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• Set Up Anti-Brick Protection to Safeguard and Supercharge Your Wii

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  We’ve shown you how to hack your Wii for homebrew software, emulators, and DVD playback, now it’s time to safeguard your Wii against bricking and fix some annoyances—like that stupid “Press A” health screen. The thing about console modding and jailbreaking—save for the rare company like Amazon that doesn’t seem to care—is companies will play a game of cat and mouse to try and knock modded console out of commission, undo your awesome mods, or even brick your device. Although extreme moves like bricktacular-updates are rare once you modify your device you have to be vigilante in protecting it against updates that could hurt your sweet setup. Today we’re going to walk you through hardening your Wii and giving it the best brick protection available Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor Our Favorite Tech: What We’re Thankful For at How-To Geek Snowy Christmas House Personas Theme for Firefox The Mystic Underground Tunnel Wallpaper Ubunchu! – The Ubuntu Manga Available in Multiple Languages Breathe New Life into Your PlayStation 2 Peripherals by Hooking Them Up to Your Computer Move the Window Control Buttons to the Left Side in Windows Fun and Colorful Firefox Theme for Windows 7

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• The Oracle VM Hall of Fame

  - by Kristin Rose

  “Take me out to the ball game, take me out to the crowd. Buy me a new Oracle VM, I want my competition to be history!”...Yes, baseball is in full swing, and as we make our way to the closing of the quarter, Oracle is ready to “knock it out of the park” with its newly updated release of Oracle VM 3.1. This home run of a server virtualization solution will let you deploy software faster, as it intelligently manages your entire infrastructure, from application to disk. As if that wasn’t enough, the competition can’t even get on base! Have a look at the final score below: Partners will be hitting grand slams left and right because management tools, application templates and single source support, have all teamed up to create one heck of a curve ball for the competition, but more importantly, an absolute first draft pick for our partners. With no license cost and an affordable enterprise support cost, crowds have gathered to see this ‘All Star’ play some hard ball. Watch as Jeff Doolan, Sr. Director of Linux and Virtualization Channel Sales at Oracle, goes into more depth on how Oracle VM is a real game changer and eliminates the competition.Adding to the line-up are two key components of Oracle VM 3.1: Enhanced Ease-of-use: The new GUI design is engineered for faster execution of workflow and to maximize ease of use and reduce deployment time. Administrators have more time to spend at the ball park or focus on the business.New Oracle VM Templates: such as the Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.3; Oracle PeopleSoft FSCM 9.1; Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c; Oracle Linux 5.8; Oracle Linux 6.1; Oracle Solaris 11 – which add to the existing 100+ existing templates that are ready for download. Oracle VM Templates are pre-configured as an entire stack including OS and application fully tested, production ready and certified from Oracle.For more information on Oracle newest player, Oracle VM 3.1, read this press release or visit our technology information page. Batter Up,The OPN Communications Team

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• isometric drawing order with larger than single tile images - drawing order algorithm?

  - by Roger Smith

  I have an isometric map over which I place various images. Most images will fit over a single tile, but some images are slightly larger. For example, I have a bed of size 2x3 tiles. This creates a problem when drawing my objects to the screen as I get some tiles erroneously overlapping other tiles. The two solutions that I know of are either splitting the image into 1x1 tile segments or implementing my own draw order algorithm, for example by assigning each image a number. The image with number 1 is drawn first, then 2, 3 etc. Does anyone have advice on what I should do? It seems to me like splitting an isometric image is very non obvious. How do you decide which parts of the image are 'in' a particular tile? I can't afford to split up all of my images manually either. The draw order algorithm seems like a nicer choice but I am not sure if it's going to be easy to implement. I can't solve, in my head, how to deal with situations whereby you change the index of one image, which causes a knock on effect to many other images. If anyone has an resources/tutorials on this I would be most grateful.

