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• MySQL Table Loop using PHP

  - by JM4

  I have an online form which collects consumer data and stores in a dedicated MySQL database. In some instances, data is passed in the URL under the "RefID" variable which is also stored in the database and attached to each registration. I use the 'mysql_num_rows ($result)' to fetch all agent details on another page but this only returns ALL available details. My goal is as follows: GOAL I want to create an HTML table in which rows are automatically generated based on the list of all registrations on my site. A new row is created IF and ONLY IF a unique RefID is present on that particular record. In the event the field is NULL, it is reported on a single line. In short, the HTML table could look something like this: RefID - Number of Enrollments abc123 - 10 baseball - 11 twonk - 7 NULL - 33 Where abc123 is a particular RefID and 10 is the number of times that RefID appears in the DB. If a new registration comes in with RefID = "horses", a new row is created, showing "horses - 1". The HTML table will be viewable by account administrators needing to see the number of enrollments for a particular RefID (which they won't know ahead of time). Anybody have any suggestions?

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• DB Strategy for inserting into a high read table (Sql Server)

  - by Tom

  Looking for strategies for a very large table with data maintained for reporting and historical purposes, a very small subset of that data is used in daily operations. Background: We have Visitor and Visits tables which are continuously updated by our consumer facing site. These tables contain information on every visit and visitor, including bots and crawlers, direct traffic that does not result in a conversion, etc. Our back end site allows management of the visitor's (leads) from the front end site. Most of the management occurs on a small subset of our visitors (visitors that become leads). The vast majority of the data in our visitor and visit tables is maintained only for a much smaller subset of user activity (basically reporting type functionality). This is NOT an indexing problem, we have done all we can with indexing and keeping our indexes clean, small, and not fragmented. ps: We do not currently have the budget or expertise for a data warehouse. The problem: We would like the system to be more responsive to our end users when they are querying, for instance, the list of their assigned leads. Currently the query is against a huge data set of mostly irrelevant data. I am pondering a few ideas. One involves new tables and a fairly major re-architecture, I'm not asking for help on that. The other involves creating redundant data, (for instance a Visitor_Archive and a Visitor_Small table) where the larger visitor and visit tables exist for inserts and history/reporting, the smaller visitor1 table would exist for managing leads, sending lead an email, need leads phone number, need my list of leads, etc.. The reason I am reaching out is that I would love opinions on the best way to keep the Visitor_Archive and the Visitor_Small tables in sync... Replication? Can I use replication to replicate only data with a certain column value (FooID = x) Any other strategies?

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• Detecting modifier keys held down during startup in OS/X (or Windows)?

  - by Tom Swirly

  I've searched here and not found any question that really covers this. I have a cross-platform Windows-OS/X application in which I'd like to be able to detect whether modifier keys like shift or control are being held down while the application starts up. We'd like to do this to allow the application to start up without reading its preferences file, in case that somehow gets corrupted (we saw in testing a prefs bug, now fixed, that made the window size 0 by 0, for example). We're using the excellent and comprehensive cross-platform C++ library named Juce. Unfortunately, Juce's master tells me that he believes this is impossible on OS/X at least since you only get keyboard events and there is no way to read the state of the keys unless something changes. Is this true? Or is there some way around this? I'm almost sure I've used Mac programs that used this mechanism to bypass their preferences. Or... stepping up one level... is there another solution to providing the functionality of "run the program but don't read the prefs file" other than "holding a key down while launching the program"? This is consumer software so we can't expect too much from the user. The final solution will end up being a cross-platform one so hints on the Windows side will also be appreciated. Thanks, and be well! I'll report in with progress on my end.

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• What "pieces" are needed in order to set up a cluster of physical servers?

  - by Chris Dutrow

  Background: Currently, we use Rackspace cloud servers. We have no intention to stop using them, but would like to look into setting up a cluster of physical servers (probably desktop computers in the $400 range with 8gb memory each) to offset some of our load and work as a secondary, more powerful, less reliable system. To put things in perspective, we can buy comparable desktop computers for the same price as we pay in one month to rent them on Rackspace Cloud. I understand that this is generally a dumb idea. However, in this particular instance, the server cluster is needed for its computation power. It is not mission-critical, it does not host a consumer-facing website, and if it goes down for a day or two, its not really a problem. Currently, we have access to business class verizon fios. If I understand correctly, we can get at least 25 dedicated IP addresses with this service, this should be enough. Requirements: Each server runs Linux Centos 6.3 Some of the servers run Python and execute processes from a task queue (Redis or RabbitMQ) Some of the servers are capable of serving static files and Python driven REST APIs Some of the servers host a Cassandra database cluster One or more of the servers are a Redis database servers One or more of the servers are PostgreSQL servers Questions: What kind of router or switch is needed? We would like the computers to be able to communicate effectively with each other via internal IP addresses. This is especially important for communicating with servers hosting Redis that need to be able to respond to requests very quickly. Are there special switches or routers that need to be used to connect the servers together? Are Desktop computers ok for this? We have found that we are mostly RAM-bottle necked, I understand that some servers have highly superior CPUs, but I'm not sure we need CPU power as much as we need RAM, which is cheap in Desktop computers. Will we have problems with the WIFI cards in the desktops or any other unexpected hardware limitation? What tools should be used to "image" the servers. For example, when we get an installation right for a Redis server or Cassandra node, are there tools that come with Linux Centos 6.3 to image the server to a USB drive or something like that? Or do we need to use some other software for this? What other things are we missing that we should be concerned about? Thanks so much!

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• How do I combine static and dynamic DHCP leases on a Cisco router?

  - by Brad

  Basically, what I need is super similar to the unanswered cisco forum question below: https://supportforums.cisco.com/message/3139749#3139749 I have a Cisco 850 Series router. I have configured a DHCP pool for the 10.0.0.0/24 network. I have excluded 10.0.0.1 - 10.0.0.99 from the DHCP pool. I want to add a static DHCP pool for stuff and I want DHCP to statically assign them the addresses of my choice below 100. Actually, I don't care what addresses I statically assign. They can be anything in the pool for all I care, I just want it to work. Why are you doing this? Just statically assign the IPs on the devices! I don't want to do this because I have some laptop users. They could obviously only use that static IP here. This isn't a problem if they could be bothered to change any location setting or something. They can't. So it HAS to be DHCP. It also has to be static IPs because I need to forward ports to them. I know, I know, this is weird but it's an apartment LAN/WLAN so this isn't exactly a typical use case. Relevant sections of config below: ip dhcp excluded-address 10.0.0.1 10.0.0.99 ! ip dhcp pool Internal-net import all network 10.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 default-router 10.0.0.1 domain-name 1770.local lease 7 ! ip dhcp pool static-pool import all origin file flash://staticmap default-router 10.0.0.1 domain-name 1770.local Contents of staticmap: *time* Aug 5 2010 09:00 AM *version* 2 !IP address Type Hardware address Lease expiration 10.0.0.100/24 1 001f.5b3e.d50a Infinite *end* You can see here I was trying addresses outside the excluded-address range to see if that would make any difference. My testing machine's MAC: mainframe:~ brad$ ifconfig en1 en1: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 ether 00:1f:5b:3e:d5:0a What shows up in the DHCP binding table: basestar#show ip dhcp binding Bindings from all pools not associated with VRF: IP address Client-ID/ Lease expiration Type Hardware address/ User name 10.0.0.112 0100.1f5b.3ed5.0a Aug 12 2010 10:06 AM Automatic What's up with the funny looking MAC in the DHCP binding table?? Is what I'm trying to accomplish basically impossible? Am I going about this the wrong way? All I want to to be able to port forward some ports to specific devices. The way I would do this with a consumer router is to do what I'm trying to do here; assign static DHCP to those devices then configure PAT for ports on those addresses.

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• Macintosh computers cannot connect to router unless we re-start the modem and router

  - by dwwilson66

  We have a small office network with DSL and a Netgear WNR-2000 wireless router acting as a DHCP server. There are nine devices connected to the router, wirelessly and wired. Whenever a Mac computer tries to connect, it's unsuccessful until we restart the router. Each of the possible devices that can connect to the network is listed in a table to assign certain IP addresses to certain MAC addresses. I am running WPA-PSK security. I can view the router status and see that the Mac's MAC address is visible to the router, but with a 169.* IP address, even though I'm assigning its MAC address to an IP address within my subnet. All non-Mac devices attached to the network connect properly, and can access the network properly even AFTER the Mac has not successfully connected. The network includes Windows devices, Roku boxes, printers and internet ready TVs. This to me, would point to a DHCP issue with how Mac communicates with my network. One interesting thing to note is that if a Mac connects and is prevented from sleeping, it will stay connected indefinitely; reissuing the security cert from the router works fine. I'm not sure if that's supposed to sever & re-establish a connection with the updated credentials or not, but I do stay connected. If the Mac sleeps and is awakened while the security cert is still valid, it connects fine. If the security certificate expires while the Mac is asleep, we need to restart the router. Restarting the router will ALWAYS assigns the proper IP addresses to the Mac equipment. I have heard anecdotally that Mac doesn't play well with 802.11n; I have not tested any other Wireless protocols. There's a couple issues here: First, I found this on Stack, Mac laptop crashing wireless router, but it's not rally applicable since the router isn't crashing. But, it does give some clues about Mac's accessing the network. I did change my encryption from WEP to WPA-PSK, but after about a week, we're still experiencing the issue. I'm not really sure if there's anything else useful in that question. Second, I'm considering getting a 802.11c router and hooking it up to the wireless N router. the 802.11c router would handle all the Mac traffic, and would be set up as a Mac-only subnet. Everything else would remain as is. However, I'm not sure if this is doable on a technology level...do I need a bridge or is this some way to do this with regular consumer gear?

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• How to configure Transparent IP Address Sharing (TAS) on a Mediatrix 4102 with DGW 2.0 firmware?

  - by Pascal Bourque

  I am making the switch to VoIP. I chose voip.ms as my service provider and Mediatrix 4102 as my ATA. One reason why I chose the Mediatrix over other popular consumer ATAs is that it's supposed to be easy to place it in front of the router, so it can give priority to its own upstream traffic over the home network's upstream traffic. This is supposed to work transparently, with the ATA and router sharing the same public IP address (the one obtained from the modem). They call this feaure Transparent IP Address Sharing, or TAS. Their promotional brochure describes it like this: The Mediatrix 4102 also uses its innovative TAS (Transparent IP Address Sharing) technology and an embedded PPPoE client to allow the PC (or router) connected to the second Ethernet port to have the same public IP address, eliminating the need for private IP addresses or address translations. I am interested by this feature because my router, an Apple Time Capsule, doesn't support QoS and cannot give priority to the voice packets if the ATA is behind the router. However, after hours of searching the web, reading the documentation, and good ol' trial and error, I haven't been able to configure the Mediatrix to run in this mode. Then I found a version of the manual that looks like it was for a previous version of the firmware (SIP), where there is an entire section dedicated to configuring TAS (starting at page 209). But my Mediatrix comes with the DGW 2.0 firmware, whose documentation does not mention TAS at all. So I tried to follow the TAS setup instructions from the SIP documentation and apply them to my DGW firmware, using the Variable Mapping Between SIP v5.0 and DGW v2.0 document as a reference, but no success. Some required SIP variables don't have an equivalent in DGW. So it looks like the DGW firmware does not support TAS at all, or if it does they are not doing anything to help us set it up. So right now, the Mediatrix is behind the router and VoIP works perfectly except when my upstream bandwidth is saturated. My questions are: Is downgrading to SIP firmware the only way to have my Mediatrix 4102 run in TAS mode? If not, anybody knows how to setup TAS on the DGW firmware? Is TAS mode the only way to give priority to the voice packets if I want to keep my current router (Apple Time Capsule)? Thanks!

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• How should I set up my Hyper-V server and network topology?

