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• Could I replace a stock PSU fan with a more quiet one?

  - by GaryJL

  I have a cheap 450W PSU with an exhaust fan at the rear. This fan, however, is very loud. Is it a good idea to replace the stock PSU fan with a quiet fan with similar airflow? The PSU fan is hard-wired to the PCB in the PSU so I was intending on snipping the stock fan wires and sealing the loose ends with electrical tape. I would then connect the new quiet fan to the PWR_FAN socket on the motherboard. Has anyone done this before themselves? Is it a good idea in the first place? Considering if my PSU fails, it could take out a couple of other components too.

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• Pinnacle Studio 14 Importer crashes on Windows 7 x64

  - by Tuminoid

  Pinnacle Studio 14 Importer crashes on Windows 7 x64, thus I'm unable to import videos from my camcorder. I've Googled around and it seems to be a problem with x64 support in the program, but there is no info if it can somehow be remedied with Compatibility settings, XP mode. Further Googling got me this link, and none of the tips in site it links help. I've got no idea what ObjectDoct Plus 2 is (no a program or service installed by that name) which he claims causes the problem. Is that ObjectDoct critical to Pinnacle Studio and how to get rid of it (or any other advice how to make Studio 14 work on x64). UPDATE: 1) XP mode doesn't help as it doesn't handle Firewire, which is how my Canon HV20 must be connected to transfer HDV from tape. 2) I don't have that ObjectDock installed. 3) I don't wanna re-buy PS15 just to get this solved as PS14 should be able to do it.

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• Backup solution

  - by user66115

  We are currently looking for a new backup solution. Our current network is 5 remote location with a tape backup in each plant. Right now we are looking at a MPLS VPN and running backups out of our main plant. The main thing that we backup are user private folders and department files. And each plant has it's own file server that houses CAD drawings. My main plan is to have every thing but that CAD drawing at the main faculty. We would start with a main backup of the drawing files and then do change backups back to the main plant. Besides tapes what would be the best way to backup. Our contact at Pc Connection is point us toward a Tandberg Data device.

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• Hyper-V and host-installed hardware devices: can guest VMs access?

  - by gravyface

  Have a couple of servers I'd like to setup as Hyper-V Servers, with a couple of Windows 2008 Standard VMs. On the host, we have a few hardware devices we'd like to be accessible to the guest; I'm not sure if these are supported via a raw "pass-thru" on Hyper-V (which I don't have a lot of experience with) if the same drivers are installed on the guest. Hardware in question is a Brooktrout fax card, a SCSI adapter for the tape drive, and a 9-pin serial connected to one of the core firewalls for management.

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• Tools for tracking disk usage

  - by Carey

  I manage a number of linux fileservers. These all run applications written from 0-10 years ago. As sometimes happens, a machine will come close to, or run out of disk space. Reasons include applications not rotating log files, a machine with 500GB of disk producing 150GB of new files every month that were not written to tape, databases gradually increasing in size, people doing silly things...generally a bit of chaos. Anyway, when a machine unexpectedly goes from 50% to 100% full in a couple of hours, I figure out what broke (lots of "du") and delete files or contact someone. I also can look at cacti graphs to figure out what the machine's normal disk usage is (e.g. for /home). Does anyone know of any tools that will give finer grained information on historial usage than a cacti/RRD graph? Like "/home/abc/xyz increased 50GB in the last day".

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• Reducing storage cost by moving old files to external USB HDDs. Your thoughts?

  - by cparker4486

  I've got about 300GB of pictures and marketing data that is rarely accessed and I'd like to get it off my main storage. I was thinking to simply add two external USB HDDs to the server and move all the files to one of the drives. The second drive would be the backup destination for the first drive. I'm working with Server 2003 R2 SP2. This will help me free a good amount of space on my main storage as well as reduce the complexity, backup window, and usage of my backups to tape.

