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• Why can't decimal numbers be represented exactly in binary?

  - by Barry Brown

  There have been several questions posted to SO about floating-point representation. For example, the decimal number 0.1 doesn't have an exact binary representation, so it's dangerous to use the == operator to compare it to another floating-point number. I understand the principles behind floating-point representation. What I don't understand is why, from a mathematical perspective, are the numbers to the right of the decimal point any more "special" that the ones to the left? For example, the number 61.0 has an exact binary representation because the integral portion of any number is always exact. But the number 6.10 is not exact. All I did was move the decimal one place and suddenly I've gone from Exactopia to Inexactville. Mathematically, there should be no intrinsic difference between the two numbers -- they're just numbers. By contrast, if I move the decimal one place in the other direction to produce the number 610, I'm still in Exactopia. I can keep going in that direction (6100, 610000000, 610000000000000) and they're still exact, exact, exact. But as soon as the decimal crosses some threshold, the numbers are no longer exact. What's going on? Edit: to clarify, I want to stay away from discussion about industry-standard representations, such as IEEE, and stick with what I believe is the mathematically "pure" way. In base 10, the positional values are: ... 1000 100 10 1 1/10 1/100 ... In binary, they would be: ... 8 4 2 1 1/2 1/4 1/8 ... There are also no arbitrary limits placed on these numbers. The positions increase indefinitely to the left and to the right.

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• MySQL "OR MATCH" hangs (very slow) on multiple tables

  - by Kerry

  After learning how to do MySQL Full-Text search, the recommended solution for multiple tables was OR MATCH and then do the other database call. You can see that in my query below. When I do this, it just gets stuck in a "busy" state, and I can't access the MySQL database. SELECT a.`product_id`, a.`name`, a.`slug`, a.`description`, b.`list_price`, b.`price`, c.`image`, c.`swatch`, e.`name` AS industry, MATCH( a.`name`, a.`sku`, a.`description` ) AGAINST ( '%s' IN BOOLEAN MODE ) AS relevance FROM `products` AS a LEFT JOIN `website_products` AS b ON (a.`product_id` = b.`product_id`) LEFT JOIN ( SELECT `product_id`, `image`, `swatch` FROM `product_images` WHERE `sequence` = 0) AS c ON (a.`product_id` = c.`product_id`) LEFT JOIN `brands` AS d ON (a.`brand_id` = d.`brand_id`) INNER JOIN `industries` AS e ON (a.`industry_id` = e.`industry_id`) WHERE b.`website_id` = %d AND b.`status` = %d AND b.`active` = %d AND MATCH( a.`name`, a.`sku`, a.`description` ) AGAINST ( '%s' IN BOOLEAN MODE ) OR MATCH ( d.`name` ) AGAINST ( '%s' IN BOOLEAN MODE ) GROUP BY a.`product_id` ORDER BY relevance DESC LIMIT 0, 9 Any help would be greatly appreciated. EDIT All the tables involved are MyISAM, utf8_general_ci. Here's the EXPLAIN SELECT statement: id select_type table type possible_keys key key_len ref rows Extra 1 PRIMARY a ALL NULL NULL NULL NULL 16076 Using temporary; Using filesort 1 PRIMARY b ref product_id product_id 4 database.a.product_id 2 1 PRIMARY e eq_ref PRIMARY PRIMARY 4 database.a.industry_id 1 1 PRIMARY <derived2> ALL NULL NULL NULL NULL 23261 1 PRIMARY d eq_ref PRIMARY PRIMARY 4 database.a.brand_id 1 Using where 2 DERIVED product_images ALL NULL NULL NULL NULL 25933 Using where I don't know how to make that look neater -- sorry about that UPDATE it returns the query after 196 seconds (I think correctly). The query without multiple tables takes about .56 seconds (which I know is really slow, we plan on changing to solr or sphinx soon), but 196 seconds?? If we could add a number to the relevance if it was in the brand name ( d.name ), that would also work

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• Rails Browser Detection Methods