  - by Daniel Waechter

  This is my first time setting up either Hyper-V or Windows 2008, so please bear with me. I am setting up a pretty decent server running Windows Server 2008 R2 to be a remote (colocated) Hyper-V host. It will be hosting Linux and Windows VMs, initially for developers to use but eventually also to do some web hosting and other tasks. Currently I have two VMs, one Windows and one Ubuntu Linux, running pretty well, and I plan to clone them for future use. Right now I'm considering the best ways to configure developer and administrator access to the server once it is moved into the colocation facility, and I'm seeking advice on that. My thought is to set up a VPN for access to certain features of the VMs on the server, but I have a few different options for going about this: Connect the server to an existing hardware firewall (an old-ish Netscreen 5-GT) that can create a VPN and map external IPs to the VMs, which will have their own IPs exposed through the virtual interface. One problem with this choice is that I'm the only one trained on the Netscreen, and its interface is a bit baroque, so others may have difficulty maintaining it. Advantage is that I already know how to do it, and I know it will do what I need. Connect the server directly to the network and configure the Windows 2008 firewall to restrict access to the VMs and set up a VPN. I haven't done this before, so it will have a learning curve, but I'm willing to learn if this option is better long-term than the Netscreen. Another advantage is that I won't have to train anyone on the Netscreen interface. Still, I'm not certain if the capabilities of the Windows software firewall as far as creating VPNs, setting up rules for external access to certain ports on the IPs of Hyper-V servers, etc. Will it be sufficient for my needs and easy enough to set up / maintain? Anything else? What are the limitations of my approaches? What are the best practices / what has worked well for you? Remember that I need to set up developer access as well as consumer access to some services. Is a VPN even the right choice?

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• How to configure Transparent IP Address Sharing (TAS) on a Mediatrix 4102 with DGW 2.0 firmware?

  - by Pascal Bourque

  I am making the switch to VoIP. I chose voip.ms as my service provider and Mediatrix 4102 as my ATA. One reason why I chose the Mediatrix over other popular consumer ATAs is that it's supposed to be easy to place it in front of the router, so it can give priority to its own upstream traffic over the home network's upstream traffic. This is supposed to work transparently, with the ATA and router sharing the same public IP address (the one obtained from the modem). They call this feaure Transparent IP Address Sharing, or TAS. Their promotional brochure describes it like this: The Mediatrix 4102 also uses its innovative TAS (Transparent IP Address Sharing) technology and an embedded PPPoE client to allow the PC (or router) connected to the second Ethernet port to have the same public IP address, eliminating the need for private IP addresses or address translations. I am interested by this feature because my router, an Apple Time Capsule, doesn't support QoS and cannot give priority to the voice packets if the ATA is behind the router. However, after hours of searching the web, reading the documentation, and good ol' trial and error, I haven't been able to configure the Mediatrix to run in this mode. Then I found a version of the manual that looks like it was for a previous version of the firmware (SIP), where there is an entire section dedicated to configuring TAS (starting at page 209). But my Mediatrix comes with the DGW 2.0 firmware, whose documentation does not mention TAS at all. So I tried to follow the TAS setup instructions from the SIP documentation and apply them to my DGW firmware, using the Variable Mapping Between SIP v5.0 and DGW v2.0 document as a reference, but no success. Some required SIP variables don't have an equivalent in DGW. So it looks like the DGW firmware does not support TAS at all, or if it does they are not doing anything to help us set it up. So right now, the Mediatrix is behind the router and VoIP works perfectly except when my upstream bandwidth is saturated. My questions are: Is downgrading to SIP firmware the only way to have my Mediatrix 4102 run in TAS mode? If not, anybody knows how to setup TAS on the DGW firmware? Is TAS mode the only way to give priority to the voice packets if I want to keep my current router (Apple Time Capsule)? Thanks!

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• How should we serve files in a small bioinformatics cluster?

  - by cespinoza

  We have a small cluster of six ubuntu servers. We run bioinformatics analyses on these clusters. Each analysis takes about 24 hours to complete, each core i7 server can handle 2 at a time, takes as input about 5GB data and outputs about 10-25GB of data. We run dozens of these a week. The software is a hodgepodge of custom perl scripts and 3rd party sequence alignment software written in C/C++. Currently, files are served from two of the compute nodes (yes, we're using compute nodes as file servers)-- each node has 5 1TB sata drives mounted separately (no raid) and is pooled via glusterfs 2.0.1. They each have as 3 bonded intel ethernet pci gigabit ethernet cards, attached to a d-link DGS-1224T switch ($300 24 port consumer-level). We are not currently using jumbo frames (not sure why, actually). The two file-serving compute nodes are then mirrored via glusterfs. Each of the four other nodes mounts the files via glusterfs. The files are all large (4gb+), and are stored as bare files (no database/etc) if that matters. As you can imagine, this is a bit of a mess that grew organically without forethought and we want to improve it now that we're running out of space. Our analyses are I/O intensive and it is a bottle neck-- we're only getting 140mB/sec between the two fileservers, maybe 50mb/sec from the clients (which only have single NICs). We have a flexible budget which I can probably get up $5k or so. How should we spend our budget? We need at least 10TB of storage fast enough to serve all nodes. How fast/big does the cpu/memory of such a file server have to be? Should we use NFS, ATA over Ethernet, iSCSI, Glusterfs, or something else? Should we buy two or more servers and create some sort of storage cluster, or is 1 server enough for such a small number of nodes? Should we invest in faster NICs (say, PCI-express cards with multiple connectors)? The switch? Should we use raid, if so, hardware or software? and which raid (5, 6, 10, etc)? Any ideas appreciated. We're biologists, not IT gurus.

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• Week in Geek: US Govt E-card Scam Siphons Confidential Data Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to “back up photos to Flickr, automate repetitive tasks, & normalize MP3 volume”, enable “stereo mix” in Windows 7 to record audio, create custom papercraft toys, read up on three alternatives to Apple’s flaky iOS alarm clock, decorated our desktops & app docks with Google icon packs, and more. Photo by alexschlegel. Random Geek Links It has been a busy week on the security & malware fronts and we have a roundup of the latest news to help keep you updated. Photo by TopTechWriter.US. US govt e-card scam hits confidential data A fake U.S. government Christmas e-card has managed to siphon off gigabytes of sensitive data from a number of law enforcement and military staff who work on cybersecurity matters, many of whom are involved in computer crime investigations. Security tool uncovers multiple bugs in every browser Michal Zalewski reports that he discovered the vulnerability in Internet Explorer a while ago using his cross_fuzz fuzzing tool and reported it to Microsoft in July 2010. Zalewski also used cross_fuzz to discover bugs in other browsers, which he also reported to the relevant organisations. Microsoft to fix Windows holes, but not ones in IE Microsoft said that it will release two security bulletins next week fixing three holes in Windows, but it is still investigating or working on fixing holes in Internet Explorer that have been reportedly exploited in attacks. Microsoft warns of Windows flaw affecting image rendering Microsoft has warned of a Windows vulnerability that could allow an attacker to take control of a computer if the user is logged on with administrative rights. Windows 7 Not Affected by Critical 0-Day in the Windows Graphics Rendering Engine While confirming that details on a Critical zero-day vulnerability have made their way into the wild, Microsoft noted that customers running the latest iteration of Windows client and server platforms are not exposed to any risks. Microsoft warns of Office-related malware Microsoft’s Malware Protection Center issued a warning this week that it has spotted malicious code on the Internet that can take advantage of a flaw in Word and infect computers after a user does nothing more than read an e-mail. *Refers to a flaw that was addressed in the November security patch releases. Make sure you have all of the latest security updates installed. Unpatched hole in ImgBurn disk burning application According to security specialist Secunia, a highly critical vulnerability in ImgBurn, a lightweight disk burning application, can be used to remotely compromise a user’s system. Hole in VLC Media Player Virtual Security Research (VSR) has identified a vulnerability in VLC Media Player. In versions up to and including 1.1.5 of the VLC Media Player. Flash Player sandbox can be bypassed Flash applications run locally can read local files and send them to an online server – something which the sandbox is supposed to prevent. Chinese auction site touts hacked iTunes accounts Tens of thousands of reportedly hacked iTunes accounts have been found on Chinese auction site Taobao, but the company claims it is unable to take action unless there are direct complaints. What happened in the recent Hotmail outage Mike Schackwitz explains the cause of the recent Hotmail outage. DOJ sends order to Twitter for Wikileaks-related account info The U.S. Justice Department has obtained a court order directing Twitter to turn over information about the accounts of activists with ties to Wikileaks, including an Icelandic politician, a legendary Dutch hacker, and a U.S. computer programmer. Google gets court to block Microsoft Interior Department e-mail win The U.S. Federal Claims Court has temporarily blocked Microsoft from proceeding with the $49.3 million, five-year DOI contract that it won this past November. Google Apps customers get email lockdown Companies and organisations using Google Apps are now able to restrict the email access of selected users. LibreOffice Is the Default Office Suite for Ubuntu 11.04 Matthias Klose has announced some details regarding the replacement of the old OpenOffice.org 3.2.1 packages with the new LibreOffice 3.3 ones, starting with the upcoming Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) Alpha 2 release. Sysadmin Geek Tips Photo by Filomena Scalise. How to Setup Software RAID for a Simple File Server on Ubuntu Do you need a file server that is cheap and easy to setup, “rock solid” reliable, and has Email Alerting? This tutorial shows you how to use Ubuntu, software RAID, and SaMBa to accomplish just that. How to Control the Order of Startup Programs in Windows While you can specify the applications you want to launch when Windows starts, the ability to control the order in which they start is not available. However, there are a couple of ways you can easily overcome this limitation and control the startup order of applications. Random TinyHacker Links Using Opera Unite to Send Large Files A tutorial on using Opera Unite to easily send huge files from your computer. WorkFlowy is a Useful To-do List Tool A cool to-do list tool that lets you integrate multiple tasks in one single list easily. Playing Flash Videos on iOS Devices Yes, you can play flash videos on jailbroken iPhones. Here’s a tutorial. Clear Safari History and Cookies On iPhone A tutorial on clearing your browser history on iPhone and other iOS devices. Monitor Your Internet Usage Here’s a cool, cross-platform tool to monitor your internet bandwidth. Super User Questions See what the community had to say on these popular questions from Super User this week. Why is my upload speed much less than my download speed? Where should I find drivers for my laptop if it didn’t come with a driver disk? OEM Office 2010 without media – how to reinstall? Is there a point to using theft tracking software like Prey on my laptop, if you have login security? Moving an “all-in-one” PC when turned on/off How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Get caught up on your HTG reading with our hottest articles from this past week. How to Combine Rescue Disks to Create the Ultimate Windows Repair Disk How To Boot 10 Different Live CDs From 1 USB Flash Drive What is Camera Raw, and Why Would a Professional Prefer it to JPG? Did You Know Facebook Has Built-In Shortcut Keys? The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: The Basics One Year Ago on How-To Geek Enjoy looking through our latest gathering of retro article goodness. Learning Windows 7: Create a Homegroup & Join a New Computer To It How To Disconnect a Machine from a Homegroup Use Remote Desktop To Access Other Computers On a Small Office or Home Network How To Share Files and Printers Between Windows 7 and Vista Allow Users To Run Only Specified Programs in Windows 7 The Geek Note That is all we have for you this week and we hope your first week back at work or school has gone very well now that the holidays are over. Know a great tip? Send it in to us at [email protected]. Photo by Pamela Machado. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy How to Combine Rescue Disks to Create the Ultimate Windows Repair Disk What is Camera Raw, and Why Would a Professional Prefer it to JPG? The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: The Basics How To Boot 10 Different Live CDs From 1 USB Flash Drive The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 Arctic Theme for Windows 7 Gives Your Desktop an Icy Touch Install LibreOffice via PPA and Receive Auto-Updates in Ubuntu Creative Portraits Peek Inside the Guts of Modern Electronics Scenic Winter Lane Wallpaper to Create a Relaxing Mood Access Your Web Apps Directly Using the Context Menu in Chrome The Deep – Awesome Use of Metal Objects as Deep Sea Creatures [Video]