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• recommendations for disk -> usb backup software

  - by TWood

  Recently I lost a tape drive and rather than repair the unit I decided that backups to usb external drives would be cheaper. In the past I used NTBackup and figured that the new server 2008 R2 backup wbadmin utility would be able to meet my needs. It does not. I am looking for recommendations for another utility that i can use. My requirements are: -backup local disk in addition to files on a network share -scheduled task integration (or some gui options to manage schedule) -non-incremental backup Basically I could do this all with WBAdmin if it just supported network shares. I saw some links that described attaching a vhd pointed to a network share but I am trying to avoid hacks like that. If i'm going to do all that trouble I'd just as well manually copy the directories over myself. If anyone has any software suggestions that might make this task easier for me let me know please. I am considering BackupAssist but can only find a few reviews here and there for it.

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• mirror sql server 2008 to AWS instance from our datacenter?

  - by Alex

  We are currenlty running on hosted pos system locally and would like to mirror to AWS. We are new to AWS and would like to know the most cost effective way to do this? We have 2 DB and 2 web servers right now in one cabinet in CA. One tape drive, one firewall, one SNA. We are thinking to replicate our system in AWS (using sql server 2008) and just mirror both systems and use a witness server between them to keep the data in sync? The goal is, if CA datacenter goes down, AWS keeps running. User see no downtime. All data is synced. Is anyone doing something similar? Would this be practical to just use AWS in this fashion? Thanks

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• repairing or retrieving video off a cracked disk

  - by Tori Hisey

  My disk has a thin cracked right through the one side. right around the crack it looks like it has water damage but im pretty sure it was caused from the crack. will tape work for this? its a dvd of us in jamaica swimming with dolphins and i havent even watched it yet, it got ruined in my suitcase. If there is no way to repair it, is there somewhere that i can take it so they might be able to somehow get the video off of it and onto another disk? any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks

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• polkit: disable all users except those in group wheel?

  - by John Nash

  Is it possible to do the following using 1 polkit .pkla file? Disable all users except those in the wheel group from using polkit. The users in the wheel group will need to provide the root password when using polkit. /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/wheel-only.pkla [disable all users except the wheel group] Identity=unix-group:wheel Action=* ResultAny=??? ResultInactive=??? ResultActive=??? The following file works but you need to provide all the users in /etc/group: [disable all users except those in the wheel group: root and myuser] Identity=unix-user:daemon;unix-user:bin;unix-user:sys;unix-user:adm;unix-user:tty;unix-user:disk;unix-user:lp;unix-user:mail;unix-user:news;unix-user:uucp;unix-user:man;unix-user:proxy;unix-user:kmem;unix-user:dialout;unix-user:fax;unix-user:voice;unix-user:cdrom;unix-user:floppy;unix-user:tape;unix-user:sudo;unix-user:audio;unix-user:dip;unix-user:www-data;unix-user:backup;unix-user:operator;unix-user:list;unix-user:irc;unix-user:src;unix-user:gnats;unix-user:shadow;unix-user:utmp;unix-user:video;unix-user:sasl;unix-user:plugdev;unix-user:staff;unix-user:games;unix-user:users;unix-user:nogroup;unix-user:libuuid;unix-user:crontab;unix-user:messagebus;unix-user:Debian-exim;unix-user:mlocate;unix-user:avahi;unix-user:netdev;unix-user:bluetooth;unix-user:lpadmin;unix-user:ssl-cert;unix-user:fuse;unix-user:utempter;unix-user:Debian-gdm;unix-user:scanner;unix-user:saned;unix-user:i2c;unix-user:haldaemon;unix-user:powerdev Action=* ResultAny=no ResultInactive=no ResultActive=no

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• How to Backup Your Web-Based Email Account Using Thunderbird