  - by alvincrespo

  Hey Everyone, I was wondering what methods are standard within the industry to do browser detection in Rails? Is there a gem, library or sample code somewhere that can help determine the browser and apply a class or id to the body element of the (X)HTML? Thanks, I'm just wondering what everyone uses and whether there is accepted method of doing this? I know that we can get the user.agent and parse that string, but I'm not sure if that is that is an acceptable way to do browser detection. Also, I'm not trying to debate feature detection here, I've read multiple answers for that on StackOverflow, all I'm asking for is what you guys have done. [UPDATE] So thanks to faunzy on GitHub, I've sort of understand a bit about checking the user agent in Rails, but still not sure if this is the best way to go about it in Rails 3. But here is what I've gotten so far: def users_browser user_agent = request.env['HTTP_USER_AGENT'].downcase @users_browser ||= begin if user_agent.index('msie') && !user_agent.index('opera') && !user_agent.index('webtv') 'ie'+user_agent[user_agent.index('msie')+5].chr elsif user_agent.index('gecko/') 'gecko' elsif user_agent.index('opera') 'opera' elsif user_agent.index('konqueror') 'konqueror' elsif user_agent.index('ipod') 'ipod' elsif user_agent.index('ipad') 'ipad' elsif user_agent.index('iphone') 'iphone' elsif user_agent.index('chrome/') 'chrome' elsif user_agent.index('applewebkit/') 'safari' elsif user_agent.index('googlebot/') 'googlebot' elsif user_agent.index('msnbot') 'msnbot' elsif user_agent.index('yahoo! slurp') 'yahoobot' #Everything thinks it's mozilla, so this goes last elsif user_agent.index('mozilla/') 'gecko' else 'unknown' end end return @users_browser end

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• how to design and produce enterprise software in Java Technology EE ? more importantly does it have

  - by fwfwfw

  I want to be able to design and produce enterprise software/applications. Java EE comes to mind. but are there alternatives ? Does it have to be J2EE, to make enterprisey software ? More importantly, how common is it for developers to use Java Technology in order to build enterprise software ? I mean how much "meat" do you need to pack before you can charge a $100,000 sticker price ? is bloatware common in this industry ? what is the best way I can learn the entire Java Enterprise and be able to design and produce enterprise software ? Or perhaps an alternative to Java ? I am starting software engineering in University, but I have personal coding experience....i just would love to be able to design enterprise software using Java Technology....i can pick up books and start practicing.....i just dont know where to begin or what to expect. My goal is to get as much experience in enterprise software field, and specialize into niches start my own company. so far i know enterprise software sale process usually take at least a couple of months but for a good reason..

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• Is there a search engine that indexes source code of a web-page?

  - by Dexter

  I need to search the web for sites that are in our industry that use the same Adwords management company, to ensure that the said company is not violating our contract, as they have been accused of doing. They use a tracking code in the template of every page which has a certain domain in the URL, and I'm wondering if it's possible "Google" the source code using some bot that crawls the code rather than the content? For example, I bought an unlimited license for an image gallery, and I was asked to type the license number in a comment just before the script. I thought it was just so a human could look at the source and find out if someone paid, but it turned out that it was actually that they had a crawler looking for their source code and that comment. If it ran across the code on your site, it would look for the comment, and if it found one, it would check to see if it was an existing one. If not, it would first notify you of your noncompliance, and then notify the owner of the script. Edit: I'm looking to index HTML and JavaScript only, not the server-side languages or Java.

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• World Economic Crisis. IT prospects

  - by Andrew Florko

  There was alike question in 2008, 2 years passed. Please, share your expectations about IT market and employment in the next year or two (or so far you can predict). IMHO Russia (my native country) fully met Crisis in spring, 2008. Stock markets shrank 3(!) times during half a year. Many developers were fired those days but I suppose just because business was shocked and freezed some projects. Developers expected +20% salary growth per year in 2004-2007 (Developer salary in Moscow was about 2-3K$ in early 2008). Then there was 30% (very subjective) salary cut-off in 2008 and salaries were frozen till 2009. Now things are slowly coming back to 2008. Looking in the future I expect pessimistic scenario and another crash. Our economic depends more and more on oil & gas every year. IT that serves industry will be shrinked because we can't compete to China in real production. Due to high currency board (rubble is strong compared to dollar) we can't rely on offshore programming. Our officials are concerned on innovative economic breakthrough but it's an ordinary budget money assignemtn in practice. I don't believe in innovations either because who require innovations if you have debts and tomorrow is vapor?