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• ecryptfs - decrypt and mount at boot with USB key

  - by Josh McGee

  I have a system running Ubuntu Server as a testbed for some services that I want to get familiar with. I decided to let the installation procedure set up encryption. I knew all along that I would have to decrypt it with the passphrase in order to get the system booted, but I assumed it wouldn't matter since it will only boot once or twice a month. However, my brother has informed me that he is a victim of power outages at the residence where this server is located. This means we have to explain to his girlfriend how to turn on the computer, attach a keyboard, connect a monitor (she just can't understand that she can type to the computer without a display, so whatever) and input the passphrase for us, while we are at work. I have arrived at the conclusion that I should just put together a USB key that can be plugged in before powering on the computer, to avoid all the trouble. Is this possible with ecryptfs? Is there a tutorial or simple list of instructions available so that I can knock this out and focus back on the stuff I care about? EDIT: I am aware that this is possible with LUKS and dm-crypt, but unfortunately the magical encryption that Ubuntu hands you during the installation is only ecryptfs so my question is specific to that.

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• Recruiters intentionally present one good candidate for an available job

  - by Jeff O

  Maybe they do it without realizing. The recruiter's goal is to fill the job as soon as possible. I even think they feel it is in their best interest that the candidate be qualified, so I'm not trying to knock recruiters. Aren't they better off presenting 3 candidates, but one clearly stands out? The last thing they want from their client is a need to extend the interview process because they can't decide. If the client doesn't like any of them, you just bring on your next good candidate. This way they hedge their bet a little. Any experience, insight or ever heard of a head-hunter admit this? Does it make sense? There has to be a reason why the choose such unqualified people. I've seen jobs posted that clearly state they want someone with a CS degree and the recruiter doesn't take it literally. I don't have a CS degree or Java experience and still they think I'm a possible fit.

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• Office design and layout for agile development

  - by Adam Eberbach

  (moved from stackoverflow) I have found lot of discussions here on about which keyboard, desk, light or colored background is best - but I can't find one addressing the layout of the whole office. We are a company with about 20 employees moving to a new place, something larger. There are two main development practices going on here with regular combination, the back end people often needing to work with the mobile people to arrange web services. There are about twice as many back end people as mobile people. About half of the back end developers are working on-site at any time and while they are almost never all in the office at once at least 5-10 spaces need to be provided - so most of the time the two groups are about equal. We have the chance to arrange desks, partitions and possibly even walls to make the space good. There won't be cash for dot-com frills like catering or massages but now's the time to be planning to avoid ending up with a bunch of desks in a long line. Joel on Software's Bionic Office is an article I've remembered from way back and it has some good ideas but I* (and more importantly the company's owners) are not completely sold on the privacy idea in an environment where we are supposed to be collaborating. This is another great link - The Ultimate Software Development Office Layout - I hadn't even remembered enclosed meeting rooms until reading this. Does the private office stand in the way of agile development? Is the scrum enough forced contact and if you need to bug someone you should need to get up and knock on their door? What design layouts can you point to and why would you recommend them? *I'm not against closed offices at all but would be happy if some other solution can do just as well. If it can't... well, that's what this question is all about.

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• How do I simplify a 2D game grid for level management while keeping its by-pixel features?

  - by Eric Thoma

  (I cross-posted this from StackOverflow as this seems to be a more appropriate forum. I've looked around a little here and I did not find an answer, so I hope this is not a recurring question.) This is a question dealing with 2D world design. I am playing around by creating a 2D bird's eye view shooter game, and I am looking to make the game sleek and advanced. I hope to be able to write physics so projectiles have momentum and knock-down properties. I am immediately running into the problem of world design. I need a way to have level files that store everything there is about a game. This is easiest by just having a grid of objects. But there are thin-walls and other objects that don't seem to fit into a traditional cell of a grid. I want to be able to fit all these together so I can streamline level design; so I don't have to put in the exact pixel-specific start and end of a wall. There doesn't seem to be an obvious translation from level file to game without forcing myself into a pacman-life scenario, meaning a scenario where the game feels boxy and discrete. There is a contrast between the smoothly (relatively) moving characters and finite jumps in a grid. I would appreciate an answer that would describe implementation options or point me to resources that do. I would also appreciate references to sites that teach game design. The language I am using is Java (although I would love to use C or C++, but I can never find convenient resources in those languages). Thank you for any answers. Please leave any questions in the space below; I will be able to answer them later tonight (28th Nov).

