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• iPhone Apps, Objective C, a Graph, and Functions vs. Objects (or something like that)

  - by BillEccles

  Gentleones, I've got a UIImageView that I have in a UIView. This particular UIImageView displays a PNG of a graph. It's important for this particular view controller and another view controller to know what the graph "looks like," i.e., the function described by the PNG graph. These other view controllers need to be able to call a "function" of some sort with the X value returning the Y value. Please ignore the fact (from an outsider's perspective) that I could probably generate the graph programmatically. So my questions are: 1 - Where should I put this function? Should it go in one view controller or the other, or should it go in its own class or main or...? 2 - Should it be an object in some way? Or should it be a straight function? (In either case, where's it belong?) Pardon the apparent n00b-iness of the question. It's 'cause I'm honestly a n00b! This OOP stuff is giving my head a spin having been a procedural programmer for 30 years. (And I choose to learn it by jumping into an iPhone app. Talk about baptism by fire!) Thanks in advance,Bill

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• Easiest way to programmatically create email accounts for use by web app?

  - by cadwag

  I have a web app that create groups. Each group gets their own discussion board. I would like to add the feature of allowing users to send emails to their "group" within the web app to start a new discussion or reply to an email from the "group" to make a new post in an already ongoing discussion. For example, to start a new discussion a user would send: From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: Hey guys! Meet up on Tuesday? Body: Yes? No? All members of the group would receive an email: From: [email protected] Subject: Hey guys! Meet up on Tuesday? Body: Yes? No? Reply-To: group1@ example.com And, the app would start a new discussion with: Author: Bill Fake Subject: Hey guys! Meet up on Tuesday? Body: Yes? No? This is a pretty standard feature for Google Groups and other big sites. So how do us mere mortals go about implementing this? Is there an easy way? Or do I: 1. Install postfix 2. Write scripts to create new accounts for each new group 3. Access the server periodically via pop3 (or imap?) to retrieve the email messages sent to each account? 4. Parse the message for content If it's the latter, did I miss a step?

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• WCF - Contract Name could not be found in the list of contracts

  - by user208662

  Hello, I am relatively new to WCF. However, I need to create a service that exposes data to both Silverlight and AJAX client applications. In an attempt to accomplish this, I have created the following service to serve as a proof of concept: [ServiceContract(Namespace="urn:MyCompany.MyProject.Services")] public interface IJsonService { [OperationContract] [WebInvoke(Method = "GET", RequestFormat=WebMessageFormat.Json, ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json)] List<String> JsonFindNames(); } [ServiceContract(Namespace="urn:MyCompany.MyProject.Services")] public interface IWsService { [OperationContract(Name="FindNames")] List<String> WsFindNames(); } [ServiceBehavior(Name="myService", Namespace="urn:MyCompany.MyProject.Services")] public class myService : IJsonService, IWsService { public List<String> JsonFindNames() { return FindNames(); } public List<String> WsFindNames() { return FindNames(name); } public List<string> FindNames() { List<string> names = List<string>(); names.Add("Alan"); names.Add("Bill"); return results; } } When I try to access this service, I receive the following error: The contract name 'myService' could not be found in the list of contracts implemented by the service 'myService'. What is the cause of this? How do I fix this? Thank you

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• How to (kindly) ask your users to upgrade from IE6?

  - by nickf

  It's no secret at all that IE6 has been a major roadblock to the advancement of the web over the last few years. I couldn't count the number of hours I've spent bashing my head against a wall trying to fix or debug IE6 issues. The way I see it, there are two types of IE6 user. a) the poor corporate schmoe whose IT department doesn't want to upgrade in case something breaks, and b) the mums and dads of the world who think the internet is the blue E on their desktop (and I don't mean that in a nasty way). There's probably a couple of people who know about all the other browsers, but still choose to run IE6. They get what they deserve, IMO. Anyway, getting to the point, I'd say that 90% of my IE6-using visitors are in the the mums and dads category - they're not stupid, they just don't know WHY they should upgrade to IE7 or Firefox or whatever. How do I educate these people without pissing them off? Is there a nice and friendly website I can direct these people to, which explains the reasons for upgrading in plain language? Any mention of "security" or "web standards" I think would just come across as scary. I've just seen http://www.whatbrowser.org which seems to fit the bill nicely. It explains in very basic terms: what a web browser is why you'd want to upgrade it how old your current browser is (subtle hint to those with a 9 year old browser) ..aaaand it's in 22 languages. It's from Google but displays no bias (it links to Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, Internet Explorer displayed in a random order).

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• How to eliminate duplicate rows?

  - by Odette

  hi guys im back with my original query and i just have one question please (ps: I know i have to vote and regsiter and I promise I will do that today) With the following query (t-sql) I am getting the correct results, except that there are duplicates now. I have been reading up and think I can use the PARTITION BY syntax - can you please show me how to incorporate the PARTITION BY syntax? WITH CALC1 AS (SELECT OTQUOT, OTIT01 AS ITEMS, ROUND(OQCQ01 * OVRC01,2) AS COST FROM @[email protected] WHERE OTIT01 < '' UNION ALL ... SELECT OTQUOT, OTIT10 AS ITEMS, ROUND(OQCQ10 * OVRC10,2) AS COST FROM @[email protected] WHERE OTIT10 < '' ) SELECT OTQUOT, DESC, ITEMS, RN FROM ( SELECT OTQUOT, ITEMS, B.IXRPGP AS GROUP, C.OTRDSC AS DESC, COST, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY OTQUOT ORDER BY COST DESC) AS RN FROM CALC1 AS A INNER JOIN @[email protected] AS B ON (A.ITEMS = B.IKITMC) INNER JOIN DATAGRP.GDSGRP AS C ON (B.IXRPGP = C.OKRPGP) ) T RESULTS: 60408169 FENCING GNCPDCTP18BGBG 1 60408169 FENCING CGIFESHPD1795BG 2 60408169 FENCING GTTCGIBG 3 60408169 FENCING GBTCGIBG 4 How do I get rid of the duplicates? thanks Bill and all the others for your help (I am still learning!)