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  If the Gmail scare earlier this week has you thinking about backing up your Gmail or other web-based email account, we’re here to help. Read on to learn how to backup your web-based email using open source email application Thunderbird. In case you missed it, earlier this week Gmail suffered an unusual series of glitches that led to 0.02% of Gmail users finding their inboxes totally empty. The good news is that the glitch was fixed and no actual data was lost (they restored the missing email from tape backups that were unaffected by the issue). While that’s wonderful nobody lost any important emails it’s also very unsettling. Not every “Oops, we lost your data!” scenario ends so well. Today we’re going to walk you through backing up your email using the free and robust open-source application Thunderbird. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Have You Ever Wondered How Your Operating System Got Its Name? Should You Delete Windows 7 Service Pack Backup Files to Save Space? What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It? How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 Access the Options for Your Favorite Extensions Easier in Firefox Don’t Sleep Keeps Your Windows Machine Awake DropSpace Syncs Android Files to Dropbox Field of Poppies Wallpaper The History Of Operating Systems [Infographic] DriveSafe.ly Reads Your Text Messages Aloud

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• Storage Forum at Oracle OpenWorld

  - by kgee

  For anyone attending Oracle OpenWorld and involved in Storage, join us at the Storage Forum & Reception. This special engagement offers you the ability to meet Oracle’s top storage executives, architects and fellow storage colleagues. Features include interactive sessions and round-table discussions on Oracle's storage strategy, product direction, and real-world customer implementations. It’s your chance to ask questions and learn first-hand about Oracle's response to top trends and what keeps storage managers up at night, including how to contain storage costs, improve performance, and ensure seamless integration with Oracle software environments. Featured Speakers: Mike Workman, SVP of Pillar Axiom Storage Group; Phil Bullinger, SVP of Sun ZFS Storage Group; and Jim Cates, VP of Tape Systems Storage Group Added Bonus: The Storage Forum will be followed by an exclusive Wine and Cocktail Reception where you can... Meet and network with peers, and other storage professionals Interact with Oracle’s experts in a fun and relaxed setting Wind down and prepare for the Oracle Customer Appreciation Event featuring Pearl Jam and Kings of Leon Date & Times:Wednesday, October 3, 20123:30 – 5:00 p.m. Forum 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. Reception Disclaimer: Space is limited, so register at http://bit.ly/PULcyR as soon as possible! If you want any more information, feel free to email [email protected]

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• Paper Gold Rush

  - by Chris G. Williams

  The last few days at the shop have been reminiscent of a marathon of Pawn Stars. Quite a few people have come in wanting to trade for store credit. Most of them have left disappointed. We did pick up a few things here and there (which hopefully I can sell.) The problem, in a nutshell, is that people get it in their head that a (YuGiOh) card is worth X amount because they looked it up 2-3 years a...go, or someone told them it was valuable... then they play it in their deck for a year without sleeves, and cram it in a binder covered in duct tape. By the time they bring the cards in to me, new sets have come out which often de-value the tournament usefulness of the card from $20 to *maybe* 50 cents, in mint condition. Which means I can offer them about 10-15 cents... only they are almost never in mint condition, which means I usually offer them nothing at all. Most of the time, you can watch their smile fade as I start going through their cards. It's kinda sad, really, since I know they think they've spent the last two years walking around with the keys to their own personal gold mine. I don't really enjoy seeing that look on a child's face. I like kids and I remember those moments when perception and reality crashed headlong into each other. It was seldom pretty. So, when I'm talking to a child, I try to take it easy on them and give them some suggestions on how to better preserve their cards. Sometimes though, it's an adult. Depending on the situation, my response to them varies pretty broadly. Most of the time though, I still feel pretty bad when it doesn't go their way.

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• Partner Infoline & Service Portal