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• Using Unity – Part 2

  - by nmarun

  In the first part of this series, we created a simple project and learned how to implement IoC pattern using Unity. In this one, I’ll show how you can instantiate other types that implement our IProduct interface. One place where this one would want to use this feature is to create mock types for testing purposes. Alright, let’s dig in. I added another class – Product2.cs  to the ProductModel project. 1: public class Product2 : IProduct 2: { 3: public string Name { get; set;} 4: public Category Category { get; set; } 5: public DateTime MfgDate { get;set; } 6:  7: public Product2() 8: { 9: Name = "Canon Digital Rebel XTi"; 10: Category = new Category {Name = "Electronics", SubCategoryName = "Digital Cameras"}; 11: MfgDate = DateTime.Now; 12: } 13:  14: public string WriteProductDetails() 15: { 16: return string.Format("Name: {0}<br/>Category: {1}<br/>Mfg Date: {2}", 17: Name, Category, MfgDate.ToShortDateString()); 18: } 19: } Highlights of this class are that it implements IProduct interface and it has some different properties than the Product class. The Category class looks like below: 1: public class Category 2: { 3: public string Name { get; set; } 4: public string SubCategoryName { get; set; } 5:  6: public override string ToString() 7: { 8: return string.Format("{0} - {1}", Name, SubCategoryName); 9: } 10: } We’ll go to our web.config file to add the configuration information about this new class – Product2 that we created. Let’s first add a typeAlias element. 1: <typeAlias alias="Product2" type="ProductModel.Product2, ProductModel"/> That’s all that is needed for us to get an instance of Product2 in our application. I have a new button added to the .aspx page and the click event of this button is where all the magic happens: 1: private IUnityContainer unityContainer; 2: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) 3: { 4: unityContainer = Application["UnityContainer"] as IUnityContainer; 5: 6: if (unityContainer == null) 7: { 8: productDetailsLabel.Text = "ERROR: Unity Container not populated in Global.asax.<p />"; 9: } 10: else 11: { 12: if (!IsPostBack) 13: { 14: IProduct productInstance = unityContainer.Resolve<IProduct>(); 15: productDetailsLabel.Text = productInstance.WriteProductDetails(); 16: } 17: } 18: } 19:  20: protected void Product2Button_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) 21: { 22: unityContainer.RegisterType<IProduct, Product2>(); 23: IProduct product2Instance = unityContainer.Resolve<IProduct>(); 24: productDetailsLabel.Text = product2Instance.WriteProductDetails(); 25: } The unityContainer instance is set in the Page_Load event. Line 22 in the click event of the Product2Button registers a type mapping in the container. In English, this means that when unityContainer tries to resolve for IProduct, it gets an instance of Product2. Once this code runs, following output is rendered: There’s another way of doing this. You can resolve an instance of the requested type with a name from the container. We’ll have to update the container element of our web.config file to include the following: 1: <container name="unityContainer"> 2: <types> 3: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product"/> 4: <!-- Named mapping for IProduct to Product --> 5: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product" name="LegacyProduct" /> 6: <!-- Named mapping for IProduct to Product2 --> 7: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product2" name="NewProduct" /> 8: </types> 9: </container> I’ve added a Dropdownlist and a button to the design page: 1: <asp:DropDownList ID="ModelTypesList" runat="server"> 2: <asp:ListItem Text="Legacy Product" Value="LegacyProduct" /> 3: <asp:ListItem Text="New Product" Value="NewProduct" /> 4: </asp:DropDownList> 5: <br /> 6: <asp:Button ID="SelectedModelButton" Text="Get Selected Instance" runat="server" 7: onclick="SelectedModelButton_Click" /> 1: protected void SelectedModelButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) 2: { 3: // get the selected value: LegacyProduct or NewProduct 4: string modelType = ModelTypesList.SelectedValue; 5: // pass the modelType to the Resolve method 6: IProduct customModel = unityContainer.Resolve<IProduct>(modelType); 7: productDetailsLabel.Text = customModel.WriteProductDetails(); 8: } Pretty straight forward right? The only thing to note here is that the values in the dropdownlist item need to match the name attribute of the type. Depending on what you select, you’ll get an instance of either the Product class or the Product2 class and the corresponding WriteProductDetails() method is called. Now you see, how either of these methods can be used to create mock objects your the test project. See the code here. I’ll continue to share more of Unity in the next blog.

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• Enhanced REST Support in Oracle Service Bus 11gR1

  - by jeff.x.davies

  In a previous entry on REST and Oracle Service Bus (see http://blogs.oracle.com/jeffdavies/2009/06/restful_services_with_oracle_s_1.html) I encoded the REST query string really as part of the relative URL. For example, consider the following URI: http://localhost:7001/SimpleREST/Products/id=1234 Now, technically there is nothing wrong with this approach. However, it is generally more common to encode the search parameters into the query string. Take a look at the following URI that shows this principle http://localhost:7001/SimpleREST/Products?id=1234 At first blush this appears to be a trivial change. However, this approach is more intuitive, especially if you are passing in multiple parameters. For example: http://localhost:7001/SimpleREST/Products?cat=electronics&subcat=television&mfg=sony The above URI is obviously used to retrieve a list of televisions made by Sony. In prior versions of OSB (before 11gR1PS3), parsing the query string of a URI was more difficult than in the current release. In 11gR1PS3 it is now much easier to parse the query strings, which in turn makes developing REST services in OSB even easier. In this blog entry, we will re-implement the REST-ful Products services using query strings for passing parameter information. Lets begin with the implementation of the Products REST service. This service is implemented in the Products.proxy file of the project. Lets begin with the overall structure of the service, as shown in the following screenshot. This is a common pattern for REST services in the Oracle Service Bus. You implement different flows for each of the HTTP verbs that you want your service to support. Lets take a look at how the GET verb is implemented. This is the path that is taken of you were to point your browser to: http://localhost:7001/SimpleREST/Products/id=1234 There is an Assign action in the request pipeline that shows how to extract a query parameter. Here is the expression that is used to extract the id parameter: $inbound/ctx:transport/ctx:request/http:query-parameters/http:parameter[@name="id"]/@value The Assign action that stores the value into an OSB variable named id. Using this type of XPath statement you can query for any variables by name, without regard to their order in the parameter list. The Log statement is there simply to provided some debugging info in the OSB server console. The response pipeline contains a Replace action that constructs the response document for our rest service. Most of the response data is static, but the ID field that is returned is set based upon the query-parameter that was passed into the REST proxy. Testing the REST service with a browser is very simple. Just point it to the URL I showed you earlier. However, the browser is really only good for testing simple GET services. The OSB Test Console provides a much more robust environment for testing REST services, no matter which HTTP verb is used. Lets see how to use the Test Console to test this GET service. Open the OSB we console (http://localhost:7001/sbconsole) and log in as the administrator. Click on the Test Console icon (the little "bug") next to the Products proxy service in the SimpleREST project. This will bring up the Test Console browser window. Unlike SOAP services, we don't need to do much work in the request document because all of our request information will be encoded into the URI of the service itself. Belore the Request Document section of the Test Console is the Transport section. Expand that section and modify the query-parameters and http-method fields as shown in the next screenshot. By default, the query-parameters field will have the tags already defined. You just need to add a tag for each parameter you want to pass into the service. For out purposes with this particular call, you'd set the quer-parameters field as follows: <tp:parameter name="id" value="1234" /> </tp:query-parameters> Now you are ready to push the Execute button to see the results of the call. That covers the process for parsing query parameters using OSB. However, what if you have an OSB proxy service that needs to consume a REST-ful service? How do you tell OSB to pass the query parameters to the external service? In the sample code you will see a 2nd proxy service called CallREST. It invokes the Products proxy service in exactly the same way it would invoke any REST service. Our CallREST proxy service is defined as a SOAP service. This help to demonstrate OSBs ability to mediate between service consumers and service providers, decreasing the level of coupling between them. If you examine the message flow for the CallREST proxy service, you'll see that it uses an Operational branch to isolate processing logic for each operation that is defined by the SOAP service. We will focus on the getProductDetail branch, that calls the Products REST service using the HTTP GET verb. Expand the getProduct pipeline and the stage node that it contains. There is a single Assign statement that simply extracts the productID from the SOA request and stores it in a local OSB variable. Nothing suprising here. The real work (and the real learning) occurs in the Route node below the pipeline. The first thing to learn is that you need to use a route node when calling REST services, not a Service Callout or a Publish action. That's because only the Routing action has access to the $oubound variable, especially when invoking a business service. The Routing action contains 3 Insert actions. The first Insert action shows how to specify the HTTP verb as a GET. The second insert action simply inserts the XML node into the request. This element does not exist in the request by default, so we need to add it manually. Now that we have the element defined in our outbound request, we can fill it with the parameters that we want to send to the REST service. In the following screenshot you can see how we define the id parameter based on the productID value we extracted earlier from the SOAP request document. That expression will look for the parameter that has the name id and extract its value. That's all there is to it. You now know how to take full advantage of the query parameter parsing capability of the Oracle Service Bus 11gR1PS2. Download the sample source code here: rest2_sbconfig.jar Ubuntu and the OSB Test Console You will get an error when you try to use the Test Console with the Oracle Service Bus, using Ubuntu (or likely a number of other Linux distros also). The error (shown below) will state that the Test Console service is not running. The fix for this problem is quite simple. Open up the WebLogic Server administrator console (usually running at http://localhost:7001/console). In the Domain Structure window on the left side of the console, select the Servers entry under the Environment heading. The select the Admin Server entry in the main window of the console. By default, you should be viewing the Configuration tabe and the General sub tab in the main window. Look for the Listen Address field. By default it is blank, which means it is listening on all interfaces. For some reason Ubuntu doesn't like this. So enter a value like localhost or the specific IP address or DNS name for your server (usually its just localhost in development envirionments). Save your changes and restart the server. Your Test Console will now work correctly.

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• TechEd 2010 Day One – How I Travel