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• Comparing Object properties using reflection

  - by Kumar

  I have two classes Address and Employee as follows: public class Address { public string AddressLine1 { get; set; } public string AddressLine2 { get; set; } public string City { get; set; } public string State { get; set; } public string Zip { get; set; } } public class Employee { public string FirstName { get; set; } public string MiddleName { get; set; } public string LastName { get; set; } public Address EmployeeAddress { get; set; } } I have two employee instances as follows: var emp1Address = new Address(); emp1Address.AddressLine1 = "Microsoft Corporation"; emp1Address.AddressLine2 = "One Microsoft Way"; emp1Address.City = "Redmond"; emp1Address.State = "WA"; emp1Address.Zip = "98052-6399"; var emp1 = new Employee(); emp1.FirstName = "Bill"; emp1.LastName = "Gates"; emp1.EmployeeAddress = emp1Address; var emp2Address = new Address(); emp2Address.AddressLine1 = "Gates Foundation"; emp2Address.AddressLine2 = "One Microsoft Way"; emp2Address.City = "Redmond"; emp2Address.State = "WA"; emp2Address.Zip = "98052-6399"; var emp2 = new Employee(); emp2.FirstName = "Melinda"; emp2.LastName = "Gates"; emp2.EmployeeAddress = emp2Address; Now how can I write a method which compares these two employees and returns the list of properties which have different values. So in this example I would like the result to be FirstName and Address.AddressLine1 .

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• Recommendations for jQuery tooltips

  - by jerome

  I am looking for tooltip plugins for jQuery that would allow for the following type of behavior. <a href="somewhere.html"> <span> <img src="someimage.jpg" style="display: none;" /> Here is the tooltip content. </span> Here is the link to somewhere. </a> The behavior that I am hoping for is to hover over "Here is the link to somewhere" and have a tooltip pop up showing the content of the span containing "someimage.jpg" and "Here is the tooltip content". I would prefer that the tooltip track along with the mouse's movement over the link and that the tooltip's appearace (background color, opacity, border color, etc.) be configurable. The two most popular tooltips that I have found, "clueTip" and Jörn Zaefferer's "Tooltip" do not seem to fit the bill, unless I am missing something. Ultimately, the links and images will be dynamically generated.

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• Database schema for Product Properties

  - by Chemosh

  As so many people I'm looking for a Products /Product Properties database schema. I'm using Ruby on Rails and (Thinking) Sphinx for faceted searches. Requirements: Adding new product types and their options should not require a change to the database schema Support faceted searches using Sphinx. Solutions I've come across: (See Bill Karwin's answer) Option 1: Single Table Inheritance Not an option really. The table would contain way to many columns. Option 2: Class Table Inheritance Ruby on Rails caches the database schema on start-up which means a restart whenever a new type of product is introduced. If you have a size able product catalog this could mean hundreds of tables. Option 3: Serialized LOB Kills being able to do faceted searches without heavy application logic. Option 4: Entity-Attribute-Value For testing purposes, EAV worked fine. However it could quickly become a mess and a maintenance hell as you add more and more options (e.g. when an option increase the prices or delivery time). What option should I go with? What other solutions are out there? Is there a silver bullet (ha) I overlooked?

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• How do I produce a screenshot of a flash swf on the server?

  - by indignant

  I'm writing a flash app using the open source tools. I would like to load a data file in to the app and capture a screenshot of the stage on the server. The only part that seems mysterious is running the app on the server. In fact, I don't even care if it's the same app running on the server and in the browser--if I can use the flash stage and drawing routines to produce an image server-side, I'm happy. If I have to delve in to flex, fine. Right now I'm having problems finding any starting point at all. I gather Adobe has some commercial products that may fit the bill, but I'd like to stick with open source, apache, and linux. I know this is probably possible with haxe/neko, but I'd like to use more mainstream tools if possible. Am I asking too much? EDIT/CLARIFICATION: Many thanks for the responses so far, but I think I've been a bit muddy in my description. I've already written the actual stage-grabbing stuff using the same PNGEncoder class as was suggested. The problem is in actually running the swf on the server side. I don't want to let the client take the screen shot itself, because this opens up the possibility of the client maliciously submitting a screenshot which does not correspond to what is on the stage, that is, I don't want users uploading porn. If I could run the the actionscript code on the server, then I could generate the screenshot from my data files and be sure that the screenshot matches the data, but I have no idea how to run the actionscript or swf on the server.

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• How to filter what is shown in the for-each loop in XSL

  - by Denoteone

  I thought it would be as easy as tell the for-each to only select top_coach_sales_vw that has "Site" equal to "PB" but when I run the script it does not loop through any of the data in the XML. I am escaping the single quotes because it is part of a php echo. <xsl:for-each select="NewDataSet/top_coach_sales_vw[Site==\'PB\']"> <td><xsl:value-of select="name"/></td> <td><xsl:value-of select="Site"/></td> <td><xsl:value-of select="Status"/></td> </xsl:for-each> XML: <NewDataSet> <top_coach_sales_vw> <name>Mike</name> <Site>PB</Site> <State>Ready</State> </top_coach_sales_vw> <top_coach_sales_vw> <name>Bill</name> <Site>EL</Site> <State>Talking</State> </top_coach_sales_vw> <top_coach_sales_vw> <name>Ted</name> <Site>PB</Site> <State>Ready</State> </top_coach_sales_vw> </NewDataSet>

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• If attacker has original data, and encrypted data, can they determine the passphrase?

