile.ProfileInfoCollection containing user-profile information for all profiles in the data source.</returns> public override ProfileInfoCollection GetAllProfiles(ProfileAuthenticationOption authenticationOption, int pageIndex, int pageSize, out int totalRecords) { CheckParameters(pageIndex, pageSize); return GetProfileInfo(authenticationOption, null, null, pageIndex, pageSize, out totalRecords); } /// <summary> /// Retrieves user-profile data from the data source for profiles in which the last activity date occurred on or before the specified date. /// </summary> /// <param name="authenticationOption">One of the System.Web.Profile.ProfileAuthenticationOption values, specifying whether anonymous, authenticated, or both types of profiles are returned.</param> /// <param name="userInactiveSinceDate">A System.DateTime that identifies which user profiles are considered inactive. If the System.Web.Profile.ProfileInfo.LastActivityDate of a user profile occurs on or before this date and time, the profile is considered inactive.</param> /// <param name="pageIndex">The index of the page of results to return.</param> /// <param name="pageSize">The size of the page of results to return.</param> /// <param name="totalRecords">When this method returns, contains the total number of profiles.</param> /// <returns>A System.Web.Profile.ProfileInfoCollection containing user-profile information about the inactive profiles.</returns> public override ProfileInfoCollection GetAllInactiveProfiles(ProfileAuthenticationOption authenticationOption, DateTime userInactiveSinceDate, int pageIndex, int pageSize, out int totalRecords) { CheckParameters(pageIndex, pageSize); return GetProfileInfo(authenticationOption, null, userInactiveSinceDate, pageIndex, pageSize, out totalRecords); } /// <summary> /// Returns the number of profiles in which the last activity date occurred on or before the specified date. /// </summary> /// <param name="authenticationOption">One of the System.Web.Profile.ProfileAuthenticationOption values, specifying whether anonymous, authenticated, or both types of profiles are returned.</param> /// <param name="userInactiveSinceDate">A System.DateTime that identifies which user profiles are considered inactive. If the System.Web.Profile.ProfileInfo.LastActivityDate of a user profile occurs on or before this date and time, the profile is considered inactive.</param> /// <returns>The number of profiles in which the last activity date occurred on or before the specified date.</returns> public override int GetNumberOfInactiveProfiles(ProfileAuthenticationOption authenticationOption, DateTime userInactiveSinceDate) { int inactiveProfiles = 0; ProfileInfoCollection profiles = GetProfileInfo(authenticationOption, null, userInactiveSinceDate, 0, 0, out inactiveProfiles); return inactiveProfiles; } //Verifies input parameters for page size and page index. private static void CheckParameters(int pageIndex, int pageSize) { if (pageIndex < 1 || pageSize < 1) throw new ApplicationException(ERR_INVALID_PARAMETER + " page index."); } //GetProfileInfo //Retrieves a count of profiles and creates a //ProfileInfoCollection from the profile data in the //database. Called by GetAllProfiles, GetAllInactiveProfiles, //FindProfilesByUserName, FindInactiveProfilesByUserName, //and GetNumberOfInactiveProfiles. //Specifying a pageIndex of 0 retrieves a count of the results only. private static ProfileInfoCollection GetProfileInfo(ProfileAuthenticationOption authenticationOption, string usernameToMatch, object userInactiveSinceDate, int pageIndex, int pageSize, out int totalRecords) { ProfileInfoCollection profiles = new ProfileInfoCollection(); totalRecords = 0; // Count profiles only. if (pageSize == 0) return profiles; int counter = 0; int startIndex = pageSize * (pageIndex - 1); int endIndex = startIndex + pageSize - 1; DateTime dt = new DateTime(1900, 1, 1); if (userInactiveSinceDate != null) dt = (DateTime)userInactiveSinceDate; /* foreach(CustomProfileInfo profile in dal.GetProfileInfo((int)authenticationOption, usernameToMatch, dt, applicationName, out totalRecords)) { if(counter >= startIndex) { ProfileInfo p = new ProfileInfo(profile.UserName, profile.IsAnonymous, profile.LastActivityDate, profile.LastUpdatedDate, 0); profiles.Add(p); } if(counter >= endIndex) { break; } counter++; } */ return profiles; } } } This is how I use it in the controller: public ActionResult AddTyreToCart(CartViewModel model) { string profile = Request.IsAuthenticated ? Request.AnonymousID : User.Identity.Name; } I would like to debug: How can 2 users who provide different cookies get the same profileid? EDIT Here is the code for getuniqueid public int GetUniqueID(string userName, bool isAuthenticated, bool ignoreAuthenticationType, string appName) { SqlParameter[] parms = { new SqlParameter("@Username", SqlDbType.VarChar, 256), new SqlParameter("@ApplicationName", SqlDbType.VarChar, 256)}; parms[0].Value = userName; parms[1].Value = appName; if (!ignoreAuthenticationType) { Array.Resize(ref parms, parms.Length + 1); parms[2] = new SqlParameter("@IsAnonymous", SqlDbType.Bit) { Value = !isAuthenticated }; } int userID; object retVal = null; retVal = SqlHelper.ExecuteScalar(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["SQLOrderB2CConnString"].ConnectionString, CommandType.StoredProcedure, "getProfileUniqueID", parms); if (retVal == null) userID = CreateProfileForUser(userName, isAuthenticated, appName); else userID = Convert.ToInt32(retVal); return userID; } And this is the SP: CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[getProfileUniqueID] @Username VarChar( 256), @ApplicationName VarChar( 256), @IsAnonymous bit = null AS BEGIN SET NOCOUNT ON; /* [getProfileUniqueID] created 08.07.2009 mf Retrive unique id for current user */ SELECT UniqueID FROM dbo.Profiles WHERE Username = @Username AND ApplicationName = @ApplicationName AND IsAnonymous = @IsAnonymous or @IsAnonymous = null END

