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  • Oracle BPM: Adding an attachment during the Human Task Initialization

    - by kyap
    Recently I had the requirement from a customer to instantiate a Human Task, which can accept a payload containing a binary attribute (base64) representing an actual document. According to the same requirement, this attribute should be shown as a hyperlink in the Worklist UI to the assignee(s), from which the assignees can download the document on the local machine for review. Multiple options have been leverage, but most required heavy customization.  In order to leverage as much as possible Oracle BPM out-of-the box functionalities, I decided to add this document as a readonly attachment. We can easily achieve this operation within Worklist Application, but it is a bit more challenging when we want to attach the document during the Human Task initialization.  After some investigations (on BPM 11g PS4FP and PS5), here's the way to go: 1. Create an asynchronous BPM process, and use this xsd to create 2 Business Objects FullPayload and PartialPayload : 2. Create 2 process variables 'vFullPayload' and 'vPartialPayload' using this Business Objects created above 3. Implement the Start Event with the initial Data Association, with an input argument using 'FullPayload' Business Object type 4. Drag in an User Task into the process. Implement the User Task as usual by using 'vPartialPayload' type as the input type and assign the task to your favorite tester (mine is jcooper) 5. Here's the main course - Start the Data Association and map the payload into 'execData' as follow: FROM TO  vFullPayload.attachment.mimetype  execData.attachment[1].mimeType  vFullPayload.attachment.filename  execData.attachment[1].name  bpmn:getDataObject('vFullPayload')/ns:attachment/ns:content  execData.attachment[1].content  'BPM'  execData.attachment[1].attachmentScope false()  execData.attachment[1].doesBelongToParent 'weblogic'  execData.attachment[1].updateBy  xp20:current-dateTime()  execData.attachment[1].updateDate (Note: Check the <Humantask>WorkflowTask.xsd file in your project xsd folder to discover the different options for attachmentScope & storageType) 6. Your process is completed. Just build a standard ADF UI and deploy the process/UI onto your BPM Server for the testing. Here's an example, with a base64 encoded pdf file: application-pdf.txt 7. Finally, go to the BPM Worklist application to check the result ! Please note that Oracle BPM, by default, limits the attachment document size to 2Mb. If you are planning to have bigger attachments in your process, it is recommended to store your documents in a Content Management server (such as Oracle UCM) and pass the reference instead. It is possible to configure Oracle BPM to store attachment directly into Oracle UCM too, and I believe we can use the storageType, ucmMetadataItem attributes for this purpose.... I will confirm once I have access onto an Oracle UCM for the testing :)

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  • Ajaxy

    - by Chris Skardon
    Today is the big day, the day I attempt to use Ajax in the app… I’ve never done this (well, tell a lie, I’ve done it in a ‘tutorial’ site, but that was a while ago now), so it’s going to be interesting.. OK, basics first, let’s start with the @Ajax.ActionLink Right, first stab: @Ajax.ActionLink("Click to get latest", "LatestEntry", new AjaxOptions { UpdateTargetId = "ajaxEntrant", InsertionMode = InsertionMode.Replace, HttpMethod = "GET" }) As far as I’m aware, I’m asking to get the ‘LatestEntry’ from the current controller, and in doing so, I will replace the #ajaxEntrant DOM bit with the result. So. I guess I’d better get the result working… To the controller! public PartialResult LatestEntry() { var entrant =_db.Entrants.OrderByDescending(e => e.Id).Single(); return PartialView("_Entrant", entrant); } Pretty simple, just returns the last entry in a PartialView… but! I have yet to make my partial view, so onto that! @model Webby.Entrant <div class="entrant"> <h4>@Model.Name</h4> </div> Again, super simple, (I’m really just testing at this point)… All the code is now there (as far as I know), so F5 and in… And once again, in the traditionally disappointing way of the norm, it doesn’t work, sure… it opens the right view, but it doesn’t replace the #ajaxEntry DOM element, rather it replaces the whole page… The source code (again, as far as I know) looks ok: <a data-ajax="true" data-ajax-method="GET" data-ajax-mode="replace" data-ajax-update="#ajaxEntrants" href="/Entrants/LatestEntrant">Click to get latest</a> Changing the InsertionMode to any of the other modes has the same effect.. It’s not the DOM name either, changing that has the same effect.. i.e. none. It’s not the partial view either, just making that a <p> has (again) no effect… Ahhhhh --- what a schoolboy error… I had neglected (ahem) to actually put the script bit into the calling page (another save from stackoverflow): <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.unobtrusive-ajax.js")" type="text/javascript"></script> I’ve now stuck that into the _Layout.cshtml view temporarily to aid the development process… :) Onwards and upwards! Chris

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  • Car-like Physics - Basic Maths to Simulate Steering

    - by Reanimation
    As my program stands I have a cube which I can control using keyboard input. I can make it move left, right, up, down, back, fourth along the axis only. I can also rotate the cube either left or right; all the translations and rotations are implemented using glm. if (keys[VK_LEFT]) //move cube along xAxis negative { globalPos.x -= moveCube; keys[VK_RIGHT] = false; } if (keys[VK_RIGHT]) //move cube along xAxis positive { globalPos.x += moveCube; keys[VK_LEFT] = false; } if (keys[VK_UP]) //move cube along yAxis positive { globalPos.y += moveCube; keys[VK_DOWN] = false; } if (keys[VK_DOWN]) //move cube along yAxis negative { globalPos.y -= moveCube; keys[VK_UP] = false; } if (FORWARD) //W - move cube along zAxis positive { globalPos.z += moveCube; BACKWARD = false; } if (BACKWARD) //S- move cube along zAxis negative { globalPos.z -= moveCube; FORWARD = false; } if (ROT_LEFT) //rotate cube left { rotX +=0.01f; ROT_LEFT = false; } if (ROT_RIGHT) //rotate cube right { rotX -=0.01f; ROT_RIGHT = false; } I render the cube using this function which handles the shader and position on screen: void renderMovingCube(){ glUseProgram(myShader.handle()); GLuint matrixLoc4MovingCube = glGetUniformLocation(myShader.handle(), "ProjectionMatrix"); glUniformMatrix4fv(matrixLoc4MovingCube, 1, GL_FALSE, &ProjectionMatrix[0][0]); glm::mat4 viewMatrixMovingCube; viewMatrixMovingCube = glm::lookAt(camOrigin,camLookingAt,camNormalXYZ); ModelViewMatrix = glm::translate(viewMatrixMovingCube,globalPos); ModelViewMatrix = glm::rotate(ModelViewMatrix,rotX, glm::vec3(0,1,0)); //manually rotate glUniformMatrix4fv(glGetUniformLocation(myShader.handle(), "ModelViewMatrix"), 1, GL_FALSE, &ModelViewMatrix[0][0]); movingCube.render(); glUseProgram(0); } The glm::lookAt function always points to the screens centre (0,0,0). The globalPos is a glm::vec3 globalPos(0,0,0); so when the program executes, renders the cube in the centre of the screens viewing matrix; the keyboard inputs above adjust the globalPos of the moving cube. The glm::rotate is the function used to rotate manually. My question is, how can I make the cube go forwards depending on what direction the cube is facing.... ie, once I've rotated the cube a few degrees using glm, the forwards direction, relative to the cube, is no longer on the z-Axis... how can I store the forwards direction and then use that to navigate forwards no matter what way it is facing? (either using vectors that can be applied to my code or some handy maths). Thanks.

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  • Drawing multiple Textures as tilemap

    - by DocJones
    I am trying to draw a 2d game map and the objects on the map in a single pass. Here is my OpenGL initialization code // Turn off unnecessary operations glDisable(GL_DEPTH_TEST); glDisable(GL_LIGHTING); glDisable(GL_CULL_FACE); glDisable(GL_STENCIL_TEST); glDisable(GL_DITHER); glEnable(GL_BLEND); glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_2D); // activate pointer to vertex & texture array glEnableClientState(GL_VERTEX_ARRAY); glEnableClientState(GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY); My drawing code is being called by a NSTimer every 1/60 s. Here is the drawing code of my world object: - (void) draw:(NSRect)rect withTimedDelta:(double)d { GLint *t; glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE0); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, [_textureManager textureByName:@"blocks"]); glTexEnvi(GL_TEXTURE_ENV, GL_TEXTURE_ENV_MODE, GL_REPLACE); for (int x=0; x<[_map getWidth] ; x++) { for (int y=0; y<[_map getHeight] ; y++) { GLint v[] = { 16*x ,16*y, 16*x+16,16*y, 16*x+16,16*y+16, 16*x ,16*y+16 }; t=[_textureManager getBlockWithNumber:[_map getBlockAtX:x andY:y]]; glVertexPointer(2, GL_INT, 0, v); glTexCoordPointer(2, GL_INT, 0, t); glDrawArrays(GL_QUADS, 0, 4); } } } (_textureManager is a Singelton only loading a texture once!) The object drawing codes is identical (except the nested loops) in terms of OpenGL calls: - (void) drawWithTimedDelta:(double)d { GLint *t; GLint v[] = { 16*xpos ,16*ypos, 16*xpos+16,16*ypos, 16*xpos+16,16*ypos+16, 16*xpos ,16*ypos+16 }; glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, [_textureManager textureByName:_textureName]); t=[_textureManager getBlockWithNumber:12]; glVertexPointer(2, GL_INT, 0, v); glTexCoordPointer(2, GL_INT, 0, t); glDrawArrays(GL_QUADS, 0, 4); } As soon as my central drawing routine calls the two drawing methods the second call overlays the first one. i would expect the call to world.draw to draw the map and "stamp" the objects upon it. Debugging shows me, that the first call is performed correctly (world is being drawn), but the following call to all objects ONLY draws the objects, the rest of the scene is getting black. I think i need to blend the drawn textures, but i cant seem to figure out how. Any help is appreciated. Thanks PS: Here is the github link to the project. It may not be in sync of my post here, but for some more in-depth analysis it may help.

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  • Play Your Position Until the Play Breaks Down&hellip;then Do Whatever it Takes.

    - by AjarnMark
    If I didn’t know better, I would think that K. Brian Kelley (blog | twitter) has been listening in on conversations with my boss. In his recent blog post Successful Teams: Knowing When to Step Out of Your Role, Brian describes quite clearly a philosophy that my boss has been trying to get across to everyone in the department.  We have been using sports analogies, like how important it is to play your position, until the play breaks down (such as a fumble) and then do whatever it takes it to cover each other / recover the ball / win.  While we like having very skilled people who could do a lot of different tasks, it is important that you first do your assigned tasks, and only once those are complete, or failure of the larger mission is probable, do you consider walking away from them to help someone else with their responsibilities. The thing that you cannot afford, especially on a lean team, is the really nice guy who is always trying to help out other people, but in doing so, is never quite getting his own responsibilities taken care of.  Yes, if the Running Back drops the football, you want any member of the team in the vicinity to jump on it, whether that is the leading blocker or the Quarterback.  But until the fumble happens, you want the leading blocker to focus on doing his job, and block for the Running Back.  If the blocker is doing any other job than his primary responsibility, you’re probably going to lose. This sounds logical enough, but it is really easy to go astray with the best of intentions.  This is especially true on a small, tight-knit team, where it is really easy to get sucked into someone else’s task or problem, doubly so if you think you can do it better or faster than them.  Now you are really setting yourself up for failure.  The right thing is to let the other person do the job, even if it seems less efficient in the short-run, so that you can focus on the tasks which require your expertise.  Don’t break formation…don’t abandon your assignment, until it is clear that mission failure is imminent, and even then, as Brian writes, it should be with the agreement of the mission leader. Thanks, Brian, for putting it so well.  This has been distributed throughout our department.