  - by Brad Cupit

  If an attacker has several distinct items (for example: e-mail addresses) and knows the encrypted value of each item, can the attacker more easily determine the secret passphrase used to encrypt those items? Meaning, can they determine the passphrase without resorting to brute force? This question may sound strange, so let me provide a use-case: User signs up to a site with their e-mail address Server sends that e-mail address a confirmation URL (for example: https://my.app.com/confirmEmailAddress/bill%40yahoo.com) Attacker can guess the confirmation URL and therefore can sign up with someone else's e-mail address, and 'confirm' it without ever having to sign in to that person's e-mail account and see the confirmation URL. This is a problem. Instead of sending the e-mail address plain text in the URL, we'll send it encrypted by a secret passphrase. (I know the attacker could still intercept the e-mail sent by the server, since e-mail are plain text, but bear with me here.) If an attacker then signs up with multiple free e-mail accounts and sees multiple URLs, each with the corresponding encrypted e-mail address, could the attacker more easily determine the passphrase used for encryption? Alternative Solution I could instead send a random number or one-way hash of their e-mail address (plus random salt). This eliminates storing the secret passphrase, but it means I need to store that random number/hash in the database. The original approach above does not require this extra table. I'm leaning towards the the one-way hash + extra table solution, but I still would like to know the answer: does having multiple unencrypted e-mail addresses and their encrypted counterparts make it easier to determine the passphrase used?

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• How to have screen revert to BLACK between pages?

  - by user340667

  0 Hi - I tried out the Background Image Scaling script and with Cybr's update it works like magic. It SCALES the image perfectly. No distortion. BUT, my image isn't "computer friendly". I.e.: Not 1024 X 768 or even close to that. (Heck, my monitor has a wide screen, so it isn't 1024 X 768 either! Is anybody's anymore?) Anyhow, this creates a problem inasmuch as, unless I size the window from the bottom up it ends up with a white "stripe" beneath it. What I would REALLY like for it to do is have that white to be BLACK. My "usual" BG color/text etc. code is like: ""body bgcolor="#000000" text="#fcba1e" link="#0000ff" vlink="#800080" alink="#ff0000"" (Site won't let me add the arrows here.) I've tried inserting this in various places with no success. Any ideas for a workaround would surely be appreciated ! Thanks ! Bill

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• Porting VB6 app to VB.Net: Can anyone ballpark how much effort this is?

  - by Robusto

  In 2002 I did a pretty large VB6 app for a client. It used a lot of UserControls and a 3rd party menu control (for putting icons next to menu names). It had dynamically "splittable" panels, TreeViews with multi-state checkboxes, etc. A very rich UI. My total time on the project was about 500 hours, which the client graciously let me spread over a whole month. (Yeah, it was that kind of job.) They were very happy, though, and they paid the bill on time with no argument. So after having no contact with them for years, they suddenly call and wonder if I can update the app to .Net for them. My initial reaction is just to decline, since I don't use VB.Net. And having read a bunch of posts on SO about the difficulties of porting, etc., etc., I'm even more inclined to decline, so to speak. Still, before I tell them no I am interested in roughly quantifying the effort it would take. I would love to hear from anyone who has done this kind of thing and has a feel for how much work it is. Was it: Significantly less than the effort you used on the original? Somewhat less than the effort you used on the original? The same as the effort you used on the original? More? A lot more? Please only respond if you have actually done this kind of port. And the answer doesn't have to be exact, since I really am only trying to ballpark this. My feeling is that the effort will be at least as much as it took for the original, if not more. But I could be wrong. Thanks for any help.

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• find, excluding dir, not descending into dir, AND using maxdepth and mindepth

  - by user1680819

  This is RHEL 5.6 and GNU find 4.2.27. I am trying to exclude a directory from find, and want to make sure that directory isn't descended into. I've seen plenty of posts saying -prune will do this - and it does. I can run this command: find . -type d -name "./.snapshot*" -prune -o -print and it works. I run it through strace and verify it is NOT descending into .snapshot. I also want to find directories ONLY at a certain level. I can use mindepth and maxdepth to do this: find . -maxdepth 8 -mindepth 8 -type d and it gives me all the dirs 8 levels down, including what's in .snapshot. If I combine the prune and mindepth and maxdepth options: find . -maxdepth 8 -mindepth 8 -type d \( -path "./.snapshot/*" -prune -o -print \) the output is right - I see all the dirs 8 levels down except for what's in .snapshot, but if I run that find through strace, I see that .snapshot is still being descended into - to levels 1 through 8. I've tried a variety of different combinations, moving the precedence parens around, reording expression components - everything that yields the right output still descends into .snapshot. I see in the man page that -prune doesn't work with -depth, but doesn't say anything about mindepth and maxdepth. Can anyone offer any advice? Thanks... Bill

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• Displaying JSON in your Browser