  - by BuckWoody

  Normally when I blog on the first day of a conference, well, there hasn’t been a first day yet. So I talk about the value of a conference or some other facet. And normally in my (non-conference) blogs, I show you how I have learned to be a data professional – things I’ve learned how to do over the years. But in all that time, I don’t think I’ve ever talked about a big part of my job – traveling. I’ve traveled a lot throughout the years, when I’ve taught, gone to conferences, consulted and in my current role assisting Microsoft customers with large-scale database system designs.  So I’ll share a few thoughts about what I do. Keep in mind that I travel for short durations, just a day or so, and sometimes I travel internationally. For those I prepare differently – what I’m talking about here is what I do for a multi-day, same-country trip. Hopefully you find it useful. I’ll tag a few other travelers I know to add their thoughts.  Preparing for Travel   When I’m notified of a trip, I begin researching the location. I find the flights, hotel and (if I have to) a car to use while I’m away. We have an in-house system we use to book the travel, but when I travel not-for-Microsoft I use Expedia and Kayak to find what I need.  Traveling on Sunday and Friday is the worst. I have to do it sometimes (like this week) and it’s always a bad idea. But you can blunt the impact by booking as early as you can stand it. That means I have to be up super-early, but the flights are normally on time. I stay flexible, and always have a backup plan in case the flights are delayed or canceled.  For the hotel, I tend to go on the cheaper side, and I look for older hotels that have been renovated, or quirky ones. For instance, in Boise, ID recently I stayed at a 60’s-themed (think Mad-Men) hotel that was very cool. Always I go on the less expensive side – I find the “luxury” hotels nail me for Internet, food, everything. The cheaper places include all kinds of things, and even have breakfasts, shuttles and all kinds of things that start to add up. I even call ahead to make sure there’s an iron and ironing board available, since I’ll need those when I get there.  I find any way I can not to get a car. I use mass-transit wherever possible, and try to make friends and pay their gas to take me places. In a pinch, I’ll use a taxi. It ends up being cheaper, faster, and less stressful all around.  Packing  Over the years I’ve learned never to check luggage whenever I can. To do that, I lay out everything I want to take with me on the bed, and then try and make sure I’m really going to use it. I wear a dark wool set of pants, which I can clean and wear in hot and cold climates. I bring undies and socks of course, and for most places I have to wear “dress up” shirts. I bring at least two print T-Shirts in case I want to dress down for something while I’m gone, but I only bring one set of shoes. All the  clothes are rolled as tightly as possible as I learned in the military. Then I use those to cushion the electronics I take.  For toiletries I bring a shaver, toothpaste and toothbrush, D/O and a small brush. Everything else the hotel will provide.  For entertainment, I take a small Zune, a full PC-Headset (so I can make IP calls on the road) and my laptop. I don’t take books or anything else – everything is electronic. I use E-books (downloaded from our Library), Audio-Books (on the Zune) and I also bring along a Kaossilator (more here) to play music in the hotel room or even on the plane without being heard.  If I can, I pack into one roll-on bag. There’s not a lot better than this one, but I also have a Bag I was given as a prize for something or other here at Microsoft. Either way, I like something with less pockets and more big, open compartments. Everything gets rolled up and packed in, with all of the wires and charges in small bags my wife made for me. The laptop (and anything I don’t want gate-checked) goes on top or in an outside pouch so I can grab it quickly if I have to gate-check the bag. As much as I can, I try to go in one bag. When I can’t (like this week) I use this bag since it can expand, roll up, crush and even be put away later. It’s super-heavy canvas and worth the price. This allows me to not check a bag.  Journey Logistics The day of the trip, I have everything ready since I’m getting up early. I pack a few small snacks inside a plastic large-mouth water bottle, which protects the snacks and lets me get water in the terminal. I bring along those little powdered drink mixes to add to the water.  At the airport, I make a beeline for the power-outlets. I charge up my laptop and phone, and download all my e-mails so I can work on them off-line in the air. I don’t travel as often as I used to – just every month or so now, so I don’t have a membership to an airline club. If I travel much more, I’ll invest in one again – they are WELL worth the money, for the wifi, food and quiet if for nothing else.  I print out my logistics on paper and put that in my pocket – flight numbers, hotel addresses and phones for everything. That way if I have to make a change, I don’t have to boot up anything or even have power to be able to roll with the punches if things change.  Working While Away  While I’m away I realize I’m going to be swamped with things at the conference or with my clients. So I turn on Out-Of-Office notifications to let people know I won’t be as responsive, and I keep my Outlook calendar up to date so my co-workers know what I’m up to. I even update it with hotel and phone info in case they really need to reach me. I share my calendar with my wife so my family knows what I’m doing as well.  I check my e-mail during breaks, but I only respond to them in the evening or early morning at the hotel. I tweet during conferences. The point is to be as present as possible during the event or when I’m at the clients. Both deserve it.  So those are my initial thoughts. I’ll tag Brent Ozar, Brad McGeHee and Paul Randal, and they can tag whomever they wish. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• HTG Explains: Should You Build Your Own PC?

  - by Chris Hoffman

  There was a time when every geek seemed to build their own PC. While the masses bought eMachines and Compaqs, geeks built their own more powerful and reliable desktop machines for cheaper. But does this still make sense? Building your own PC still offers as much flexibility in component choice as it ever did, but prebuilt computers are available at extremely competitive prices. Building your own PC will no longer save you money in most cases. The Rise of Laptops It’s impossible to look at the decline of geeks building their own PCs without considering the rise of laptops. There was a time when everyone seemed to use desktops — laptops were more expensive and significantly slower in day-to-day tasks. With the diminishing importance of computing power — nearly every modern computer has more than enough power to surf the web and use typical programs like Microsoft Office without any trouble — and the rise of laptop availability at nearly every price point, most people are buying laptops instead of desktops. And, if you’re buying a laptop, you can’t really build your own. You can’t just buy a laptop case and start plugging components into it — even if you could, you would end up with an extremely bulky device. Ultimately, to consider building your own desktop PC, you have to actually want a desktop PC. Most people are better served by laptops. Benefits to PC Building The two main reasons to build your own PC have been component choice and saving money. Building your own PC allows you to choose all the specific components you want rather than have them chosen for you. You get to choose everything, including the PC’s case and cooling system. Want a huge case with room for a fancy water-cooling system? You probably want to build your own PC. In the past, this often allowed you to save money — you could get better deals by buying the components yourself and combining them, avoiding the PC manufacturer markup. You’d often even end up with better components — you could pick up a more powerful CPU that was easier to overclock and choose more reliable components so you wouldn’t have to put up with an unstable eMachine that crashed every day. PCs you build yourself are also likely more upgradable — a prebuilt PC may have a sealed case and be constructed in such a way to discourage you from tampering with the insides, while swapping components in and out is generally easier with a computer you’ve built on your own. If you want to upgrade your CPU or replace your graphics card, it’s a definite benefit. Downsides to Building Your Own PC It’s important to remember there are downsides to building your own PC, too. For one thing, it’s just more work — sure, if you know what you’re doing, building your own PC isn’t that hard. Even for a geek, researching the best components, price-matching, waiting for them all to arrive, and building the PC just takes longer. Warranty is a more pernicious problem. If you buy a prebuilt PC and it starts malfunctioning, you can contact the computer’s manufacturer and have them deal with it. You don’t need to worry about what’s wrong. If you build your own PC and it starts malfunctioning, you have to diagnose the problem yourself. What’s malfunctioning, the motherboard, CPU, RAM, graphics card, or power supply? Each component has a separate warranty through its manufacturer, so you’ll have to determine which component is malfunctioning before you can send it off for replacement. Should You Still Build Your Own PC? Let’s say you do want a desktop and are willing to consider building your own PC. First, bear in mind that PC manufacturers are buying in bulk and getting a better deal on each component. They also have to pay much less for a Windows license than the $120 or so it would cost you to to buy your own Windows license. This is all going to wipe out the cost savings you’ll see — with everything all told, you’ll probably spend more money building your own average desktop PC than you would picking one up from Amazon or the local electronics store. If you’re an average PC user that uses your desktop for the typical things, there’s no money to be saved from building your own PC. But maybe you’re looking for something higher end. Perhaps you want a high-end gaming PC with the fastest graphics card and CPU available. Perhaps you want to pick out each individual component and choose the exact components for your gaming rig. In this case, building your own PC may be a good option. As you start to look at more expensive, high-end PCs, you may start to see a price gap — but you may not. Let’s say you wanted to blow thousands of dollars on a gaming PC. If you’re looking at spending this kind of money, it would be worth comparing the cost of individual components versus a prebuilt gaming system. Still, the actual prices may surprise you. For example, if you wanted to upgrade Dell’s $2293 Alienware Aurora to include a second NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 graphics card, you’d pay an additional $600 on Alienware’s website. The same graphics card costs $650 on Amazon or Newegg, so you’d be spending more money building the system yourself. Why? Dell’s Alienware gets bulk discounts you can’t get — and this is Alienware, which was once regarded as selling ridiculously overpriced gaming PCs to people who wouldn’t build their own. Building your own PC still allows you to get the most freedom when choosing and combining components, but this is only valuable to a small niche of gamers and professional users — most people, even average gamers, would be fine going with a prebuilt system. If you’re an average person or even an average gamer, you’ll likely find that it’s cheaper to purchase a prebuilt PC rather than assemble your own. Even at the very high end, components may be more expensive separately than they are in a prebuilt PC. Enthusiasts who want to choose all the individual components for their dream gaming PC and want maximum flexibility may want to build their own PCs. Even then, building your own PC these days is more about flexibility and component choice than it is about saving money. In summary, you probably shouldn’t build your own PC. If you’re an enthusiast, you may want to — but only a small minority of people would actually benefit from building their own systems. Feel free to compare prices, but you may be surprised which is cheaper. Image Credit: Richard Jones on Flickr, elPadawan on Flickr, Richard Jones on Flickr     

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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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• Corsair Hackers Reboot

  It wasn't easy for me to attend but it was absolutely worth to go. The Linux User Group of Mauritius (LUGM) organised another get-together for any open source enthusiast here on the island. Strangely named "Corsair Hackers Reboot" but it stands for a positive cause: "Corsair Hackers Reboot Event A collaborative activity involving LUGM, UoM Computer Club, Fortune Way Shopping Mall and several geeks from around the island, striving to put FOSS into homes & offices. The public is invited to discover and explore Free Software & Open Source." And it was a good opportunity for me and the kids to visit the east coast of Mauritius, too. Perfect timing It couldn't have been better... Why? Well, for two important reasons (in terms of IT): End of support for Microsoft Windows XP - 08.04.2014 Release of Ubuntu 14.04 Long Term Support - 17.04.2014 Quite funnily, those two IT dates weren't the initial reasons and only during the weeks of preparations we put those together. And therefore it was even more positive to promote the use of Linux and open source software in general to a broader audience. Getting there ... Thanks to the new motor way M3 and all the additional road work which has been completed recently it was very simple to get across the island in a very quick and relaxed manner. Compared to my trips in the early days of living in Mauritius (and riding on a scooter) it was very smooth and within less than an hour we hit Centrale de Flacq. Well, being in the city doesn't necessarily mean that one has arrived at the destination. But thanks to modern technology I had a quick look on Google Maps, and we finally managed to get a parking behind the huge bus terminal in Flacq. From there it was just a short walk to Fortune Way. The children were trying to count the number of buses... Well, lots and lots of buses - really impressive actually. What was presented? There were different areas set up. Right at the entrance one's attention was directly drawn towards the elevated hacker's stage. Similar to rock stars performing their gig there was bunch of computers, laptops and networking equipment in order to cater the right working conditions for coding/programming challenge(s) on the one hand and for the pen-testing or system hacking competition on the other hand. Personally, I was very impresses that actually Nitin took care of the pen-testing competition. He hardly started one year back with Linux in general, and Kali Linux specifically. Seeing his personal development from absolute newbie to a decent Linux system administrator within such a short period of time, is really impressive. His passion to open source software made him a living. Next, clock-wise seen, was the Kid's Corner with face-painting as the main attraction. Additionally, there were numerous paper print outs to colour. Plus a decent workstation with the educational suite GCompris. Of course, my little ones were into that. They already know GCompris since a while as they are allowed to use it on an IGEL thin client terminal here at home. To simplify my life, I set up GCompris as full-screen guest session on the server, and they can pass the login screen without any further obstacles. And because it's a thin client hooked up to a XDMCP remote session I don't have to worry about the hardware on their desk, too. The next section was the main attraction of the event: BYOD - Bring Your Own Device Well, compared to the usual context of BYOD the corsairs had a completely different intention. Here, you could bring your own laptop and a team of knowledgeable experts - read: geeks and so on - offered to fully convert your system on any Linux distribution of your choice. And even though I came later, I was told that the USB pen drives had been in permanent use. From being prepared via dd command over launching LiveCD session to finally installing a fresh Linux system on bare metal. Most interestingly, I did a similar job already a couple of months ago, while upgrading an existing Windows XP system to Xubuntu 13.10. So far, the female owner is very happy and enjoys her system almost every evening to go shopping online, checking mails, and reading latest news from the Anime world. Back to the Hackers event, Ish told me that they managed approximately 20 conversion during the day. Furthermore, Ajay and others gladly assisted some visitors with some tricky issues and by the end of the day you can call is a success. While I was around, there was a elderly male visitor that got a full-fledged system conversion to a Linux system running completely in French language. A little bit more to the centre it was Yasir's turn to demonstrate his Arduino hardware that he hooked up with an experimental electrical circuit board connected to an LCD matrix display. That's the real spirit of hacking, and he showed some minor adjustments on the fly while demo'ing the system. Also, very interesting there was a thermal sensor around. Personally, I think that platforms like the Arduino as well as the Raspberry Pi have a great potential at a very affordable price in order to bring a better understanding of electronics as well as computer programming to a broader audience. It would be great to see more of those experiments during future activities. And last but not least there were a small number of vendors. Amongst them was Emtel - once again as sponsor of the general internet connectivity - and another hardware supplier from Riche Terre shopping mall. They had a good collection of Android related gimmicks, like a autonomous web cam that can convert any TV with HDMI connector into an online video chat system given WiFi. It's actually kind of awesome to have a Skype or Google hangout video session on the big screen rather than on the laptop. Some pictures of the event LUGM: Great conversations on Linux, open source and free software during the Corsair Hackers Reboot LUGM: Educational workstation running GCompris suite attracted the youngest attendees of the day. Of course, face painting had to be done prior to hacking... LUGM: Nadim demoing some Linux specifics to interested visitors. Everyone was pretty busy during the whole day LUGM: The hacking competition, here pen-testing a wireless connection and access point between multiple machines LUGM: Well prepared workstations to be able to 'upgrade' visitors' machines to any Linux operating system Final thoughts Gratefully, during the preparations of the event I was invited to leave some comments or suggestions, and the team of the LUGM did a great job. The outdoor banner was a eye-catcher, the various flyers and posters for the event were clearly written and as far as I understood from the quick chats I had with Ish, Nadim, Nitin, Ajay, and of course others all were very happy about the event execution. Great job, LUGM! And I'm already looking forward to the next Corsair Hackers Reboot event ... Crossing fingers: Very soon and hopefully this year again :) Update: In the media The event had been announced in local media, too. L'Express: Salon informatique: Hacking Challenge à Flacq

