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  • How to restore Active Desktop if Themes is locked via GPO?

    - by pepoluan
    My company forces Active Desktop upon everybody so that it can display a (monthly-rotated) corporate wallpaper.jpg. Problem is, some computers (including my laptop) somehow experienced some errors resulting in the dreaded "Active Desktop Recovery" screen to show up... and clicking the "Restore My Active Desktop" button always resulted in "Internet Explorer Script Error". Various workarounds I found in the Internet either does not work or requires me to change the theme first to something else... and the latter I can't do because the Desktop Settings screen is locked via GPO. As it happens, due to the nature of the programs I use, I'm granted Administrator-level access on my computer. The question is: How do I fix my situation? Note: I don't need to put on my own wallpaper, but watching the "Active Desktop Recovery" screen (with its BLANK WHITE!!1! OH MY EYES!1!!one!eleven!! background) gets tiresome. I'm quite happy with the corporate wallpaper. I just need to somehow 'recover' my Active Desktop. More information: OS: Windows XP Professional SP3 (yeah, company's too afraid to even experiment with Windows 7) Antivirus: Symantec Endpoint Protection If you need any additional information, feel free to ask.

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  • initrd problem and Kernel panics after openSUSE 11.2 upgrade.

    - by unixbhaskar
    Once I have done the upgrade form openSUSE11.1 to openSUSE11.2 by doing this: zypper dup Now I tried to boot the system and it failed sync with VFS and kernel panic, so clearly a initrd problem . if I'm not mistaken. Now a bit of explanation about the problem: while upgrading it shows me the error updating initramfs( I forgot the exact error or might be warning).Oh yeah it shows some grub warning too. I have had been doing that from a chroot environment.. with all the required file mounted in proper place in the chroot environment. Now .after bit googling and painfully looking the susegeek.com forum and opensuse.org forum I have decided to recreate the initrd ...but the fellow called "mkinitrd" is real real crap as I hev been pointed out by few forum members. I tried to make an initrd image by myself, failed to do so .as it shows error that device not found( if I boot into suse live cd and mount the partition ) then I tried from the chrooted env and it says "there is no space left on the device" A bit bemused :( yeah most of you pointed it right may lack of knowledge of mine. Kindly suggest me and show me steps to do it correctly and get opensuse11.2 up and running. TIA

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  • Slower/cached Linux file system required

    - by Chopper3
    I know it sounds odd but I need a slower or cached filesystem. I have a lot of firewalls that are syslog'ing their data to a pair of Linux VMs which write these files to their 'local' (actually FC SAN attached) ext3-formatted disks and also forward the messages to our Splunk servers. The problem is that the syslog server is writing these syslog messages as hundreds, sometimes thousands, of tiny ~4k writes per second back to our FC SAN - which can handle this workload right now but our FW traffic's going to be growing by at least a factor of 5000% (really) in coming months and that'll be a pain for the SAN, I want to fix the root cause before it's a problem. So I need some help figuring out a way of getting these writes cached or held-off in some way from the 'physical' disks so that the VMs fire off larger, but less frequent, writes - there's no way of avoiding these writes but there's no need for it to do so many tiny ones. I've looked at the various ext3 options, setting noatime and nodiratime but that's not made much of a dent in the problem. Obviously I'm investigating other file systems but thought I'd throw this out in case others have the same problem in the future. Oh and I can't just forward these messages to Splunk, our firewall team insist they're in their original format for diag purposes.

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  • Cannot connect to MySQL on RDS (Amazon Web Services) from my laptop

    - by Bruno Reis
    I'm having some trouble connecting to a MySQL 5.1 server on an RDS instance on AWS from my laptop. The detailed description of the problem is here: https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=323397 In short: I have 2 MySQL servers, both with the same db configuration and firewall (security group) configuration. One of them works fine: I can connect to it from my EC2 instances (ie, from inside the AWS cloud) and from my laptop. The other one doesn't: I can connect from my EC2 instances but not from my laptop. The symptom: a connection attempt from my laptop just hangs, and then times out, as if there was a firewall blocking me (ie, silently dropping my SYN packets). I must say that everything has been working fine for a very long time, and this problem began suddenly, 3 days ago, without any modifications to DB parameters or the security groups. My current analysis of the situation: The firewall (ie, security group) cannot be the problem: both MySQL servers share the same firewall configuration -- I can connect to one of them but not to the other. Later on, I even added a rule to allow inbound connections from 0.0.0.0/0 (ie, I turned off the firewall), and nothing. Oh, I also created a new, fresh security group and changed this instance's SG to the new one (to which I first added my ip address, and then 0.0.0.0/0) but still nothing. The credentials cannot be the problem: I use the same from my laptop and from my EC2 instances -- and the user (which is what Amazon calls master user), in the database, has a host of '%'. MySQL is not blocking my IP due to, say, too many failed connection attemps: I've FLUSH HOSTS on the database, and also I tried to connect using many different source IP addresses, even from all around the world through a VPN proxy service. What could I be missing? I'm asking here because it's been about 36 hours since I've posted on AWS forums but got no answer at all over there... someone here might have a solution! Any input is really appreciated, I'm out of ideas. Thanks!

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  • 20 1TB drives vs. 10 2TB drives in RAID5/6 server

    - by Hunter
    Hi everyone, I will be setting up a server at work and I need some advice on some details. The setup will be one blade-type server (8-core, 16GB RAM) with two subsystems - one for the main storage the other to back it up. I'm shooting for a 20TB array (I know it'll be less after formatting and parity drives). So is there any advantage one way or the other with either 20 1TB drives or 10 2TB drives? I'm not sure right now how many controllers I should have either (in the quote I have is a dual-port controller). I would think two controllers for a server of this size would be a better choice than the dual-port controller (but I really don't know). And would an array of this size have any performance issues in RAID 5 or 6 (I know RAID 5 or 6 are "slower" because of all the parity calculations). Also, these will be either WD RE3 (1TB) or the RE4 (2TB). Oh, also, for the backup array would it be ok to use the WD 2TB green drives (also in RAID5 or 6)?

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  • Siege - running a stress test benchmark

    - by morgoth84
    I need to do a benchmark test of a HTTPS server using Siege, to see how it behaves under massive load. I'm initiating tests from another machine which is quite powerful and it is connected to the same physical switch the server is connected on. But when I initiate a test, I can't get it to make more than 170 requests per second. With this load the server's CPU usage is at 15-20% and the average response time for a request is approx. 0.03 seconds. Load of the client machine is approx. at 10%. So, I gradually increase the number of users in Siege (the number of worker threads) and request rate linearly increases up to 170 reqs/sec, but it never gets over it. No matter how many more worker threads I start, the load on the server is never more than 20% (and the client's load also doesn't increase any more). How can I overcome this? I've googled a bit and found out that after a request is completed, a socket associated with one ephermal port remains in WAIT_TIME state for some time during which it can't be reused. I tried to overcome this by doing these things: sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range="1024 65535" echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_tw_recycle Oh, and the client machine is a Linux (RedHat, I think, but I'm not sure). Any help would be appreciated.

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  • RAIDs with a lot of spindles - how to safely put to use the "wasted" space

    - by kubanczyk
    I have a fairly large number of RAID arrays (server controllers as well as midrange SAN storage) that all suffer from the same problem: barely enough spindles to keep the peak I/O performance, and tons of unused disk space. I guess it's a universal issue since vendors offer the smallest drives of 300 GB capacity but the random I/O performance hasn't really grown much since the time when the smallest drives were 36 GB. One example is a database that has 300 GB and needs random performance of 3200 IOPS, so it gets 16 disks (4800 GB minus 300 GB and we have 4.5 TB wasted space). Another common example are redo logs for a OLTP database that is sensitive in terms of response time. The redo logs get their own 300 GB mirror, but take 30 GB: 270 GB wasted. What I would like to see is a systematic approach for both Linux and Windows environment. How to set up the space so sysadmin team would be reminded about the risk of hindering the performance of the main db/app? Or, even better, to be protected from that risk? The typical situation that comes to my mind is "oh, I have this very large zip file, where do I uncompress it? Umm let's see the df -h and we figure something out in no time..." I don't put emphasis on strictness of the security (sysadmins are trusted to act in good faith), but on overall simplicity of the approach. For Linux, it would be great to have a filesystem customized to cap I/O rate to a very low level - is this possible?