  - by Rick Strahl

  Do you work with AJAX requests a lot and need to quickly check URLs for JSON results? Then you probably know that it’s a fairly big hassle to examine JSON results directly in the browser. Yes, you can use FireBug or Fiddler which work pretty well for actual AJAX requests, but if you just fire off a URL for quick testing in the browser you usually get hit by the Save As dialog and the download manager, followed by having to open the saved document in a text editor in FireFox. Enter JSONView which allows you to simply display JSON results directly in the browser. For example, imagine I have a URL like this: http://localhost/westwindwebtoolkitweb/RestService.ashx?Method=ReturnObject&format=json&Name1=Rick&Name2=John&date=12/30/2010 typed directly into the browser and that that returns a complex JSON object. With JSONView the result looks like this: No fuss, no muss. It just works. Here the result is an array of Person objects that contain additional address child objects displayed right in the browser. JSONView basically adds content type checking for application/json results and when it finds a JSON result takes over the rendering and formats the display in the browser. Note that it re-formats the raw JSON as well for a nicer display view along with collapsible regions for objects. You can still use View Source to see the raw JSON string returned. For me this is a huge time-saver. As I work with AJAX result data using GET and REST style URLs quite a bit it’s a big timesaver. To quickly and easily display JSON is a key feature in my development day and JSONView for all its simplicity fits that bill for me. If you’re doing AJAX development and you often review URL based JSON results do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of JSONView. Other Browsers JSONView works only with FireFox – what about other browsers? Chrome Chrome actually displays raw JSON responses as plain text without any plug-ins. There’s no plug-in or configuration needed, it just works, although you won’t get any fancy formatting. [updated from comments] There’s also a port of JSONView available for Chrome from here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chklaanhfefbnpoihckbnefhakgolnmc It looks like it works just about the same as the JSONView plug-in for FireFox. Thanks for all that pointed this out… Internet Explorer Internet Explorer probably has the worst response to JSON encoded content: It displays an error page as it apparently tries to render JSON as XML: Yeah that seems real smart – rendering JSON as an XML document. WTF? To get at the actual JSON output, you can use View Source. To get IE to display JSON directly as text you can add a Mime type mapping in the registry:   Create a new application/json key in: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\ContentType\application/json Add a string value of CLSID with a value of {25336920-03F9-11cf-8FD0-00AA00686F13} Add a DWORD value of Encoding with a value of 80000 I can’t take credit for this tip – found it here first on Sky Sander’s Blog. Note that the CLSID can be used for just about any type of text data you want to display as plain text in the IE. It’s the in-place display mechanism and it should work for most text content. For example it might also be useful for looking at CSS and JS files inside of the browser instead of downloading those documents as well. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in ASP.NET  AJAX  

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• 11 Types of Developers

  - by Lee Brandt

  Jack Dawson Jack Dawson is the homeless drifter in Titanic. At one point in the movie he says, “I figure life’s a gift, and I don’t intend on wasting it.” He is happy to wander wherever life takes him. He works himself from place to place, making just enough money to make it to his next adventure. The “Jack Dawson” developer clings on to any new technology as the ‘next big thing’, and will find ways to shoe-horn it in to places where it is not a fit. He is very appealing to the other developers because they want to try the newest techniques and tools too, He will only stay until the new technology either bores him or becomes problematic. Jack will also be hard to find once the technology has been implemented, because he will be on to the next shiny thing. However, having a Jack Dawson on your team can be beneficial. Jack can be a great ally when attempting to convince a stodgy, corporate entity to upgrade. Jack usually has an encyclopedic recall of all the new features of the technology upgrade and is more than happy to interject them in any conversation. Tom Smykowski Tom is the neurotic employee in Office Space, and is deathly afraid of being fired. He will do only what is necessary to keep the status quo. He believes as long as nothing changes, his job is safe. He will scoff at anything new and be the naysayer during any change initiative. Tom can be useful in off-setting Jack Dawson. Jack will constantly be pushing for change and Tom will constantly be fighting it. When you see that Jack is getting kind of bored with a new technology and Tom has finally stopped wetting himself at the mere mention of it, then it is probably the sweet spot of beginning to implement that new technology (providing it is the right tool for the job). Ray Consella Ray is the guy who built the Field of Dreams. He took a risk. Sometimes he screwed it up, but he knew he didn’t want to end up regretting not attempting it. He constantly doubted himself, but he knew he had to keep going. Granted, he was doing what the voices in his head were telling him to do, but my point is he was driven to do something that most people considered crazy. Even when his friends, his wife and even he told himself he was crazy, somewhere inside himself, he knew it was the right thing to do. These are the innovators. These are the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of the world. The take risks, they fail, they learn and the get better. Obviously, this kind of person thrives in start-ups and smaller companies, but that is due to their natural aversion to bureaucracy. They want to see their ideas put into motion quickly, and withdrawn quickly if it doesn’t work. Short feedback cycles are essential to Ray. He wants to know if his idea is working or not. He wants to modify or reverse his idea if it is not working or makes things worse. These are the agilistas. May I always be one.

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• jQuery Context Menu Plugin and Capturing Right-Click

  - by Ben Griswold

  I was thrilled to find Cory LaViska’s jQuery Context Menu Plugin a few months ago. In very little time, I was able to integrate the context menu with the jQuery Treeview.  I quickly had a really pretty user interface which took full advantage of limited real estate.  And guess what.  As promised, the plugin worked in Chrome, Safari 3, IE 6/7/8, Firefox 2/3 and Opera 9.5.  Everything was perfect and I shipped to the Integration Environment. One thing kept bugging though – right clicks aren’t the standard in a web environment. Sure, when one hovers over the treeview node, the mouse changed from an arrow to a pointer, but without help text most users will certainly left-click rather than right. As I was already doubting the design decision, we did some Mac testing.  The context menu worked in Firefox but not Safari.  Damn.  That’s when I started digging into the Madness of Javascript Mouse Events.  Don’t tell, but it’s complicated.  About as close as one can get to capture the right-click mouse event on all major browsers on Windows and Mac is this: if (event.which == null) /* IE case */ button= (event.button < 2) ? "LEFT" : ((event.button == 4) ? "MIDDLE" : "RIGHT"); else /* All others */ button= (event.which < 2) ? "LEFT" : ((event.which == 2) ? "MIDDLE" : "RIGHT"); Yikes.  The content menu code was simply checking if event.button == 2.  No problem.  Cory offers a jQuery Right Click Plugin which I’m sure works for windows but probably not the Mac either.  (Please note I haven’t verified this.) Anyway, I decided to address my UI design concern and the Safari Mac issue in one swoop.  I decided to make the context menu respond to any mouse click event.  This didn’t take much – especially after seeing how Bill Beckelman updated the library to recognize the left click. First, I added an AnyClick option to the library defaults: // Any click may trigger the dropdown and that's okay // See Javascript Madness: Mouse Events – http: //unixpapa.com/js/mouse.html if (o.anyClick == undefined) o.anyClick = false; And then I trigger the context menu dropdown based on the following conditional: if (evt.button == 2 || o.anyClick) { Nothing tricky about that, right?  Finally, I updated my menu setup to include the AnyClick value, if true: $('.member').contextMenu({ menu: 'memberContextMenu', anyClick: true },             function (action, el, pos) {                 … Now the context menu works in “all” environments if you left, right or even middle click.  Download jQuery Context Menu Plugin for Any Click *Opera 9.5 has an option to allow scripts to detect right-clicks, but it is disabled by default. Furthermore, Opera still doesn’t allow JavaScript to disable the browser’s default context menu which causes a usability conflict.