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• change height in Android 2.2 LinearLayout in code

  - by Niro

  Im trying to change height of Layouts through the code without success. I've tried all of the examples i saw here and other site and my app just keep shutting down. xml code: <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools" android:id="@+id/main_lay" android:orientation="vertical" tools:context=".MainActivity" > <LinearLayout android:id="@+id/layout_add" > </LinearLayout> <LinearLayout android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="50dp" android:background="@color/green"> <ImageView android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:contentDescription="@string/desc" android:layout_height="45dp" android:layout_gravity="center_vertical|left" android:scaleType="fitStart" android:background="@color/orange" android:src="@drawable/logo" > </ImageView> </LinearLayout> </LinearLayout> Java code: main_layout=(LinearLayout)findViewById(R.id.main_lay); main_layout.setLayoutParams(new FrameLayout.LayoutParams(LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT,LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT)); main_layout.setBackgroundResource(R.color.white); layout_add = (LinearLayout) findViewById(R.id.layout_add); layout_add.setLayoutParams(new FrameLayout.LayoutParams(LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT,50 )); layout_add.setBackgroundResource(R.color.dark_grey); I cant understand what im doing wrong. I've tried different ways to fix it. The Backround setting is working fine. Thank you guys Niro This is the Logcat 12-09 16:12:39.007: E/AnalyticsSDKTest.cpp(6338): Time w/ UTC Offset: 2012-12-09 12-09 16:16:14.517: E/ActivityManager(121): fail to set top app changed! 12-09 16:16:14.547: E/InputDispatcher(121): channel '4056b9c8 com.nirosadvice.converter/com.nirosadvice.converter.MainActivity (server)' ~ Consumer closed input channel or an error occurred. events=0x8 12-09 16:16:14.547: E/InputDispatcher(121): channel '4056b9c8 com.nirosadvice.converter/com.nirosadvice.converter.MainActivity (server)' ~ Channel is unrecoverably broken and will be disposed! 12-09 16:16:18.071: E/PVWmdrmProxy(5716): binder died for component: ComponentInfo{com.pv.wmdrmservice/com.pv.wmdrmservice.PVWmdrmService} 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): FATAL EXCEPTION: main 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to start activity ComponentInfo{com.nirosadvice.converter/com.nirosadvice.converter.MainActivity}: java.lang.RuntimeException: Binary XML file line #1: You must supply a layout_width attribute. 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:1821) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at android.app.ActivityThread.handleLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:1842) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at android.app.ActivityThread.access$1500(ActivityThread.java:132) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:1038) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:150) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4263) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:507) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:839) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:597) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException: Binary XML file line #1: You must supply a layout_width attribute. 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at android.content.res.TypedArray.getLayoutDimension(TypedArray.java:491) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at android.view.ViewGroup$LayoutParams.setBaseAttributes(ViewGroup.java:3684) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at android.view.ViewGroup$MarginLayoutParams.<init>(ViewGroup.java:3764) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at android.widget.FrameLayout$LayoutParams.<init>(FrameLayout.java:457) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at android.widget.FrameLayout.generateLayoutParams(FrameLayout.java:423) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at android.widget.FrameLayout.generateLayoutParams(FrameLayout.java:47) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at android.view.LayoutInflater.inflate(LayoutInflater.java:396) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at android.view.LayoutInflater.inflate(LayoutInflater.java:320) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at android.view.LayoutInflater.inflate(LayoutInflater.java:276) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindow.setContentView(PhoneWindow.java:231) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at android.app.Activity.setContentView(Activity.java:1715) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at com.nirosadvice.converter.MainActivity.onCreate(MainActivity.java:87) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at android.app.Instrumentation.callActivityOnCreate(Instrumentation.java:1072) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:1785) 12-09 16:16:18.161: E/AndroidRuntime(18911): ... 11 more Thanks After Iv'e added the attributes to the XML - this is what i'm getting : CatLog: 12-09 16:42:33.168: E/AndroidRuntime(19065): FATAL EXCEPTION: main 12-09 16:42:33.168: E/AndroidRuntime(19065): java.lang.ClassCastException: android.view.ViewGroup$LayoutParams 12-09 16:42:33.168: E/AndroidRuntime(19065): at android.widget.LinearLayout.measureVertical(LinearLayout.java:360) 12-09 16:42:33.168: E/AndroidRuntime(19065): at android.widget.LinearLayout.onMeasure(LinearLayout.java:309) 12-09 16:42:33.168: E/AndroidRuntime(19065): at android.view.View.measure(View.java:8526) 12-09 16:42:33.168: E/AndroidRuntime(19065): at android.view.ViewGroup.measureChildWithMargins(ViewGroup.java:3224) 12-09 16:42:33.168: E/AndroidRuntime(19065): at android.widget.FrameLayout.onMeasure(FrameLayout.java:250) 12-09 16:42:33.168: E/AndroidRuntime(19065): at android.view.View.measure(View.java:8526) 12-09 16:42:33.168: E/AndroidRuntime(19065): at android.view.ViewGroup.measureChildWithMargins(ViewGroup.java:3224) 12-09 16:42:33.168: E/AndroidRuntime(19065): at android.widget.FrameLayout.onMeasure(FrameLayout.java:250) 12-09 16:42:33.168: E/AndroidRuntime(19065): at android.view.View.measure(View.java:8526) 12-09 16:42:33.168: E/AndroidRuntime(19065): at android.view.ViewRoot.performTraversals(ViewRoot.java:902) 12-09 16:42:33.168: E/AndroidRuntime(19065): at android.view.ViewRoot.handleMessage(ViewRoot.java:1957) 12-09 16:42:33.168: E/AndroidRuntime(19065): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99) 12-09 16:42:33.168: E/AndroidRuntime(19065): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:150) 12-09 16:42:33.168: E/AndroidRuntime(19065): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4263) 12-09 16:42:33.168: E/AndroidRuntime(19065): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 12-09 16:42:33.168: E/AndroidRuntime(19065): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:507) 12-09 16:42:33.168: E/AndroidRuntime(19065): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:839) 12-09 16:42:33.168: E/AndroidRuntime(19065): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:597) 12-09 16:42:33.168: E/AndroidRuntime(19065): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) 12-09 16:42:39.023: E/AnalyticsSDKTest.cpp(6338): Time w/ UTC Offset: 2012-12-09 21:42:39-05:00 12-09 16:42:49.013: E/AndroidRuntime(19095): FATAL EXCEPTION: main 12-09 16:42:49.013: E/AndroidRuntime(19095): java.lang.ClassCastException: android.view.ViewGroup$LayoutParams 12-09 16:42:49.013: E/AndroidRuntime(19095): at android.widget.LinearLayout.measureVertical(LinearLayout.java:360) 12-09 16:42:49.013: E/AndroidRuntime(19095): at android.widget.LinearLayout.onMeasure(LinearLayout.java:309) 12-09 16:42:49.013: E/AndroidRuntime(19095): at android.view.View.measure(View.java:8526) 12-09 16:42:49.013: E/AndroidRuntime(19095): at android.view.ViewGroup.measureChildWithMargins(ViewGroup.java:3224) 12-09 16:42:49.013: E/AndroidRuntime(19095): at android.widget.FrameLayout.onMeasure(FrameLayout.java:250) 12-09 16:42:49.013: E/AndroidRuntime(19095): at android.view.View.measure(View.java:8526) 12-09 16:42:49.013: E/AndroidRuntime(19095): at android.view.ViewGroup.measureChildWithMargins(ViewGroup.java:3224) 12-09 16:42:49.013: E/AndroidRuntime(19095): at android.widget.FrameLayout.onMeasure(FrameLayout.java:250) 12-09 16:42:49.013: E/AndroidRuntime(19095): at android.view.View.measure(View.java:8526) 12-09 16:42:49.013: E/AndroidRuntime(19095): at android.view.ViewRoot.performTraversals(ViewRoot.java:902) 12-09 16:42:49.013: E/AndroidRuntime(19095): at android.view.ViewRoot.handleMessage(ViewRoot.java:1957) 12-09 16:42:49.013: E/AndroidRuntime(19095): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99) 12-09 16:42:49.013: E/AndroidRuntime(19095): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:150) 12-09 16:42:49.013: E/AndroidRuntime(19095): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4263) 12-09 16:42:49.013: E/AndroidRuntime(19095): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 12-09 16:42:49.013: E/AndroidRuntime(19095): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:507) 12-09 16:42:49.013: E/AndroidRuntime(19095): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:839) 12-09 16:42:49.013: E/AndroidRuntime(19095): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:597) 12-09 16:42:49.013: E/AndroidRuntime(19095): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) 12-09 16:44:00.913: E/AndroidRuntime(19148): FATAL EXCEPTION: main 12-09 16:44:00.913: E/AndroidRuntime(19148): java.lang.ClassCastException: android.view.ViewGroup$LayoutParams 12-09 16:44:00.913: E/AndroidRuntime(19148): at android.widget.LinearLayout.measureVertical(LinearLayout.java:360) 12-09 16:44:00.913: E/AndroidRuntime(19148): at android.widget.LinearLayout.onMeasure(LinearLayout.java:309) 12-09 16:44:00.913: E/AndroidRuntime(19148): at android.view.View.measure(View.java:8526) 12-09 16:44:00.913: E/AndroidRuntime(19148): at android.view.ViewGroup.measureChildWithMargins(ViewGroup.java:3224) 12-09 16:44:00.913: E/AndroidRuntime(19148): at android.widget.FrameLayout.onMeasure(FrameLayout.java:250) 12-09 16:44:00.913: E/AndroidRuntime(19148): at android.view.View.measure(View.java:8526) 12-09 16:44:00.913: E/AndroidRuntime(19148): at android.view.ViewGroup.measureChildWithMargins(ViewGroup.java:3224) 12-09 16:44:00.913: E/AndroidRuntime(19148): at android.widget.FrameLayout.onMeasure(FrameLayout.java:250) 12-09 16:44:00.913: E/AndroidRuntime(19148): at android.view.View.measure(View.java:8526) 12-09 16:44:00.913: E/AndroidRuntime(19148): at android.view.ViewRoot.performTraversals(ViewRoot.java:902) 12-09 16:44:00.913: E/AndroidRuntime(19148): at android.view.ViewRoot.handleMessage(ViewRoot.java:1957) 12-09 16:44:00.913: E/AndroidRuntime(19148): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99) 12-09 16:44:00.913: E/AndroidRuntime(19148): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:150) 12-09 16:44:00.913: E/AndroidRuntime(19148): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4263) 12-09 16:44:00.913: E/AndroidRuntime(19148): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 12-09 16:44:00.913: E/AndroidRuntime(19148): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:507) 12-09 16:44:00.913: E/AndroidRuntime(19148): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:839) 12-09 16:44:00.913: E/AndroidRuntime(19148): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:597) 12-09 16:44:00.913: E/AndroidRuntime(19148): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) 12-09 16:44:02.935: E/InputDispatcher(121): channel '4056b9c8 com.nirosadvice.converter/com.nirosadvice.converter.MainActivity (server)' ~ Consumer closed input channel or an error occurred. events=0x8 12-09 16:44:02.935: E/InputDispatcher(121): channel '4056b9c8 com.nirosadvice.converter/com.nirosadvice.converter.MainActivity (server)' ~ Channel is unrecoverably broken and will be disposed! 12-09 16:45:25.075: E/AndroidRuntime(19210): FATAL EXCEPTION: main 12-09 16:45:25.075: E/AndroidRuntime(19210): java.lang.ClassCastException: android.view.ViewGroup$LayoutParams 12-09 16:45:25.075: E/AndroidRuntime(19210): at android.widget.LinearLayout.measureVertical(LinearLayout.java:360) 12-09 16:45:25.075: E/AndroidRuntime(19210): at android.widget.LinearLayout.onMeasure(LinearLayout.java:309) 12-09 16:45:25.075: E/AndroidRuntime(19210): at android.view.View.measure(View.java:8526) 12-09 16:45:25.075: E/AndroidRuntime(19210): at android.view.ViewGroup.measureChildWithMargins(ViewGroup.java:3224) 12-09 16:45:25.075: E/AndroidRuntime(19210): at android.widget.FrameLayout.onMeasure(FrameLayout.java:250) 12-09 16:45:25.075: E/AndroidRuntime(19210): at android.view.View.measure(View.java:8526) 12-09 16:45:25.075: E/AndroidRuntime(19210): at android.view.ViewGroup.measureChildWithMargins(ViewGroup.java:3224) 12-09 16:45:25.075: E/AndroidRuntime(19210): at android.widget.FrameLayout.onMeasure(FrameLayout.java:250) 12-09 16:45:25.075: E/AndroidRuntime(19210): at android.view.View.measure(View.java:8526) 12-09 16:45:25.075: E/AndroidRuntime(19210): at android.view.ViewRoot.performTraversals(ViewRoot.java:902) 12-09 16:45:25.075: E/AndroidRuntime(19210): at android.view.ViewRoot.handleMessage(ViewRoot.java:1957) 12-09 16:45:25.075: E/AndroidRuntime(19210): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99) 12-09 16:45:25.075: E/AndroidRuntime(19210): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:150) 12-09 16:45:25.075: E/AndroidRuntime(19210): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4263) 12-09 16:45:25.075: E/AndroidRuntime(19210): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 12-09 16:45:25.075: E/AndroidRuntime(19210): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:507) 12-09 16:45:25.075: E/AndroidRuntime(19210): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:839) 12-09 16:45:25.075: E/AndroidRuntime(19210): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:597) 12-09 16:45:25.075: E/AndroidRuntime(19210): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) 12-09 16:50:34.507: E/AndroidRuntime(19358): FATAL EXCEPTION: main 12-09 16:50:34.507: E/AndroidRuntime(19358): java.lang.ClassCastException: android.view.ViewGroup$LayoutParams 12-09 16:50:34.507: E/AndroidRuntime(19358): at android.widget.LinearLayout.measureVertical(LinearLayout.java:360) 12-09 16:50:34.507: E/AndroidRuntime(19358): at android.widget.LinearLayout.onMeasure(LinearLayout.java:309) 12-09 16:50:34.507: E/AndroidRuntime(19358): at android.view.View.measure(View.java:8526) 12-09 16:50:34.507: E/AndroidRuntime(19358): at android.view.ViewGroup.measureChildWithMargins(ViewGroup.java:3224) 12-09 16:50:34.507: E/AndroidRuntime(19358): at android.widget.FrameLayout.onMeasure(FrameLayout.java:250) 12-09 16:50:34.507: E/AndroidRuntime(19358): at android.view.View.measure(View.java:8526) 12-09 16:50:34.507: E/AndroidRuntime(19358): at android.view.ViewGroup.measureChildWithMargins(ViewGroup.java:3224) 12-09 16:50:34.507: E/AndroidRuntime(19358): at android.widget.FrameLayout.onMeasure(FrameLayout.java:250) 12-09 16:50:34.507: E/AndroidRuntime(19358): at android.view.View.measure(View.java:8526) 12-09 16:50:34.507: E/AndroidRuntime(19358): at android.view.ViewRoot.performTraversals(ViewRoot.java:902) 12-09 16:50:34.507: E/AndroidRuntime(19358): at android.view.ViewRoot.handleMessage(ViewRoot.java:1957) 12-09 16:50:34.507: E/AndroidRuntime(19358): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99) 12-09 16:50:34.507: E/AndroidRuntime(19358): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:150) 12-09 16:50:34.507: E/AndroidRuntime(19358): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4263) 12-09 16:50:34.507: E/AndroidRuntime(19358): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 12-09 16:50:34.507: E/AndroidRuntime(19358): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:507) 12-09 16:50:34.507: E/AndroidRuntime(19358): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:839) 12-09 16:50:34.507: E/AndroidRuntime(19358): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:597) 12-09 16:50:34.507: E/AndroidRuntime(19358): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) Third try - after changing the Frame to Linear : 12-09 17:42:39.076: E/AnalyticsSDKTest.cpp(6338): Time w/ UTC Offset: 2012-12-09 22:42:39-05:00 12-09 17:55:44.141: E/ActivityManager(121): Fix ANR:broadcast when App died 12-09 17:55:44.722: E/AndroidRuntime(19469): FATAL EXCEPTION: main 12-09 17:55:44.722: E/AndroidRuntime(19469): java.lang.ClassCastException: android.view.ViewGroup$LayoutParams 12-09 17:55:44.722: E/AndroidRuntime(19469): at android.widget.LinearLayout.measureVertical(LinearLayout.java:360) 12-09 17:55:44.722: E/AndroidRuntime(19469): at android.widget.LinearLayout.onMeasure(LinearLayout.java:309) 12-09 17:55:44.722: E/AndroidRuntime(19469): at android.view.View.measure(View.java:8526) 12-09 17:55:44.722: E/AndroidRuntime(19469): at android.view.ViewGroup.measureChildWithMargins(ViewGroup.java:3224) 12-09 17:55:44.722: E/AndroidRuntime(19469): at android.widget.FrameLayout.onMeasure(FrameLayout.java:250) 12-09 17:55:44.722: E/AndroidRuntime(19469): at android.view.View.measure(View.java:8526) 12-09 17:55:44.722: E/AndroidRuntime(19469): at android.view.ViewGroup.measureChildWithMargins(ViewGroup.java:3224) 12-09 17:55:44.722: E/AndroidRuntime(19469): at android.widget.FrameLayout.onMeasure(FrameLayout.java:250) 12-09 17:55:44.722: E/AndroidRuntime(19469): at android.view.View.measure(View.java:8526) 12-09 17:55:44.722: E/AndroidRuntime(19469): at android.view.ViewRoot.performTraversals(ViewRoot.java:902) 12-09 17:55:44.722: E/AndroidRuntime(19469): at android.view.ViewRoot.handleMessage(ViewRoot.java:1957) 12-09 17:55:44.722: E/AndroidRuntime(19469): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99) 12-09 17:55:44.722: E/AndroidRuntime(19469): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:150) 12-09 17:55:44.722: E/AndroidRuntime(19469): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4263) 12-09 17:55:44.722: E/AndroidRuntime(19469): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 12-09 17:55:44.722: E/AndroidRuntime(19469): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:507) 12-09 17:55:44.722: E/AndroidRuntime(19469): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:839) 12-09 17:55:44.722: E/AndroidRuntime(19469): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:597) 12-09 17:55:44.722: E/AndroidRuntime(19469): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method)