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  • A big flat text file or a HTML site for language documentation?

    - by Bad Sector
    A project of mine is a small embeddable Tcl-like scripting language, LIL. While i'm mostly making it for my own use, i think it is interesting enough for others to use, so i want it to have a nice (but not very "wordy") documentation. So far i'm using a single flat readme.txt file. It explains the language's syntax, features, standard functions, how to use the C API, etc. Also it is easy to scan and read in almost every environment out there, from basic text-only terminals to full-fledged high-end graphical desktop environments. However, while i tried to keep things nicely formatted (as much as this is possible in plain text), i still think that being a big (and growing) wall of text, it isn't as easy on the eyes as it could be. Also i feel that sometimes i'm not writing as much as i want in order to avoid expanding the text too much. So i thought i could use another project of mine, QuHelp, which is basically a help site generator for sites like this one with a sidebar that provides a tree of topics/subtopics and offline full text search. With this i can use HTML to format the documentation and if i use QuHelp for some other project that uses LIL, i can import LIL's documentation as part of the other project's documentation. However converting the existing documentation to QuHelp/HTML isn't a small task, especially when it comes to functions (i'll need to put more detail on them than what currently exists in the readme.txt file). Also it loses the wide range of availability that it currently has (even if QuHelp's generated code degrades gracefully down to console-only web browsers, plain text is readable from everywhere, including from popular editors such as Vim and Emacs - i had someone once telling me that he likes LIL's documentation because it is readable without leaving his editor). So, my question is simply this: should i keep the documentation as it is now in the form of a single readme.txt file or should i convert it to something like the site i mentioned above? There is also the option to do both, but i'm not sure if i'll be able to always keep them in sync or if it is worth the effort. After asking around in IRC i've got mixed answers: some liked the wide availability of the single text file, others said that it is looks as bad as a man page (personally i don't mind that - i can read man pages just fine - but other people might have issues reading them). What do you think?

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  • Is Java viable for serious game development?

    - by tehtros
    Ever since I was a little kid, my dream has been to develop games. Well, now that I am older, more mature, and have some programming experience, I would like to start. However, I would like to turn this into a career. The problem, is that my language of choice is Java. Now, I am not intending this to be a Java vs. C++ question, but rather, is Java an acceptable language for serious game development, instead of lower level languages like C++. By serious, I mean high quality graphics, and being able to play a game with said high quality graphics, without much lag on decent computers. Also, eventually, possible making it to consoles. I have scoured the internet, but there are not very many resources for Java game development, not nearly as many as C++. In fact, most engines are written in C++. Once, I tried to play a made with jMonkeyEngine. The game was terribly slow, to the point where my computer froze. I had no other Java applications running and nothing too resource intensive. Keep in mind, that my computer can play most modern 3D games with ease. So, I am really serious about game development, is Java still a viable choice? I have tried multiple times to learn C++, but I don't really like the language. I don't really know why, but usually, whenever I try to learn, I can never grasp the topics. Also, my most of my friends know Java, and one is even anti-C++, saying that no one knows how to use it right. Then, he goes to say that "there is no right way to use C++, that it can not be used correctly. The nature of the language prevents good code." Also, if I continue to learn and improve Java now, and it turns out that later I am required to learn C++, will making the switch be difficult? So, in short, can Java be taken serious, for serious game development. This includes heavy graphics, fast game play without lag, and possibly, and easy switch to consoles?

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  • Generating Report for NUnit

    - by thangchung
     All source codes for this post can be found at my github.Time ago, I received a request that people ask me how they can generate reports of the results of testing using NUnit? In fact, I may never do this. In the little world of my programming, I only care about the test results, red-green-refactoring, and that was it. When I got that question quite a bit unexpected, I knew that I could use NCover to generate reports, but reports of NCover too simple, it did not give us more details on the number of test cases, test methods, ... And I began to see about creating interesting report for NUnit.I was lucky to find an open source here. Its authors call it NUnit2Report, but one disadvantage is it only running on .NET 1.0. Indeed too old compared to the current version 4.0. And I try to download the preview, but I could not run. I had to open its source code and found that it uses XSLT to convert the output of NUnit results from XML to HTML. Nothing really special, because I also knew that after NUnit run output file extension is XML is created. Author only use this file to convert to HTML using XSLT. And I decided to convert it to. NET 4.0, because I will not have to code from scratch. Conversion work made me take some time, but was lucky that I finally have what I want. Thanks Gilles for the this OSS. I will send a mail to thank him for his efforts but put this out for the OSS. Now I will show people how to do it. I used the auto built NAnt and NUnit for running TestCase, and I use Selenium testing framework. After writing three TestCase using Selenium, I ran NUnit, and got the following results: There are 1 fail and 2s success. In the bin directory of this project will have the NUnit output file as shown below: Then I create a build file, and a bat file for easy running (can use PowerShell is here also.) Double click in the bat file to create a report like this:       Finally open the index.html file in the folder to view report. As everyone can see, it is the TestCase and divide very clearly, that I meet the requirements. This is really good. Once again I really thank NUnit2Report from Gilles. People can contact him via the mail address [email protected] or website  http://nunit2report.sourceforge.net. It really is useful to those who promised to QA. Hopefully this post will help anyone really interested in doing reports for NUnit.   

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  • Push back rectangle where collision happens

    - by Tifa
    I have a tile collision on a game I am creating but the problem is once a collision happens for example a collision happens in right side my sprite cant move to up and bottom :( thats because i set the speed to 0. I thinks its wrong. here is my code: int startX, startY, endX, endY; float pushx = 0,pushy = 0; // move player if(Gdx.input.isKeyPressed(Input.Keys.LEFT)){ dx=-1; currentWalk = leftWalk; } if(Gdx.input.isKeyPressed(Input.Keys.RIGHT)){ dx=1; currentWalk = rightWalk; } if(Gdx.input.isKeyPressed(Input.Keys.DOWN)){ dy=-1; currentWalk = downWalk; } if(Gdx.input.isKeyPressed(Input.Keys.UP)){ dy=1; currentWalk = upWalk; } sr.setProjectionMatrix(camera.combined); sr.begin(ShapeRenderer.ShapeType.Line); Rectangle koalaRect = rectPool.obtain(); koalaRect.set(player.getX(), player.getY(), pw, ph /2 ); float oldX = player.getX(), oldY = player.getY(); // THIS LINE WAS ADDED player.setXY(player.getX() + dx * Gdx.graphics.getDeltaTime() * 4f, player.getY() + dy * Gdx.graphics.getDeltaTime() * 4f); // THIS LINE WAS MOVED HERE FROM DOWN BELOW if(dx> 0) { startX = endX = (int)(player.getX() + pw); } else { startX = endX = (int)(player.getX() ); } startY = (int)(player.getY()); endY = (int)(player.getY() + ph); getTiles(startX, startY, endX, endY, tiles); for(Rectangle tile: tiles) { sr.rect(tile.x,tile.y,tile.getWidth(),tile.getHeight()); if(koalaRect.overlaps(tile)) { //dx = 0; player.setX(oldX); // THIS LINE CHANGED Gdx.app.log("x","hit " + player.getX() + " " + oldX); break; } } if(dy > 0) { startY = endY = (int)(player.getY() + ph ); } else { startY = endY = (int)(player.getY() ); } startX = (int)(player.getX()); endX = (int)(player.getX() + pw); getTiles(startX, startY, endX, endY, tiles); for(Rectangle tile: tiles) { if(koalaRect.overlaps(tile)) { //dy = 0; player.setY(oldY); // THIS LINE CHANGED //Gdx.app.log("y","hit" + player.getY() + " " + oldY); break; } } sr.rect(koalaRect.x,koalaRect.y,koalaRect.getWidth(),koalaRect.getHeight() / 2); sr.setColor(Color.GREEN); sr.end(); I want to push back the sprite when a collision happens but i have no idea how :D pls help

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  • Stop YouTube Videos from Automatically Playing in Chrome

    - by The Geek
    If you’ve actually used the internet before, you’ve probably come across a page with an auto-playing YouTube clip, and chances are good it was a rather annoying one. Here’s how to stop them from starting automatically in Chrome. We’ve already told you how to stop them from automatically playing if you’re a Firefox user (best answer: use Flashblock!), but now it’s time for Chrome users to get their turn. Use the Stop Autoplay for YouTube Extension The great thing about this extension is that it stops the video from playing, but it allows it to continue buffering, so when you do feel like playing the video, it’ll already be downloaded—really useful for people with slower internet connections. There’s no UI or anything fancy, just head to the extension page and click the Install button. If you want to get rid of it later, use the Tools –> Extensions menu (or you can type chrome://extensions/ into your address bar), and then click the Uninstall link for that add-on.   Download Stop Autoplay for YouTube [Google Chrome Extensions] Using FlashBlock for Chrome If you really wanted to, you could just disable Flash across the board using FlashBlock for Chrome. Once you’ve installed the extension, you won’t see any Flash elements anywhere, and you’ll have to move your mouse over them and click to enable them each time. When I installed the extension the first time, I noticed that YouTube was already in the allow list. I’m not sure if that’s the default setting or not, but you can use the icon in the address bar, or the Options from the Extensions panel to get to the settings page, and from there you can remove anything from the White List that you wouldn’t want. Another nice feature about Flash Block is that it can also block Silverlight, or you could simply uninstall or remove unnecessary Chrome plug-ins. Download FlashBlock for Chrome Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Stop YouTube Videos from Automatically Playing in FirefoxDisable YouTube Comments while using ChromeApologies About An Awful Audio AdvertisementImprove YouTube Video Viewing in Google ChromeWatch YouTube Videos in Cinema Style in Firefox TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow Combine MP3 Files Easily QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff Download Free MP3s from Amazon Awe inspiring, inter-galactic theme (Win 7) Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites

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  • Informed TDD &ndash; Kata &ldquo;To Roman Numerals&rdquo;