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  • System Issues and Major Malfuctions after Failed hibernation Exit

    - by Sarah Seguin
    I have a HP G71-340US that went into hibernation mode for a while and when I tried coming out of it, I got an error message: You're computer cannot come out if hibernation . Status: 0xc000009a Info: A fatal error occurred processing the restoration data. File: \hiberfil.sys Any information that was not saved before the computer went into hybernation will be lost enter=continue So I hit continue and it ran soooo super slow it. It was seriously crawling. Finally I gave up and turned it off manually (IE press and hold the button). It's been a week or two since then and EVERY SINGLE TIME I have tried to to do ANYTHING it takes forever. When I say forever, I literally mean takes 5-7 minutes to load the internet, then the page itself, then to click a link, so on so forth. Eventually everything just goes not responding and I have to give up (4-6 HOURS later). I also cannot access my thumb/jump drives once I've managed to load windows. I was going to try runing malware bytes incase of a virus, but it's windows explorer developes errors and goes not responding on me. Currently I'm running scan disk or check disk and like every file is coming back unreadable. I let it run the last 2 hours straight in chkdesk and I'm only at 6 percent with around 500+ errors and still going. Yes, I've taken logs of the errors via cell phone camera and patience. A week or two prior to this happening I had to change our the hard drive due to blunt force trama next to the mouse. OH! Running on Windows 7: ) And I've tried loading the computer in safe mode and it makes absolutely no difference. Any and all help would be appreciated. I really don't know what to do from here and I'm kind of freaking out. I've googled different part of the error and things that I've done/seen and there are so many different answers/topics that I thought it best to just post the questions.

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  • How to boost playback volume in real time on media recorded with a very low volume.

    - by L Marksman
    I have never heard a satisfactory answer to this often misunderstood question, let me explain. Lets say I have a sound card and earphones/speakers that can play back audio loud enough in most cases. This is great but the problem is that you always find people who do not know how to record audio, from Youtube video's to music. So now you end up with a audio playback that only uses 10% or less of the capacity of your sound hardware, in vista/win 7 you will see this frequently in the mixer with the volume pushed up to max but the green sound level only goes up a millimeter or two. I am looking for (preferably free) software or a method to boost the sound level of any audio from any source in real time to use more of my hardware capacity similar to what VLC media player can do. Oh and please, do not tell me it is impossible. I am not trying to boost the volume past what my hardware is capable of, I am just trying to use my hardware's full capacity. Also please do not tell met to buy new hardware, I know I can use hardware amplification, I don't want to (like many others) spend money on a simple little problem like this. Thanks!

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  • How to upgrade iPhone 3G to iOS 5 now that iOS 6 is out? [closed]

    - by mmmshuddup
    My friend has an old iPhone 3G and I wanted to upgrade it to iOS 5 because I had read that the performance is actually better with iOS 5 on that phone in spite of the difference in processor power. The problem is that now that iOS 6 is out, iTunes only gives me the option to upgrade to that. I am a little more leery of iOS 6 knowing that it was launched mostly for the iPhone 5 and since that phone has a way faster processor, I would assume that performance would be an issue on the iPhone 3G. How can I, if possible, upgrade just to iOS 5? Note: I would like to avoid having to jailbreak the phone by all means possible. (It's not mine and I don't want to take the risk with a phone that doesn't belong to me.) EDIT: If anyone knows of a good site to get help on questions like this let me know. Apparently you're allowed to ask questions about iPhones here, just not this. Which is completely utter asinine, but oh well. Anyone with helpful ideas, post in the comments please.

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  • Using sound forge 6.0 what will be the need to upgrade to latest version

    - by Jayapal Chandran
    I had been using sound forge 6.0 not recently but long back. I edit mp3 files for my purpose and some more filters like flange, pan, fade in out, recording, line in recording, extracting sound from video files (mpg, avi(divx), etc...), increasing the default volume, editing treble and bass effects, and etc... I am not going to use it professionally. I use it just like that. Now when i checked i could see Sound Forge Audio Studio 10 is the latest version for my purpose. Others are too high i think. Besides, i had been using Gold Wave version 4 very extensively just to edit sound files mostly mp3. and here is the reason for me to change to sound forge. It is when we edit mp3 files it deflashes(making it raw i think) before editing. after editing if i save it asks for the format to save and i will choose mp3. At this point it again applies the compression process which makes the sound file lossy. When i did the same with sound forge it did not deflash. It just edited the file as mp3. May be i dont know whether gold wave has the same option. So, please suggest. oh i had asked a question already like this... here it is goldwave vs sound forge in editing mp3 files

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  • can't save or create files in external hard disk

    - by Rodniko
    i formatted my computer and installed new win7. i connected my external hard disk (usb connector) and i have some kind of permission problem. i can't save files after opening them and right clicking and choosing "new" shows that i can only create folders. what is wrong ? why doesn't the external hd doesn't have permission and how do i cahnge it? in microsoft they probably thought: "hmmm.... how would i make it difficult for the user to use our product..." , "we will have to make the difficulty as soon as the windows is installed...." " but how would we guarantee 100% for the user to have problems? "oh yhe! block creating files and saving them, yes!" i'm so tired of those guys... my HD is half a Terra, changing ownership of all the files inside will take a couple of hours , i need other ideas... if any...

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  • Will Windows repair my multi-boot when I format the 1st physical partition with boot sector?

    - by user2353806
    Due to historical reasons I got a laptop with Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008R2 partitions. (boot from external wasn´t that viable) Nothing (Windows Repair, bootrec /whateveroption) worked when I restored only the Windows 7 and WS2k8 with Acronis TrueImage. Don´t ask me through what idiotic error messages I went during repair tries. (Wrong Windows version,...) So I grudgingly restored all three - with the little additional excursion that I thought changing the active partition to the Windows 7 partition would move the boot sector and let me format the Vista part... Oh no. Seems too logical for MS. (Dunno what I changed, but today it will let me format!) So the real question is: Will formatting the Vista part trash things again beyond comprehension or will Windows Repair bring back the boot rec and remove Vista from the boot options? Or should I just erase all the files to avoid trashing the boot? Where will the boot rec be (after repair) when I format the Vista? On 1st or 2nd partition? And if I get drunk and install Windows 8.1 on the 1st, will anything work? ;-) Thanks

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  • Moving an external hard drive while running

    - by user1108939
    I mean physically moving the drive around. I've never dealt with external hard drives before. Just plugged this wd mypassport to test the transfer rate. At one point I 'safely ejected' the drive. A minute later I decide to check the underside of the drive, not realizing the disk is still spinning. I lift the drive, rotating my writs about 70 degrees to the left... I hear a sequence of three high pitched sounds. I couldn't determine whether that was an indication beep by an internal security feature or the head scratching the plate (oh god...). Drive stops and usb power is disconnected. I reconnect it - it shows up fine - reads/writes. The drive was not reading/writing when i moved it. Did I damage my drive? Are these things that fragile? I thought them to be at least as durable as a standard 2.5" internal drive. Am I mistaken?

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  • Multi-petabyte scale out storage solution [closed]

    - by Alex Yuriev
    Let's say that I have a need to have a single-name space scale to multi-petabyte object store with a file system-like wrapper. What is currently out there that supports the following: Single name space that can take 1B files. Support for multiple entry points using NFS At least node level replication ( preferably node and file level replication ) Online software upgrades No "magic sauce" on the storage layer The following has been evaluated: Gluster & Lustre - just ick - fundamental lack of understanding of why online upgrades are mandatory. OneFS - we have it. It is smelling more and more like it hides a dead body under the hood. Other than MapR and zfs am I missing anything? P.S. Oh yes, I keep forgetting that the forums are for people to discuss if 2TB drive actually stores 2TB info. May bad. Seriously though - how the heck can "meets the following requirements" can be considered a "debate"? P.P.S. I did not throw an idiotic insult - i pointed out that this is actually an interesting question compared to a conversation about storage capacity of a 2TB hard drive. It is not a question of what works better - it is a question that asks did I miss any of the products that currently exist which fit the criteria where criteria is clearly outline. I got one answer below which included something that I have not looked at in a long time which looks quite a bit grown up compared to the time I briefly look at it before.

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  • How two completely unrelated software can affect each other in a very strange manner?

    - by user40602
    I installed an old game on my old PC and it doesn't work; its process/exe file was listed in task manager but nothing appeared on the screen. then some time later i discovered that when some specific program was running an my pc, that game could be executed without that problem! although i am myself a power user and also a programmer, i couldn't find the reason, and don't have any good guesses about it. i just know that when i want to run that game i should have another specific and unrelated program running. i ask if anyone has any idea/guess about the possible reasons for this rare phenomenon! oh and if u ask about the details/names of those programs, i am afraid of telling that, because others may think i am kidding, but i am not (please believe me!), that game is NFS2 and the other program is mysqld.exe (i said before that i am a programmer!). I don't know how mysqld.exe (yes it is the windows version of the famous MySQL DBMS server) can affect NFS2 in such an strange manner, and my curiosity and profession don't let me to forget seeking for the answer, so i decided to take the help of others to see if someone has had a similar experience or a reasonable idea about it.