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  • Any best practices with feedback colours?

    - by alex
    I have a few that I think are correct. These are background colours for messages. ERROR: red; INFO: blue; SUCCESS: green; NOT IMPORTANT INFO: yellow Have I got the blue and yellow around the wrong way? Any hex values that are a de facto standard for these? I am curious considering web development, but I think the answers will be agnostic. Here is an interesting thought (I'm sure I've read about it in an article). What colours would the errors be on Target's website, considering all their branding is red?

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  • What are great _specific_ usability guidelines?

    - by Jilles
    Usability is extremely important, and yet there are so many products that violate a lot of rules. There are several questions on StackOverflow that are about usability (see: link1, link2, link3), however what I feel is missing still is a comprehensive list of usability "tactics": concrete examples of what (not) to do for a web application. Please don't add references to books. Please list one example per answer so that we can use the voting to actually prioritize the list.

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  • Stopping at my Front-End abilities... good career move?

    - by R. H.
    Just curious about what other front-end and back-end people think, career wise. Here's the details: I'm a 30 yr old mom who is pretty good at front end development - that's my day job at an interactive agency. Don't have the money or time to go back to school or lots of high priced training sessions. I started out as a graphic designer ten years ago or so, then moved into database-backed web stuff, like CMS. I'm great at transforming PSD to a working html and css structure, especially for Wordpress themes. I enjoy this part of the process, probably because it's easy and fun, and as I learn a little more about jQuery and PHP, I can make it even better if I want or need. I'm not sure where I should stop though, as far as my career goes. I don't know that I'll ever get to the point that I'm a great PHP developer or jQuery master. Is it lame to just be a front-end designer/developer? Can that be a successful career all its own? Or, should I obligate myself to learning the harder programming, if I'm capable? Any advice or points any of you may have is appreciated!

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  • Joomla 2.5 - Modify registration form and logic

    - by ice13ill
    Hello I'm new to Joomla and I want to change the way an account is created (in Joomla 2.5): Change the registation form (remove one or two fields) Change the registration logic: I want to add more stuff in the sent email (and a pdf attachment) and also i want to call some other functions (or make extra requests), analyse the result and then return the response to the client. What ways are there?

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  • Has anyone ever worked with a UX designer who also did the graphic design, is it a good combination?

    - by Ami
    I need to design a new framework for web based apps, including both UX guidelines and the art/graphic design guidelines such as what menus will look like, headers, colors, fonts etc. The UX designers I met, were unable to provide the artistic side, and the graphic designers didn't have the UX skills. Should I continue to look for one person with both skills, or is it better broken to two separate tasks?

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