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• Continuous Retraining Tutorials

  - by foampile

  I am looking for an online resource in which you can sortof design your future professional profile and it would provide you a set of tutorials that you would complete to get a basic level of familiarity with related technologies. One of my professional problems is my learning style: I can learn either by direct hands-on experience OR by following a rigid training program that goes in a linear progression. I have a hard time learning things in a multidimensional environment where the biggest challenge is to determine what needs to be learned and how to pick from a ton of books and the least problem is to go through the actual material. So I am looking for a reputable source that will knock those two confusing questions out for me so I can kick back and continuously be upgrading my skills without having to worry about what and how myself. I have found some decent online tutorials for various technologies but never found a single place that has all or most developer education tutorials that all follow the same or similar interface. I am kindof a lazy learner and would rather follow confirmed learning steps than be figuring my own education path just to realize I did it all wrong down the road. Is there a tutorial mega-boutique like that online?

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• A Dozen USB Chargers Analyzed; Or: Beware the Knockoffs

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  When it comes to buying a USB charger one is just as good as another so you might as well buy the cheapest one, right? This interesting and detailed analysis of name brand, off-brand, and counterfeit chargers will have you rethinking that stance. Ken Shirriff gathered up a dozen USB chargers including official Apple chargers, counterfeit Apple chargers, as well as offerings from Monoprice, Belkin, Motorola, and other companies. After putting them all through a battery of tests he gave them overall rankings based on nine different categories including power stability, power quality, and efficiency. The take away from his research? Quality varied widely between brands but when sticking with big companies like Apple or HP the chargers were all safe. The counterfeit chargers (like the $2 Apple iPad charger knock-off he tested) proved to be outright dangerous–several actually melted or caught fire in the course of the project. Hit up the link below for his detailed analysis including power output readings for the dozen chargers. A Dozen USB Chargers in the Lab [via O'Reilly Radar] 6 Start Menu Replacements for Windows 8 What Is the Purpose of the “Do Not Cover This Hole” Hole on Hard Drives? How To Log Into The Desktop, Add a Start Menu, and Disable Hot Corners in Windows 8

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• Simple animation using C#/Windows Forms

  - by clintp

  I need to knock out a quick animation in C#/Windows Forms for a Halloween display. Just some 2D shapes moving about on a solid background. Since this is just a quick one-off project I really don't want to install and learn an entire new set of tools for this. (DirectX dev kits, Silverlight, Flash, etc..) I also have to install this on multiple computers so anything beyond the basic .Net framework (2.0) would be a pain in the arse. For tools I've got VS2k8, 25 years of development experience, a wheelbarrow, holocaust cloak, and about 2 days to knock this out. I haven't done animation since using assembler on my Atari 130XE (hooray for page flipping and player/missile graphics!) Advice? Here's some of the things I'd like to know: I can draw on any empty widget (like a panel) by fiddling with it's OnPaint handler, right? That's how I'd draw a custom widget. Is there a better technique than this? Is there a page-flipping technique for this kind of thing in Windows Forms? I'm not looking for a high frame rate, just as little flicker/drawing as necessary. Thanks. Post Mortem Edit ... "a couple of coding days later" Well, the project is done. The links below came in handy although a couple of them were 404. (I wish SO would allow more than one reply to be marked "correct"). The biggest problem I had to overcome was flickering, and a persistent bug when I tried to draw on the form directly. Using the OnPaint event for the Form: bad idea. I never got that to work; lots of mysterious errors (stack overflows, or ArgumentNullExceptions). I wound up using a panel sized to fill the form and that worked fine. Using the OnPaint method is slow anyway. Somewhere online I read that building the PaintEventArgs was slow, and they weren't kidding. Lots of flickering went away when I abandoned this. Skip the OnPaint/Invalidate() and just paint it yourself. Setting all of the "double buffering" options on the form still left some flicker that had to be fixed. (And I found conflicting docs that said "set them on the control" and "set them on the form". Well controls don't have a .SetStyle() method.) I haven't tested without them, so they might be doing something (this is the form): this.SetStyle(ControlStyles.UserPaint, true); this.SetStyle(ControlStyles.OptimizedDoubleBuffer, true); this.SetStyle(ControlStyles.AllPaintingInWmPaint, true); So the workhorse of the code wound up looking like (pf is the panel control): void PaintPlayField() { Bitmap bufl = new Bitmap(pf.Width, pf.Height); using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(bufl)) { g.FillRectangle(Brushes.Black, new Rectangle(0, 0, pf.Width, pf.Height)); DrawItems(g); DrawMoreItems(g); pf.CreateGraphics().DrawImageUnscaled(bufl, 0, 0); } } And I just called PaintPlayField from the inside of my Timer loop. No flicker at all.