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• Pet Store Loyalty Programs: I'm Not Loyal Yet!

  - by ruth.donohue

  After two years of constantly being asked (aka "pestered) by my now eight-year-old daughter for a dog (or any pet that is more interactive than a goldfish), I've finally compromised with a hamster purely by chance. Friends of ours had recently brought home a female hamster, and (surprise, surprise) two weeks later, they were looking for homes for 11 baby hamster pups. Since the pups were not yet ready to be weaned from their mother, my daughter and I had several weeks to get ready -- and we spent that extra time visiting a number of local pet stores and purchasing an assortment of hamster books, toys, exercise equipment, food, bedding, and cage -- not cheap! Now, I'm usually an online shopper (i.e. I love reading user reviews and comparing prices), but for kids, there is absolutely no online substitute for actually walking into a store and physically picking out something you want. We have two competing pet shops within close proximity to where we live, and I signed up for their rewards programs to get discounts on select items. I'm sure it takes a while to get my data into the system (after all, I did fill out a form the old-fashioned way), but as it has been more than two weeks for one store and over a week for the other, the window of opportunity is getting smaller as we by now pretty much have most of what we think we need. Everything I've purchased has been purely hamster or small animal related, so in an ideal world, the stores would have me easily figured out as a hamster owner. Here is what I would be expecting of a loyalty rewards program: Point me to some useful links, either information provied by the company or external websites where I can learn more. Any value-add a business can provide to make my life easier makes me a much more loyal customer. What things can I expect as a new pet owner? Any hamster communities? Any hamster-related events? Any vets that specialize in small animals in the vicinity? Send me an email with other related products I may be interested in. Upsell and cross-sell to me. We've go the basics and a couple of luxuries, but at this point, I'm pretty excited (surprisingly) about the hamster, and my daughter is footing the bill with her birthday and Christmas money. She and I would be more than happy to spend her money! Get this information to me faster. As I mentioned, my window of opportunity is getting smaller, as eithe rmy daughter's money will run out on other things or we'll start losing the thrill of buying new hamster toys and treats. I realize this is easier said than done, and undoubtedly, the stores are getting value knowing my basic customer information and purchase history. Buth, they could really benefit by delivering a loyalty program that really earned my loyalty. "Goldeen" needs a new water bottle, yogurt chips, and chew toys as he doesn't seem to like the ones we bought. So for now, I'll just go to whichever store is the most convenient. Oh, and just for fun (not related to this post), here are a couple of videos my daughter really got a kick out of watching: Hamster on a Piano Tic in a Spin-Dryer

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• SQLAuthority News – Android Efficiency Tips and Tricks – Personal Technology Tip #003

  - by pinaldave

  I use my phone for lots of things.  I use it mainly to replace my tablet – I can e-mail, take and edit photos, and do almost everything I can do on a laptop with this phone.  And I am sure that there are many of you out there just like me.  I personally have a Galaxy S3, which uses the Android operating system, and I have decided to feature it as the third installment of my Technology Tips and Tricks series. 1) Shortcut to your favorite contacts on home screen Access your most-called contacts easily from your home screen by holding your finger on any empty spot on the home screen.  A menu will pop up that allows you to choose Shortcuts, and Contact.  You can scroll through your contact list and then just tap on the name of the person you want to be able to dial with a single click. 2) Keep track of your data usage Yes, we all should keep a close eye on our data usage, because it is very easy to go over our limits and then end up with a giant bill at the end of the month.  Never get surprised when you open that mobile phone envelope again.  Go to Settings, then Data Usage, and you can find a quick rundown of your usage, how much data each app uses, and you can even set alarms to let you know when you are nearing the limits.   Better yet, you can set the phone to stop using data when it reaches a certain limit. 3) Bring back Good Grammar We often hear proclamations about the downfall of written language, and how texting abbreviations, misspellings, and lack of punctuation are the root of all evil.  Well, we can show all those doomsdayers that all is not lost by bringing punctuation back to texting.  Usually we leave it off when we text because it takes too long to get to the screen with all the punctuation options.  But now you can hold down the period (or “full stop”) button and a list of all the commonly-used punctuation marks will pop right up. 4) Apps, Apps, Apps and Apps And finally, I cannot end an article about smart phones without including a list of my favorite apps.  Here are a list of my Top 10 Applications on my Android (not counting social media apps). Advanced Task Killer – Keeps my phone snappy by closing un-necessary apps WhatsApp - my favorite alternate to Text SMS Flipboard - my ‘timepass’ moments Skype – keeps me close to friends and family GoogleMaps - I am never lost because of this one thing Amazon Kindle – Books my best friends DropBox - My data always safe Pluralsight Player – Learning never stops for me Samsung Kies Air – Connecting Phone to Computer Chrome – Replacing default browser I have not included any social media applications in the above list, but you can be sure that I am linked to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)   Filed under: Best Practices, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Android, Personal Technology