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• Error handling approach on PHP

  - by Industrial

  Hi everybody, We have a web server that we're about to launch a number of applications onto. They will all share database and memcached servers, but each application has it's own mySQL database and all memcached keys per application, is prefixed. Possible scenario: If a memcached server in our cluster goes boom, we want someone (operative system admin) to be automatically contacted by email/iphone push notification or in any other appropriate way. If we we're about to install 150 identical applications for our customers on our servers, and a memcached server dies - all 150 applications will individually find this out and contact our system admin, which most certainly is going to think about getting a new job where he or she isn't about to be woken up by getting 150 messages sent 4:15 in the morning. Possible solution: One idea is to set up an external server for error handling that gets a $_POST or cURL request sent, and handles storage of the error message depending on the seriousness of the actual error message. It would of course check upon receiving the error call, that if the same memcached server have already been reported as offline, there would be no need to spam the system admin with additional reminders... The questions: What's a good approach on how to handle errors? How does the big guys in the industry handle this? Thanks!

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• Agile methodologies. Is it a by-product of mind control techniques as NLP / Scientology?

  - by Bobb

  The more I read about contemporary methods combinging scrum, tdd and xp, the more I feel like I already seen the methods. I am not arguing that agile approach is much more progressive than older rigid structures like waterfall, what I am saying is that it seems to me that agile methodologies are ideal to be used as a nest for a brainwashing business. I read few articles which kept referring to authors which I checked afterwards and they call themselves - coaches, trainers (usual thing when NLP specialists are involved) with no apparent software development history. Also I met a guy who is a scrum faciltator (term widly used in relation to scientology) in a high profile company. I talked to him less than 5 min but I got complete feeling that he is either on drugs or he has been programmed by a powerful NLP specialist. The way to talk and his body movements witnessed he is not an average normal person (in terms of normal distribution :))... Please dont get me wrong. I am not a fun of conspiracy theories. But I had an experience with a member of church of scientology tried to invade a commercial firm and actually went half way through to very top in just 3 weeks. I saw his work. For now I have complete impression is that psycho manipulators are now invading IT industry through the convenient door of agile techniques. Anyone has the same feeling/thoughts?

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• Please recommend the one SQL book for a developer without a lot of SQL experience.

  - by Hamish Grubijan

  I have too many hobbies outside of my profession, so I am hoping to read just one good book, and get a tad better at SQL. My background: took one boring, theoretical class in databases, was exposed to SQL professionally (in addition to several other languages and technologies) for a year and a half. I've done about 5 years of C#/Java stuff professionally. By "professionally" I mean doing it full-time while someone paid me more than $25/hr for it - not necessarily that I created masterpieces along the way :) I want to become better at SQL (coding aspect; DBA is not of particular importance to me right now). I am looking for one book to give me a solid foundation in it. When I needed to learn some C from almost a scratch, I used (and loved) this book: http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Language-2nd-Brian-Kernighan/dp/0131103628 I am hoping to find one just like this for SQL. I am not doing web development now or in a near future, and I am looking for something that is hopefully not specific to any one sub-industry. Thanks in advance.