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  • Raspberry Pi how to format HDD

    - by Speed
    Hi I am very new to Raspberry Pi environment, so looking for a bit of help to format a usb hard disk drive. I ran lsblk and got sda 8:0 0 37.3G 0 disk sda1 8:1 0 37.3G 0 part looking on web, if tried the following "sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1 -L USB40gb" it did something but when I tried to mount the drive again, it still showed the files that were there before and I can not create new file/folder "Error creating directory: Permission denied" I am writing this from my windows 8.1 pc so can not cut and paste from the pi. trying to format its output is a bit hard. Oh, there is Nothing written after the word "part" above. There use to be /media/USB40gb so I have done something because this has disappeared. I am using PCManFM 0.9.10 It does not have a format option, which would make life a lot easier, but then its not windows. I think I am running the basic linux os for the pi. It boots to a graphic environment, but I do not know how to advise what it is. I think its OpenBox 2.0.4 Thanks in advance Speed PS: I reran the format string above but this time I changed the label to read USB37gb. I did this to confirm that I was in fact formatting the right drive. Low and behold, it actually formatted the drive, wiping everything from it. Great ... testing it by creating a new folder on the drive and get error msg Permission Denied! So I have fixed the formatting issue by trial and error but still can't use the drive... Suggestions anyone?

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  • Upload File to Windows Azure Blob in Chunks through ASP.NET MVC, JavaScript and HTML5