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• Silverlight Cream for January 30, 2011 - 2 -- #1038

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Max Paulousky, Renuka Prasad, Ollie Riches, Jesse Liberty(-2-, -3-, -4-, -5-), Medusa M, John Papa, Beth Massi, and Joost van Schaik. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Stop What You Are Doing And Learn About Reactive Programming" Jesse Liberty WP7: "Windows Phone Looping Selector for Digits " Max Paulousky Lightswitch: "How To Send HTML Email from a LightSwitch Application" Beth Massi Shoutouts: Shawn Wildermuch has niether GooNews for users of his cool WP7 app or or for the WP7 Marketplace in general: R.I.P. GooNews From SilverlightCream.com: Windows Phone Looping Selector for Digits Max Paulousky expanded on the Looping selector for some customization allowing him to display width/height metric measurement selectors... great job, Max! WP7 – How to Create a Simple Checked Listbox In Windows Phone 7 Renuka Prasad has the code for a nicely-working checked Listbox for WP7 on his blog... the post is the code... WP7Contrib: Network Connectivity Push Model Ollie Riches had a post last week that I'm just catching up to... about the 'push model' for network connectivity they produced in WP7 Contrib. Using the Camera in Windows Phone 7 Jesse Liberty has a bunch of posts up... I'm just going to bite the bullet and catch up! ... this 'From Scratch post 24 is all about the camera in your WP7 dev travails... and he makes it look so darned easy :) Linq and Fluent Programming Jesse Liberty's next post is 'From Scratch 25 and is all about Linq and Fluent Programming which started with a discussion at Codemash with Bill Wagner... wanna get a handle on fluent programming? ... check this out. Stop What You Are Doing And Learn About Reactive Programming Another item you might want to get your head around is Reactive Programming, or Rx... Jesse Liberty has a great post up discussing this, as his 'From Scratch post 26... good external links, and lots of commentary as well. Rx–Reactive Programming for Windows Phone Jesse Liberty's 'From Scratch 27 follows the previous on about Rx by taking the Rx show to the WP7 development arena. Want a solid Rx example... here ya go! Reactive Extensions–Observable Sequences are First Class Objects Finally catching up with Jesse Liberty (for now), I find this 'From Scratch number 28 which is again on Rx and WP7 dev, expanding on the example from the previous post by harnessing the power of Rx Localizing Silverlight applications Medusa M has a nice post up at dotnetslackers on localization in Silverlight. If you haven't had to do localization before, it can get to be a pain... understanding an article like this will get you part of the way to being pain-free. Silverlight TV 59: What Goes Into Baking Silverlight? Very cool presentation for those of you interested in the bits ... John Papa's Silverlight TV number 59 is up and he's chatting with Andy Rivas about the process followed getting the bits to us. How To Send HTML Email from a LightSwitch Application Beth Massi's latest Lightswitch post is on sending HTML Email via SMTP from Lightswitch, and then follows that up with sending Email via Outlook automation. ViewModel driven animations using the Visual State Manager, DataStateBehavior and Expression Blend After some good user feedback, Joost van Schaik decided to make some modifications to his WP7 app, and got involved in a Page Title collapse animation driven from the ViewModel. Check out the nice write-up, video, external links, and source... all good! Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Is there a low carbon future for the retail industry?

  - by user801960

  Recently Oracle published a report in conjunction with The Future Laboratory and a global panel of experts to highlight the issue of energy use in modern industry and the serious need to reduce carbon emissions radically by 2050.  Emissions must be cut by 80-95% below the levels in 1990 – but what can the retail industry do to keep up with this? There are three key aspects to the retail industry where carbon emissions can be cut:  manufacturing, transport and IT.  Manufacturing Naturally, manufacturing is going to be a big area where businesses across all industries will be forced to make considerable savings in carbon emissions as well as other forms of pollution.  Many retailers of all sizes will use third party factories and will have little control over specific environmental impacts from the factory, but retailers can reduce environmental impact at the factories by managing orders more efficiently – better planning for stock requirements means economies of scale both in terms of finance and the environment. The John Lewis Partnership has made detailed commitments to reducing manufacturing and packaging waste on both its own-brand products and products it sources from third party suppliers. It aims to divert 95 percent of its operational waste from landfill by 2013, which is a huge logistics challenge.  The John Lewis Partnership’s website provides a large amount of information on its responsibilities towards the environment. Transport Similarly to manufacturing, tightening up on logistical planning for stock distribution will make savings on carbon emissions from haulage.  More accurate supply and demand analysis will mean less stock re-allocation after initial distribution, and better warehouse management will mean more efficient stock distribution.  UK grocery retailer Morrisons has introduced double-decked trailers to its haulage fleet and adjusted distribution logistics accordingly to reduce the number of kilometers travelled by the fleet.  Morrisons measures route planning efficiency in terms of cases moved per kilometre and has, over the last two years, increased the number of cases per kilometre by 12.7%.  See Morrisons Corporate Responsibility report for more information. IT IT infrastructure is often initially overlooked by businesses when considering environmental efficiency.  Datacentres and web servers often need to run 24/7 to handle both consumer orders and internal logistics, and this both requires a lot of energy and puts out a lot of heat.  Many businesses are lowering environmental impact by reducing IT system fragmentation in their offices, while an increasing number of businesses are outsourcing their datacenters to cloud-based services.  Using centralised datacenters reduces the power usage at smaller offices, while using cloud based services means the datacenters can be based in a more environmentally friendly location.  For example, Facebook is opening a massive datacentre in Sweden – close to the Arctic Circle – to reduce the need for artificial cooling methods.  In addition, moving to a cloud-based solution makes IT services more easily scaleable, reducing redundant IT systems that would still use energy.  In store, the UK’s Carbon Trust reports that on average, lighting accounts for 25% of a retailer’s electricity costs, and for grocery retailers, up to 50% of their electricity bill comes from refrigeration units.  On a smaller scale, retailers can invest in greener technologies in store and in their offices.  The report concludes that widely shared objectives of energy security, reduced emissions and continued economic growth are dependent on the development of a smart grid capable of delivering energy efficiency and demand response, as well as integrating renewable and variable sources of energy. The report is available to download from http://emeapressoffice.oracle.com/imagelibrary/detail.aspx?MediaDetailsID=1766I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the report.   