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• Mobile HCM: It’s not the future, it is right now

  - by Natalia Rachelson

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} A guest post by Steve Boese, Director Product Strategy, Oracle I’ll bet you reached for your iPhone or Android or BlackBerry and took a quick look at email or Facebook or last night’s text messages before you even got out of bed this morning. Come on, admit it, it’s ok, you are among friends here. See, feel better now? But seriously, the incredible growth and near-ubiquity of increasingly powerful, capable, and for many of us, essential in our daily lives mobile devices has profoundly changed the way we communicate, consume information, socialize, and more and more, conduct business and get our work done. And if you doubt that profound change has happened, just think for a moment about the last time you misplaced your iPhone.  The shivers, the cold sweats, the panic... We have all been there. And indeed your personal experiences with mobile technology echoes throughout the world - here are a few data points to consider: Market research firm IDC estimates 1.8 billion mobile phones will be shipped in 2012. A recent Pew study reports 46% of Americans own a smartphone of some kind. And finally in the USA, ownership of tablets like the iPad has doubled from 10% to 19% in the last year. So truly for the Human Resources leader, the question is no longer, ‘Should HR explore ways to exploit mobile devices and their always-on nature to better support and empower the modern workforce?’, but rather ‘How can HR best take advantage of smartphone and tablet capability to provide information, enable transactions, and enhance decision making?’. Because even though moving HCM applications to mobile devices seems inherently logical given today’s fast-moving and mobile workforces, and its promise to deliver incredible value to the organization, HR leaders also have to consider many factors before devising their Mobile HCM strategy and embarking on mobile HR technology projects. Here are just some of the important considerations for HR leaders as you build your strategies and evaluate mobile HCM solutions: Does your organization provide mobile devices to the workforce today, and if so, will the current set of deployed devices have the necessary capability and ecosystems to support your mobile HCM initiatives? Will you allow workers to use or bring their own mobile devices, (commonly abbreviated as ‘BYOD’), and if so are your IT and Security organizations in agreement and capable of supporting that strategy? Do you know which workers need access to mobile HCM applications? Often mobile HCM capability flows down in an organization, with executives and other ‘road-warrior’ types having the most immediate needs, followed by field sales staff, project managers, and even potential job candidates. But just as an organization will have to spend time understanding ‘who’ should have access to mobile HCM technology, the ‘what’ of the way the solutions should be deployed to these groups will also vary. What works and makes sense for the executive, (company-wide dashboards and analytics on an iPad), might not be as relevant for a retail store manager, (employee schedules, location-level sales and inventory data, transaction approvals, etc.). With Oracle Fusion HCM, we are taking an approach to mobile HR that encompasses not just the mobile solution needs for the various types of worker, but also incorporates the fundamental attributes of great mobile applications - the ability to support end-to-end transactions, apps that respond with lightning-fast speed, with functions that are embedded in a worker’s daily activities, and features that can be mashed-up easily with other business areas like Finance and CRM. Finally, and perhaps most importantly for the Oracle Fusion HCM team, delivering mobile experiences that truly enhance, enable, and empower the mobile workforce, and deliver on the design mantras of the best-in-class consumer applications, continues to shape and drive design decisions. Mobile is no longer the future, it is right now, and the cutting-edge HR leader of today will need to consider how mobile fits her HCM technology strategy from here on out. You can learn more about our ideas and plans for Oracle Fusion HCM mobile solutions at https://fusiontap.oracle.com/.