    - by Ralf Westphal
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/05/28/informed-tdd-ndash-kata-ldquoto-roman-numeralsrdquo.aspxIn a comment on my article on what I call Informed TDD (ITDD) reader gustav asked how this approach would apply to the kata “To Roman Numerals”. And whether ITDD wasn´t a violation of TDD´s principle of leaving out “advanced topics like mocks”. I like to respond with this article to his questions. There´s more to say than fits into a commentary. Mocks and TDD I don´t see in how far TDD is avoiding or opposed to mocks. TDD and mocks are orthogonal. TDD is about pocess, mocks are about structure and costs. Maybe by moving forward in tiny red+green+refactor steps less need arises for mocks. But then… if the functionality you need to implement requires “expensive” resource access you can´t avoid using mocks. Because you don´t want to constantly run all your tests against the real resource. True, in ITDD mocks seem to be in almost inflationary use. That´s not what you usually see in TDD demonstrations. However, there´s a reason for that as I tried to explain. I don´t use mocks as proxies for “expensive” resource. Rather they are stand-ins for functionality not yet implemented. They allow me to get a test green on a high level of abstraction. That way I can move forward in a top-down fashion. But if you think of mocks as “advanced” or if you don´t want to use a tool like JustMock, then you don´t need to use mocks. You just need to stand the sight of red tests for a little longer ;-) Let me show you what I mean by that by doing a kata. ITDD for “To Roman Numerals” gustav asked for the kata “To Roman Numerals”. I won´t explain the requirements again. You can find descriptions and TDD demonstrations all over the internet, like this one from Corey Haines. Now here is, how I would do this kata differently. 1. Analyse A demonstration of TDD should never skip the analysis phase. It should be made explicit. The requirements should be formalized and acceptance test cases should be compiled. “Formalization” in this case to me means describing the API of the required functionality. “[D]esign a program to work with Roman numerals” like written in this “requirement document” is not enough to start software development. Coding should only begin, if the interface between the “system under development” and its context is clear. If this interface is not readily recognizable from the requirements, it has to be developed first. Exploration of interface alternatives might be in order. It might be necessary to show several interface mock-ups to the customer – even if that´s you fellow developer. Designing the interface is a task of it´s own. It should not be mixed with implementing the required functionality behind the interface. Unfortunately, though, this happens quite often in TDD demonstrations. TDD is used to explore the API and implement it at the same time. To me that´s a violation of the Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) which not only should hold for software functional units but also for tasks or activities. In the case of this kata the API fortunately is obvious. Just one function is needed: string ToRoman(int arabic). And it lives in a class ArabicRomanConversions. Now what about acceptance test cases? There are hardly any stated in the kata descriptions. Roman numerals are explained, but no specific test cases from the point of view of a customer. So I just “invent” some acceptance test cases by picking roman numerals from a wikipedia article. They are supposed to be just “typical examples” without special meaning. Given the acceptance test cases I then try to develop an understanding of the problem domain. I´ll spare you that. The domain is trivial and is explain in almost all kata descriptions. How roman numerals are built is not difficult to understand. What´s more difficult, though, might be to find an efficient solution to convert into them automatically. 2. Solve The usual TDD demonstration skips a solution finding phase. Like the interface exploration it´s mixed in with the implementation. But I don´t think this is how it should be done. I even think this is not how it really works for the people demonstrating TDD. They´re simplifying their true software development process because they want to show a streamlined TDD process. I doubt this is helping anybody. Before you code you better have a plan what to code. This does not mean you have to do “Big Design Up-Front”. It just means: Have a clear picture of the logical solution in your head before you start to build a physical solution (code). Evidently such a solution can only be as good as your understanding of the problem. If that´s limited your solution will be limited, too. Fortunately, in the case of this kata your understanding does not need to be limited. Thus the logical solution does not need to be limited or preliminary or tentative. That does not mean you need to know every line of code in advance. It just means you know the rough structure of your implementation beforehand. Because it should mirror the process described by the logical or conceptual solution. Here´s my solution approach: The arabic “encoding” of numbers represents them as an ordered set of powers of 10. Each digit is a factor to multiply a power of ten with. The “encoding” 123 is the short form for a set like this: {1*10^2, 2*10^1, 3*10^0}. And the number is the sum of the set members. The roman “encoding” is different. There is no base (like 10 for arabic numbers), there are just digits of different value, and they have to be written in descending order. The “encoding” XVI is short for [10, 5, 1]. And the number is still the sum of the members of this list. The roman “encoding” thus is simpler than the arabic. Each “digit” can be taken at face value. No multiplication with a base required. But what about IV which looks like a contradiction to the above rule? It is not – if you accept roman “digits” not to be limited to be single characters only. Usually I, V, X, L, C, D, M are viewed as “digits”, and IV, IX etc. are viewed as nuisances preventing a simple solution. All looks different, though, once IV, IX etc. are taken as “digits”. Then MCMLIV is just a sum: M+CM+L+IV which is 1000+900+50+4. Whereas before it would have been understood as M-C+M+L-I+V – which is more difficult because here some “digits” get subtracted. Here´s the list of roman “digits” with their values: {1, I}, {4, IV}, {5, V}, {9, IX}, {10, X}, {40, XL}, {50, L}, {90, XC}, {100, C}, {400, CD}, {500, D}, {900, CM}, {1000, M} Since I take IV, IX etc. as “digits” translating an arabic number becomes trivial. I just need to find the values of the roman “digits” making up the number, e.g. 1954 is made up of 1000, 900, 50, and 4. I call those “digits” factors. If I move from the highest factor (M=1000) to the lowest (I=1) then translation is a two phase process: Find all the factors Translate the factors found Compile the roman representation Translation is just a look-up. Finding, though, needs some calculation: Find the highest remaining factor fitting in the value Remember and subtract it from the value Repeat with remaining value and remaining factors Please note: This is just an algorithm. It´s not code, even though it might be close. Being so close to code in my solution approach is due to the triviality of the problem. In more realistic examples the conceptual solution would be on a higher level of abstraction. With this solution in hand I finally can do what TDD advocates: find and prioritize test cases. As I can see from the small process description above, there are two aspects to test: Test the translation Test the compilation Test finding the factors Testing the translation primarily means to check if the map of factors and digits is comprehensive. That´s simple, even though it might be tedious. Testing the compilation is trivial. Testing factor finding, though, is a tad more complicated. I can think of several steps: First check, if an arabic number equal to a factor is processed correctly (e.g. 1000=M). Then check if an arabic number consisting of two consecutive factors (e.g. 1900=[M,CM]) is processed correctly. Then check, if a number consisting of the same factor twice is processed correctly (e.g. 2000=[M,M]). Finally check, if an arabic number consisting of non-consecutive factors (e.g. 1400=[M,CD]) is processed correctly. I feel I can start an implementation now. If something becomes more complicated than expected I can slow down and repeat this process. 3. Implement First I write a test for the acceptance test cases. It´s red because there´s no implementation even of the API. That´s in conformance with “TDD lore”, I´d say: Next I implement the API: The acceptance test now is formally correct, but still red of course. This will not change even now that I zoom in. Because my goal is not to most quickly satisfy these tests, but to implement my solution in a stepwise manner. That I do by “faking” it: I just “assume” three functions to represent the transformation process of my solution: My hypothesis is that those three functions in conjunction produce correct results on the API-level. I just have to implement them correctly. That´s what I´m trying now – one by one. I start with a simple “detail function”: Translate(). And I start with all the test cases in the obvious equivalence partition: As you can see I dare to test a private method. Yes. That´s a white box test. But as you´ll see it won´t make my tests brittle. It serves a purpose right here and now: it lets me focus on getting one aspect of my solution right. Here´s the implementation to satisfy the test: It´s as simple as possible. Right how TDD wants me to do it: KISS. Now for the second equivalence partition: translating multiple factors. (It´a pattern: if you need to do something repeatedly separate the tests for doing it once and doing it multiple times.) In this partition I just need a single test case, I guess. Stepping up from a single translation to multiple translations is no rocket science: Usually I would have implemented the final code right away. Splitting it in two steps is just for “educational purposes” here. How small your implementation steps are is a matter of your programming competency. Some “see” the final code right away before their mental eye – others need to work their way towards it. Having two tests I find more important. Now for the next low hanging fruit: compilation. It´s even simpler than translation. A single test is enough, I guess. And normally I would not even have bothered to write that one, because the implementation is so simple. I don´t need to test .NET framework functionality. But again: if it serves the educational purpose… Finally the most complicated part of the solution: finding the factors. There are several equivalence partitions. But still I decide to write just a single test, since the structure of the test data is the same for all partitions: Again, I´m faking the implementation first: I focus on just the first test case. No looping yet. Faking lets me stay on a high level of abstraction. I can write down the implementation of the solution without bothering myself with details of how to actually accomplish the feat. That´s left for a drill down with a test of the fake function: There are two main equivalence partitions, I guess: either the first factor is appropriate or some next. The implementation seems easy. Both test cases are green. (Of course this only works on the premise that there´s always a matching factor. Which is the case since the smallest factor is 1.) And the first of the equivalence partitions on the higher level also is satisfied: Great, I can move on. Now for more than a single factor: Interestingly not just one test becomes green now, but all of them. Great! You might say, then I must have done not the simplest thing possible. And I would reply: I don´t care. I did the most obvious thing. But I also find this loop very simple. Even simpler than a recursion of which I had thought briefly during the problem solving phase. And by the way: Also the acceptance tests went green: Mission accomplished. At least functionality wise. Now I´ve to tidy up things a bit. TDD calls for refactoring. Not uch refactoring is needed, because I wrote the code in top-down fashion. I faked it until I made it. I endured red tests on higher levels while lower levels weren´t perfected yet. But this way I saved myself from refactoring tediousness. At the end, though, some refactoring is required. But maybe in a different way than you would expect. That´s why I rather call it “cleanup”. First I remove duplication. There are two places where factors are defined: in Translate() and in Find_factors(). So I factor the map out into a class constant. Which leads to a small conversion in Find_factors(): And now for the big cleanup: I remove all tests of private methods. They are scaffolding tests to me. They only have temporary value. They are brittle. Only acceptance tests need to remain. However, I carry over the single “digit” tests from Translate() to the acceptance test. I find them valuable to keep, since the other acceptance tests only exercise a subset of all roman “digits”. This then is my final test class: And this is the final production code: Test coverage as reported by NCrunch is 100%: Reflexion Is this the smallest possible code base for this kata? Sure not. You´ll find more concise solutions on the internet. But LOC are of relatively little concern – as long as I can understand the code quickly. So called “elegant” code, however, often is not easy to understand. The same goes for KISS code – especially if left unrefactored, as it is often the case. That´s why I progressed from requirements to final code the way I did. I first understood and solved the problem on a conceptual level. Then I implemented it top down according to my design. I also could have implemented it bottom-up, since I knew some bottom of the solution. That´s the leaves of the functional decomposition tree. Where things became fuzzy, since the design did not cover any more details as with Find_factors(), I repeated the process in the small, so to speak: fake some top level, endure red high level tests, while first solving a simpler problem. Using scaffolding tests (to be thrown away at the end) brought two advantages: Encapsulation of the implementation details was not compromised. Naturally private methods could stay private. I did not need to make them internal or public just to be able to test them. I was able to write focused tests for small aspects of the solution. No need to test everything through the solution root, the API. The bottom line thus for me is: Informed TDD produces cleaner code in a systematic way. It conforms to core principles of programming: Single Responsibility Principle and/or Separation of Concerns. Distinct roles in development – being a researcher, being an engineer, being a craftsman – are represented as different phases. First find what, what there is. Then devise a solution. Then code the solution, manifest the solution in code. Writing tests first is a good practice. But it should not be taken dogmatic. And above all it should not be overloaded with purposes. And finally: moving from top to bottom through a design produces refactored code right away. Clean code thus almost is inevitable – and not left to a refactoring step at the end which is skipped often for different reasons.   PS: Yes, I have done this kata several times. But that has only an impact on the time needed for phases 1 and 2. I won´t skip them because of that. And there are no shortcuts during implementation because of that.