  - by uwes

  As an EMEA-wide team we're supporting the daily work of our partners. Our team consists of 24 sales consultants, one third is specialized on the Partner Infoline. Partner Infoline's main focus is to deliver actively and reactively technical pre sales knowledge about the Oracle hardware portfolio to our partners.With infoline we assist our partners in their daily work, furthermore we help to educate our partners to be self sufficient in all aspects and questions about hardware configurations and hardware quotes. For our Infoline Service we use a ticketing system called Service Portal which is widely used within Oracle and delivers a good and stable functionality and availability. Our Infoline-Service provides answers to questions concerning technical pre-sales matters that are related to hardware and the corresponding hardware related software.* You can address these types of questions by sending them to our mailing list: [email protected] The serviceportal will send you an auto-reply including a unique reference number, which will be the identification for your request until it is closed. Depending on the complexity of the request, it might be necessary to forward it to our specialists (servers, storage, tape, Solaris etc.) located whole over Europe. In order to make the whole process smooth here are some recommendations: write your request in English; saves translation-time, when it has to be forwarded to the specialists stating clearly in the title your interest area, like for example "memory in M4000 server". one request/one subject; makes it easier to maintain and keep the correspondence clear and simple. The rule of the service is to provide an answer quick, which means the vast majority of the requests are answered within a couple of hours. However please keep in mind that some requests may need extra work by involving the appropriate person within Europe or even in US. Therefore there is no official SLA for this service. * This excludes Oracle "classic" products and post-sales support. The latter should still be addressed through MOS (http://support.oracle.com)