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• C# array of objects - conditional validation

  - by fishdump

  Sorry about the vague title! I have an class with a number of member variables (system, zone, site, ...) public sealed class Cello { public String Company; public String Zone; public String System; public String Site; public String Facility; public String Process; //... } I have an array of objects of this class. private Cello[] m_cellos = null; // ... I need to know whether the array contains objects with the same site but different systems, zones or companies since such a situation would be illegal. I have various other checks to make but they are all along similar lines. The Array class has a number of functions that look promising but I am not very up on defining 'key selector' functions and things like that. Any suggestions or pointers would be greatly appreciated. --- Alistair.

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• Interesting SQL Sorting Issue

  - by rofly

  It's crunch time, deadline for my most recent contract is coming in two days and almost everything is complete and working fine (knock on wood) except for one issue. In one of my stored procedures, I'm needing to return a result set as follows. group_id | name A101 | Craig A102 | Craig Z101 | Craig Z102 | Craig A101 | Jim A102 | Jim Z101 | Jim Z102 | Jim B101 | Andy B102 | Andy Z101 | Andy Z102 | Andy The names need to be sorted by the first character of the group id and also include the Z101/Z102 entries. By sorting strictly by the group id, I get a result set as follows: A101 | Craig A102 | Craig A101 | Jim A102 | Jim B101 | Andy B102 | Andy Z101 | Andy Z102 | Andy Z101 | Jim Z102 | Jim I really can't think of a solution that doesn't involve me making a cursor and bloating the stored procedure up more than it already is. I'm sure a great mind out there has an elegant solution and I'm eager to see what the community can come up with. Thanks a ton in advance.

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• Any good Open Source or Cheap ASP.NET Catalog Applications

  - by Zhaph - Ben Duguid

  We're looking for a cheap-to-free "off the shelf" ASP.NET catalogue application, that will meet the following requirements: Support two kinds of listings: Suppliers of Services Suppliers of Products, and their Products Suppliers can be categorised by: Area of specialisation - including sub-categories Location Other data, e.g. where listing came from Versioning of supplier/product details Easy to use management interface Use masterpages so we can drop it into our existing site layout Run on a Windows 2003 server, with .NET 3.5 installed In an ideal world, the following additional requirements might be met: Suppliers can manage their own listings Other products that are available to us (that will obviously need some additional development to meet these requirements) are: Content Management System (MS) Commerce Server - bear in mind we're not selling the products/suppliers, just listing them Simple DB application. I'm happy to knock something up in MCMS/simple DB, I'm just looking to see if anyone's had any experience with off the shelf apps that could save us some time. I'm also happy to receive "Don't use this because" type answers. Thanks.

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• Crashing the OS X Pasteboard

  - by Ben Packard

  I have an application that reads in text by emulating CMD-C copy commands and reading the pasteboard - unfortunately this the only way to achieve what I need. Occasionally, something goes wrong in execution (not sure yet if it's related to the copy command or not) and the app crashes. Once in a while, this has a knock on effect on the system-wide pasteboard - any other application that is running will crash if I attempt a copy, cut, or paste. Is there a robust way to handle this - something I should be doing with the NSPasteboard before exiting? Any information on what might be happening is appreciated. For completeness, here are the only snippets of code that access the pasteboard: Reading from the pasteboard: NSString *pBoardText = [[NSPasteboard generalPasteboard]stringForType:NSStringPboardType]; Initially clearing the pasteboard (I run this only once, at launch): [[NSPasteboard generalPasteboard] declareTypes: [NSArray arrayWithObject:NSStringPboardType] owner: self]; [[NSPasteboard generalPasteboard] setString: @"" forType: NSStringPboardType];

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• Remove certain keys from a dictionary in python

  - by Margaret

  I'm trying to construct a dictionary that contains a series of sets: {Field1:{Value1, Value2, Value3}, Field2{Value4}} The trouble is, I then wish to delete any fields from the dictionary that only have one value in the set. I have been writing code like this: for field in FieldSet: if len(FieldSet[field]) == 1: del(FieldSet[field]) But receive the error "RuntimeError: dictionary changed size during execution". (Not surprising, since that's what I'm doing.) It's not the be-all and end-all if I have to knock together some sort of workaround, but is it possible to do this?