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  • Configurable Objects - Introduction

    - by Anthony Shorten
    One of the interesting facilities in the framework is Configurable Object functionality (it is also known as Task Optimization and also known as Cool Tools). The idea is that any implementation can create their own views of the base product objects and services and implement functionality against those new views. For example, in Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing, there is a Person object. That object is used to store and manage information about individuals as well as companies. In the base product you would use the Person Maintenance screen and fill in some of the screen when you wanted to register or maintain and individual as well and fill out other parts of the screen when you wanted to register or maintain a company. This can be somewhat confusing to some customers. Using Configurable Objects this can be simplified. A business object can be created that is a view of the any object. For example, you could create a Human business object which would cover the aspects of the Person object pertaining to an individual and a Company business object to cover the aspects unique to a company. Even the tag names (i.e. Field Names) in the object can be changed to be more what the implementation is familiar with. The object can also restructure the object. For example, a common identifier for an individual in the USA is the Social Security number, this value is a Person Identifier (as this varies in each country). In the new Human object you can remap the Person Identifier as a Social Security number. To define a Business Object you use a schema editor built into the browser user interface and use a mapping language to setup the business objects. An example of the language is shown below in an extract of the schema for the Human business object. As you can see there are mapping as well as formatting and other tags. This information can be built manually or using a wizard which generates the base structure for you to alter. This is all stored as meta data when saved. Once a Business object is built it can be used as basis for code, other business objects (we support inheritance), called by a screen (called a UI Map) or even as a Web Service. This is just a start with Configurable Objects as you can also create views of base services called Business Services, Service Scripts used for non-object or complex object processing (as well as other things), UI Maps used for screens and Data Areas to reuse definitions across multiple objects. Configurable Objects are powerful and I only really touched on them here. Over the next few months I hope to add lots more entries about them.

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  • SSIS and StreamInsight Working Together.

    I have been thinking a lot recently about what it would be like to have StreamInsight and SSIS working together.  Well the CAT team have produced a paper on some of our options here. Here are some of my thoughts. There is of course a slight mismatch in their types of usage.  StreamInsight is an Event Stream processing engine capable of operating on new data in the sub second timeframe.  The engine allows you to do real time analytics and take decisions on events that have potentially only just happened.  SSIS on the other hand is a batch processing engine.  In general I do not like having to invoke the same package more than once every 90 seconds or so as it can start to get expensive.  Usually when doing batch processing we have an hour or longer of grace before we have to move data from A –> B. StreamInsight operates on streams of data.  Before anyone mentions it yes I know StreamInsight is equally adept at using the IEnumerable interface, but I would argue live streaming and real-time analytics is a primary goal of the product.  SSIS does not have an “Always On” button I do not like the idea of embedding StreamInsight inside SSIS using a transform particularly.  It means StreamInsight becomes a batch processing engine because it can only operate when the SSIS package is running and SSIS is in charge of when that happens. If I am to have StreamInsight within SSIS then I prefer to have StreamInsight on the adapters.  This way you can force the adapters to stay open and introduce events into your Pipeline.   SSIS has a much richer set of transforms out of the box than StreamInsight.  Although “Always On” was not a design goal of SSIS I have used it like this and it works just fine. SSIS being called from within StreamInsight, now that excites me.  see below   For a while now I have been thinking what it would be like to decouple the Data Flow task from the SSIS package and expose it as something with which you can interact.  Anything can instantiate this version of a DFT as it would expose one or more  input interfaces and one or more output interfaces.  I can imagine that this would be a big hit when moving to “The Cloud” as well.  I could see the Data Flow task maybe being hosted in Azure Appfabric or some such layer. StreamInsight would be able to take advantage of this as well.   I am interested to see where this goes and will be pressing for more meat around the subject when I visit Redmond soon.

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  • Easy Profiling Point Insertion

    - by Geertjan
    One really excellent feature of NetBeans IDE is its Profiler. What's especially cool is that you can analyze code fragments, that is, you can right-click in a Java file and then choose Profiling | Insert Profiling Point. When you do that, you're able to analyze code fragments, i.e., from one statement to another statement, e.g., how long a particular piece of code takes to execute: https://netbeans.org/kb/docs/java/profiler-profilingpoints.html However, right-clicking a Java file and then going all the way down a longish list of menu items, to find "Profiling", and then "Insert Profiling Point" is a lot less easy than right-clicking in the sidebar (known as the glyphgutter) and then setting a profiling point in exactly the same way as a breakpoint: That's much easier and more intuitive and makes it far more likely that I'll use the Profiler at all. Once profiling points have been set then, as always, another menu item is added for managing the profiling point: To achieve this, I added the following to the "layer.xml" file: <folder name="Editors"> <folder name="AnnotationTypes"> <file name="profiler.xml" url="profiler.xml"/> <folder name="ProfilerActions"> <file name="org-netbeans-modules-profiler-ppoints-ui-InsertProfilingPointAction.shadow"> <attr name="originalFile" stringvalue="Actions/Profile/org-netbeans-modules-profiler-ppoints-ui-InsertProfilingPointAction.instance"/> <attr name="position" intvalue="300"/> </file> </folder> </folder> </folder> Notice that a "profiler.xml" file is referred to in the above, in the same location as where the "layer.xml" file is found. Here is the content: <!DOCTYPE type PUBLIC '-//NetBeans//DTD annotation type 1.1//EN' 'http://www.netbeans.org/dtds/annotation-type-1_1.dtd'> <type name='editor-profiler' description_key='HINT_PROFILER' localizing_bundle='org.netbeans.eppi.Bundle' visible='true' type='line' actions='ProfilerActions' severity='ok' browseable='false'/> Only disadvantage is that this registers the profiling point insertion in the glyphgutter for all file types. But that's true for the debugger too, i.e., there's no MIME type specific glyphgutter, instead, it is shared by all MIME types. Little bit confusing that the profiler point insertion can now, in theory, be set for all MIME types, but that's also true for the debugger, even though it doesn't apply to all MIME types. That probably explains why the profiling point insertion can only be done, officially, from the right-click popup menu of Java files, i.e., the developers wanted to avoid confusion and make it available to Java files only. However, I think that, since I'm already aware that I can't set the Java debugger in an HTML file, I'm also aware that the Java profiler can't be set that way as well. If you find this useful too, you can download and install the NBM from here: http://plugins.netbeans.org/plugin/55002

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  • Is ASP.NET MVC completely (and exclusively) based on conventions?

    - by Mike Valeriano
    --TL;DR Is there a "Hello World!" ASP.NET MVC tutorial out there that doesn't rely on conventions and "stock" projects? Is it even possible to take advantage of the technology without reusing the default file structure, and start from a single "hello_world.asp" file or something (like in PHP)? Am I completely mistaken and I should be looking somewhere else, maybe this? I'm interested in the MVC framework, not Web Forms --Background I've played a bit with PHP in the past, just for fun, and now I'm back to it since web development became relevant for me once again. I'm no professional, but I try to gain as much knowledge and control over the technology I'm working with as possible. I'm using Visual Studio 2012 for C# - my "desktop" language of choice - and since I got the Professional Edition from Dreamspark, the Web Development Tools are available, including ASP.NET MVC 4. I won't touch Web Forms, but the MVC Framework got my attention because the MVC pattern is something I can really relate to, since it provides the control I want but... not quite. Learning PHP was easy - and right form the start I could just create a "hello_world.php" file and just do something like this for immediate results: <!-- file: hello_world.php --> <?php> echo "Hello World!"; <?> But I couldn't find a single ASP.NET (MVC) tutorial out there (I'll be sure to buy one of the upcoming MVC 4 books, only a month away or so) that would start like that. They all start with a sample project, building up knowledge from the basics and heavily using conventions as they go along. Which is fine, I suppose, but it's now the best way for me to learn things. Even the "Empty" project template for a new ASP.NET MVC 4 Application in VS2012 is not empty at all: several files and folders are created for you - much like a new C# desktop application project, but with C# I can in fact start from scratch, creating the project structure myself. It is not the case with PHP: I can choose from a plethora of different MVC frameworks I can just create my own framework I can just skip frameworks altogether, and toss random PHP along with my HTML on a single file and make it work I understand the framework needs to establish some rules, but what if I just want to create a single page website with some C# logic behind it? Do I really need to create a whole bloat of files and folders for the sake of convention? Also, please understand that I haven't gotten far on any of those tutorials mainly because of this reason, but, if that's the only way to do it, I'll go for it using one of the books I've mentioned before. This is my first contact with ASP.NET but from the few comparisons I've read, I believe I should stay the hell away from Web Forms. Thank you. (Please forgive the broken English - it is not my primary language.)

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  • Connect to QuickBooks from PowerBuilder using RSSBus ADO.NET Data Provider

    - by dataintegration
    The RSSBus ADO.NET providers are easy-to-use, standards based controls that can be used from any platform or development technology that supports Microsoft .NET, including Sybase PowerBuilder. In this article we show how to use the RSSBus ADO.NET Provider for QuickBooks in PowerBuilder. A similar approach can be used from PowerBuilder with other RSSBus ADO.NET Data Providers to access data from Salesforce, SharePoint, Dynamics CRM, Google, OData, etc. In this article we will show how to create a basic PowerBuilder application that performs CRUD operations using the RSSBus ADO.NET Provider for QuickBooks. Step 1: Open PowerBuilder and create a new WPF Window Application solution. Step 2: Add all the Visual Controls needed for the connection properties. Step 3: Add the DataGrid control from the .NET controls. Step 4:Configure the columns of the DataGrid control as shown below. The column bindings will depend on the table. <DataGrid AutoGenerateColumns="False" Margin="13,249,12,14" Name="datagrid1" TabIndex="70" ItemsSource="{Binding}"> <DataGrid.Columns> <DataGridTextColumn x:Name="idColumn" Binding="{Binding Path=ID}" Header="ID" Width="SizeToHeader" /> <DataGridTextColumn x:Name="nameColumn" Binding="{Binding Path=Name}" Header="Name" Width="SizeToHeader" /> ... </DataGrid.Columns> </DataGrid> Step 5:Add a reference to the RSSBus ADO.NET Provider for QuickBooks assembly. Step 6:Optional: Set the QBXML Version to 6. Some of the tables in QuickBooks require a later version of QuickBooks to support updates and deletes. Please check the help for details. Connect the DataGrid: Once the visual elements have been configured, developers can use standard ADO.NET objects like Connection, Command, and DataAdapter to populate a DataTable with the results of a SQL query: System.Data.RSSBus.QuickBooks.QuickBooksConnection conn conn = create System.Data.RSSBus.QuickBooks.QuickBooksConnection(connectionString) System.Data.RSSBus.QuickBooks.QuickBooksCommand comm comm = create System.Data.RSSBus.QuickBooks.QuickBooksCommand(command, conn) System.Data.DataTable table table = create System.Data.DataTable System.Data.RSSBus.QuickBooks.QuickBooksDataAdapter dataAdapter dataAdapter = create System.Data.RSSBus.QuickBooks.QuickBooksDataAdapter(comm) dataAdapter.Fill(table) datagrid1.ItemsSource=table.DefaultView The code above can be used to bind data from any query (set this in command), to the DataGrid. The DataGrid should have the same columns as those returned from the SELECT statement. PowerBuilder Sample Project The included sample project includes the steps outlined in this article. You will also need the QuickBooks ADO.NET Data Provider to make the connection. You can download a free trial here.