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• Commercial Drupal Modules & Themes

  - by Ravish

  A discussion at Drupal.org forums prompted me to give my input about commercial ecosystem around Open Source Content Management Systems. WordPress and Joomla have been growing rapidly since past few years. But, growth rate of Drupal seems to be almost flat. Despite being the most powerful CMS around, Drupal is still not being adopted by masses. Many people will argue that Drupal is not targeted towards masses, but developers. I agree, Drupal is more of a development platform than a consumer CMS. Drupal is ‘many things to many people’, and I can build almost any type of website with it. Drupal is being used for building blogs, corporate websites, Intranet portals, social networking and even a project management system. Looking at the wide array of Drupal implementations, it deserves to be the most widely adopted CMS. I believe there are few challenges that Drupal community needs to overcome. To understand these challenges, I surveyed some webmasters who use Joomla or WordPress but not Drupal. I asked them why they don’t want to use Drupal, following are the responses I got from them: Drupal is too complicated, takes time to learn. Drupal is great, but its admin panel is overwhelming. I couldn’t find any nice themes for Drupal. There is no WYSIWYG editor in Drupal. Most Drupal modules do not work out of the box. There aren’t enough modules like Ubercart which provides any out of the box functionality. I tried modules like CCK, Views and Panels. After wasting several hours struggling with them, I decided to give up on Drupal. I don’t use Drupal because of pushbutton and Garland theme. I had hard time trying to customize Garland and it messed up the whole layout. There are no premium modules and themes for Drupal. Joomla has tons of awesome themes and modules. I don’t want a million hacks like CCK, Views, Tokens, Pathauto, ImageCache and CTools just to run a simple website. Most of the complaints from users are related to the learning and development curve involved with Drupal, and the lack of ecosystem. While most of the problems will be gone in Drupal 7, ecosystem is something that needs to be built by the Drupal community. Drupal distributions are a great step forward. There are few awesome Drupal distributions available like Open Publish, Open Atrium and Drupal Commons. I predict, there will be a wave of many powerful Drupal distributions after Drupal 7 release. Many of them will be user-friendly and commercial supported. Following is my post at Drupal.org forums: Quote from: http://drupal.org/node/863776#comment-3313836 Brian Gardner (StudioPress) and Woo Themes launched premium WordPress themes in 2007, the developer community did not accept it at first. Moreover, they were not even GPL licensed. There was an outcry in WordPress community against them. Following that, most premium theme providers switched to GPL licensing. Despite controversies, users voted for premium theme and plugins by buying them. Inspired by their success, hundreds of other developers started to sell premium themes and plugins. It is now the acceptable and in fact most popular business model among WordPress community. Matt Mullenweg once told me, they would not support premium themes. If he supported, developers would no more give out free GPL themes & plugins. He pointed me towards Joomla, there were hardly any nice free themes & modules available. Now two years forward, premium products are not just accepted but embraced by the WordPress community – http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/commercial/ The quality and number of themes & modules has increased, even the free ones. This also helped to boost the adoption and ecosystem of WordPress. Today, state of Drupal is like WordPress was in 2007. There are hardly any out of the box solutions available for Drupal. Ubercart, Open Publish and Open Atrium are the only ones I can think of. Many of the popular Drupal modules are patches and hole-fillers. Thankfully, these hole-filler modules are going to be in Drupal 7 core. Drupal 7 and distributions will spawn a new array of solutions built upon Drupal. Soon, we will have more like Ubercarts and Open Atriums. If commercial solutions can help fuel this ecosystem and growth, Drupal community will accept them eventually. This debate will not stop your customers from buying your product. If your product is awesome, they will vote for you by buying your product.

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• SQL SERVER – SSMS: Memory Usage By Memory Optimized Objects Report

  - by Pinal Dave

  At conferences and at speaking engagements at the local UG, there is one question that keeps on coming which I wish were never asked. The question around, “Why is SQL Server using up all the memory and not releasing even when idle?” Well, the answer can be long and with the release of SQL Server 2014, this got even more complicated. This release of SQL Server 2014 has the option of introducing In-Memory OLTP which is completely new concept and our dependency on memory has increased multifold. In reality, nothing much changes but we have memory optimized objects (Tables and Stored Procedures) additional which are residing completely in memory and improving performance. As a DBA, it is humanly impossible to get a hang of all the innovations and the new features introduced in the next version. So today’s blog is around the report added to SSMS which gives a high level view of this new feature addition. This reports is available only from SQL Server 2014 onwards because the feature was introduced in SQL Server 2014. Earlier versions of SQL Server Management Studio would not show the report in the list. If we try to launch the report on the database which is not having In-Memory File group defined, then we would see the message in report. To demonstrate, I have created new fresh database called MemoryOptimizedDB with no special file group. Here is the query used to identify whether a database has memory-optimized file group or not. SELECT TOP(1) 1 FROM sys.filegroups FG WHERE FG.[type] = 'FX' Once we add filegroup using below command, we would see different version of report. USE [master] GO ALTER DATABASE [MemoryOptimizedDB] ADD FILEGROUP [IMO_FG] CONTAINS MEMORY_OPTIMIZED_DATA GO The report is still empty because we have not defined any Memory Optimized table in the database.  Total allocated size is shown as 0 MB. Now, let’s add the folder location into the filegroup and also created few in-memory tables. We have used the nomenclature of IMO to denote “InMemory Optimized” objects. USE [master] GO ALTER DATABASE [MemoryOptimizedDB] ADD FILE ( NAME = N'MemoryOptimizedDB_IMO', FILENAME = N'E:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL12.SQL2014\MSSQL\DATA\MemoryOptimizedDB_IMO') TO FILEGROUP [IMO_FG] GO You may have to change the path based on your SQL Server configuration. Below is the script to create the table. USE MemoryOptimizedDB GO --Drop table if it already exists. IF OBJECT_ID('dbo.SQLAuthority','U') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE dbo.SQLAuthority GO CREATE TABLE dbo.SQLAuthority ( ID INT IDENTITY NOT NULL, Name CHAR(500)  COLLATE Latin1_General_100_BIN2 NOT NULL DEFAULT 'Pinal', CONSTRAINT PK_SQLAuthority_ID PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED (ID), INDEX hash_index_sample_memoryoptimizedtable_c2 HASH (Name) WITH (BUCKET_COUNT = 131072) ) WITH (MEMORY_OPTIMIZED = ON, DURABILITY = SCHEMA_AND_DATA) GO As soon as above script is executed, table and index both are created. If we run the report again, we would see something like below. Notice that table memory is zero but index is using memory. This is due to the fact that hash index needs memory to manage the buckets created. So even if table is empty, index would consume memory. More about the internals of how In-Memory indexes and tables work will be reserved for future posts. Now, use below script to populate the table with 10000 rows INSERT INTO SQLAuthority VALUES (DEFAULT) GO 10000 Here is the same report after inserting 1000 rows into our InMemory table.    There are total three sections in the whole report. Total Memory consumed by In-Memory Objects Pie chart showing memory distribution based on type of consumer – table, index and system. Details of memory usage by each table. The information about all three is taken from one single DMV, sys.dm_db_xtp_table_memory_stats This DMV contains memory usage statistics for both user and system In-Memory tables. If we query the DMV and look at data, we can easily notice that the system tables have negative object IDs.  So, to look at user table memory usage, below is the over-simplified version of query. USE MemoryOptimizedDB GO SELECT OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID), * FROM sys.dm_db_xtp_table_memory_stats WHERE OBJECT_ID > 0 GO This report would help DBA to identify which in-memory object taking lot of memory which can be used as a pointer for designing solution. I am sure in future we will discuss at lengths the whole concept of In-Memory tables in detail over this blog. To read more about In-Memory OLTP, have a look at In-Memory OLTP Series at Balmukund’s Blog. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: SQL Memory, SQL Reports

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• Lessons from a SAN Failure

  - by Bill Graziano

  At 1:10AM Sunday morning the main SAN at one of my clients suffered a “partial” failure.  Partial means that the SAN was still online and functioning but the LUNs attached to our two main SQL Servers “failed”.  Failed means that SQL Server wouldn’t start and the MDF and LDF files mostly showed a zero file size.  But they were online and responding and most other LUNs were available.  I’m not sure how SANs know to fail at 1AM on a Saturday night but they seem to.  From a personal standpoint this worked out poorly: I was out with friends and after more than a few drinks.  From a work standpoint this was about the best time to fail you could imagine.  Everything was running well before Monday morning.  But it was a long, long Sunday.  I started tipsy, got tired and ended up hung over later in the day. Note to self: Try not to go out drinking right before the SAN fails. This caught us at an interesting time.  We’re in the process of migrating to an entirely new set of servers so some things were partially moved.  This made it difficult to follow our procedures as cleanly as we’d like.  The benefit was that we had much better documentation of everything on the server.  I would encourage everyone to really think through the process of implementing your DR plan and document as much as possible.  Following a checklist is much easier than trying to remember at night under pressure in a hurry after a few drinks. I had a series of estimates on how long things would take.  They were accurate for any single server failure.  They weren’t accurate for a SAN failure that took two servers down.  This wasn’t bad but we should have communicated better. Don’t forget how many things are outside the database.  Logins, linked servers, DTS packages (yikes!), jobs, service broker, DTC (especially DTC), database triggers and any objects in the master database are all things you need backed up.  We’d done a decent job on this and didn’t find significant problems here.  That said this still took a lot of time.  There were many annoyances as a result of this.  Small settings like a login’s default database had a big impact on whether an application could run.  This is probably the single biggest area of concern when looking to recreate a server.  I’d encourage everyone to go through every single node of SSMS and look for user created objects or settings outside the database. Script out your logins with the proper SID and already encrypted passwords and keep it updated.  This makes life so much easier.  I used an approach based on KB246133 that worked well.  I’ll get my scripts posted over the next few days. The disaster can cause your DR process to fail in unexpected ways.  We have a job that scripts out all logins and role memberships and writes it to a file.  This runs on the DR server and pulls from the production server.  Upon opening the file I found that the contents were a “server not found” error.  Fortunately we had other copies and didn’t need to try and restore the master database.  This now runs on the production server and pushes the script to the DR site.  Soon we’ll get it pushed to our version control software. One of the biggest challenges is keeping your DR resources up to date.  Any server change (new linked server, new SQL Server Agent job, etc.) means that your DR plan (and scripts) is out of date.  It helps to automate the generation of these resources if possible. Take time now to test your database restore process.  We test ours quarterly.  If you have a large database I’d also encourage you to invest in a compressed backup solution.  Restoring backups was the single larger consumer of time during our recovery. And yes, there’s a database mirroring solution planned in our new architecture. I didn’t have much involvement in things outside SQL Server but this caused many, many things to change in our environment.  Many applications today aren’t just executables or web sites.  They are a combination of those plus network infrastructure, reports, network ports, IP addresses, DTS and SSIS packages, batch systems and many other things.  These all needed a little bit of attention to make sure they were functioning properly. Profiler turned out to be a handy tool.  I started a trace for failed logins and kept that running.  That let me fix a number of problems before people were able to report them.  I also ran traces to capture exceptions.  This helped identify problems with linked servers. Overall the thing that gave me the most problem was linked servers.  In order for a linked server to function properly you need to be pointed to the right server, have the proper login information, have the network routes available and have MSDTC configured properly.  We have a lot of linked servers and this created many failure points.  Some of the older linked servers used IP addresses and not DNS names.  This meant we had to go in and touch all those linked servers when the servers moved.