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• Error monitoring/handling on webservers

  - by Industrial

  Hi everybody, We have a web server that we're about to launch a number of applications onto. They will all share database and memcached servers, but each application has it's own mySQL database and all memcached keys per application, is prefixed. Possible scenario: If a memcached server in our cluster goes boom, we want someone (operative system admin) to be automatically contacted by email/iphone push notification or in any other appropriate way. If we we're about to install 150 identical applications for our customers on our servers, and a memcached server dies - all 150 applications will individually find this out and contact our system admin, which most certainly is going to think about getting a new job where he or she isn't about to be woken up by getting 150 messages sent 4:15 in the morning. Possible solution: One idea is to set up an external server for error handling that gets a $_POST or cURL request sent, and handles storage of the error message depending on the seriousness of the actual error message. It would of course check upon receiving the error call, that if the same memcached server have already been reported as offline, there would be no need to spam the system admin with additional reminders... The questions: What's a good approach on how to handle errors? How does the big guys in the industry handle this? Thanks!

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• best web database solution for scala for a high traffic site?

  - by egervari

  I am in charge of a rebuilding a website that gets about 250,000 visitors a day. We'd like to use Scala, but it does not work very well with Spring (in some minor cases) and Hibernate (there is a major and very annoying mismatch here if you want to use scala collections, which we do). The application itself is going to have about 40-50 tables. Other than Hibernate, is there an ORM that works awesome with Scala and is as performant and reliable as Hibernate? Does it also have the same capabilities, or are we going to run into leaky-abstractions if we don't use Hibernate? It would be a big risk for us to go with a framework that is newer and doesn't seem to have a lot of industry backing... and at the same time, Hibernate is a real pain to program against when using Scala. 1) The Java Collection <- Scala Collection is absolutely painful. There is a lot more boilerplate and crap to write. 2) The IDE doesn't import JavaConversions and java interfaces automatically... so we this needs to be done manually. Optimizing Imports in IDEA is going to destroy all the manual work. 3) There is also a performance cost to converting back and forth all the time in your domain objects and your dao classes. 4) Not to mention there needs to be a lot of casting, which produces code ugly as sin. I actually would love to write my own orm that is 100% tailored to scala, but obviously this is really outside of the scope of our project for now. So what is the best approach?

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• JMS message. Model to include data or pointers to data?

  - by John

  I am trying to resolve a design difference of opinion where neither of us has experience with JMS. We want to use JMS to communicate between a j2ee application and the stand-alone application when a new event occurs. We would be using a single point-to-point queue. Both sides are Java-based. The question is whether to send the event data itself in the JMS message body or to send a pointer to the data so that the stand-alone program can retrieve it. Details below. I have a j2ee application that supports data entry of new and updated persons and related events. The person records and associated events are written to an Oracle database. There are also stand-alone, separate programs that contribute new person and event records to the database. When a new event occurs through any of 5-10 different application functions, I need to notify remote systems through an outbound interface using an industry-specific standard messaging protocol. The outbound interface has been designed as a stand-alone application to support scalability through asynchronous operation and by moving it to a separate server. The j2ee application currently has most of the data in memory at the time the event is entered. The data would consist of approximately 6 different objects; a person object and some with multiple instances for an average size in the range of 3000 to 20,000 bytes. Some special cases could be many times this amount. From a performance and reliability perspective, should I model the JMS message to pass all the data needed to create the interface message, or model the JMS message to contain record keys for the data and have the stand-alone Java application retrieve the data to create the interface message?

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• Organizing development teams

  - by Patrick

  A long time ago, when my company was much smaller, dividing the development work over teams was quite easy: the 'application' team developed the applications-specific logic, often requiring a deep insight of specific industry problems) the 'generic' team developed the parts that were common/generic for all applications (user interface related stuff, database access, low-level Windows stuff, ...) Over the years the boundaries between the teams have become fuzzy: the 'application' teams often write application-specific functionality with a 'generic' part, so instead of asking the 'generic' team to write that part for them, they write it themselves to speed up the developments; then donate it to the 'generic' team the 'generic' team's focus seems to be more 'maintenance oriented'. All of the 'very generic' code has already been written, so no new developments are needed in it, but instead they continuously have to support all the functionality donated by the application teams. All this seems to indicate that it's not a good idea anymore to have this split in teams. Maybe the 'generic' team should evolve into a 'software quality' team (defining and guarding the rules for writing good quality software), or into a 'software deployment' team (defining how software should be deployed, installed, ...). How do you split up the work in different teams if you have different applications? everybody can write generic code and donates it to a central 'generic' team? everybody can write generic code, but nobody 'manages' this generic code (everybody is the owner) generic code is written by a 'generic' team only and the applications have to wait until the 'generic' team delivers the generic part (via a library, via a DLL) there is no overlap in code between the different applications some other way? Notice that thee advantage of having the mix (allowing everybody to write everywhere in the code) is that: code is written in a more flexible way it's easier to debug the code since you can easily step into the 'generic' code in the debugger But the big (and maybe only) disadvantage is that this generic code may become nobody's responsibility if there is no clear team that manages it anymore. What is your vision?