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  • Friday Fun: Play Your Favorite 8-Bit NES Games Online

    - by Mysticgeek
    We finally made it to another Friday and once again we bring you some NES fun to waste the rest of the day before the weekend. Today we take a look at a site that contains a lot of classic NES games you can play online. vNES VirtualNES.com contains hundreds of vintage NES games you can play online. If you’re old enough to remember, when the NES came out, it breathed life back into home console gaming. Here we will take a look at a few of the games they offer that will certainly bring back memories. Super Mario Bros 3 which is a personal favorite from the 8-bit era.   Play Super Mario Bros 3 Excite Bike was one of the coolest dirt bike racing games at the time as it even allowed you to create your own tracks.   Play ExciteBike Of course The Legend of Zelda was one of the first fantasy games many an hour have been spent on. Play The Legend of Zelda We’d be remiss if we didn’t bring up Pac-man since the game recently celebrated it’s 30th anniversary. Play Pac-Man If you don’t like the default keyboard controls you can change them on the Options page. Join their forum and more…this site will definitely bring you back to the good old 8-bit NES days.   The site contains hundreds of different games for you to get on your old school NES fix. If you’re sick of waiting for the whistle to blow, this site will bring you back to the good old days when you had nothing to do but mash buttons all day. Play NES Games at virtualnes.com Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Friday Fun: Get Your Mario OnFriday Fun: Go Retro with PacmanFriday Fun: Five More Time Wasting Online GamesFriday Fun: Online Flash Games to Usher in the WeekendFriday Fun: Online Sports Flash Games TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Awesome World Cup Soccer Calendar Nice Websites To Watch TV Shows Online 24 Million Sites Windows Media Player Glass Icons (icons we like) How to Forecast Weather, without Gadgets Outlook Tools, one stop tweaking for any Outlook version

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  • To Serve Man?

    - by Dave Convery
    Since the announcement of Windows 8 and its 'Metro' interface, the .NET community has wondered if the skills they've spent so long developing might be swept aside,in favour of HTML5 and JavaScript. Mercifully, that only seems to be true of SilverLight (as Simon Cooper points out), but it did leave me thinking how easy it is to impose a technology upon people without directly serving their needs. Case in point: QR codes. Once, probably, benign in purpose, they seem to have become a marketer's tool for determining when someone has engaged with an advert in the real world, with the same certainty as is possible online. Nobody really wants to use QR codes - it's far too much hassle. But advertisers want that data - they want to know that someone actually read their billboard / poster / cereal box, and so this flawed technology is suddenly everywhere, providing little to no value to the people who are actually meant to use it. What about 3D cinema? Profits from the film industry have been steadily increasing throughout the period that digital piracy and mass sharing has been possible, yet the industry cinema chains have forced 3D films upon a broadly uninterested audience, as a way of providing more purpose to going to a cinema, rather than watching it at home. Despite advances in digital projection, 3D cinema is scarcely more immersive to us than were William Castle's hoary old tricks of skeletons on wires and buzzing chairs were to our grandparents. iTunes - originally just a piece of software that catalogued and ripped music for you, but which is now multi-purpose bloatware; a massive, system-hogging behemoth. If it was being built for the people that used it, it would have been split into three or more separate pieces of software long ago. But as bloatware, it serves Apple primarily rather than us, stuffed with Music, Video, Various stores and phone / iPad management all bolted into one. Why? It's because, that way, you're more likely to bump into something you want to buy. You can't even buy a new laptop without finding that a significant chunk of your hard drive has been sold to 'select partners' - advertisers, suppliers of virus-busting software, and endless bloatware-flogging pop-ups that make using a new laptop without reformatting the hard drive like stepping back in time. The product you want is not the one you paid for. This is without even looking at services like Facebook and Klout, who provide a notional service with the intention of slurping up as much data about you as possible (in Klout's case, whether you create an account with them or not). What technologies do you find annoying or intrusive, and who benefits from keeping them around?

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  • Split Internet Explorer into Dual-Panes

    - by Asian Angel
    If you have a wide screen monitor then you may want to make better use of Internet Explorer’s browser window area. Now you can split the browser window into dual-panes as needed with the IE Split browser plugin. Note: Requires .NET Framework 2.0 or higher (link provided below). IE Split in Action If you are using an older version of this software here is something to keep in mind before upgrading to the 2.0 release. Once you have installed IE Split you will notice a new toolbar added to your browser. As seen here, you can condense it down tightly and access it using the drop-down bar. A closer look at the drop-down bar. Notice the address bar…this will be for the left pane when you split the browser window. Here is our browser split into dual-panes. There are two address bars and two tab/title bars each corresponding to their appropriate pane. It may look slightly backwards at first but is not hard to get used to. A better view of the left pane with the IE Split navigation & title bars showing. Note: The title bar can be hidden if desired. And the right pane. You can also have multiple “split” tabs open if needed. There is nothing quite like getting double the value for the same amount of space. When you no longer need dual-panes open just click on the “x” to close IE Split down. All back to normal again. Conclusion While might not be for everyone this can still be useful for those who need side-by-side access to websites without using multiple separate windows. Links Download IE-Split Download the Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (Standalone Installer) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Set Up Multi-Pane Viewing in FirefoxWhy Can’t I Turn the Details/Preview Panes On or Off in Windows Vista Explorer?Split a text file in half (or any percentage) on Ubuntu LinuxMysticgeek Blog: A Look at Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 on Windows XPMake Ctrl+Tab in Internet Explorer 7 Use Most Recent Order 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 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Filevo is a Cool File Hosting & Sharing Site Get a free copy of WinUtilities Pro 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate Customize Everything Related to Dates, Times, Currency and Measurement in Windows 7 Google Earth replacement Icon (Icons we like)

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  • Solving Inbound Refinery PDF Conversion Issues, Part 1

    - by Kevin Smith
    Working with Inbound Refinery (IBR)  and PDF Conversion can be very frustrating. When everything is working smoothly you kind of forgot it is even there. Documents are cheeked into WebCenter Content (WCC), sent to IBR for conversion, converted to PDF, returned to WCC, and viola your Office documents have a nice PDF rendition available for viewing. Then a user checks in a bunch of password protected Word files, the conversions fail, your IBR queue starts backing up, users start calling asking why their document have not been released yet, and your spend a frustrating afternoon trying to recover and get things back running properly again. Password protected documents are one cause of PDF conversion failures, and I will cover those in a future blog post, but there are many other problems that can cause conversions to fail, especially when working with the WinNativeConverter and using the native applications, e.g. Word, to convert a document to PDF. There are other conversion options like PDFExportConverter which uses Oracle OutsideIn to convert documents directly to PDF without the need for the native applications. However, to get the best fidelity to the original document the native applications must be used. Many customers have tried PDFExportConverter, but have stayed with the native applications for conversion since the conversion results from PDFExportConverter were not as good as when the native applications are used. One problem I ran into recently, that at least has a easy solution, are Word documents that display a Show Repairs dialog when the document is opened. If you open the problem document yourself you will see this dialog. This will cause the conversion to time out. Any time the native application displays a dialog that requires user input the conversion will time out. The solution is to set add a setting for BulletProofOnCorruption to the registry for the user running Word on the IBR server. See this support note from Microsoft for details. The support note says to set the registry key under HKEY_CURRENT_USER, but since we are running IBR as a service the correct location is under HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT. Also since in our environment we were using Office 2007, the correct registry key to use was: HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Options Once you have done this restart the IBR managed server and resubmit your problem document. It should now be converted successfully. For more details on IBR see the Oracle® WebCenter Content Administrator's Guide for Conversion.

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  • How to shoot yourself in the foot (DO NOT Read in the office)