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, November 04, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, November 04, 2012Popular ReleasesZXMAK2: Version 2.6.8.4: fix tape autostop & tape iconProDinner - ASP.NET MVC Sample (EF4.4, N-Tier, jQuery): 8: update to ASP.net MVC Awesome 3.0 udpate to EntityFramework 4.4 update to MVC 4 added dinners grid on homepageASP.net MVC Awesome - jQuery Ajax Helpers: 3.0: added Grid helper added XML Documentation added textbox helper added Client Side API for AjaxList removed .SearchButton from AjaxList AjaxForm and Confirm helpers have been merged into the Form helper optimized html output for AjaxDropdown, AjaxList, Autocomplete works on MVC 3 and 4BlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.7: Cheap ASP.NET Hosting - $4.95/Month - Click Here!! Click Here for More Info Cheap ASP.NET Hosting - $4.95/Month - Click Here! If you want to set up and start using BlogEngine.NET right away, you should download the Web project. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. If you are upgrading from a previous version of BlogEngine.NET, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.7 instructions. If you looking for Web Application Project, ...Launchbar: Launchbar 4.2.2.0: This release is the first step in cleaning up the code and using all the latest features of .NET 4.5 Changes 4.2.2 (2012-11-02) Improved handling of left clicks 4.1.0 (2012-10-17) Removed tray icon Assembly renamed and signed with strong name Note When you upgrade, Launchbar will start with the default settings. You can import your previous settings by following these steps: Run Launchbar and just save the settings without configuring anything Shutdown Launchbar Go to the folder %LOCA...CommonLibrary.NET: CommonLibrary.NET 0.9.8.8: Releases notes for FluentScript located at http://fluentscript.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Release%20Notes&referringTitle=Documentation Fluentscript - 0.9.8.8 - Final ReleaseApplication: FluentScript Version: 0.9.8.8 Build: 0.9.8.8 Changeset: 77368 ( CommonLibrary.NET ) Release date: November 2nd, 2012 Binaries: CommonLibrary.dll Namespace: ComLib.Lang Project site: http://fluentscript.codeplex.com/ Download: http://commonlibrarynet.codeplex.com/releases/view/90426 Source code: http://common...Mouse Jiggler: MouseJiggle-1.3: This adds the much-requested minimize-to-tray feature to Mouse Jiggler.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.10.0 Release Candidate: This is a Release Candidate, which means that if we do not find any major issues in the next week, we will release this version as the final release of 4.10.0 on November 9th, 2012. The documentation for the MVC bits still lives in the Github version of the docs for now and will be updated on our.umbraco.org with the final release of 4.10.0. Browse the documentation here: https://github.com/umbraco/Umbraco4Docs/tree/4.8.0/Documentation/Reference/Mvc If you want to do only MVC then make sur...Skype Auto Recorder: SkypeAutoRecorder 1.3.4: New icon and images. Reworked settings window. Implemented high-quality sound encoding. Implemented a possibility to produce stereo records. Added buttons with system-wide hot keys for manual starting and canceling of recording. Added buttons for opening folder with records. Added Help button. Fixed an issue when recording is continuing after call end. Fixed an issue when recording doesn't start. Fixed several bugs and improved stability. Major refactoring and optimization...Access 2010 Application Platform - Build Your Own Database: Application Platform - 0.0.2: Release 0.0.2 Created two new users. One belongs to the Administrators group and the other to the Public group. User: admin Pass: admin User: guest Pass: guest Initial Release This is the first version of the database. At the moment is all contained in one file to make development easier, but the obvious idea would be to split it into Front and Back End for a production version of the tool. The features it contains at the moment are the "Core" features.Python Tools for Visual Studio: Python Tools for Visual Studio 1.5: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 1.5 RTM. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, Edit/Intellisense/Debug/Profile, Cloud, HPC, IPython, etc. support. For a quick overview of the general IDE experience, please watch this video There are a number of exciting improvement in this release comp...mangopollo: Mangopollo 1.1: New classes : CycleTileData, IconicTileData, FlipTileData to mimic Windows Phone 8 API,BCF.Net: BCF.Net: BCF.Net-20121024 source codeAssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5.5: Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, please wait while we try to package for those OSes. Try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compile your own for Linux (source included) Changelog: Fixed potential bot bugs: Map change, OpenAL...DirectX Tool Kit: October 30, 2012 (add WP8 support): October 30, 2012 Added project files for Windows Phone 8MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.6: Changelog for 2.3.6 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Fixed a bug in multichannel audio conversion failure. AAC does not support 6 channel audio, MCEBuddy now checks for it and force the output to 2 channel if AAC codec is specified 2. Fixed a bug in Original Broadcast Date and Time. Original Broadcast Date and Time is reported in UTC timezone in WTV metadata. TVDB and MovieDB dates are reported in network timezone. It is assumed the video is recorded and converted on the same machine, i.e. local timezone...MVVM Light Toolkit: MVVM Light Toolkit V4.1 for Visual Studio 2012: This version only supports Visual Studio 2012 (and all Express editions too). If you use Visual Studio 2010, please stay tuned, we will publish an update in a few days with support for VS10. V4.1 supports: Windows Phone 8 Windows 8 (Windows RT) Silverlight 5 Silverlight 4 WPF 4.5 WPF 4 WPF 3.5 And the following development environments: Visual Studio 2012 (Pro, Premium, Ultimate) Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows 8 Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows Phone 8 Visual...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.73: Fix issue in Discussion #401101 (unreferenced var in a for-in statement was getting removed). add the grouping operator to the parsed output so that unminified parsed code is closer to the original. Will still strip unneeded parens later, if minifying. more cleaning of references as they are minified out of the code.RiP-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.03: changes NEW: Added Support for the phun.org forum FIXED: Kitty-Kats new Forum UrlLiberty: v3.4.0.1 Release 28th October 2012: Change Log -Fixed -H4 Fixed the save verification screen showing incorrect mission and difficulty information for some saves -H4 Hopefully fixed the issue where progress did not save between missions and saves would not revert correctly -H3 Fixed crashes that occurred when trying to load player information -Proper exception dialogs will now show in place of crashesNew ProjectsAzure Storage Extensions For Storage Client V2.0: This library add LINQ syntax to the method Where on TableQuery<T> This support actually Windows Azure Storage Library V2.0BekkGitTfsDemo: A demo project for a speech on git-tfs.Booky: Booky is a utility bookmarking service which allows you to manage, share and find bookmarks to ultimately store bookmarks online for later use.BSA.Net: BSA.Net bzureC# to C++/CX Converter: Gives you the power of C++ at a cost of the simplicity of C#.Cloud Clipboard Sync: Share the clipboard content via cloud (ex. Dropbox).CricketDataMining: Btech Project on Cricket Data MiningCthulhu Invaders: Estudy project about design patternsDALHelper: Connect to your SQL Server database easily, efficiently, writing minimal code. Dwarf Fortress 2010 Backup Assistant: (Inspired by Minecraft Backup Assistant - http://minecraftbackup.codeplex.com/) Allows quick and easy backup/management of your DF savegames. Planned Features: * Rename saves and autosaves * Backup to zip/7-zip with metadata * Restore backupsInmobiliaria: Proyecto de nosotrosInventário com Código de Barras para Windows CE / Mobile: Aplicativo para inventário de produtos com código de barras. Executa em coletores de dados Windows CE ou Mobile.JQuery MVC in ASP.Net WebForms: The purpose of this project is to try and strip back a lot of the "bloat" in asp.net, use jquery and to build effective MVC in to WebFormsMar3ek's Download Manager 2: Mar3ek's Download Manager 2 - a simple, yet powerful, download manager for windows.Martian Shrimp: A small, simple and modular game making framework for modern browsers.MOJ: Moj is program created to help users organize and browse their virtual movie colectionNetFluid Starter Kit: NetFluid sample collection. Including : - Wallen garden controller - JSON RPC - Background thread web page - Dynamic image generation www.netfluid.orgO Library: The O Library is a SQL Framework to use with SQL Server 2008 & 2012 that enables developer to add a .Net feeling to their T-SQL code.Scanner With WIA2.0: warp implement WIA 2.0 with c#Simplify Workflow: A set of custom activities and templates extending Windows Workflow Foundation to simplify the development process for BPM or Workflow application.T4 C# Constructor Generator: T4 C# Constructor Generator is a T4 template for Visual Studio C# projects that lowers the overhead of the C# compiler by generating constructors.Unity.Mvc.Wcf: Removes the cross-cutting concern of managing WCF service clients used by your MVC controllers.WorkflowCode - Workflow in a Code framework: Intended to use by developers. As useful and simple as possible. It is the Workflow framework for a fast and readable code. With samples and tips.XNeon Netmedia Player: A Media Player, Social Networking Notifier and Internet Browser from the Founder of Aza DOSXooFoo: This project intends sharing tools for the XOOPS communityXoops France: Publications Xoops francophones (traductions noyau xoops, documentations, modules françisés, thèmes, plugin smarty, hacks, ...)Yasher (Yet Another Hasher): Compute hash of files or text. Supported algorithms : * MD5 * SHA1 * SHA256 * SHA384 * SHA512 * RIPEMD160