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• SQLAuthority News – Android Efficiency Tips and Tricks – Personal Technology Tip

  - by pinaldave

  I use my phone for lots of things.  I use it mainly to replace my tablet – I can e-mail, take and edit photos, and do almost everything I can do on a laptop with this phone.  And I am sure that there are many of you out there just like me.  I personally have a Galaxy S3, which uses the Android operating system, and I have decided to feature it as the third installment of my Technology Tips and Tricks series. 1) Shortcut to your favorite contacts on home screen Access your most-called contacts easily from your home screen by holding your finger on any empty spot on the home screen.  A menu will pop up that allows you to choose Shortcuts, and Contact.  You can scroll through your contact list and then just tap on the name of the person you want to be able to dial with a single click. 2) Keep track of your data usage Yes, we all should keep a close eye on our data usage, because it is very easy to go over our limits and then end up with a giant bill at the end of the month.  Never get surprised when you open that mobile phone envelope again.  Go to Settings, then Data Usage, and you can find a quick rundown of your usage, how much data each app uses, and you can even set alarms to let you know when you are nearing the limits.   Better yet, you can set the phone to stop using data when it reaches a certain limit. 3) Bring back Good Grammar We often hear proclamations about the downfall of written language, and how texting abbreviations, misspellings, and lack of punctuation are the root of all evil.  Well, we can show all those doomsdayers that all is not lost by bringing punctuation back to texting.  Usually we leave it off when we text because it takes too long to get to the screen with all the punctuation options.  But now you can hold down the period (or “full stop”) button and a list of all the commonly-used punctuation marks will pop right up. 4) Apps, Apps, Apps and Apps And finally, I cannot end an article about smart phones without including a list of my favorite apps.  Here are a list of my Top 10 Applications on my Android (not counting social media apps). Advanced Task Killer – Keeps my phone snappy by closing un-necessary apps WhatsApp - my favorite alternate to Text SMS Flipboard - my ‘timepass’ moments Skype – keeps me close to friends and family GoogleMaps - I am never lost because of this one thing Amazon Kindle – Books my best friends DropBox - My data always safe Pluralsight Player – Learning never stops for me Samsung Kies Air – Connecting Phone to Computer Chrome – Replacing default browser I have not included any social media applications in the above list, but you can be sure that I am linked to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)   Filed under: Best Practices, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Android, Personal Technology

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• ATG Live Webcast: Advanced E-Business Suite Architectures

  - by BillSawyer

  I am pleased to announce the ATG Live Webcast event for Dec. 8th, 2011: Advanced E-Business Suite Architectures Join Elke Phelps, Senior Principal Product Manager and Sriram Veeraraghavan, Senior Principal Software Engineer as they discuss advanced E-Business Suite architectures that can help you improve performance, scalability, business continuity, utilization, provisioning, and security. This one-hour webcasts provides an overview of advanced architectures with Q&A. This session will cover the latest advanced architectural options, including the use of Oracle database high-availability features and functions such as Real Application Clusters, ASM, Active Data Guard, clouds, virtualization, Oracle VM, high-availability and load-balancing architectures, WebLogic Server, and more. This session will also cover the latest updates to systems management tools like AutoConfig, and may also include sneak previews of upcoming functionality. This event is targeted to architects, system administrators, DBAs, developers, and implementers. The agenda for the Advanced E-Business Suite Architectures webcast includes the following topics: Advanced Oracle E-Business Suite Architectures Optional External Integrations Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 Improving Performance and Scalability Providing Business Continuity Improving Utilization and Provisioning Improving Security Date:            Thursday, December 8, 2011Time:           8:00 AM - 9:00 AM Pacific Standard TimePresenter:  Elke Phelps, Senior Principal Product Manager                      Sriram Veeraraghavan, Senior Principal Software EngineerWebcast Registration Link (Preregistration is optional but encouraged)To hear the audio feed:    Domestic Participant Dial-In Number:           877-697-8128    International Participant Dial-In Number:      706-634-9568    Additional International Dial-In Numbers Link:    Dial-In Passcode:                                              98514To see the presentation:    The Direct Access Web Conference details are:    Website URL: https://ouweb.webex.com    Meeting Number:  273291684If you miss the webcast, or you have missed any webcast, don't worry -- we'll post links to the recording as soon as it's available from Oracle University.  You can monitor this blog for pointers to the replay. And, you can find our archive of our past webcasts and training at http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/entry/e_business_suite_technology_learningIf you have any questions or comments, feel free to email Bill Sawyer (Senior Manager, Applications Technology Curriculum) at BilldotSawyer-AT-Oracle-DOT-com.