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• Why do you program? Why do you do what you do? [closed]

  - by Pirate for Profit

  To me, writing a new program is like a puzzle. Before you write any code for a large system, you have to carefully craft each piece in your mind and imagine how all the pieces will fit together. If you don't, your solution may end up being undefined. What I mean is, I often don't know what I'm doing so I'll come to this site and beg for a code snippet, and then somehow try to hack it into my projects. I started writing GW-Basic when I was around 8 years old. Then it progressed from there, went to california university and did some Python and C++, but really didn't learn anything(college = highsk00l++). I've mostly been self-taught, took awhile to break bad habits and I'd say only in recent years would I consider myself understanding of design patterns and all that stuff (no but honestly procedural dudes, I would not want to design and maintain a large system procedurally, yous crazy). And despite my username, money has NOT been a big motivator. I've gone from job to job, I can usually get the work done perfect very quickly, any delays on my part are understandable (well about as understandable as it gets in the industry). But I ain't gonna work for peanuts because I got mouths to feed. Why do you program? Why do you do what you do?

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• Help Needed Finding a Programmer

  - by ssean

  Good Morning, I am trying to find a programmer to code a piece of custom software for my business. I plan on using this software to manage my business, and possibly sell it to other companies (in the same industry) at a later date. I've never hired a programmer before, so I'm not sure what to expect or where to begin. I know exactly what features I need, and how I want it laid out, I just need someone who can take my ideas and make it happen. This software will be used to manage customer information, and keep track of orders. What I think I need: * SQL Server or similar database that will be located at our office. * Desktop Application, that connects via LAN to the database server (cannot be browser based) * Multiple User Support (Simultaneous users accesing the system) * Needs to be scalable (currently we have 5 employees, but who knows what the future will bring) * Multi-Platform Support (Windows, Linux) I posted a job offer through elance, which seems to raise more questions than answers. How do I decide what language(s) will work best for my situation? (I have received offers for C#, Eclipse, .NET, Powerbuilder, etc. - I want to make sure that I choose the best one now, so I don't run into problems later) Does the programmer hold any rights to the software? (I plan to offer the software for sale at a later date) Any help or insight would be appreciated, and I'd be happy to clarify anything if it helps. Thanks in advance!

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• Which one gives you more advantages: Microsoft or SUN/Oracle certification?

  - by edwin.nathaniel

  Which one gives you more advantages: Microsoft or SUN/Oracle certification? If you don't mind, please relate your answer to your career (dev, sys-admin, dba), industry (finance, general consulting, business apps, software house), and location (where you live, does it influence your decision?) as well. One reason I asked this because I heard that having MCP (in C#, MCSAD or whatever the cert is called these days) could give you extra point from the employer perspective if they're a Microsoft Partner. I don't quite understand why and am also wondering if SUN/Oracle certificate holder have similar edge/benefit. I'm also interested to know if Certification plays role where you live. For example: certification could be a big negative sign in Silicon Valley, but might be helpful if you're in other US/Canada cities or outside USA/Canada. If you are an independent software consultant, do these certification helps you win bids? I totally understand that this question might be subjective and could be "closed". But it doesn't hurt to ask I suppose. I also understand that there are people who dislike/disagree (or have negative perspective on technology certification). While there are people who have the opinion that "these are not the kind of employers you would want to work with", I respect you guys, but sometime a pure software product company might not exist in certain cities in the world. And if certification can help one's career somewhere else, I guess that means more opportunities right? I've had experienced in both platforms: (short) .NET and (not too long) Java (minus Oracle DB stuff), but I think it's about time I have to pick one of them and be good at. Where I live right now might also dictates my career albeit insignificant. Anyhow, this last paragraph is just tiny blurb. Thanks!