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• php shuffle() returns one item

  - by mike

  Anyone have any idea why shuffle() would only return 1 item? when using: $array2 = shuffle($array1); with the following array($array1): Array ( [0] => 1 [1] => 5 [2] => 6 [3] => 7 [4] => 8 [5] => 10 [6] => 11 [7] => 12 [8] => 13 [9] => 14 ) The output of: print_r($array2); is simply: 1 Any idea as to why it would not only not shuffle the array, but knock off the remaining 9 items in the array? thanks!

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• Template deduction based on return type?

  - by Marlon

  I'd like to be able to use template deduction to achieve the following: GCPtr<A> ptr1 = GC::Allocate(); GCPtr<B> ptr2 = GC::Allocate(); instead of (what I currently have): GCPtr<A> ptr1 = GC::Allocate<A>(); GCPtr<B> ptr2 = GC::Allocate<B>(); My current Allocate function looks like this: class GC { public: template <typename T> static GCPtr<T> Allocate(); }; Would this be possible to knock off the extra < A and < B? Thanks

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• How should I be storing objects that I wish to access in reverse order of the way I placed them in

  - by andrew hicks

  I'm following this guide here: http://www.mazeworks.com/mazegen/mazetut/index.htm Or more specficially create a CellStack (LIFO) to hold a list of cell locations set TotalCells = number of cells in grid choose a cell at random and call it CurrentCell set VisitedCells = 1 while VisitedCells < TotalCells find all neighbors of CurrentCell with all walls intact if one or more found choose one at random knock down the wall between it and CurrentCell push CurrentCell location on the CellStack make the new cell CurrentCell add 1 to VisitedCells else pop the most recent cell entry off the CellStack make it CurrentCell endIf endWhile Im writing this in java, My problem is. How should I be storing my visited cells, So that I can access them from reverse order of when I placed them in. Like this? List<Location> visitedCells = new ArrayList<Location>(); Then do I grab with visitedCells.get(visitedCells.size()-1)? Location stores the x, y and z. Not something Im trying to ask you.

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• Friday Fun: Games that Look Like Productivity Apps

  - by Mysticgeek

  We’ve been showing you fun flash games to play during company time on a Friday afternoon. Hopefully while playing them, you haven’t received a “talking to”. Today we show you some cool games to play that look like productivity apps, so the boss will be none the wiser. The website cantyouseeimbusy.com has developed some very neat little games that look like productivity apps like Word and Excel. These apps look exactly like some project you would be working on, but are really neat little games. Here we take a look at three cool ones on the site called Breakdown, Leadership, and Cost Cutter. Leadership Leadership is a cool game that looks like something you would be working in Excel and is a spin off of the classic game Moon Lander. You navigate your ship through a variety of challenging line graphs. Breakdown This one is a knock off of the classic game Break Out. Use your mouse to scroll the racket at the bottom and bounce the ball off of the text in the document. Press the space bar to pause the game and the elements will disappear…good for when the boss comes around. Cost Cutter This one is a puzzle game where it looks like your working on some bar charts in Excel. You need to click combinations of two or more blocks that are the same color. Again, hit the spacebar and the game elements will disappear. If you’re looking for a way to goof off with some simple games without the boss knowing, these will definitely do the trick. Another cool game along these lines is Excit! which we covered previously. Play Cost Cutter, Breakdown, and Leadership at cantyouseeimbusy.com Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Friday Fun: Get Your Mario OnFriday Fun: Bricks Breaking & Cube CrashFriday Fun: Fancy Pants AdventuresFriday Fun: GemCraft is a Totally Addictive Tower Defense GameFriday Fun: Five More Time Wasting Online 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Download Microsoft Office Help tab The Growth of Citibank Quickly Switch between Tabs in IE 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

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• JavaFX, Google Maps, and NetBeans Platform