    - by Shaun
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/shaunxu/archive/2013/07/01/upload-file-to-windows-azure-blob-in-chunks-through-asp.net.aspxMany people are using Windows Azure Blob Storage to store their data in the cloud. Blob storage provides 99.9% availability with easy-to-use API through .NET SDK and HTTP REST. For example, we can store JavaScript files, images, documents in blob storage when we are building an ASP.NET web application on a Web Role in Windows Azure. Or we can store our VHD files in blob and mount it as a hard drive in our cloud service. If you are familiar with Windows Azure, you should know that there are two kinds of blob: page blob and block blob. The page blob is optimized for random read and write, which is very useful when you need to store VHD files. The block blob is optimized for sequential/chunk read and write, which has more common usage. Since we can upload block blob in blocks through BlockBlob.PutBlock, and them commit them as a whole blob with invoking the BlockBlob.PutBlockList, it is very powerful to upload large files, as we can upload blocks in parallel, and provide pause-resume feature. There are many documents, articles and blog posts described on how to upload a block blob. Most of them are focus on the server side, which means when you had received a big file, stream or binaries, how to upload them into blob storage in blocks through .NET SDK.  But the problem is, how can we upload these large files from client side, for example, a browser. This questioned to me when I was working with a Chinese customer to help them build a network disk production on top of azure. The end users upload their files from the web portal, and then the files will be stored in blob storage from the Web Role. My goal is to find the best way to transform the file from client (end user’s machine) to the server (Web Role) through browser. In this post I will demonstrate and describe what I had done, to upload large file in chunks with high speed, and save them as blocks into Windows Azure Blob Storage.   Traditional Upload, Works with Limitation The simplest way to implement this requirement is to create a web page with a form that contains a file input element and a submit button. 1: @using (Html.BeginForm("About", "Index", FormMethod.Post, new { enctype = "multipart/form-data" })) 2: { 3: <input type="file" name="file" /> 4: <input type="submit" value="upload" /> 5: } And then in the backend controller, we retrieve the whole content of this file and upload it in to the blob storage through .NET SDK. We can split the file in blocks and upload them in parallel and commit. The code had been well blogged in the community. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public ActionResult About(HttpPostedFileBase file) 3: { 4: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 5: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 6: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(file.FileName); 7: var blockDataList = new Dictionary<string, byte[]>(); 8: using (var stream = file.InputStream) 9: { 10: var blockSizeInKB = 1024; 11: var offset = 0; 12: var index = 0; 13: while (offset < stream.Length) 14: { 15: var readLength = Math.Min(1024 * blockSizeInKB, (int)stream.Length - offset); 16: var blockData = new byte[readLength]; 17: offset += stream.Read(blockData, 0, readLength); 18: blockDataList.Add(Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)), blockData); 19:  20: index++; 21: } 22: } 23:  24: Parallel.ForEach(blockDataList, (bi) => 25: { 26: blob.PutBlock(bi.Key, new MemoryStream(bi.Value), null); 27: }); 28: blob.PutBlockList(blockDataList.Select(b => b.Key).ToArray()); 29:  30: return RedirectToAction("About"); 31: } This works perfect if we selected an image, a music or a small video to upload. But if I selected a large file, let’s say a 6GB HD-movie, after upload for about few minutes the page will be shown as below and the upload will be terminated. In ASP.NET there is a limitation of request length and the maximized request length is defined in the web.config file. It’s a number which less than about 4GB. So if we want to upload a really big file, we cannot simply implement in this way. Also, in Windows Azure, a cloud service network load balancer will terminate the connection if exceed the timeout period. From my test the timeout looks like 2 - 3 minutes. Hence, when we need to upload a large file we cannot just use the basic HTML elements. Besides the limitation mentioned above, the simple HTML file upload cannot provide rich upload experience such as chunk upload, pause and pause-resume. So we need to find a better way to upload large file from the client to the server.   Upload in Chunks through HTML5 and JavaScript In order to break those limitation mentioned above we will try to upload the large file in chunks. This takes some benefit to us such as - No request size limitation: Since we upload in chunks, we can define the request size for each chunks regardless how big the entire file is. - No timeout problem: The size of chunks are controlled by us, which means we should be able to make sure request for each chunk upload will not exceed the timeout period of both ASP.NET and Windows Azure load balancer. It was a big challenge to upload big file in chunks until we have HTML5. There are some new features and improvements introduced in HTML5 and we will use them to implement our solution.   In HTML5, the File interface had been improved with a new method called “slice”. It can be used to read part of the file by specifying the start byte index and the end byte index. For example if the entire file was 1024 bytes, file.slice(512, 768) will read the part of this file from the 512nd byte to 768th byte, and return a new object of interface called "Blob”, which you can treat as an array of bytes. In fact,  a Blob object represents a file-like object of immutable, raw data. The File interface is based on Blob, inheriting blob functionality and expanding it to support files on the user's system. For more information about the Blob please refer here. File and Blob is very useful to implement the chunk upload. We will use File interface to represent the file the user selected from the browser and then use File.slice to read the file in chunks in the size we wanted. For example, if we wanted to upload a 10MB file with 512KB chunks, then we can read it in 512KB blobs by using File.slice in a loop.   Assuming we have a web page as below. User can select a file, an input box to specify the block size in KB and a button to start upload. 1: <div> 2: <input type="file" id="upload_files" name="files[]" /><br /> 3: Block Size: <input type="number" id="block_size" value="512" name="block_size" />KB<br /> 4: <input type="button" id="upload_button_blob" name="upload" value="upload (blob)" /> 5: </div> Then we can have the JavaScript function to upload the file in chunks when user clicked the button. 1: <script type="text/javascript"> 1: 2: $(function () { 3: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 4: }); 5: });</script> Firstly we need to ensure the client browser supports the interfaces we are going to use. Just try to invoke the File, Blob and FormData from the “window” object. If any of them is “undefined” the condition result will be “false” which means your browser doesn’t support these premium feature and it’s time for you to get your browser updated. FormData is another new feature we are going to use in the future. It could generate a temporary form for us. We will use this interface to create a form with chunk and associated metadata when invoked the service through ajax. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: if (window.File && window.Blob && window.FormData) { 4: alert("Your brwoser is awesome, let's rock!"); 5: } 6: else { 7: alert("Oh man plz update to a modern browser before try is cool stuff out."); 8: return; 9: } 10: }); Each browser supports these interfaces by their own implementation and currently the Blob, File and File.slice are supported by Chrome 21, FireFox 13, IE 10, Opera 12 and Safari 5.1 or higher. After that we worked on the files the user selected one by one since in HTML5, user can select multiple files in one file input box. 1: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 2: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 3: var file = files[i]; 4: var fileSize = file.size; 5: var fileName = file.name; 6: } Next, we calculated the start index and end index for each chunks based on the size the user specified from the browser. We put them into an array with the file name and the index, which will be used when we upload chunks into Windows Azure Blob Storage as blocks since we need to specify the target blob name and the block index. At the same time we will store the list of all indexes into another variant which will be used to commit blocks into blob in Azure Storage once all chunks had been uploaded successfully. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10:  11: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 12: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 13: var blockSizeInKB = $("#block_size").val(); 14: var blockSize = blockSizeInKB * 1024; 15: var blocks = []; 16: var offset = 0; 17: var index = 0; 18: var list = ""; 19: while (offset < fileSize) { 20: var start = offset; 21: var end = Math.min(offset + blockSize, fileSize); 22:  23: blocks.push({ 24: name: fileName, 25: index: index, 26: start: start, 27: end: end 28: }); 29: list += index + ","; 30:  31: offset = end; 32: index++; 33: } 34: } 35: }); Now we have all chunks’ information ready. The next step should be upload them one by one to the server side, and at the server side when received a chunk it will upload as a block into Blob Storage, and finally commit them with the index list through BlockBlobClient.PutBlockList. But since all these invokes are ajax calling, which means not synchronized call. So we need to introduce a new JavaScript library to help us coordinate the asynchronize operation, which named “async.js”. You can download this JavaScript library here, and you can find the document here. I will not explain this library too much in this post. We will put all procedures we want to execute as a function array, and pass into the proper function defined in async.js to let it help us to control the execution sequence, in series or in parallel. Hence we will define an array and put the function for chunk upload into this array. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4:  5: // start to upload each files in chunks 6: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 7: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 8: var file = files[i]; 9: var fileSize = file.size; 10: var fileName = file.name; 11: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 12: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 13: ... ... 14:  15: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 16: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 17: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 18: }); 19: }); 20: } 21: }); 22: }); As you can see, I used File.slice method to read each chunks based on the start and end byte index we calculated previously, and constructed a temporary HTML form with the file name, chunk index and chunk data through another new feature in HTML5 named FormData. Then post this form to the backend server through jQuery.ajax. This is the key part of our solution. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 15: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 16: // load blob based on the start and end index for each chunks 17: var blob = file.slice(block.start, block.end); 18: // put the file name, index and blob into a temporary from 19: var fd = new FormData(); 20: fd.append("name", block.name); 21: fd.append("index", block.index); 22: fd.append("file", blob); 23: // post the form to backend service (asp.net mvc controller action) 24: $.ajax({ 25: url: "/Home/UploadInFormData", 26: data: fd, 27: processData: false, 28: contentType: "multipart/form-data", 29: type: "POST", 30: success: function (result) { 31: if (!result.success) { 32: alert(result.error); 33: } 34: callback(null, block.index); 35: } 36: }); 37: }); 38: }); 39: } 40: }); Then we will invoke these functions one by one by using the async.js. And once all functions had been executed successfully I invoked another ajax call to the backend service to commit all these chunks (blocks) as the blob in Windows Azure Storage. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.series(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: }); That’s all in the client side. The outline of our logic would be - Calculate the start and end byte index for each chunks based on the block size. - Defined the functions of reading the chunk form file and upload the content to the backend service through ajax. - Execute the functions defined in previous step with “async.js”. - Commit the chunks by invoking the backend service in Windows Azure Storage finally.   Save Chunks as Blocks into Blob Storage In above we finished the client size JavaScript code. It uploaded the file in chunks to the backend service which we are going to implement in this step. We will use ASP.NET MVC as our backend service, and it will receive the chunks, upload into Windows Azure Bob Storage in blocks, then finally commit as one blob. As in the client side we uploaded chunks by invoking the ajax call to the URL "/Home/UploadInFormData", I created a new action under the Index controller and it only accepts HTTP POST request. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: } 8: catch (Exception e) 9: { 10: error = e.ToString(); 11: } 12:  13: return new JsonResult() 14: { 15: Data = new 16: { 17: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 18: error = error 19: } 20: }; 21: } Then I retrieved the file name, index and the chunk content from the Request.Form object, which was passed from our client side. And then, used the Windows Azure SDK to create a blob container (in this case we will use the container named “test”.) and create a blob reference with the blob name (same as the file name). Then uploaded the chunk as a block of this blob with the index, since in Blob Storage each block must have an index (ID) associated with so that finally we can put all blocks as one blob by specifying their block ID list. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 8: var index = int.Parse(Request.Form["index"]); 9: var file = Request.Files[0]; 10: var id = Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)); 11:  12: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 13: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 14: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 15: blob.PutBlock(id, file.InputStream, null); 16: } 17: catch (Exception e) 18: { 19: error = e.ToString(); 20: } 21:  22: return new JsonResult() 23: { 24: Data = new 25: { 26: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 27: error = error 28: } 29: }; 30: } Next, I created another action to commit the blocks into blob once all chunks had been uploaded. Similarly, I retrieved the blob name from the Request.Form. I also retrieved the chunks ID list, which is the block ID list from the Request.Form in a string format, split them as a list, then invoked the BlockBlob.PutBlockList method. After that our blob will be shown in the container and ready to be download. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult Commit() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 8: var list = Request.Form["list"]; 9: var ids = list 10: .Split(',') 11: .Where(id => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(id)) 12: .Select(id => Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(int.Parse(id)))) 13: .ToArray(); 14:  15: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 16: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 17: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 18: blob.PutBlockList(ids); 19: } 20: catch (Exception e) 21: { 22: error = e.ToString(); 23: } 24:  25: return new JsonResult() 26: { 27: Data = new 28: { 29: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 30: error = error 31: } 32: }; 33: } Now we finished all code we need. The whole process of uploading would be like this below. Below is the full client side JavaScript code. 1: <script type="text/javascript" src="~/Scripts/async.js"></script> 2: <script type="text/javascript"> 3: $(function () { 4: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 5: // assert the browser support html5 6: if (window.File && window.Blob && window.FormData) { 7: alert("Your brwoser is awesome, let's rock!"); 8: } 9: else { 10: alert("Oh man plz update to a modern browser before try is cool stuff out."); 11: return; 12: } 13:  14: // start to upload each files in chunks 15: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 16: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 17: var file = files[i]; 18: var fileSize = file.size; 19: var fileName = file.name; 20:  21: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 22: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 23: var blockSizeInKB = $("#block_size").val(); 24: var blockSize = blockSizeInKB * 1024; 25: var blocks = []; 26: var offset = 0; 27: var index = 0; 28: var list = ""; 29: while (offset < fileSize) { 30: var start = offset; 31: var end = Math.min(offset + blockSize, fileSize); 32:  33: blocks.push({ 34: name: fileName, 35: index: index, 36: start: start, 37: end: end 38: }); 39: list += index + ","; 40:  41: offset = end; 42: index++; 43: } 44:  45: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 46: var putBlocks = []; 47: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 48: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 49: // load blob based on the start and end index for each chunks 50: var blob = file.slice(block.start, block.end); 51: // put the file name, index and blob into a temporary from 52: var fd = new FormData(); 53: fd.append("name", block.name); 54: fd.append("index", block.index); 55: fd.append("file", blob); 56: // post the form to backend service (asp.net mvc controller action) 57: $.ajax({ 58: url: "/Home/UploadInFormData", 59: data: fd, 60: processData: false, 61: contentType: "multipart/form-data", 62: type: "POST", 63: success: function (result) { 64: if (!result.success) { 65: alert(result.error); 66: } 67: callback(null, block.index); 68: } 69: }); 70: }); 71: }); 72:  73: // invoke the functions one by one 74: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 75: async.series(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 76: var data = { 77: name: fileName, 78: list: list 79: }; 80: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 81: if (!result.success) { 82: alert(result.error); 83: } 84: else { 85: alert("done!"); 86: } 87: }); 88: }); 89: } 90: }); 91: }); 92: </script> And below is the full ASP.NET MVC controller code. 1: public class HomeController : Controller 2: { 3: private CloudStorageAccount _account; 4: private CloudBlobClient _client; 5:  6: public HomeController() 7: : base() 8: { 9: _account = CloudStorageAccount.Parse(CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("DataConnectionString")); 10: _client = _account.CreateCloudBlobClient(); 11: } 12:  13: public ActionResult Index() 14: { 15: ViewBag.Message = "Modify this template to jump-start your ASP.NET MVC application."; 16:  17: return View(); 18: } 19:  20: [HttpPost] 21: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 22: { 23: var error = string.Empty; 24: try 25: { 26: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 27: var index = int.Parse(Request.Form["index"]); 28: var file = Request.Files[0]; 29: var id = Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)); 30:  31: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 32: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 33: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 34: blob.PutBlock(id, file.InputStream, null); 35: } 36: catch (Exception e) 37: { 38: error = e.ToString(); 39: } 40:  41: return new JsonResult() 42: { 43: Data = new 44: { 45: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 46: error = error 47: } 48: }; 49: } 50:  51: [HttpPost] 52: public JsonResult Commit() 53: { 54: var error = string.Empty; 55: try 56: { 57: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 58: var list = Request.Form["list"]; 59: var ids = list 60: .Split(',') 61: .Where(id => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(id)) 62: .Select(id => Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(int.Parse(id)))) 63: .ToArray(); 64:  65: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 66: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 67: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 68: blob.PutBlockList(ids); 69: } 70: catch (Exception e) 71: { 72: error = e.ToString(); 73: } 74:  75: return new JsonResult() 76: { 77: Data = new 78: { 79: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 80: error = error 81: } 82: }; 83: } 84: } And if we selected a file from the browser we will see our application will upload chunks in the size we specified to the server through ajax call in background, and then commit all chunks in one blob. Then we can find the blob in our Windows Azure Blob Storage.   Optimized by Parallel Upload In previous example we just uploaded our file in chunks. This solved the problem that ASP.NET MVC request content size limitation as well as the Windows Azure load balancer timeout. But it might introduce the performance problem since we uploaded chunks in sequence. In order to improve the upload performance we could modify our client side code a bit to make the upload operation invoked in parallel. The good news is that, “async.js” library provides the parallel execution function. If you remembered the code we invoke the service to upload chunks, it utilized “async.series” which means all functions will be executed in sequence. Now we will change this code to “async.parallel”. This will invoke all functions in parallel. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.parallel(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: }); In this way all chunks will be uploaded to the server side at the same time to maximize the bandwidth usage. This should work if the file was not very large and the chunk size was not very small. But for large file this might introduce another problem that too many ajax calls are sent to the server at the same time. So the best solution should be, upload the chunks in parallel with maximum concurrency limitation. The code below specified the concurrency limitation to 4, which means at the most only 4 ajax calls could be invoked at the same time. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.parallelLimit(putBlocks, 4, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: });   Summary In this post we discussed how to upload files in chunks to the backend service and then upload them into Windows Azure Blob Storage in blocks. We focused on the frontend side and leverage three new feature introduced in HTML 5 which are - File.slice: Read part of the file by specifying the start and end byte index. - Blob: File-like interface which contains the part of the file content. - FormData: Temporary form element that we can pass the chunk alone with some metadata to the backend service. Then we discussed the performance consideration of chunk uploading. Sequence upload cannot provide maximized upload speed, but the unlimited parallel upload might crash the browser and server if too many chunks. So we finally came up with the solution to upload chunks in parallel with the concurrency limitation. We also demonstrated how to utilize “async.js” JavaScript library to help us control the asynchronize call and the parallel limitation.   Regarding the chunk size and the parallel limitation value there is no “best” value. You need to test vary composition and find out the best one for your particular scenario. It depends on the local bandwidth, client machine cores and the server side (Windows Azure Cloud Service Virtual Machine) cores, memory and bandwidth. Below is one of my performance test result. The client machine was Windows 8 IE 10 with 4 cores. I was using Microsoft Cooperation Network. The web site was hosted on Windows Azure China North data center (in Beijing) with one small web role (1.7GB 1 core CPU, 1.75GB memory with 100Mbps bandwidth). The test cases were - Chunk size: 512KB, 1MB, 2MB, 4MB. - Upload Mode: Sequence, parallel (unlimited), parallel with limit (4 threads, 8 threads). - Chunk Format: base64 string, binaries. - Target file: 100MB. - Each case was tested 3 times. Below is the test result chart. Some thoughts, but not guidance or best practice: - Parallel gets better performance than series. - No significant performance improvement between parallel 4 threads and 8 threads. - Transform with binaries provides better performance than base64. - In all cases, chunk size in 1MB - 2MB gets better performance.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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  • Windows XP Video Configuration Issues