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• Is Joel Test really a good gauging tool?

  - by henry

  I just learned about Joel Test. I have been computer programmer for 22 years, but somehow never heard about it before. I consider my best job so far to be this small investment managing company with 30 employees and only 3 people in IT department. I am no longer with them but I had being working there for 5 years – my longest streak with any given company. To my surprise they scored extremely poor on Joel Test. The only two questions I would answer “yes” are #4: Do you have a bug database? And #9: Do you use the best tools money can buy? Everything else is either “sometimes” or straight “no”. Here is what I liked about the company however: a) Good pay, they bragged about it to my face and I bragged about it to their face, so it was almost like a family environment. b) I always knew big picture. When writing a code to solve particular problem there were no ambiguity about the business nature of that problem. Even though we did not always had written specs we could ask business users a question anytime, often yelling it across the floor. I could even talk to executives any time I felt like doing it: no appointment necessary. c) Immediate feedback. Once we implement a solution and make business users happy they immediately let us know that, we (programmers) become heroes of the moment. d) No red tape. I could always buy any tools I deem necessary, and design solutions the way my professional judgment dictates. e) Flexibility. If I had mid-day dental appointment that is near my house rather than near the office, I would send email to the company: "FYI: I work from home today". As long as one of 3 IT guys was on the floor (to help traders in case their monitors go dark) they did not care where 2 others are. So the question thus becomes how valuable Joel Test is? Why bother with 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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• Fiber-Optic Cable Trick Brings Remote Triggering to Older Flashes