  - by Geertjan

  Thanks to a great new article by Rob Terpilowski, and other work and research he describes in that article, it's now trivial to introduce a map component to a NetBeans Platform application. Making use of the GMapsFX library, as described in Rob's article, which provides a JavaFX API for Google Maps, you can very quickly knock this application together. Click to enlarge the image. Here's all the code (from Rob's article): @TopComponent.Description( preferredID = "MapTopComponent", persistenceType = TopComponent.PERSISTENCE_ALWAYS ) @TopComponent.Registration(mode = "editor", openAtStartup = true) @ActionID(category = "Window", id = "org.map.MapTopComponent") @ActionReference(path = "Menu/Window" /*, position = 333 */) @TopComponent.OpenActionRegistration( displayName = "#CTL_MapWindowAction", preferredID = "MapTopComponent" ) @NbBundle.Messages({ "CTL_MapWindowAction=Map", "CTL_MapTopComponent=Map Window", "HINT_MapTopComponent=This is a Map window" }) public class MapWindow extends TopComponent implements MapComponentInitializedListener { protected GoogleMapView mapComponent; protected GoogleMap map; private static final double latitude = 52.3667; private static final double longitude = 4.9000; public MapWindow() { setName(Bundle.CTL_MapTopComponent()); setToolTipText(Bundle.HINT_MapTopComponent()); setLayout(new BorderLayout()); JFXPanel panel = new JFXPanel(); Platform.setImplicitExit(false); Platform.runLater(() -> { mapComponent = new GoogleMapView(); mapComponent.addMapInializedListener(this); BorderPane root = new BorderPane(mapComponent); Scene scene = new Scene(root); panel.setScene(scene); }); add(panel, BorderLayout.CENTER); } @Override public void mapInitialized() { //Once the map has been loaded by the Webview, initialize the map details. LatLong center = new LatLong(latitude, longitude); MapOptions options = new MapOptions(); options.center(center) .mapMarker(true) .zoom(9) .overviewMapControl(false) .panControl(false) .rotateControl(false) .scaleControl(false) .streetViewControl(false) .zoomControl(false) .mapType(MapTypeIdEnum.ROADMAP); map = mapComponent.createMap(options); //Add a couple of markers to the map. MarkerOptions markerOptions = new MarkerOptions(); LatLong markerLatLong = new LatLong(latitude, longitude); markerOptions.position(markerLatLong) .title("My new Marker") .animation(Animation.DROP) .visible(true); Marker myMarker = new Marker(markerOptions); MarkerOptions markerOptions2 = new MarkerOptions(); LatLong markerLatLong2 = new LatLong(latitude, longitude); markerOptions2.position(markerLatLong2) .title("My new Marker") .visible(true); Marker myMarker2 = new Marker(markerOptions2); map.addMarker(myMarker); map.addMarker(myMarker2); //Add an info window to the Map. InfoWindowOptions infoOptions = new InfoWindowOptions(); infoOptions.content("<h2>Center of the Universe</h2>") .position(center); InfoWindow window = new InfoWindow(infoOptions); window.open(map, myMarker); } } Awesome work Rob, will be useful for many developers out there.

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• Culture Shmulture?