    - by TATWORTH
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TATWORTH/archive/2013/06/21/how-to-shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-do-not-read.aspxLet me make it absolutely clear - the following is:merely collated by your Geek from http://www.codeproject.com/Lounge.aspx?msg=3917012#xx3917012xxvery, very very funny so you read it in the presence of others at your own riskso here is the list - you have been warned!C You shoot yourself in the foot.   C++ You accidently create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Providing emergency medical assistance is impossible since you can't tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at others and saying "That's me, over there."   FORTRAN You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue anyway because you have no exception-handling facility.   Modula-2 After realizing that you can't actually accomplish anything in this language, you shoot yourself in the head.   COBOL USEing a COLT 45 HANDGUN, AIM gun at LEG.FOOT, THEN place ARM.HAND.FINGER on HANDGUN.TRIGGER and SQUEEZE. THEN return HANDGUN to HOLSTER. CHECK whether shoelace needs to be retied.   Lisp You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds...   BASIC Shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol. On big systems, continue until entire lower body is waterlogged.   Forth Foot yourself in the shoot.   APL You shoot yourself in the foot; then spend all day figuring out how to do it in fewer characters.   Pascal The compiler won't let you shoot yourself in the foot.   Snobol If you succeed, shoot yourself in the left foot. If you fail, shoot yourself in the right foot.   HyperTalk Put the first bullet of the gun into foot left of leg of you. Answer the result.   Prolog You tell your program you want to be shot in the foot. The program figures out how to do it, but the syntax doesn't allow it to explain.   370 JCL You send your foot down to MIS with a 4000-page document explaining how you want it to be shot. Three years later, your foot comes back deep-fried.   FORTRAN-77 You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue anyway because you still can't do exception-processing.   Modula-2 (alternative) You perform a shooting on what might be currently a foot with what might be currently a bullet shot by what might currently be a gun.   BASIC (compiled) You shoot yourself in the foot with a BB using a SCUD missile launcher.   Visual Basic You'll really only appear to have shot yourself in the foot, but you'll have so much fun doing it that you won't care.   Forth (alternative) BULLET DUP3 * GUN LOAD FOOT AIM TRIGGER PULL BANG! EMIT DEAD IF DROP ROT THEN (This takes about five bytes of memory, executes in two to ten clock cycles on any processor and can be used to replace any existing function of the language as well as in any future words). (Welcome to bottom up programming - where you, too, can perform compiler pre-processing instead of writing code)   APL (alternative) You hear a gunshot and there's a hole in your foot, but you don't remember enough linear algebra to understand what happened. or @#&^$%&%^ foot   Pascal (alternative) Same as Modula-2 except that the bullet is not the right type for the gun and your hand is blown off.   Snobol (alternative) You grab your foot with your hand, then rewrite your hand to be a bullet. The act of shooting the original foot then changes your hand/bullet into yet another foot (a left foot).   Prolog (alternative) You attempt to shoot yourself in the foot, but the bullet, failing to find its mark, backtracks to the gun, which then explodes in your face.   COMAL You attempt to shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol, but the bore is clogged, and the pressure build-up blows apart both the pistol and your hand. or draw_pistol aim_at_foot(left) pull_trigger hop(swearing)   Scheme As Lisp, but none of the other appendages are aware of this happening.   Algol You shoot yourself in the foot with a musket. The musket is aesthetically fascinating and the wound baffles the adolescent medic in the emergency room.   Ada If you are dumb enough to actually use this language, the United States Department of Defense will kidnap you, stand you up in front of a firing squad and tell the soldiers, "Shoot at the feet." or The Department of Defense shoots you in the foot after offering you a blindfold and a last cigarette. or After correctly packaging your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream and shoot yourself in the foot. When you try, however, you discover that your foot is of the wrong type. or After correctly packing your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream, and confidently aim at your foot knowing it is safe. However the cordite in the round does an Unchecked Conversion, fires and shoots you in the foot anyway.   Eiffel   You create a GUN object, two FOOT objects and a BULLET object. The GUN passes both the FOOT objects a reference to the BULLET. The FOOT objects increment their hole counts and forget about the BULLET. A little demon then drives a garbage truck over your feet and grabs the bullet (both of it) on the way. Smalltalk You spend so much time playing with the graphics and windowing system that your boss shoots you in the foot, takes away your workstation and makes you develop in COBOL on a character terminal. or You send the message shoot to gun, with selectors bullet and myFoot. A window pops up saying Gunpowder doesNotUnderstand: spark. After several fruitless hours spent browsing the methods for Trigger, FiringPin and IdealGas, you take the easy way out and create ShotFoot, a subclass of Foot with an additional instance variable bulletHole. Object Oriented Pascal You perform a shooting on what might currently be a foot with what might currently be a bullet fired from what might currently be a gun.   PL/I You consume all available system resources, including all the offline bullets. The Data Processing & Payroll Department doubles its size, triples its budget, acquires four new mainframes and drops the original one on your foot. Postscript foot bullets 6 locate loadgun aim gun shoot showpage or It takes the bullet ten minutes to travel from the gun to your foot, by which time you're long since gone out to lunch. The text comes out great, though.   PERL You stab yourself in the foot repeatedly with an incredibly large and very heavy Swiss Army knife. or You pick up the gun and begin to load it. The gun and your foot begin to grow to huge proportions and the world around you slows down, until the gun fires. It makes a tiny hole, which you don't feel. Assembly Language You crash the OS and overwrite the root disk. The system administrator arrives and shoots you in the foot. After a moment of contemplation, the administrator shoots himself in the foot and then hops around the room rabidly shooting at everyone in sight. or You try to shoot yourself in the foot only to discover you must first reinvent the gun, the bullet, and your foot.or The bullet travels to your foot instantly, but it took you three weeks to load the round and aim the gun.   BCPL You shoot yourself somewhere in the leg -- you can't get any finer resolution than that. Concurrent Euclid You shoot yourself in somebody else's foot.   Motif You spend days writing a UIL description of your foot, the trajectory, the bullet and the intricate scrollwork on the ivory handles of the gun. When you finally get around to pulling the trigger, the gun jams.   Powerbuilder While attempting to load the gun you discover that the LoadGun system function is buggy; as a work around you tape the bullet to the outside of the gun and unsuccessfully attempt to fire it with a nail. In frustration you club your foot with the butt of the gun and explain to your client that this approximates the functionality of shooting yourself in the foot and that the next version of Powerbuilder will fix it.   Standard ML By the time you get your code to typecheck, you're using a shoot to foot yourself in the gun.   MUMPS You shoot 583149 AK-47 teflon-tipped, hollow-point, armour-piercing bullets into even-numbered toes on odd-numbered feet of everyone in the building -- with one line of code. Three weeks later you shoot yourself in the head rather than try to modify that line.   Java You locate the Gun class, but discover that the Bullet class is abstract, so you extend it and write the missing part of the implementation. Then you implement the ShootAble interface for your foot, and recompile the Foot class. The interface lets the bullet call the doDamage method on the Foot, so the Foot can damage itself in the most effective way. Now you run the program, and call the doShoot method on the instance of the Gun class. First the Gun creates an instance of Bullet, which calls the doFire method on the Gun. The Gun calls the hit(Bullet) method on the Foot, and the instance of Bullet is passed to the Foot. But this causes an IllegalHitByBullet exception to be thrown, and you die.   Unix You shoot yourself in the foot or % ls foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o % rm * .o rm: .o: No such file or directory % ls %   370 JCL (alternative) You shoot yourself in the head just thinking about it.   DOS JCL You first find the building you're in in the phone book, then find your office number in the corporate phone book. Then you have to write this down, then describe, in cubits, your exact location, in relation to the door (right hand side thereof). Then you need to write down the location of the gun (loading it is a proprietary utility), then you load it, and the COBOL program, and run them, and, with luck, it may be run tonight.   VMS   $ MOUNT/DENSITY=.45/LABEL=BULLET/MESSAGE="BYE" BULLET::BULLET$GUN SYS$BULLET $ SET GUN/LOAD/SAFETY=OFF/SIGHT=NONE/HAND=LEFT/CHAMBER=1/ACTION=AUTOMATIC/ LOG/ALL/FULL SYS$GUN_3$DUA3:[000000]GUN.GNU $ SHOOT/LOG/AUTO SYS$GUN SYS$SYSTEM:[FOOT]FOOT.FOOT   %DCL-W-ACTIMAGE, error activating image GUN -CLI-E-IMGNAME, image file $3$DUA240:[GUN]GUN.EXE;1 -IMGACT-F-NOTNATIVE, image is not an OpenVMS Alpha AXP image or %SYS-F-FTSHT, foot shot (fifty lines of traceback omitted) sh,csh, etc You can't remember the syntax for anything, so you spend five hours reading manual pages, then your foot falls asleep. You shoot the computer and switch to C.   Apple System 7 Double click the gun icon and a window giving a selection for guns, target areas, plus balloon help with medical remedies, and assorted sound effects. Click "shoot" button and a small bomb appears with note "Error of Type 1 has occurred."   Windows 3.1 Double click the gun icon and wait. Eventually a window opens giving a selection for guns, target areas, plus balloon help with medical remedies, and assorted sound effects. Click "shoot" button and a small box appears with note "Unable to open Shoot.dll, check that path is correct."   Windows 95 Your gun is not compatible with this OS and you must buy an upgrade and install it before you can continue. Then you will be informed that you don't have enough memory.   CP/M I remember when shooting yourself in the foot with a BB gun was a big deal.   DOS You finally found the gun, but can't locate the file with the foot for the life of you.   MSDOS You shoot yourself in the foot, but can unshoot yourself with add-on software.   Access You try to point the gun at your foot, but it shoots holes in all your Borland distribution diskettes instead.   Paradox Not only can you shoot yourself in the foot, your users can too.   dBase You squeeze the trigger, but the bullet moves so slowly that by the time your foot feels the pain, you've forgotten why you shot yourself anyway. or You buy a gun. Bullets are only available from another company and are promised to work so you buy them. Then you find out that the next version of the gun is the one scheduled to actually shoot bullets.   DBase IV, V1.0 You pull the trigger, but it turns out that the gun was a poorly designed hand grenade and the whole building blows up.   SQL You cut your foot off, send it out to a service bureau and when it returns, it has a hole in it but will no longer fit the attachment at the end of your leg. or Insert into Foot Select Bullet >From Gun.Hand Where Chamber = 'LOADED' And Trigger = 'PULLED'   Clipper You grab a bullet, get ready to insert it in the gun so that you can shoot yourself in the foot and discover that the gun that the bullets fits has not yet been built, but should be arriving in the mail _REAL_SOON_NOW_. Oracle The menus for coding foot_shooting have not been implemented yet and you can't do foot shooting in SQL.   English You put your foot in your mouth, then bite it off. (For those who don't know, English is a McDonnell Douglas/PICK query language which allegedly requires 110% of system resources to run happily.) Revelation [an implementation of the PICK Operating System] You'll be able to shoot yourself in the foot just as soon as you figure out what all these bullets are for.   FlagShip Starting at the top of your head, you aim the gun at yourself repeatedly until, half an hour later, the gun is finally pointing at your foot and you pull the trigger. A new foot with a hole in it appears but you can't work out how to get rid of the old one and your gun doesn't work anymore.   FidoNet You put your foot in your mouth, then echo it internationally.   PicoSpan [a UNIX-based computer conferencing system] You can't shoot yourself in the foot because you're not a host. or (host variation) Whenever you shoot yourself in the foot, someone opens a topic in policy about it.   Internet You put your foot in your mouth, shoot it, then spam the bullet so that everybody gets shot in the foot.   troff rmtroff -ms -Hdrwp | lpr -Pwp2 & .*place bullet in footer .B .NR FT +3i .in 4 .bu Shoot! .br .sp .in -4 .br .bp NR HD -2i .*   Genetic Algorithms You create 10,000 strings describing the best way to shoot yourself in the foot. By the time the program produces the optimal solution, humans have evolved wings and the problem is moot.   CSP (Communicating Sequential Processes) You only fail to shoot everything that isn't your foot.   MS-SQL Server MS-SQL Server’s gun comes pre-loaded with an unlimited supply of Teflon coated bullets, and it only has two discernible features: the muzzle and the trigger. If that wasn't enough, MS-SQL Server also puts the gun in your hand, applies local anesthetic to the skin of your forefinger and stitches it to the gun's trigger. Meanwhile, another process has set up a spinal block to numb your lower body. It will then proceeded to surgically remove your foot, cryogenically freeze it for preservation, and attach it to the muzzle of the gun so that no matter where you aim, you will shoot your foot. In order to avoid shooting yourself in the foot, you need to unstitch your trigger finger, remove your foot from the muzzle of the gun, and have it surgically reattached. Then you probably want to get some crutches and go out to buy a book on SQL Server Performance Tuning.   Sybase Sybase's gun requires assembly, and you need to go out and purchase your own clip and bullets to load the gun. Assembly is complicated by the fact that Sybase has hidden the gun behind a big stack of reference manuals, but it hasn't told you where that stack is. While you were off finding the gun, assembling it, buying bullets, etc., Sybase was also busy surgically removing your foot and cryogenically freezing it for preservation. Instead of attaching it to the muzzle of the gun, though, it packed your foot on dry ice and sent it UPS-Ground to an unnamed hookah bar somewhere in the middle east. In order to shoot your foot, you must modify your gun with a GPS system for targeting and hire some guy named "Indy" to find the hookah bar and wire the coordinates back to you. By this time, you've probably become so daunted at the tasks stand between you and shooting your foot that you hire a guy who's read all the books on Sybase to help you shoot your foot. If you're lucky, he'll be smart enough both to find your foot and to stop you from shooting it.   Magic software You spend 1 week looking up the correct syntax for GUN. When you find it, you realise that GUN will not let you shoot in your own foot. It will allow you to shoot almost anything but your foot. You then decide to build your own gun. You can't use the standard barrel since this will only allow for standard bullets, which will not fire if the barrel is pointed at your foot. After four weeks, you have created your own custom gun. It blows up in your hand without warning, because you failed to initialise the safety catch and it doesn't know whether the initial state is "0", 0, NULL, "ZERO", 0.0, 0,0, "0.0", or "0,00". You fix the problem with your remaining hand by nesting 12 safety catches, and then decide to build the gun without safety catch. You then shoot the management and retire to a happy life where you code in languages that will allow you to shoot your foot in under 10 days.FirefoxLets you shoot yourself in as many feet as you'd like, while using multiple great addons! IEA moving target in terms of standard ammunition size and doesn't always work properly with non-Microsoft ammunition, so sometimes you shoot something other than your foot. However, it's the corporate world's standard foot-shooting apparatus. Hackers seem to enjoy rigging websites up to trigger cascading foot-shooting failures. Windows 98 About the same as Windows 95 in terms of overall bullet capacity and triggering mechanisms. Includes updated DirectShot API. A new version was released later on to support USB guns, Windows 98 SE.WPF:You get your baseball glove and a ball and you head out to your backyard, where you throw balls to your pitchback. Then your unkempt-haired-cargo-shorts-and-sandals-with-white-socks-wearing neighbor uses XAML to sculpt your arm into a gun, the ball into a bullet and the pitchback into your foot. By now, however, only the neighbor can get it to work and he's only around from 6:30 PM - 3:30 AM. LOGO: You very carefully lay out the trajectory of the bullet. Then you start the gun, which fires very slowly. You walk precisely to the point where the bullet will travel and wait, but just before it gets to you, your class time is up and one of the other kids has already used the system to hack into Sony's PS3 network. Flash: Someone has designed a beautiful-looking gun that anyone can shoot their feet with for free. It weighs six hundred pounds. All kinds of people are shooting themselves in the feet, and sending the link to everyone else so that they can too. That is, except for the criminals, who are all stealing iOS devices that the gun won't work with.APL: Its (mostly) all greek to me. Lisp: Place ((gun in ((hand sight (foot then shoot))))) (Lots of Insipid Stupid Parentheses)Apple OS/X and iOS Once a year, Steve Jobs returns from sick leave to tell millions of unwavering fans how they will be able to shoot themselves in the foot differently this year. They retweet and blog about it ad nauseam, and wait in line to be the first to experience "shoot different".Windows ME Usually fails, even at shooting you in the foot. Yo dawg, I heard you like shooting yourself in the foot. So I put a gun in your gun, so you can shoot yourself in the foot while you shoot yourself in the foot. (Okay, I'm not especially proud of this joke.) Windows 2000 Now you really do have to log in, before you are allowed to shoot yourself in the foot.Windows XPYou thought you learned your lesson: Don't use Windows ME. Then, along came this new creature, built on top of Windows NT! So you spend the next couple days installing antivirus software, patches and service packs, just so you can get that driver to install, and then proceed to shoot yourself in the foot. Windows Vista Newer! Glossier! Shootier! Windows 7 The bullets come out a lot smoother. Active Directory Each bullet now has an attached Bullet Identifier, and can be uniquely identified. Policies can be applied to dictate fragmentation, and the gun will occasionally have a confusing delay after the trigger has been pulled. PythonYou try to use import foot; foot.shoot() only to realize that's only available in 3.0, to which you can't yet upgrade from 2.7 because of all those extension libs lacking support. Solaris Shoots best when used on SPARC hardware, but still runs the trigger GUI under Java. After weeks of learning the appropriate STOP command to prevent the trigger from automatically being pressed on boot, you think you've got it under control. Then the one time you ever use dtrace, it hits a bug that fires the gun. MySQL The feature that allows you to shoot yourself in the foot has been in development for about 6 years, and they are adding it into the next version, which is coming out REAL SOON NOW, promise! But you can always check it out of source control and try it yourself (just not in any environment where data integrity is important because it will probably explode.) PostgreSQLAllows you to have a smug look on your face while you shoot yourself in the foot, because those MySQL guys STILL don't have that feature. NoSQL Barrel? Who needs a barrel? Just put the bullet on your foot, and strike it with a hammer. See? It's so much simpler and more efficient that way. You can even strike multiple bullets in one swing if you swing with a good enough arc, because hammers are easy to use. Getting them to synchronize is a little difficult, though.Eclipse There are about a dozen different packages for shooting yourself in the foot, with weird interdependencies on outdated components. Once you finally navigate the morass and get one installed, you then have something to look at while you shoot yourself in the foot with that package: You can watch the screen redraw.Outlook Makes it really easy to let everyone know you shot yourself in the foot!Shooting yourself in the foot using delegates.You really need to shoot yourself in the foot but you hate firearms (you don't want any dependency on the specifics of shooting) so you delegate it to somebody else. You don't care how it is done as long is shooting your foot. You can do it asynchronously in case you know you may faint so you are called back/slapped in the face by your shooter/friend (or background worker) when everything is done.C#You prepare the gun and the bullet, carefully modeling all of the physics of a bullet traveling through a foot. Just before you're about to pull the trigger, you stumble on System.Windows.BodyParts.Foot.ShootAt(System.Windows.Firearms.IGun gun) in the extended framework, realize you just wasted the entire afternoon, and shoot yourself in the head.PHP<?phprequire("foot_safety_check.php");?><!DOCTYPE HTML><html><head> <!--Lower!--><title>Shooting me in the foot</title></head> <body> <!--LOWER!!!--><leg> <!--OK, I made this one up...--><footer><?php echo (dungSift($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], "ie"))?("Your foot is safe, but you might want to wear a hard hat!"):("<div class=\"shot\">BANG!</div>"); ?></footer></leg> </body> </html>