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• A temporary disagreement

  - by Tony Davis

  Last month, Phil Factor caused a furore amongst some MVPs with an article that attempted to offer simple advice to developers regarding the use of table variables, versus local and global temporary tables, in their code. Phil makes clear that the table variables do come with some fairly major limitations.no distribution statistics, no parallel query plans for queries that modify table variables.but goes on to suggest that for reasonably small-scale strategic uses, and with a bit of due care and testing, table variables are a "good thing". Not everyone shares his opinion; in fact, I imagine he was rather aghast to learn that there were those felt his article was akin to pulling the pin out of a grenade and tossing it into the database; table variables should be avoided in almost all cases, according to their advice, in favour of temp tables. In other words, a fairly major feature of SQL Server should be more-or-less 'off limits' to developers. The problem with temp tables is that, because they are scoped either in the procedure or the connection, it is easy to allow them to hang around for too long, eating up precious memory and bulking up the shared tempdb database. Unless they are explicitly dropped, global temporary tables, and local temporary tables created within a connection rather than within a stored procedure, will persist until the connection is closed or, with connection pooling, until the connection is reused. It's also quite common with ASP.NET applications to have connection leaks, as Bill Vaughn explains in his chapter in the "SQL Server Deep Dives" book, meaning that the web page exits without closing the connection object, maybe due to an error condition. This will then hang around in the heap for what might be hours before picked up by the garbage collector. Table variables are much safer in this regard, since they are batch-scoped and so are cleaned up automatically once the batch is complete, which also means that they are intuitive to use for the developer because they conform to scoping rules that are closer to those in procedural code. On the surface then, an ideal way to deal with issues related to tempdb memory hogging. So why did Phil qualify his recommendation to use Table Variables? This is another of those cases where, like scalar UDFs and table-valued multi-statement UDFs, developers can sometimes get into trouble with a relatively benign-looking feature, due to way it's been implemented in SQL Server. Once again the biggest problem is how they are handled internally, by the SQL Server query optimizer, which can make very poor choices for JOIN orders and so on, in the absence of statistics, especially when joining to tables with highly-skewed data. The resulting execution plans can be horrible, as will be the resulting performance. If the JOIN is to a large table, that will hurt. Ideally, Microsoft would simply fix this issue so that developers can't get burned in this way; they've been around since SQL Server 2000, so Microsoft has had a bit of time to get it right. As I commented in regard to UDFs, when developers discover issues like with such standard features, the database becomes an alien planet to them, where death lurks around each corner, and they continue to avoid these "killer" features years after the problems have been eventually resolved. In the meantime, what is the right approach? Is it to say "hammers can kill, don't ever use hammers", or is it to try to explain, as Phil's article and follow-up blog post have tried to do, what the feature was intended for, why care must be applied in its use, and so enable developers to make properly-informed decisions, without requiring them to delve deep into the inner workings of SQL Server? Cheers, Tony.

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• Software Architecture verses Software Design

  Recently, I was asked what the differences between software architecture and software design are. At a very superficial level both architecture and design seem to mean relatively the same thing. However, if we examine both of these terms further we will find that they are in fact very different due to the level of details they encompass. Software Architecture can be defined as the essence of an application because it deals with high level concepts that do not include any details as to how they will be implemented. To me this gives stakeholders a view of a system or application as if someone was viewing the earth from outer space. At this distance only very basic elements of the earth can be detected like land, weather and water. As the viewer comes closer to earth the details in this view start to become more defined. Details about the earth’s surface will start to actually take form as well as mane made structures will be detected. The process of transitioning a view from outer space to inside our earth’s atmosphere is similar to how an architectural concept is transformed to an architectural design. From this vantage point stakeholders can start to see buildings and other structures as if they were looking out of a small plane window. This distance is still high enough to see a large area of the earth’s surface while still being able to see some details about the surface. This viewing point is very similar to the actual design process of an application in that it takes the very high level architectural concept or concepts and applies concrete design details to form a software design that encompasses the actual implementation details in the form of responsibilities and functions. Examples of these details include: interfaces, components, data, and connections. In review, software architecture deals with high level concepts without regard to any implementation details. Software design on the other hand takes high level concepts and applies concrete details so that software can be implemented. As part of the transition between software architecture to the creation of software design an evaluation on the architecture is recommended. There are several benefits to including this step as part of the transition process. It allows for projects to ensure that they are on the correct path as to meeting the stakeholder’s requirement goals, identifies possible cost savings and can be used to find missing or nonspecific requirements that cause ambiguity in a design. In the book “Evaluating Software Architectures: Methods and Case Studies”, they define key benefits to adding an architectural review process to ensure that an architecture is ready to move on to the design phase. Benefits to evaluating software architecture: Gathers all stakeholders to communicate about the project Goals are clearly defined in regards to the creation or validation of specific requirements Goals are prioritized so that when conflicts occur decisions will be made based on goal priority Defines a clear expectation of the architecture so that all stakeholders have a keen understanding of the project Ensures high quality documentation of the architecture Enables discoveries of architectural reuse  Increases the quality of architecture practices. I can remember a few projects that I worked on that could have really used an architectural review prior to being passed on to developers. This project was to create some new advertising space on the company’s website in order to sell space based on the location and some other criteria. I was one of the developer selected to lead this project and I was given a high level design concept and a long list of ever changing requirements due to the fact that sales department had no clear direction as to what exactly the project was going to do or how they were going to bill the clients once they actually agreed to purchase the Ad space. In my personal opinion IT should have pushed back to have the requirements further articulated instead of forcing programmers to code blindly attempting to build such an ambiguous project.  Unfortunately, we had to suffer with this project for about 4 months when it should have only taken 1.5 to complete due to the constantly changing and unclear requirements. References  Clements, P., Kazman, R., & Klein, M. (2002). Evaluating Software Architectures. Westford, Massachusetts: Courier Westford. 

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