  - by steve.diamond

  I've been thinking about "Customer Experience Management" lately. Here at Oracle, we arguably have the most complete suite of applications for managing the customer experience across and in the context of multiple channels -- from marketing to loyalty to contact center to self-service to analytics offerings, and more. And stay tuned, because in coming months let's just say we'll have even more to talk about on this front. But that said............ Last weekend my wife and I stayed at one of the premiere hotel chains on the planet. I won't name them, but we all know the short list. It could have been the St. Regis or the Ritz Carlton or Four Seasons or Hyatt Park or....This stay, at this particular hotel, was simply outstanding. Within a chain known for providing "above and beyond" levels of service, this particular hotel, under this particular manager, exceeded expectations on so many fronts. For example, at the Spa we mentioned to the two attendants that my wife is seven months pregnant and that we had previously had a lot of trouble conceiving. We then went to our room. Ten minutes later we heard a knock at the door and received a plate of chocolate covered strawberries with a heartfelt note and an inspiring quote, signed by the two spa attendees. The following day we arranged to have a bellhop drive us to the beach. Although they had a pre-arranged beach shuttle service with time limits, etc., he greeted us by saying, "I'm yours for the day until 4 p.m. Whatever you want to do is fine by me, as long as it's legal!" The morning that we left we arranged to have a taxi drive us to the airport--a nearly 40 mile drive. What showed up was a private coach complete with navy blue suited driver dude. And we were charged the taxi fare price. And there were many other awesome exchanges I won't mention here, although I did email the GM of this hotel two nights ago and expressed our effusive praise and gratitude. I'd submit that this hotel chain would have a definitive advantage using even more Oracle software to manage and optimize its customer interactions (yes, they are a customer). But WITHOUT the culture--that management team--and that instillation of aligned values across all employees of exemplifying 'the golden rule,' I wonder how much technology really matters in providing a distinctively positive and memorable customer experience. Lest you think I'm alone in these pontifications, have you read Paul Greenberg's blog lately? Have you seen one of his most recent posts? Now this SPECIFIC post is NOT about customer service per se. But it is about people. So yes, please think long and hard about the technology you seek to deploy. But never forget who will be interacting with your systems, and your customers.

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• A new name for unit tests

  - by Will

  I never used to like unit testing. I always thought it increased the amount of work I had to do. Turns out, that's only true in terms of the actual number of lines of code you write and furthermore, this is completely offset by the increase in the number of lines of useful code that you can write in an hour with tests and test driven development. Now I love unit tests as they allow me to write useful code, that quite often works first time! (knock on wood) I have found that people are reluctant to do unit tests or start a project with test driven development if they are under strict time-lines or in an environment where others don't do it, so they don't. Kinda like, a cultural refusal to even try. I think one of the most powerful things about unit testing is the confidence that it gives you to undertake refactoring. It also gives new found hope, that I can give my code to someone else to refactor/improve, and if my unit tests still work, I can use the new version of the library that they modified, pretty much, without fear. It's this last aspect of unit testing that I think needs a new name. The unit test is more like a contract of what this code should do now, and in the future. When I hear the word testing, I think of mice in cages, with multiple experiments done on them to see the effectiveness of a compound. This is not what unit testing is, we're not trying out different code to see what is the most affective approach, we're defining what outputs we expect with what inputs. In the mice example, unit tests are more like the definitions of how the universe will work as opposed to the experiments done on the mice. Am I on crack or does anyone else see this refusal to do testing and do they think it's a similar reason they don't want to do it? What reasons do you / others give for not testing? What do you think their motivations are in not unit testing? And as a new name for unit testing that might get over some of the objections, how about jContract? (A bit Java centric I know :), or Unit Contracts?

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• Friday Fun: Snowball

  - by Asian Angel

  It is Christmas Eve and hopefully you are enjoying the start of an early weekend away from work. This week we have a snowball throwing game for you to try out, so bundle up and get ready to let those snowballs fly! Snowball The object of the game is to use your snowball ammo to harass the drunk businessman and send him flying along distance-wise as far as you can. Simply use your mouse to aim and click the left button to throw snowballs. You can monitor your stats on the silver bar towards the top of the window. The sound can also be disabled if the music is bothering you, but keep in mind that all sound will be disabled if you use the option. Time to get those snowballs flying through the air!! Keep hitting the businessman with your snowballs as you chase after him. Make certain that your aim is good or you will quickly run out of snowballs! You can really get him moving along at a good rate and he can even go high enough in the air to disappear off the screen for a few moments. There is a also chance that your aim will be so wicked with the snowballs that you will literally knock the drunk businessman’s head off! Weird but possible… The game ends when one of these two events occur: 1.) you run out of snowballs or 2.) the businessman literally bounces back at and then drops behind you as seen in the screenshot here. The moment either happens your score will pop up and then you have the opportunity to try again. Have fun! Note: The bounce back event can happen when encountering cars. Play Snowball Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Is Your Desktop Printer More Expensive Than Printing Services? 20 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know HTG Explains: Which Linux File System Should You Choose? HTG Explains: Why Does Photo Paper Improve Print Quality? An Alternate Star Wars Christmas Special [Video] Sunset in a Tropical Paradise Wallpaper Natural Wood Grain Icons for Your Desktop and App Launcher Docks My Blackberry Is Not Working! The Apple Too?! [Funny Video] Hidden Tracks Your Stolen Mac; Free Until End of January Why the Other Checkout Line Always Moves Faster

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• How do software projects go over budget and under-deliver?