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Many older flashes lack for a jack to input a sync cable and rely exclusively on a simple slave mode triggered by the primary flash. This hack uses a piece of scrap fiber optic cable to trigger the flash in bright conditions. Using a flash as an optical slave indoors isn’t much of a problem, but if you introduce bright light (such as outdoor lighting conditions), the ambient light can overpower the small on-camera flash and render the optical slave function useless. To overcome this, Marcell over at Fiber Strobe (a blog dedicated to cataloging experiments in incorporating fiber optics into photography) came up with a simple work around. By using some foam crafting materials and tape, he whipped up a simple mount for a strand of scrap fiber optic cable to connect between the on-camera flash and the sensor on the slave flash. Once attached it works exactly like as sync cable would, except it’s transmitting a pulse of light instead of a pulse of electricity. Hit up the link below for more pictures and a build guide. DIY Fiber Sync Cord [via DIY Photography] HTG Explains: What Is Windows RT and What Does It Mean To Me? HTG Explains: How Windows 8′s Secure Boot Feature Works & What It Means for Linux Hack Your Kindle for Easy Font Customization

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• Sort algorithms that work on large amount of data

  - by Giorgio

  I am looking for sorting algorithms that can work on a large amount of data, i.e. that can work even when the whole data set cannot be held in main memory at once. The only candidate that I have found up to now is merge sort: you can implement the algorithm in such a way that it scans your data set at each merge without holding all the data in main memory at once. The variation of merge sort I have in mind is described in this article in section Use with tape drives. I think this is a good solution (with complexity O(n x log(n)) but I am curious to know if there are other (possibly faster) sorting algorithms that can work on large data sets that do not fit in main memory. EDIT Here are some more details, as required by the answers: The data needs to be sorted periodically, e.g. once in a month. I do not need to insert a few records and have the data sorted incrementally. My example text file is about 1 GB UTF-8 text, but I wanted to solve the problem in general, even if the file were, say, 20 GB. It is not in a database and, due to other constraints, it cannot be. The data is dumped by others as a text file, I have my own code to read this text file. The format of the data is a text file: new line characters are record separators. One possible improvement I had in mind was to split the file into files that are small enough to be sorted in memory, and finally merge all these files using the algorithm I have described above.

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• How do I backup my customer's data?

  - by marcamillion

  If you run a SaaS app, or work on one, I would love to hear from you. Where the safety and security of your customer's data is paramount, how do you secure it and back it up? I would love to know your main host (e.g. Heroku, Engine Yard, Rackspace, MediaTemple, etc.) and who you use for your backup. Be as detailed as possible - e.g. a quick overview of your service and the data you store (images for instance), what happens with the images when the user uploads them (e.g. they go to your Linode VPS, and posted to the site for them to see - then they are automatically sent to AWS or wherever, then once a week they are backed up to tape by the managed hosting provider, and you also back them up to your house/office). If you could also give some idea as to what the unit cost (per GB/per user/per month) of storage is - on average, I would really appreciate that. Getting ready to launch my app, and I would love to get some more perspective on the nitty gritty details involved. Thanks!

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• Wireless BMC4311 driver install

  - by user113910

  Exasperated with Ubuntu 12.04 and BCM4311 driver. HP2133 (was SUSE 10) Installed 12.04 in March. It ran well until November with no updates) then updates killed my wireless controller. Trolled forums & other for fix. Tried sudo -apt-get ing & gedit ing. Finally got it working (on full update with STA driver) Hwew!—thought that was it, only to fail again after 3-4 days. Tried all the fixes again but sudo -apt-get ing & gedit ing does not fix. I'm not without experience either: first 'boot-loader' I/P from 20 switch panel, seq to 4096 bit core-store: run to I/P larger processes from paper tape reader. Gone thru acoustic-coupled networks-to-billboards (before 'the net') pre-DOS, DOS, Windows 3.1 & all the others. This is a tough problem. Any advice?