    - by Matt
    Recently I had my motherboard burn out on me. Needing the machine for work, I purchased a different motherboard and installed that. Generally a reinstall of windows is good at that point but I am not in a position to do that so I just decided I would live with it for now. When I can log-in, everything works fine, what doesn't is getting to the log-in prompt to begin with. Basically when I first installed the new mobo, every time I rebooted the machine, I would not get the windows login prompt. One of the monitors would receive a signal but the screen would be black. Moving the mouse would not show the cursor and hitting the up arrow key and typing my password and hitting enter (which will normally log you in without mouse) wouldn't change anything. I would then change the monitor configuration around (2 lcd's and a crt) and reboot and at least one of the monitors would work and display the login prompt. I could then go into display properties and turn on the other monitors. However if I rebooted again, I would get the black screen on one monitor again. I would then have to change the configuration again to one not used before and I could re-do the manual setup at that point. I think windows saves the configurations so I had to keep giving it new ones. Needless to say I've been trying to not turn off my machine. Early this week I actually got the prompt to come up without playing musical monitors. Thinking everything was getting better, I found no harm in rebooting to install the latest windows updates. Boy was I wrong. Now no matter what I do I can't get a windows log-in prompt to display. I've tried almost every conceivable combination. The new mobo has onboard video so I set that in the bios (yea bios screen always displays fine, its not until windows boots that there is a problem) to be the primary video. Still no luck. I have two other graphics cards in the machine which I'm using. Tried all kinds of configurations between those and on-board but still get this black screen of death. I read somewhere that deleting the video drivers would reset the configurations. I logged into safe mode (which works on one monitor), and uninstalled the display drivers. Still no luck and when I booted back into safe mode, it wanted to install new hardware and the display adapters weren't there as expected. Anyone have any ideas? A fresh install would be a pain and I might be getting my old board back from RMA soon so not sure I want to go through with that just yet. Only thing I can think of is to continue to try other combinations like physically removing the graphics cards. They are both EVGA 8600 cards and the windows boot screen does display fwiw.

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  • C#: Optional Parameters - Pros and Pitfalls

    - by James Michael Hare
    When Microsoft rolled out Visual Studio 2010 with C# 4, I was very excited to learn how I could apply all the new features and enhancements to help make me and my team more productive developers. Default parameters have been around forever in C++, and were intentionally omitted in Java in favor of using overloading to satisfy that need as it was though that having too many default parameters could introduce code safety issues.  To some extent I can understand that move, as I’ve been bitten by default parameter pitfalls before, but at the same time I feel like Java threw out the baby with the bathwater in that move and I’m glad to see C# now has them. This post briefly discusses the pros and pitfalls of using default parameters.  I’m avoiding saying cons, because I really don’t believe using default parameters is a negative thing, I just think there are things you must watch for and guard against to avoid abuses that can cause code safety issues. Pro: Default Parameters Can Simplify Code Let’s start out with positives.  Consider how much cleaner it is to reduce all the overloads in methods or constructors that simply exist to give the semblance of optional parameters.  For example, we could have a Message class defined which allows for all possible initializations of a Message: 1: public class Message 2: { 3: // can either cascade these like this or duplicate the defaults (which can introduce risk) 4: public Message() 5: : this(string.Empty) 6: { 7: } 8:  9: public Message(string text) 10: : this(text, null) 11: { 12: } 13:  14: public Message(string text, IDictionary<string, string> properties) 15: : this(text, properties, -1) 16: { 17: } 18:  19: public Message(string text, IDictionary<string, string> properties, long timeToLive) 20: { 21: // ... 22: } 23: }   Now consider the same code with default parameters: 1: public class Message 2: { 3: // can either cascade these like this or duplicate the defaults (which can introduce risk) 4: public Message(string text = "", IDictionary<string, string> properties = null, long timeToLive = -1) 5: { 6: // ... 7: } 8: }   Much more clean and concise and no repetitive coding!  In addition, in the past if you wanted to be able to cleanly supply timeToLive and accept the default on text and properties above, you would need to either create another overload, or pass in the defaults explicitly.  With named parameters, though, we can do this easily: 1: var msg = new Message(timeToLive: 100);   Pro: Named Parameters can Improve Readability I must say one of my favorite things with the default parameters addition in C# is the named parameters.  It lets code be a lot easier to understand visually with no comments.  Think how many times you’ve run across a TimeSpan declaration with 4 arguments and wondered if they were passing in days/hours/minutes/seconds or hours/minutes/seconds/milliseconds.  A novice running through your code may wonder what it is.  Named arguments can help resolve the visual ambiguity: 1: // is this days/hours/minutes/seconds (no) or hours/minutes/seconds/milliseconds (yes) 2: var ts = new TimeSpan(1, 2, 3, 4); 3:  4: // this however is visually very explicit 5: var ts = new TimeSpan(days: 1, hours: 2, minutes: 3, seconds: 4);   Or think of the times you’ve run across something passing a Boolean literal and wondered what it was: 1: // what is false here? 2: var sub = CreateSubscriber(hostname, port, false); 3:  4: // aha! Much more visibly clear 5: var sub = CreateSubscriber(hostname, port, isBuffered: false);   Pitfall: Don't Insert new Default Parameters In Between Existing Defaults Now let’s consider a two potential pitfalls.  The first is really an abuse.  It’s not really a fault of the default parameters themselves, but a fault in the use of them.  Let’s consider that Message constructor again with defaults.  Let’s say you want to add a messagePriority to the message and you think this is more important than a timeToLive value, so you decide to put messagePriority before it in the default, this gives you: 1: public class Message 2: { 3: public Message(string text = "", IDictionary<string, string> properties = null, int priority = 5, long timeToLive = -1) 4: { 5: // ... 6: } 7: }   Oh boy have we set ourselves up for failure!  Why?  Think of all the code out there that could already be using the library that already specified the timeToLive, such as this possible call: 1: var msg = new Message(“An error occurred”, myProperties, 1000);   Before this specified a message with a TTL of 1000, now it specifies a message with a priority of 1000 and a time to live of -1 (infinite).  All of this with NO compiler errors or warnings. So the rule to take away is if you are adding new default parameters to a method that’s currently in use, make sure you add them to the end of the list or create a brand new method or overload. Pitfall: Beware of Default Parameters in Inheritance and Interface Implementation Now, the second potential pitfalls has to do with inheritance and interface implementation.  I’ll illustrate with a puzzle: 1: public interface ITag 2: { 3: void WriteTag(string tagName = "ITag"); 4: } 5:  6: public class BaseTag : ITag 7: { 8: public virtual void WriteTag(string tagName = "BaseTag") { Console.WriteLine(tagName); } 9: } 10:  11: public class SubTag : BaseTag 12: { 13: public override void WriteTag(string tagName = "SubTag") { Console.WriteLine(tagName); } 14: } 15:  16: public static class Program 17: { 18: public static void Main() 19: { 20: SubTag subTag = new SubTag(); 21: BaseTag subByBaseTag = subTag; 22: ITag subByInterfaceTag = subTag; 23:  24: // what happens here? 25: subTag.WriteTag(); 26: subByBaseTag.WriteTag(); 27: subByInterfaceTag.WriteTag(); 28: } 29: }   What happens?  Well, even though the object in each case is SubTag whose tag is “SubTag”, you will get: 1: SubTag 2: BaseTag 3: ITag   Why?  Because default parameter are resolved at compile time, not runtime!  This means that the default does not belong to the object being called, but by the reference type it’s being called through.  Since the SubTag instance is being called through an ITag reference, it will use the default specified in ITag. So the moral of the story here is to be very careful how you specify defaults in interfaces or inheritance hierarchies.  I would suggest avoiding repeating them, and instead concentrating on the layer of classes or interfaces you must likely expect your caller to be calling from. For example, if you have a messaging factory that returns an IMessage which can be either an MsmqMessage or JmsMessage, it only makes since to put the defaults at the IMessage level since chances are your user will be using the interface only. So let’s sum up.  In general, I really love default and named parameters in C# 4.0.  I think they’re a great tool to help make your code easier to read and maintain when used correctly. On the plus side, default parameters: Reduce redundant overloading for the sake of providing optional calling structures. Improve readability by being able to name an ambiguous argument. But remember to make sure you: Do not insert new default parameters in the middle of an existing set of default parameters, this may cause unpredictable behavior that may not necessarily throw a syntax error – add to end of list or create new method. Be extremely careful how you use default parameters in inheritance hierarchies and interfaces – choose the most appropriate level to add the defaults based on expected usage. Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Software,Default Parameters