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  • Enhance Your Gmail Account in Chrome

    - by Asian Angel
    Are you tired of items like the Chat and Invite Boxes cluttering up your Gmail account? Then join us as we look at the Better Gmail extension for Google Chrome. Before Here are some examples of items that you may be tired of looking at in your Gmail account such as the “Footer” below your “Inbox”, the “Chat Box”, and the “Invitation Box”. Perhaps you would also like to have the “New Window, Print all, & Create a document Commands” moved elsewhere. And of course there is everyone’s “favorite” sponsored links… Time to do some cleaning up and reorganizing. Better Gmail in Action As soon as you have installed Better Gmail a new tab will automatically open and present you with the available options. Place a “checkmark” in the box for each option that you would like activated and click on “Save” when finished. Note: The final option entry is a tie-in with two other “linked” extensions (Folders4Gmail & HTML Signature) while the middle listing is a link to an article for disabling Google Buzz. Once you have saved your changes in the “Options” you will be prompted to refresh your Gmail tab to see the changes. Going back to our “Inbox Area” everything looks so much more streamlined and clean now. Goodbye clutter! The “New Window, Print all, & Create a document Commands” definitely look a lot nicer as a small toolbar above our e-mail. And the right side…you can see for yourself just how much better that looks. No more distractions there to bother you as you read your e-mail. Conclusion If you have been wanting to get rid of the undesirable elements visible in your Gmail account then hurry over to the Better Gmail page, grab the extension and enjoy the better view. Links Download the Better Gmail extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Figure out which Online accounts are selling your email to spammersAdd a Remember The Milk Task Pane to Gmail in ChromeHow to Send and Receive Hotmail from Your Gmail AccountAdd Your Gmail To Windows Live MailOpen Your Gmail Account in a Popup Window 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Windows Media Player 12: Tweak Video & Sound with Playback Enhancements Own a cell phone, or does a cell phone own you? Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet

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  • Slow Start For Passbook

    - by David Dorf
    Like many others, I pre-ordered my iPhone 5 then downloaded iOS 6 to my antiquated iPhone 4.  I decided the downgrade in mapping capabilities was worth access to Passbook, Apple's wallet of sorts that holds loyalty cards, tickets, and coupons.  To my disappointment, Passbook didn't work.  When it goes to the iTunes Store, it can't connect.  After a little research, I read that you can change the date on the iPhone to the future (I did March 2013), and then it will connect.  A list of apps that support Passbook are shown, some of which were already on my iPhone and others that required downloading.  Even when I put the date back on "automatic," things continued to work.  Not sure why. Anyway, even once I got into iTunes and made sure I had some of the apps downloaded, it wasn't clear what the next step was (gimme a break, its Friday afternoon).  Every time I opened Passbook, it sent me to the "Apps for Passbook" page on iTunes.  I tried downloading one of the suggested apps that I didn't already have (Walgreens).  The app's icon has a "new" stripe across the icon.  I launched it and it said it had Passbook integration. So I needed to login or signup with the loyalty program.  After figuring out what my username and password already was, it then offered to add the loyalty card to Passbook, which I accepted.  Now when I flip over to Passbook, I can see the loyalty card there.  I guess I need to go into each app to "push" cards into Passbook. People seem to be using it.  Twenty-four hours after iOS 6 was released, Sephora had 20,000 users of Passbook. Starbucks says they'll be integrated to Passbook by the end of the month, and Target is already offering coupons via Passbook.  After a few more retailers get on board, Apple may not need to consider NFC.

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  • Using the jQuery UI Library in a MVC 3 Application to Build a Dialog Form