  - by Carlos

  I've come across this story quite a few times here in the UK: NHS Computer System Summary: We're spunking £12 Billion on some health software with barely anything working. I was sitting the office discussing this with my colleagues, and we had a little think about. From what I can see, all the NHS needs is a database + middle tier of drugs/hospitals/patients/prescriptions objects, and various GUIs for doctors and nurses to look at. You'd also need to think about security and scalability. And you'd need to sit around a hospital/pharmacy/GPs office for a bit to figure out what they need. But, all told, I'd say I could knock together something with that kind of structure in a couple of days, and maybe throw in a month or two to make it work in scale. * If I had a few million quid, I could probably hire some really excellent designers to make a maintainable codebase, and also buy appropriate hardware to run the system on. I hate to trivialize something that seems to have caused to much trouble, but to me it looks like just a big distributed CRUD + UI system. So how on earth did this project bloat to £12B without producing much useful software? As I don't think the software sounds so complicated, I can only imagine that something about how it was organised caused this mess. Is it outsourcing that's the problem? Is it not getting the software designers to understand the medical business that caused it? What are your experiences with projects gone over budget, under delivered? What are best practices for large projects? Have you ever worked on such a project? EDIT *This bit seemed to get a lot of attention. What I mean is I could probably do this for say, 30 users, spending a few tens of thousands of pounds. I'm not including stuff I don't know about the medical industry and government, but I think most people who've been around programming are familiar with that kind of database/front end kind of design. My point is the NHS project looks like a BIG version of this, with bells and whistles, notably security. But surely a budget millions of times larger than mine could provide this?

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• Hadoop, NOSQL, and the Relational Model

  - by Phil Factor

  (Guest Editorial for the IT Pro/SysAdmin Newsletter)Whereas Relational Databases fit the world of commerce like a glove, it is useless to pretend that they are a perfect fit for all human endeavours. Although, with SQL Server, we’ve made great strides with indexing text, in processing spatial data and processing markup, there is still a problem in dealing efficiently with large volumes of ephemeral semi-structured data. Key-value stores such as Cassandra, Project Voldemort, and Riak are of great value for ephemeral data, and seem of equal value as a data-feed that provides aggregations to an RDBMS. However, the Document databases such as MongoDB and CouchDB are ideal for semi-structured data for which no fixed schema exists; analytics and logging are obvious examples. NoSQL products, such as MongoDB, tackle the semi-structured data problem with panache. MongoDB is designed with a simple document-oriented data model that scales horizontally across multiple servers. It doesn’t impose a schema, and relies on the application to enforce the data structure. This is another take on the old ‘EAV’ problem (where you don’t know in advance all the attributes of a particular entity) It uses a clever replica set design that allows automatic failover, and uses journaling for data durability. It allows indexing and ad-hoc querying. However, for SQL Server users, the obvious choice for handling semi-structured data is Apache Hadoop. There will soon be an ODBC Driver for Apache Hive .and an Add-in for Excel. Additionally, there are now two Hadoop-based connectors for SQL Server; the Apache Hadoop connector for SQL Server 2008 R2, and the SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW) connector. We can connect to Hadoop process the semi-structured data and then store it in SQL Server. For one steeped in the culture of Relational SQL Databases, I might be expected to throw up my hands in the air in a gesture of contempt for a technology that was, judging by the overblown journalism on the subject, about to make my own profession as archaic as the Saggar makers bottom knocker (a potter’s assistant who helped the saggar maker to make the bottom of the saggar by placing clay in a metal hoop and bashing it). However, on the contrary, I find that I'm delighted with the advances made by the NoSQL databases in the past few years. Having the flow of ideas from the NoSQL providers will knock any trace of complacency out of the providers of Relational Databases and inspire them into back-fitting some features, such as horizontal scaling, with sharding and automatic failover into SQL-based RDBMSs. It will do the breed a power of good to benefit from all this lateral thinking.

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