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  • The APEX of Business Value...or...the Business Value of APEX? Oracle Cloud Takes Oracle APEX to New Heights!

    - by Gene Eun
    The attraction of Oracle Application Express (APEX) has increased tremendously with the recent launch of the Oracle Cloud. APEX already supported departmental development and deployment of business applications with minimal involvement from the IT department. Positioned as the ideal replacement for MS Access, APEX probably has managed better to capture the eye of developers and was used for enterprise application development at least as much as for the kind of tactical applications that Oracle strategically positioned it for. With APEX as PaaS from the Oracle Cloud, a leap is made to a much higher level of business value. Now the IT department is not even needed to make infrastructure available with a database running  on it. All the business needs is a credit card. And the business application that is developed, managed and used from the cloud through a standard browser can now just as easily be accessed by users from around the world as by users from the business department itself. As a bonus – the development of the APEX application is also done in the cloud – with no special demands on the location or the enterprise access privileges of the developers. To sum it up: APEX from Oracle Cloud Database Service get the development environment up and running in minutes no involvement from the internal IT department required (not for infrastructure, platform, or development) superior availability and scalability is offered by Oracle users from anywhere in the world can be invited to access the application developers from anywhere in the world can participate in creating and maintaining the application In addition: because the Oracle Cloud platform is the same as the on-premise platform, you can still decide to move the APEX application between the cloud and the local environment – and back again. The REST-ful services that are available through APEX allow programmatic interaction with the database under the APEX application. That means that this database can be synchronized with on premise databases or data stores in (other) clouds. Through the Oracle Cloud Messaging Service, the APEX application can easily enter into asynchronous conversations with other APEX applications, Fusion Middleware applications (ADF, SOA, BPM) and any other type of REST-enabled application. In my opinion, now, for the first time perhaps, APEX offers the attraction to the business that has been suggested before: because of the cloud, all the business needs is  a credit card (a budget of $175 per month), an internet-connection and a browser. Not like before, with a PC hidden under a desk or a database running somewhere in the data center. No matter how unattended: equipment is needed, power is consumed, the database needs to be kept running and if Oracle Database XE does not suffice, software licenses are required as well. And this set up always has a security challenge associated with it. The cloud fee for the Oracle Cloud Database Service includes infrastructure, power, licenses, availability, platform upgrades, a collection of reusable application components and the development and runtime environments containing the APEX platform. Of course this not only means that business departments can move quickly without having to convince their IT colleagues to move along – it also means that small organizations that do not even have IT colleagues can do the same. Getting tailored applications or applications up and running to get in touch with users and customers all over the world is now within easy reach for small outfits – without any investment. My misunderstanding For a long time, I was under the impression that the essence of APEX was that the business could create applications themselves – meaning that business ‘people’ would actually go into APEX to create the application. To me APEX was too much of a developers’ tool to see that happen – apart from the odd business analyst who missed his or her calling as an IT developer. Having looked at various other cloud based development offerings – including Force.com, Mendix, WaveMaker, WorkXpress, OrangeScape, Caspio and Cordys- I have come to realize my mistake. All these platforms are positioned for 'the business' but require a fair amount of coding and technical expertise. However, they make the business happy nevertheless, because they allow the  business to completely circumvent the IT department. That is the essence. Not having to go through the red tape, not having to wait for IT staff who (justifiably) need weeks or months to provide an environment, not having to deal with administrators (again, justifiably) refusing to take on that 'strange environment'. Being able to think of an initiative and turn into action right away. The business does not have to build the application - it can easily hire some external developers or even that nerdy boy next door. They can get started, get an application up and running and invite users in – especially external users such as customers. They will worry later about upgrades and life cycle management and integration. To get applications up and running quickly and start turning ideas into action and results rightaway. That is the key selling point for all these cloud offerings, including APEX from the Cloud. And it is a compelling story. For APEX probably even more so than for the others. While I consider APEX a somewhat proprietary framework compared with ‘regular’ Java/JEE web development (or even .NET and PHP  development), it is still far more open than most cloud environments. APEX is SQL and PL/SQL based – nothing special about those languages – and can run just as easily on site as in the cloud. It has been around since 2004 (that is not including several predecessors that fed straight into APEX) so it can be considered pretty mature. Oracle as a company seems pretty stable – so investments in its technology are bound to last for some time to come. By the way: neither APEX nor the other Cloud DevaaS offerings are targeted at creating applications with enormous life times. They fit into a trend of agile development and rapid life cycle management, with fairly light weight user interfaces that quickly adapt to taste, technology trends and functional requirements and that are easily replaced. APEX and ADF – a match made in heaven?! (or at least in the sky) Note that using APEX only for cloud based database with REST-ful Services is also a perfectly viable scenario: any UI – mobile or browser based – capable of consuming REST-ful services can be created against such a business tier. Creating an ADF Mobile application for example that runs aginst REST-ful services is a best practice for mobile development. Such REST-ful services can be consumed from any service provider – including the Cloud based APEX powered REST-ful services running against the Oracle Cloud Database Service! The ADF Mobile architecture overview can easily be morphed to fit the APEX services in – allowing for a cloud based mobile app: Want to learn more about Oracle Database Cloud Service or Oracle Cloud, just visit cloud.oracle.com  or oracle.com/cloud. Repost of a blog entry by Rick Greenwald, Director of Product Management, Oracle Database Cloud Service.

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  • My Code Kata–A Solution Kata