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• Advice and resources on collaborative environments

  - by Tjaart

  I need some advice on collaborative software environments. More specifically, I am looking for books and reference materials that can aid me in understanding team and code structures and the interactions thereof. In other words books, blogs or white papers explaining: Different strategies for structuring teams that share common code between each other but have distinct individual functions? To summarise my question I would like to know what would be a good source of knowledge if I were to set up teams in an organisation that shared code but each unit still remained autonomous. I have done some research on this subject and explored: code review tools, distributed VCS, continuous integration tools, Unit testing automation. The tough part about implementing these tools are to determine where a good place would be to start, which tools are low hanging fruit, which tools or methods provide higher success rates. If someone asks me about code quality reference I point them to Code Complete. I am looking for an equivalent guide on software team structures and tools to make this equation work better. I realise that this question is quite vague but it arose as "we need to share code between teams without breaking each others stuff and causing management headaches and reams of red tape" The answer is definitely not simple and requires changes on many levels, hence the question. If the question is too vague please vote to close or delete. I would accept any good starting point as an answer.

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• ADF - Now with Robots!

  - by Duncan Mills

  I mentioned this briefly in a tweet the other day, just before the full rush of OOW really kicked off, so I though it was worth re-visiting. Check out this video, and then read on: So why so interesting? Well - you probably guessed from the title, ADF is involved. Indeed this is as about as far from the traditional ADF data entry application as you can get. Instead of a database at the back-end there's basically a robot. That's right, this remarkable tape drive is controlled through an ADF using all your usual friends of ADF Faces, Controller and Binding (but no ADFBC for obvious reasons). ADF is used both on the touch screen you see on the front of the device in the video, and also for the remote management console which provides a visual representation of the slots and drives. The latter uses ADF's Active Data Framework to provide a real-time view of what's going on the rack. . What's even more interesting (for the techno-geeks) is the fact that all of this is running out of flash storage on a ridiculously small form factor with tiny processor - I probably shouldn't reveal the actual specs but take my word for it, don't complain about the capabilities of your laptop ever again! This is a project that I've been personally involved in and I'm pumped to see such a good result and,  I have to say, those hardware guys are great to work with (and have way better toys on their desks than we do). More info in the SL150 (should you feel the urge to own one) is here. 

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• Offsite Backup

  - by Grant Fritchey

  There was a recent weather event in the United States that seriously impacted our power grid and our physical well being. Lots of businesses found that they couldn’t get to their building or that their building was gone. Many of them got to do a full test of their disaster recovery processes. A big part of DR is having the ability to get yourself back online in a different location. Now, most of us are not going to be paying for multiple sites, but, we need the ability to move to one if needed. The best thing you can to start to set this up is have an off-site backup. Want an easy way to automate that? I mean, yeah, you can go to tape or to a portable drive (much more likely these days) and then carry that home, but we’ve all got access to offsite storage these days, SkyDrive, DropBox, S3, etc. How about just backing up to there? I agree. Great idea. That’s why Red Gate is setting up some methods around it. Want to take part in the early access program? Go here and try it out.

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• How to handle notifications to several partial views of the same model?

  - by Seki

  I am working on refactoring an old simulation of a Turing machine. The application uses a class that contains the state and the logic of program execution, and several panels to display the tape representation and show the state, messages, and the GUI controls (start, stop, program listing, ...). I would like to refactor it using the MVC architecture that was not used originaly: the Frame is the only way to get access to the different panels and there is also a strong coupling between the "engine" class and the GUI updates in the way of frame.displayPanel.state.setText("halted"); or frame.outputPanel.messages.append("some thing"); It looks to me that I should put the state related code into an observable model class and make the different panels observers. My problem is that the java Observable class only provides a global notification to the Observers, while I would prefer not to refresh every Observers everytime, but only when the part that specificaly observe has changed. I am thinking of implementing myself several vectors of listeners (for the state / position, for the output messages, ...) but I feel like reinventing the wheel. I though also about adding some flags that the observers could check like isNewMessageAvailable(), hasTapeMoved(), etc but it sounds also approximative design. BTW, is it ok to keep the fetch / execute loop into the model or should I move it in another place? We can think in a theorical ideal way as I am completely revamping this small application.

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