    - by ChrisD
    Using a simulated dialog window is a nice way to handle inline data editing. The jQuery UI has a UI widget for a dialog window that makes it easy to get up and running with it in your application. With the release of ASP.NET MVC 3, Microsoft included the jQuery UI scripts and files in the MVC 3 project templates for Visual Studio. With the release of the MVC 3 Tools Update, Microsoft implemented the inclusion of those with NuGet as packages. That means we can get up and running using the latest version of the jQuery UI with minimal effort. To the code! Another that might interested you about JQuery Mobile and ASP.NET MVC 3 with C#. If you are starting with a new MVC 3 application and have the Tools Update then you are a NuGet update and a <link> and <script> tag away from adding the jQuery UI to your project. If you are using an existing MVC project you can still get the jQuery UI library added to your project via NuGet and then add the link and script tags. Assuming that you have pulled down the latest version (at the time of this publish it was 1.8.13) you can add the following link and script tags to your <head> tag: < link href = "@Url.Content(" ~ / Content / themes / base / jquery . ui . all . css ")" rel = "Stylesheet" type = "text/css" /> < script src = "@Url.Content(" ~ / Scripts / jquery-ui-1 . 8 . 13 . min . js ")" type = "text/javascript" ></ script > The jQuery UI library relies upon the CSS scripts and some image files to handle rendering of its widgets (you can choose a different theme or role your own if you like). Adding these to the stock _Layout.cshtml file results in the following markup: <!DOCTYPE html> < html > < head >     < meta charset = "utf-8" />     < title > @ViewBag.Title </ title >     < link href = "@Url.Content(" ~ / Content / Site . css ")" rel = "stylesheet" type = "text/css" />     <link href="@Url.Content("~/Content/themes/base/jquery.ui.all.css")" rel="Stylesheet" type="text/css" />     <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery-1.5.1.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>     <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/modernizr-1.7.min . js ")" type = "text/javascript" ></ script >     < script src = "@Url.Content(" ~ / Scripts / jquery-ui-1 . 8 . 13 . min . js ")" type = "text/javascript" ></ script > </ head > < body >     @RenderBody() </ body > </ html > Our example will involve building a list of notes with an id, title and description. Each note can be edited and new notes can be added. The user will never have to leave the single page of notes to manage the note data. The add and edit forms will be delivered in a jQuery UI dialog widget and the note list content will get reloaded via an AJAX call after each change to the list. To begin, we need to craft a model and a data management class. We will do this so we can simulate data storage and get a feel for the workflow of the user experience. The first class named Note will have properties to represent our data model. namespace Website . Models {     public class Note     {         public int Id { get ; set ; }         public string Title { get ; set ; }         public string Body { get ; set ; }     } } The second class named NoteManager will be used to set up our simulated data storage and provide methods for querying and updating the data. We will take a look at the class content as a whole and then walk through each method after. using System . Collections . ObjectModel ; using System . Linq ; using System . Web ; namespace Website . Models {     public class NoteManager     {         public Collection < Note > Notes         {             get             {                 if ( HttpRuntime . Cache [ "Notes" ] == null )                     this . loadInitialData ();                 return ( Collection < Note >) HttpRuntime . Cache [ "Notes" ];             }         }         private void loadInitialData ()         {             var notes = new Collection < Note >();             notes . Add ( new Note                           {                               Id = 1 ,                               Title = "Set DVR for Sunday" ,                               Body = "Don't forget to record Game of Thrones!"                           });             notes . Add ( new Note                           {                               Id = 2 ,                               Title = "Read MVC article" ,                               Body = "Check out the new iwantmymvc.com post"                           });             notes . Add ( new Note                           {                               Id = 3 ,                               Title = "Pick up kid" ,                               Body = "Daughter out of school at 1:30pm on Thursday. Don't forget!"                           });             notes . Add ( new Note                           {                               Id = 4 ,                               Title = "Paint" ,                               Body = "Finish the 2nd coat in the bathroom"                           });             HttpRuntime . Cache [ "Notes" ] = notes ;         }         public Collection < Note > GetAll ()         {             return Notes ;         }         public Note GetById ( int id )         {             return Notes . Where ( i => i . Id == id ). FirstOrDefault ();         }         public int Save ( Note item )         {             if ( item . Id <= 0 )                 return saveAsNew ( item );             var existingNote = Notes . Where ( i => i . Id == item . Id ). FirstOrDefault ();             existingNote . Title = item . Title ;             existingNote . Body = item . Body ;             return existingNote . Id ;         }         private int saveAsNew ( Note item )         {             item . Id = Notes . Count + 1 ;             Notes . Add ( item );             return item . Id ;         }     } } The class has a property named Notes that is read only and handles instantiating a collection of Note objects in the runtime cache if it doesn't exist, and then returns the collection from the cache. This property is there to give us a simulated storage so that we didn't have to add a full blown database (beyond the scope of this post). The private method loadInitialData handles pre-filling the collection of Note objects with some initial data and stuffs them into the cache. Both of these chunks of code would be refactored out with a move to a real means of data storage. The GetAll and GetById methods access our simulated data storage to return all of our notes or a specific note by id. The Save method takes in a Note object, checks to see if it has an Id less than or equal to zero (we assume that an Id that is not greater than zero represents a note that is new) and if so, calls the private method saveAsNew . If the Note item sent in has an Id , the code finds that Note in the simulated storage, updates the Title and Description , and returns the Id value. The saveAsNew method sets the Id , adds it to the simulated storage, and returns the Id value. The increment of the Id is simulated here by getting the current count of the note collection and adding 1 to it. The setting of the Id is the only other chunk of code that would be refactored out when moving to a different data storage approach. With our model and data manager code in place we can turn our attention to the controller and views. We can do all of our work in a single controller. If we use a HomeController , we can add an action method named Index that will return our main view. An action method named List will get all of our Note objects from our manager and return a partial view. We will use some jQuery to make an AJAX call to that action method and update our main view with the partial view content returned. Since the jQuery AJAX call will cache the call to the content in Internet Explorer by default (a setting in jQuery), we will decorate the List, Create and Edit action methods with the OutputCache attribute and a duration of 0. This will send the no-cache flag back in the header of the content to the browser and jQuery will pick that up and not cache the AJAX call. The Create action method instantiates a new Note model object and returns a partial view, specifying the NoteForm.cshtml view file and passing in the model. The NoteForm view is used for the add and edit functionality. The Edit action method takes in the Id of the note to be edited, loads the Note model object based on that Id , and does the same return of the partial view as the Create method. The Save method takes in the posted Note object and sends it to the manager to save. It is decorated with the HttpPost attribute to ensure that it will only be available via a POST. It returns a Json object with a property named Success that can be used by the UX to verify everything went well (we won't use that in our example). Both the add and edit actions in the UX will post to the Save action method, allowing us to reduce the amount of unique jQuery we need to write in our view. The contents of the HomeController.cs file: using System . Web . Mvc ; using Website . Models ; namespace Website . Controllers {     public class HomeController : Controller     {         public ActionResult Index ()         {             return View ();         }         [ OutputCache ( Duration = 0 )]         public ActionResult List ()         {             var manager = new NoteManager ();             var model = manager . GetAll ();             return PartialView ( model );         }         [ OutputCache ( Duration = 0 )]         public ActionResult Create ()         {             var model = new Note ();             return PartialView ( "NoteForm" , model );         }         [ OutputCache ( Duration = 0 )]         public ActionResult Edit ( int id )         {             var manager = new NoteManager ();             var model = manager . GetById ( id );             return PartialView ( "NoteForm" , model );         }         [ HttpPost ]         public JsonResult Save ( Note note )         {             var manager = new NoteManager ();             var noteId = manager . Save ( note );             return Json ( new { Success = noteId > 0 });         }     } } The view for the note form, NoteForm.cshtml , looks like so: @model Website . Models . Note @using ( Html . BeginForm ( "Save" , "Home" , FormMethod . Post , new { id = "NoteForm" })) { @Html . Hidden ( "Id" ) < label class = "Title" >     < span > Title < /span><br / >     @Html . TextBox ( "Title" ) < /label> <label class="Body">     <span>Body</ span >< br />     @Html . TextArea ( "Body" ) < /label> } It is a strongly typed view for our Note model class. We give the <form> element an id attribute so that we can reference it via jQuery. The <label> and <span> tags give our UX some structure that we can style with some CSS. The List.cshtml view is used to render out a <ul> element with all of our notes. @model IEnumerable < Website . Models . Note > < ul class = "NotesList" >     @foreach ( var note in Model )     {     < li >         @note . Title < br />         @note . Body < br />         < span class = "EditLink ButtonLink" noteid = "@note.Id" > Edit < /span>     </ li >     } < /ul> This view is strongly typed as well. It includes a <span> tag that we will use as an edit button. We add a custom attribute named noteid to the <span> tag that we can use in our jQuery to identify the Id of the note object we want to edit. The view, Index.cshtml , contains a bit of html block structure and all of our jQuery logic code. @ {     ViewBag . Title = "Index" ; } < h2 > Notes < /h2> <div id="NoteListBlock"></ div > < span class = "AddLink ButtonLink" > Add New Note < /span> <div id="NoteDialog" title="" class="Hidden"></ div > < script type = "text/javascript" >     $ ( function () {         $ ( "#NoteDialog" ). dialog ({             autoOpen : false , width : 400 , height : 330 , modal : true ,             buttons : {                 "Save" : function () {                     $ . post ( "/Home/Save" ,                         $ ( "#NoteForm" ). serialize (),                         function () {                             $ ( "#NoteDialog" ). dialog ( "close" );                             LoadList ();                         });                 },                 Cancel : function () { $ ( this ). dialog ( "close" ); }             }         });         $ ( ".EditLink" ). live ( "click" , function () {             var id = $ ( this ). attr ( "noteid" );             $ ( "#NoteDialog" ). html ( "" )                 . dialog ( "option" , "title" , "Edit Note" )                 . load ( "/Home/Edit/" + id , function () { $ ( "#NoteDialog" ). dialog ( "open" ); });         });         $ ( ".AddLink" ). click ( function () {             $ ( "#NoteDialog" ). html ( "" )                 . dialog ( "option" , "title" , "Add Note" )                 . load ( "/Home/Create" , function () { $ ( "#NoteDialog" ). dialog ( "open" ); });         });         LoadList ();     });     function LoadList () {         $ ( "#NoteListBlock" ). load ( "/Home/List" );     } < /script> The <div> tag with the id attribute of "NoteListBlock" is used as a container target for the load of the partial view content of our List action method. It starts out empty and will get loaded with content via jQuery once the DOM is loaded. The <div> tag with the id attribute of "NoteDialog" is the element for our dialog widget. The jQuery UI library will use the title attribute for the text in the dialog widget top header bar. We start out with it empty here and will dynamically change the text via jQuery based on the request to either add or edit a note. This <div> tag is given a CSS class named "Hidden" that will set the display:none style on the element. Since our call to the jQuery UI method to make the element a dialog widget will occur in the jQuery document ready code block, the end user will see the <div> element rendered in their browser as the page renders and then it will hide after that jQuery call. Adding the display:hidden to the <div> element via CSS will ensure that it is never rendered until the user triggers the request to open the dialog. The jQuery document load block contains the setup for the dialog node, click event bindings for the edit and add links, and a call to a JavaScript function called LoadList that handles the AJAX call to the List action method. The .dialog() method is called on the "NoteDialog" <div> element and the options are set for the dialog widget. The buttons option defines 2 buttons and their click actions. The first is the "Save" button (the text in quotations is used as the text for the button) that will do an AJAX post to our Save action method and send the serialized form data from the note form (targeted with the id attribute "NoteForm"). Upon completion it will close the dialog widget and call the LoadList to update the UX without a redirect. The "Cancel" button simply closes the dialog widget. The .live() method handles binding a function to the "click" event on all elements with the CSS class named EditLink . We use the .live() method because it will catch and bind our function to elements even as the DOM changes. Since we will be constantly changing the note list as we add and edit we want to ensure that the edit links get wired up with click events. The function for the click event on the edit links gets the noteid attribute and stores it in a local variable. Then it clears out the HTML in the dialog element (to ensure a fresh start), calls the .dialog() method and sets the "title" option (this sets the title attribute value), and then calls the .load() AJAX method to hit our Edit action method and inject the returned content into the "NoteDialog" <div> element. Once the .load() method is complete it opens the dialog widget. The click event binding for the add link is similar to the edit, only we don't need to get the id value and we load the Create action method. This binding is done via the .click() method because it will only be bound on the initial load of the page. The add button will always exist. Finally, we toss in some CSS in the Content/Site.css file to style our form and the add/edit links. . ButtonLink { color : Blue ; cursor : pointer ; } . ButtonLink : hover { text - decoration : underline ; } . Hidden { display : none ; } #NoteForm label { display:block; margin-bottom:6px; } #NoteForm label > span { font-weight:bold; } #NoteForm input[type=text] { width:350px; } #NoteForm textarea { width:350px; height:80px; } With all of our code in place we can do an F5 and see our list of notes: If we click on an edit link we will get the dialog widget with the correct note data loaded: And if we click on the add new note link we will get the dialog widget with the empty form: The end result of our solution tree for our sample:

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  • 25 Secrets for Faster ASP.NET: the Eagle has landed!

    - by Michaela Murray
    On Friday we launched our new free eBook, 25 Secrets for Faster ASP.NET Applications! Heading for 1000 of you have picked it up already, but if you haven’t got your copy yet, you can grab it from http://www.red-gate.com/25secrets. It’s the follow up to the wildly successful 50 Ways to Avoid, Find and Fix ASP.NET Performance Issues, which we released back in January this year (you can download from www.red-gate.com/50ways). Once again, we collected tips from some of the smartest brains in the ASP.NET community, but this time around, we’ve covered the latest stuff in the .NET framework – async/await, Web API, and more. Houston, we have a winner… In my original blogpost, I offered a Microsoft Surface as a prize for the best tip. Now, after some serious deliberation, our judges have settled on a winner. By a unanimous verdict, the prize goes to… (wait for it!) … Jeffrey Richter, for this cheeky number, Tip #1 in the new book: Want to build scalable websites and services? Work asynchronously One of the secrets to producing scalable websites and services is to perform all your I/O operations asynchronously to avoid blocking threads. When your thread issues a synchronous I/O request, the Windows kernel blocks the thread. This causes the thread pool to create a new thread, which allocates a lot of memory and wastes precious CPU time. Calling xxxAsync method and using C#’s async/await keywords allows your thread to return to the thread pool so it can be used for other things. This reduces the resource consumption of your app, allowing it to use more memory and improving response time to your clients. Congratulations Jeffrey! Of course, I also owe a massive thank you to everyone who’s been involved in the book, especially all the authors. It’s a real treat to work with a developer community that’s so keen to collaborate and to share their hard-won nuggets of performance knowhow. If you haven’t read it yet, I can’t recommend it highly enough. You can get it for free at www.red-gate.com/25secrets The full backstory for both eBooks: https://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/2012/11/15/application-performance-the-best-of-the-web/ https://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/2012/11/27/application-performance-episode-2-announcing-the-judges/ https://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/2013/01/25/free-ebook-50-ways-to-avoid-find-and-fix-asp-net-performance-issues/ https://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/2013/03/22/50-ways-to-avoid-find-and-fix-asp-net-performance-issues-the-next-generation/

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