    - by Glav
    There are many developers and coders out there who like to do code Kata’s to keep their coding ability up to scratch and to practice their skills. I think it is a good idea. While I like the concept, I find them dead boring and of minimal purpose. Yes, they serve to hone your skills but that’s about it. They are often quite abstract, in that they usually focus on a small problem set requiring specific solutions. It is fair enough as that is how they are designed but again, I find them quite boring. What I personally like to do is go for something a little larger and a little more fun. It takes a little more time and is not as easily executed as a kata though, but it services the same purposes from a practice perspective and allows me to continue to solve some problems that are not directly part of the initial goal. This means I can cover a broader learning range and have a bit more fun. If I am lucky, sometimes they even end up being useful tools. With that in mind, I thought I’d share my current ‘kata’. It is not really a code kata as it is too big. I prefer to think of it as a ‘solution kata’. The code is on bitbucket here. What I wanted to do was create a kind of simplistic virtual world where I can create a player, or a class, stuff it into the world, and see if it survives, and can navigate its way to the exit. Requirements were pretty simple: Must be able to define a map to describe the world using simple X,Y co-ordinates. Z co-ordinates as well if you feel like getting clever. Should have the concept of entrances, exists, solid blocks, and potentially other materials (again if you want to get clever). A coder should be able to easily write a class which will act as an inhabitant of the world. An inhabitant will receive stimulus from the world in the form of surrounding environment and be able to make a decision on action which it passes back to the ‘world’ for processing. At a minimum, an inhabitant will have sight and speed characteristics which determine how far they can ‘see’ in the world, and how fast they can move. Coders who write a really bad ‘inhabitant’ should not adversely affect the rest of world. Should allow multiple inhabitants in the world. So that was the solution I set out to act as a practice solution and a little bit of fun. It had some interesting problems to solve and I figured, if it turned out ok, I could potentially use this as a ‘developer test’ for interviews. Ask a potential coder to write a class for an inhabitant. Show the coder the map they will navigate, but also mention that we will use their code to navigate a map they have not yet seen and a little more complex. I have been playing with solution for a short time now and have it working in basic concepts. Below is a screen shot using a very basic console visualiser that shows the map, boundaries, blocks, entrance, exit and players/inhabitants. The yellow asterisks ‘*’ are the players, green ‘O’ the entrance, purple ‘^’ the exit, maroon/browny ‘#’ are solid blocks. The players can move around at different speeds, knock into each others, and make directional movement decisions based on what they see and who is around them. It has been quite fun to write and it is also quite fun to develop different players to inject into the world. The code below shows a really simple implementation of an inhabitant that can work out what to do based on stimulus from the world. It is pretty simple and just tries to move in some direction if there is nothing blocking the path. public class TestPlayer:LivingEntity { public TestPlayer() { Name = "Beta Boy"; LifeKey = Guid.NewGuid(); } public override ActionResult DecideActionToPerform(EcoDev.Core.Common.Actions.ActionContext actionContext) { try { var action = new MovementAction(); // move forward if we can if (actionContext.Position.ForwardFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.ForwardFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Forward; return action; } } if (actionContext.Position.LeftFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.LeftFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Left; return action; } } if (actionContext.Position.RearFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.RearFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Back; return action; } } if (actionContext.Position.RightFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.RightFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Right; return action; } } return action; } catch (Exception ex) { World.WriteDebugInformation("Player: "+ Name, string.Format("Player Generated exception: {0}",ex.Message)); throw ex; } } private bool CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(MapBlock block) { if (block == null || block.Accessibility == MapBlockAccessibility.AllowEntry || block.Accessibility == MapBlockAccessibility.AllowExit || block.Accessibility == MapBlockAccessibility.AllowPotentialEntry) { return true; } return false; } } It is simple and it seems to work well. The world implementation itself decides the stimulus context that is passed to he inhabitant to make an action decision. All movement is carried out on separate threads and timed appropriately to be as fair as possible and to cater for additional skills such as speed, and eventually maybe stamina, strength, with actions like fighting. It is pretty fun to make up random maps and see how your inhabitant does. You can download the code from here. Along the way I have played with parallel extensions to make the compute intensive stuff spread across all cores, had to heavily factor in visibility of methods and properties so design of classes was paramount, work out movement algorithms that play fairly in the world and properly favour the players with higher abilities, as well as a host of other issues. So that is my ‘solution kata’. If I keep going with it, I may develop a web interface for it where people can upload assemblies and watch their player within a web browser visualiser and maybe even a map designer. What do you do to keep the fires burning?

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  • Microsoft and the open source community

    - by Charles Young
    For the last decade, I have repeatedly, in my imitable Microsoft fan boy style, offered an alternative view to commonly held beliefs about Microsoft's stance on open source licensing.  In earlier times, leading figures in Microsoft were very vocal in resisting the idea that commercial licensing is outmoded or morally reprehensible.  Many people interpreted this as all-out corporate opposition to open source licensing.  I never read it that way. It is true that I've met individual employees of Microsoft who are antagonistic towards FOSS (free and open source software), but I've met more who are supportive or at least neutral on the subject.  In any case, individual attitudes of employees don't necessarily reflect a corporate stance.  The strongest opposition I've encountered has actually come from outside the company.  It's not a charitable thought, but I sometimes wonder if there are people in the .NET community who are opposed to FOSS simply because they believe, erroneously, that Microsoft is opposed. Here, for what it is worth, are the points I've repeated endlessly over the years and which have often been received with quizzical scepticism. a)  A decade ago, Microsoft's big problem was not FOSS per se, or even with copyleft.  The thing which really kept them awake at night was the fear that one day, someone might find, deep in the heart of the Windows code base, some code that should not be there and which was published under GPL.  The likelihood of this ever happening has long since faded away, but there was a time when MS was running scared.  I suspect this is why they held out for a while from making Windows source code open to inspection.  Nowadays, as an MVP, I am positively encouraged to ask to see Windows source. b)  Microsoft has never opposed the open source community.  They have had problems with specific people and organisations in the FOSS community.  Back in the 1990s, Richard Stallman gave time and energy to a successful campaign to launch antitrust proceedings against Microsoft.  In more recent times, the negative attitude of certain people to Microsoft's submission of two FOSS licences to the OSI (both of which have long since been accepted), and the mad scramble to try to find any argument, however tenuous, to block their submission was not, let us say, edifying. c) Microsoft has never, to my knowledge, written off the FOSS model.  They certainly don't agree that more traditional forms of licensing are inappropriate or immoral, and they've always been prepared to say so.  One reason why it was so hard to convince people that Microsoft is not rabidly antagonistic towards FOSS licensing is that so many people think they have no involvement in open source.  A decade ago, there was virtually no evidence of any such involvement.  However, that was a long time ago.  Quietly over the years, Microsoft has got on with the job of working out how to make use of FOSS licensing and how to support the FOSS community.  For example, as well as making increasingly extensive use of Github, they run an important FOSS forge (CodePlex) on which they, themselves, host many hundreds of distinct projects.  The total count may even be in the thousands now.  I suspect there is a limit of about 500 records on CodePlex searches because, for the past few years, whenever I search for Microsoft-specific projects on CodePlex, I always get approx. 500 hits.  Admittedly, a large volume of the stuff they publish under FOSS licences amounts to code samples, but many of those 'samples' have grown into useful and fully featured frameworks, libraries and tools. All this is leading up to the observation that yesterday's announcement by Scott Guthrie marks a significant milestone and should not go unnoticed.  If you missed it, let me summarise.   From the first release of .NET, Microsoft has offered a web development framework called ASP.NET.  The core libraries are included in the .NET framework which is released free of charge, but which is not open source.   However, in recent years, the number of libraries that constitute ASP.NET have grown considerably.  Today, most professional ASP.NET web development exploits the ASP.NET MVC framework.  This, together with several other important parts of the ASP.NET technology stack, is released on CodePlex under the Apache 2.0 licence.   Hence, today, a huge swathe of web development on the .NET/Azure platform relies four-square on the use of FOSS frameworks and libraries. Yesterday, Scott Guthrie announced the next stage of ASP.NET's journey towards FOSS nirvana.  This involves extending ASP.NET's FOSS stack to include Web API and the MVC Razor view engine which is rapidly becoming the de facto 'standard' for building web pages in ASP.NET.  However, perhaps the more important announcement is that the ASP.NET team will now accept and review contributions from the community.  Scott points out that this model is already in place elsewhere in Microsoft, and specifically draws attention to development of the Windows Azure SDKs.  These SDKs are central to Azure development.   The .NET and Java SDKs are published under Apache 2.0 on Github and Microsoft is open to community contributions.  Accepting contributions is a more profound move than simply releasing code under FOSS licensing.  It means that Microsoft is wholeheartedly moving towards a full-blooded open source approach for future evolution of some of their central and most widely used .NET and Azure frameworks and libraries.  In conjunction with Scott's announcement, Microsoft has also released Git support for CodePlex (at long last!) and, perhaps more importantly, announced significant new investment in their own FOSS forge. Here at Solidsoft we have several reasons to be very interested in Scott's announcement. I'll draw attention to one of them.  Earlier this year we wrote the initial version of a new UK Government web application called CloudStore.  CloudStore provides a way for local and central government to discover and purchase applications and services. We wrote the web site using ASP.NET MVC which is FOSS.  However, this point has been lost on the ladies and gentlemen of the press and, I suspect, on some of the decision makers on the government side.  They announced a few weeks ago that future versions of CloudStore will move to a FOSS framework, clearly oblivious of the fact that it is already built on a FOSS framework.  We are, it is fair to say, mildly irked by the uninformed and badly out-of-date assumption that “if it is Microsoft, it can't be FOSS”.  Old prejudices live on.

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  • Summit Time!

    - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell
    Boy, how time flies!  I can hardly believe that the 2011 PASS Summit is just one week away.  Maybe it snuck up on me because it’s a few weeks earlier than last year.  Whatever the cause, I am really looking forward to next week.  The PASS Summit is the largest SQL Server conference in the world and a fantastic networking opportunity thrown in for no additional charge.  Here are a few thoughts to help you maximize the week. Networking As Karen Lopez (blog | @DataChick) mentioned in her presentation for the Professional Development Virtual Chapter just a couple of weeks ago, “Don’t wait until you need a new job to start networking.”  You should always be working on your professional network.  Some people, especially technical-minded people, get confused by the term networking.  The first image that used to pop into my head was the image of some guy standing, awkwardly, off to the side of a cocktail party, trying to shmooze those around him.  That’s not what I’m talking about.  If you’re good at that sort of thing, and you can strike up a conversation with some stranger and learn all about them in 5 minutes, and walk away with your next business deal all but approved by the lawyers, then congratulations.  But if you’re not, and most of us are not, I have two suggestions for you.  First, register for Don Gabor’s 2-hour session on Tuesday at the Summit called Networking to Build Business Contacts.  Don is a master at small talk, and at teaching others, and in just those two short hours will help you with important tips about breaking the ice, remembering names, and smooth transitions into and out of conversations.  Then go put that great training to work right away at the Tuesday night Welcome Reception and meet some new people; which is really my second suggestion…just meet a few new people.  You see, “networking” is about meeting new people and being friendly without trying to “work it” to get something out of the relationship at this point.  In fact, Don will tell you that a better way to build the connection with someone is to look for some way that you can help them, not how they can help you. There are a ton of opportunities as long as you follow this one key point: Don’t stay in your hotel!  At the least, get out and go to the free events such as the Tuesday night Welcome Reception, the Wednesday night Exhibitor Reception, and the Thursday night Community Appreciation Party.  All three of these are perfect opportunities to meet other professionals with a similar job or interest as you, and you never know how that may help you out in the future.  Maybe you just meet someone to say HI to at breakfast the next day instead of eating alone.  Or maybe you cross paths several times throughout the Summit and compare notes on different sessions you attended.  And you just might make new friends that you look forward to seeing year after year at the Summit.  Who knows, it might even turn out that you have some specific experience that will help out that other person a few months’ from now when they run into the same challenge that you just overcame, or vice-versa.  But the point is, if you don’t get out and meet people, you’ll never have the chance for anything else to happen in the future. One more tip for shy attendees of the Summit…if you can’t bring yourself to strike up conversation with strangers at these events, then at the least, after you sit through a good session that helps you out, go up to the speaker and introduce yourself and thank them for taking the time and effort to put together their presentation.  Ideally, when you do this, tell them WHY it was beneficial to you (e.g. “Now I have a new idea of how to tackle a problem back at the office.”)  I know you think the speakers are all full of confidence and are always receiving a ton of accolades and applause, but you’re wrong.  Most of them will be very happy to hear first-hand that all the work they put into getting ready for their presentation is paying off for somebody. Training With over 170 technical sessions at the Summit, training is what it’s all about, and the training is fantastic!  Of course there are the big-name trainers like Paul Randall, Kimberly Tripp, Kalen Delaney, Itzik Ben-Gan and several others, but I am always impressed by the quality of the training put on by so many other “regular” members of the SQL Server community.  It is amazing how you don’t have to be a published author or otherwise recognized as an “expert” in an area in order to make a big impact on others just by sharing your personal experience and lessons learned.  I would rather hear the story of, and lessons learned from, “some guy or gal” who has actually been through an issue and came out the other side, than I would a trained professor who is speaking just from theory or an intellectual understanding of a topic. In addition to the three full days of regular sessions, there are also two days of pre-conference intensive training available.  There is an extra cost to this, but it is a fantastic opportunity.  Think about it…you’re already coming to this area for training, so why not extend your stay a little bit and get some in-depth training on a particular topic or two?  I did this for the first time last year.  I attended one day of extra training and it was well worth the time and money.  One of the best reasons for it is that I am extremely busy at home with my regular job and family, that it was hard to carve out the time to learn about the topic on my own.  It worked out so well last year that I am doubling up and doing two days or “pre-cons” this year. And then there are the DVDs.  I think these are another great option.  I used the online schedule builder to get ready and have an idea of which sessions I want to attend and when they are (much better than trying to figure this out at the last minute every day).  But the problem that I have run into (seems this happens every year) is that nearly every session block has two different sessions that I would like to attend.  And some of them have three!  ACK!  That won’t work!  What is a guy supposed to do?  Well, one option is to purchase the DVDs which are recordings of the audio and projected images from each session so you can continue to attend sessions long after the Summit is officially over.  Yes, many (possibly all) of these also get posted online and attendees can access those for no extra charge, but those are not necessarily all available as quickly as the DVD recording are, and the DVDs are often more convenient than downloading, especially if you want to share the training with someone who was not able to attend in person. Remember, I don’t make any money or get any other benefit if you buy the DVDs or from anything else that I have recommended here.  These are just my own thoughts, trying to help out based on my experiences from the 8 or so Summits I have attended.  There is nothing like the Summit.  It is an awesome experience, fantastic training, and a whole lot of fun which is just compounded if you’ll take advantage of the first part of this article and make some new friends along the way.

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  • It was a figure of speech!

    - by Ratman21
    Yesterday I posted the following as attention getter / advertisement (as well as my feelings). In the groups, (I am in) on the social networking site, LinkedIn and boy did I get responses.    I am fighting mad about (a figure of speech, really) not having a job! Look just because I am over 55 and have gray hair. It does not mean, my brain is dead or I can no longer trouble shoot a router or circuit or LAN issue. Or that I can do “IT” work at all. And I could prove this if; some one would give me at job. Come on try me for 90 days at min. wage. I know you will end up keeping me (hope fully at normal pay) around. Is any one hearing me…come on take up the challenge!     This was the responses I got.   I hear you. We just need to retrain and get our skills up to speed is all. That is what I am doing. I have not given up. Just got to stay on top of the game. Experience is on our side if we have the credentials and we are reasonable about our salaries this should not be an issue.   Already on it, going back to school and have got three certifications (CompTIA A+, Security+ and Network+. I am now studying for my CISCO CCNA certification. As to my salary, I am willing to work at very reasonable rate.   You need to re-brand yourself like a product, market and sell yourself. You need to smarten up, look and feel a million dollars, re-energize yourself, regain your confidents. Either start your own business, or re-write your CV so it stands out from the rest, get the template off the internet. Contact every recruitment agent in your town, state, country and overseas, and on the web. Apply to every job you think you could do, you may not get it but you will make a contact for your network, which may lead to a job at the end of the tunnel. Get in touch with everyone you know from past jobs. Do charity work. I maintain the IT Network, stage electrical and the Telecom equipment in my church,   Again already on it. I have email the world is seems with my resume and cover letters. So far, I have rewritten or had it rewrote, my resume and cover letters; over seven times so far. Re-energize? I never lost my energy level or my self-confidents in my work (now if could get some HR personal to see the same). I also volunteer at my church, I created and maintain the church web sit.   I share your frustration. Sucks being over 50 and looking for work. Please don't sell yourself short at min wage because the employer will think that’s your worth. Keep trying!!   I never stop trying and min wage is only for 90 days. If some one takes up the challenge. Some post asked if I am keeping up technology.   Do you keep up with the latest technology and can speak the language fluidly?   Yep to that and as to speaking it also a yep! I am a geek you know. I heard from others over the 50 year mark and younger too.   I'm with you! I keep getting told that I don't have enough experience because I just recently completed a Masters level course in Microsoft SQL Server, which gave me a project-intensive equivalent of between 2 and 3 years of experience. On top of that training, I have 19 years as an applications programmer and database administrator. I can normalize rings around experienced DBAs and churn out effective code with the best of them. But my 19 years is worthless as far as most recruiters and HR people are concerned because it is not the specific experience for which they're looking. HR AND RECRUITERS TAKE NOTE: Experience, whatever the language, translates across platforms and technology! By the way, I'm also over 55 and still have "got it"!   I never lost it and I also can work rings round younger techs.   I'm 52 and female and seem to be having the same issues. I have over 10 years experience in tech support (with a BS in CIS) and can't get hired either.   Ow, I only have an AS in computer science along with my certifications.   Keep the faith, I have been unemployed since August of 2008. I agree with you...I am willing to return to the beginning of my retail career and work myself back through the ranks, if someone will look past the grey and realize the knowledge I would bring to the table.   I also would like some one to look past the gray.   Interesting approach, volunteering to work for minimum wage for 90 days. I'm in the same situation as you, being 55 & balding w/white hair, so I know where you're coming from. I've been out of work now for a year. I'm in Michigan, where the unemployment rate is estimated to be 15% (the worst in the nation) & even though I've got 30+ years of IT experience ranging from mainframe to PC desktop support, it's difficult to even get a face-to-face interview. I had one prospective employer tell me flat out that I "didn't have the energy required for this position". Mostly I never get any feedback. All I can say is good luck & try to remain optimistic.   He said WHAT! Yes remaining optimistic is key. Along with faith in God. Then there was this (for lack of better word) jerk.   Give it up already. You were too old to work in high tech 10 years ago. Scratch that, 20 years ago! Try selling hot dogs in front of Fry's Electronics. At least you would get a chance to eat lunch with your previous colleagues....   You know funny thing on this person is that I checked out his profile. He is older than I am.

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