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• Why Software Sucks...and What You Can Do About It – book review

  - by DigiMortal

      How do our users see the products we are writing for them and how happy they are with our work? Are they able to get their work done without fighting with cool features and crashes or are they just switching off resistance part of their brain to survive our software? Yeah, the overall picture of software usability landscape is not very nice. Okay, it is not even nice. But, fortunately, Why Software Sucks...and What You Can Do About It by David S. Platt explains everything. Why Software Sucks… is book for software users but I consider it as a-must reading also for developers and specially for their managers whose politics often kills all usability topics as soon as they may appear. For managers usability is soft topic that can be manipulated the way it is best in current state of project. Although developers are not UI designers and usability experts they are still very often forced to deal with these topics and this is how usability problems start (of course, also designers are able to produce designs that are stupid and too hard to use for users, but this blog here is about development). I found this book to be very interesting and funny reading. It is not humor book but it explains you all so you remember later very well what you just read. It took me about three evenings to go through this book and I am still enjoying what I found and how author explains our weird young working field to end users. I suggest this book to all developers – while you are demanding your management to hire or outsource usability expert you are at least causing less pain to end users. So, go and buy this book, just like I did. And… they thanks to mr. Platt :) There is one book more I suggest you to read if you are interested in usability - Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition by Steve Krug. Editorial review from Amazon Today’s software sucks. There’s no other good way to say it. It’s unsafe, allowing criminal programs to creep through the Internet wires into our very bedrooms. It’s unreliable, crashing when we need it most, wiping out hours or days of work with no way to get it back. And it’s hard to use, requiring large amounts of head-banging to figure out the simplest operations. It’s no secret that software sucks. You know that from personal experience, whether you use computers for work or personal tasks. In this book, programming insider David Platt explains why that’s the case and, more importantly, why it doesn’t have to be that way. And he explains it in plain, jargon-free English that’s a joy to read, using real-world examples with which you’re already familiar. In the end, he suggests what you, as a typical user, without a technical background, can do about this sad state of our software—how you, as an informed consumer, don’t have to take the abuse that bad software dishes out. As you might expect from the book’s title, Dave’s expose is laced with humor—sometimes outrageous, but always dead on. You’ll laugh out loud as you recall incidents with your own software that made you cry. You’ll slap your thigh with the same hand that so often pounded your computer desk and wished it was a bad programmer’s face. But Dave hasn’t written this book just for laughs. He’s written it to give long-overdue voice to your own discovery—that software does, indeed, suck, but it shouldn’t. Table of contents Acknowledgments xiii Introduction Chapter 1: Who’re You Calling a Dummy? Where We Came From Why It Still Sucks Today Control versus Ease of Use I Don’t Care How Your Program Works A Bad Feature and a Good One Stopping the Proceedings with Idiocy Testing on Live Animals Where We Are and What You Can Do Chapter 2: Tangled in the Web Where We Came From How It Works Why It Still Sucks Today Client-Centered Design versus Server-Centered Design Where’s My Eye Opener? It’s Obvious—Not! Splash, Flash, and Animation Testing on Live Animals What You Can Do about It Chapter 3: Keep Me Safe The Way It Was Why It Sucks Today What Programmers Need to Know, but Don’t A Human Operation Budgeting for Hassles Users Are Lazy Social Engineering Last Word on Security What You Can Do Chapter 4: Who the Heck Are You? Where We Came From Why It Still Sucks Today Incompatible Requirements OK, So Now What? Chapter 5: Who’re You Looking At? Yes, They Know You Why It Sucks More Than Ever Today Users Don’t Know Where the Risks Are What They Know First Milk You with Cookies? Privacy Policy Nonsense Covering Your Tracks The Google Conundrum Solution Chapter 6: Ten Thousand Geeks, Crazed on Jolt Cola See Them in Their Native Habitat All These Geeks Who Speaks, and When, and about What Selling It The Next Generation of Geeks—Passing It On Chapter 7: Who Are These Crazy Bastards Anyway? Homo Logicus Testosterone Poisoning Control and Contentment Making Models Geeks and Jocks Jargon Brains and Constraints Seven Habits of Geeks Chapter 8: Microsoft: Can’t Live With ’Em and Can’t Live Without ’Em They Run the World Me and Them Where We Came From Why It Sucks Today Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don’t We Love to Hate Them Plus ça Change Growing-Up Pains What You Can Do about It The Last Word Chapter 9: Doing Something About It 1. Buy 2. Tell 3. Ridicule 4. Trust 5. Organize Epilogue About the Author

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• Guest Post: Christian Finn: Is Facebook About to Become a Victim of its Own Success?

  - by Michael Snow

  12.00 Print 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}  Since we have a number of new members of the WebCenter Evangelist team - I thought it would be appropriate to close the week with the newest hire and leader of the global WebCenter Evangelists, Christian Finn, who has just joined the Red team after many years with the small technology company up in Redmond, WA. He gave an intro to himself in an earlier post this morning but his post below is a great example of how customer engagement takes on a life of its own in our global online connected and social digital ecosystem. Is Facebook About to Become a Victim of its Own Success? What if I told you that your brand could advertise so successfully, you wouldn’t have to pay for the ads? A recent campaign by Ford Motor Company for the Ford Focus featuring Doug the spokespuppet (I am not making this up) did just that—and it raises some interesting issues for marketers and social media alike in the brave new world of customer engagement that is the Social Web. Allow me to elaborate. An article in the Wall Street Journal last week—“Big Brands Like Facebook, But They Don’t Like to Pay” tells the story of Ford’s recently concluded online campaign for the 2012 Ford Focus. (Ford, by the way, under the leadership of people such as Scott Monty, has been a pioneer of effective social campaigns.) The centerpiece of the campaign was the aforementioned Doug, who appeared as a character on Facebook in videos and via chat. (If you are not familiar with Doug, you can see him in action here, and read the WSJ story here.) You may be thinking puppet ads are a sign of Internet Bubble 2.0 and want to stop now, but bear with me. The Journal reported that Ford spent about $95M on its overall Ford Focus campaign, with TV accounting for over $60M of that spend. The Internet buy for the campaign was just over $10M, which included ad buys to drive traffic to Facebook for people to meet and ‘Like’ Doug and some amount on Facebook ads, too, to promote Doug and by extension, the Ford Focus. So far, a fairly straightforward consumer marketing story in the Internet Era. Yet here’s the curious thing: once Doug reached 10,000 fans on Facebook, Ford stopped paying for Facebook ads. Doug had gone viral with people sharing his videos with one another; once critical mass was reached there was no need to buy more ads on Facebook. Doug went on to be Liked by over 43,000 people, and 61% of his fans said they would be more likely to consider buying a Focus. According to the article, Ford says Focus sales are up this year—and increasing sales is every marketer’s goal. And so in effect, Ford found its Facebook campaign so successful that it could stop paying for it, instead letting its target consumers communicate its messages for fun—and for free. Not only did they get a 3X increase in fans beyond their paid campaign, they had thousands of customers sharing their messages in video form for months. Since free advertising is the Holy Grail of marketing both old and new-- and it appears social networks have an advantage in generating that buzz—it seems reasonable to ask: what would happen to brands’ advertising strategies—and the media they use to engage customers, if this success were repeated at scale? It seems logical to conclude that, at least initially, more ad dollars would be spent with social networks like Facebook as brands attempt to replicate Ford’s success. Certainly Facebook ad revenues are on the rise—eMarketer expects Facebook’s ad revenues to quintuple by 2012 compared with 2009 levels, to nearly 2.9B. That’s bad news for TV and the already battered print media and good news for Facebook. But perhaps not so over the longer run. With TV buys, you have to keep paying to generate impressions. If Doug the spokespuppet is any guide, however, that may not be true for social media campaigns. After an initial outlay, if a social campaign takes off, the audience will generate more impressions on its own. Thus a social medium like Facebook could be the victim of its own success when it comes to ad revenue. It may be there is an inherent limiting factor in the ad spend they can capture, as exemplified by Ford’s experience with Dough and the Focus. And brands may spend much less overall on advertising, with as good or better results, than they ever have in the past. How will these trends evolve? Can brands create social campaigns that repeat Ford’s formula for the Focus with effective results? Can social networks find ways to capture more spend and overcome their potential tendency to make further spend unnecessary? And will consumers become tired and insulated from social campaigns, much as they have to traditional advertising channels? These are the questions CMOs and Facebook execs alike will be asking themselves in the brave new world of customer engagement. As always, your thoughts and comments are most welcome.

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• Big Data – Role of Cloud Computing in Big Data – Day 11 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned the importance of the NewSQL. In this article we will understand the role of Cloud in Big Data Story What is Cloud? Cloud is the biggest buzzword around from last few years. Everyone knows about the Cloud and it is extremely well defined online. In this article we will discuss cloud in the context of the Big Data. Cloud computing is a method of providing a shared computing resources to the application which requires dynamic resources. These resources include applications, computing, storage, networking, development and various deployment platforms. The fundamentals of the cloud computing are that it shares pretty much share all the resources and deliver to end users as a service.  Examples of the Cloud Computing and Big Data are Google and Amazon.com. Both have fantastic Big Data offering with the help of the cloud. We will discuss this later in this blog post. There are two different Cloud Deployment Models: 1) The Public Cloud and 2) The Private Cloud Public Cloud Public Cloud is the cloud infrastructure build by commercial providers (Amazon, Rackspace etc.) creates a highly scalable data center that hides the complex infrastructure from the consumer and provides various services. Private Cloud Private Cloud is the cloud infrastructure build by a single organization where they are managing highly scalable data center internally. Here is the quick comparison between Public Cloud and Private Cloud from Wikipedia:   Public Cloud Private Cloud Initial cost Typically zero Typically high Running cost Unpredictable Unpredictable Customization Impossible Possible Privacy No (Host has access to the data Yes Single sign-on Impossible Possible Scaling up Easy while within defined limits Laborious but no limits Hybrid Cloud Hybrid Cloud is the cloud infrastructure build with the composition of two or more clouds like public and private cloud. Hybrid cloud gives best of the both the world as it combines multiple cloud deployment models together. Cloud and Big Data – Common Characteristics There are many characteristics of the Cloud Architecture and Cloud Computing which are also essentially important for Big Data as well. They highly overlap and at many places it just makes sense to use the power of both the architecture and build a highly scalable framework. Here is the list of all the characteristics of cloud computing important in Big Data Scalability Elasticity Ad-hoc Resource Pooling Low Cost to Setup Infastructure Pay on Use or Pay as you Go Highly Available Leading Big Data Cloud Providers There are many players in Big Data Cloud but we will list a few of the known players in this list. Amazon Amazon is arguably the most popular Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider. The history of how Amazon started in this business is very interesting. They started out with a massive infrastructure to support their own business. Gradually they figured out that their own resources are underutilized most of the time. They decided to get the maximum out of the resources they have and hence  they launched their Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) service in 2006. Their products have evolved a lot recently and now it is one of their primary business besides their retail selling. Amazon also offers Big Data services understand Amazon Web Services. Here is the list of the included services: Amazon Elastic MapReduce – It processes very high volumes of data Amazon DynammoDB – It is fully managed NoSQL (Not Only SQL) database service Amazon Simple Storage Services (S3) – A web-scale service designed to store and accommodate any amount of data Amazon High Performance Computing – It provides low-tenancy tuned high performance computing cluster Amazon RedShift – It is petabyte scale data warehousing service Google Though Google is known for Search Engine, we all know that it is much more than that. Google Compute Engine – It offers secure, flexible computing from energy efficient data centers Google Big Query – It allows SQL-like queries to run against large datasets Google Prediction API – It is a cloud based machine learning tool Other Players Besides Amazon and Google we also have other players in the Big Data market as well. Microsoft is also attempting Big Data with the Cloud with Microsoft Azure. Additionally Rackspace and NASA together have initiated OpenStack. The goal of Openstack is to provide a massively scaled, multitenant cloud that can run on any hardware. Thing to Watch The cloud based solutions provides a great integration with the Big Data’s story as well it is very economical to implement as well. However, there are few things one should be very careful when deploying Big Data on cloud solutions. Here is a list of a few things to watch: Data Integrity Initial Cost Recurring Cost Performance Data Access Security Location Compliance Every company have different approaches to Big Data and have different rules and regulations. Based on various factors, one can implement their own custom Big Data solution on a cloud. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about various Operational Databases supporting Big Data. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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