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• License key pattern detection?

  - by Ricket

  This is not a real situation; please ignore legal issues that you might think apply, because they don't. Let's say I have a set of 200 known valid license keys for a hypothetical piece of software's licensing algorithm, and a license key consists of 5 sets of 5 alphanumeric case-insensitive (all uppercase) characters. Example: HXDY6-R3DD7-Y8FRT-UNPVT-JSKON Is it possible (or likely) to extrapolate other possible keys for the system? What if the set was known to be consecutive; how do the methods change for this situation, and what kind of advantage does this give? I have heard of "keygens" before, but I believe they are probably made by decompiling the licensing software rather than examining known valid keys. In this case, I am only given the set of keys and I must determine the algorithm. I'm also told it is an industry standard algorithm, so it's probably not something basic, though the chance is always there I suppose. If you think this doesn't belong in Stack Overflow, please at least suggest an alternate place for me to look or ask the question. I honestly don't know where to begin with a problem like this. I don't even know the terminology for this kind of problem.

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• Our Look at Opera 10.50 Web Browser

  - by Asian Angel

  Everyone has been talking about the newest version of Opera recently but perhaps you have not looked at it too closely yet. Today we will take a look at 10.50 and let you see what this “new browser” is all about. The New Engines Carakan JavaScript Engine: Runs web applications up to 7 times faster than its predecessor Futhark Vega Graphics Library: Enables super fast and smooth graphics on everything from tab switching to webpage animation Presto 2.5: Provides support for HTML5, CSS2.1 and the latest CSS3 standards A Look at the Features Available If you have installed or used older versions of Opera before then the default look after a clean install will probably seem rather different. The main differences in appearance are mainly located within the “glass border” areas of the browser. The “Speed Dial” setup looks and works just as well as in previous versions. You can set a favorite wallpaper or image as your background and choose the number of “dials” using the “Configure Speed Dial Command”. One of the “standout” differences is the “O Button”. All of the menus have been condensed into this single access point but it only takes a few moments to find what you are looking for. If you have used the style before in earlier versions of Opera some of the items have been moved around. For those who prefer the “Menu Bar” that can be easily restored using the “Show Menu Bar Command”. If desired you can actually “extend” the “Tab Bar” downwards to display thumbnails of your open tabs. Just use your mouse to grab the bottom of the “Tab Bar” and adjust it to suit your personal needs. The only problem with this feature is that it will quickly use up a good sized portion of your available UI and browser window space. The “Password Manager” is ready to access when needed…the background for the button will turn a shiny metallic blue when you open a webpage that you have “Login Information” saved for. One of the new features is a small “Recycle Bin Button” in the upper right corner. Clicking on this will display a list of recently closed tabs letting you have easy access to any tabs that you may have accidentally closed. This is definitely a great feature to have as an easy access button. For those who were used to how the “Zoom Feature” looked before it has a new “look” to it. Instead of the pop-up menu-type listing of “view sizes” present before you now have a slider button that you can use to adjust the zooming level. For our default setup here the “Sidebar Panels” available were: “Bookmarks, Widgets, Unite, Notes, Downloads, History, & Panels”. Additional panels such as “Links, Windows, Search, Info, etc.” are available if you want and/or need them (accessible using the “Panels Plus Sign Button”). The “Opera Link Button” makes it easy for you to synchronize your “Speed Dial, Bookmarks, Personal Bar, Custom Searches, History & Notes”. Note: “Opera Link” requires an account and can be signed up for using the link provided below. Want to share files with your family and friends? “Unite” allows you to do that and more. With “Unite” you can: “Stream Music, Show Photo Galleries, Share Files and/or Folders, & host webpages directly from your browser”. We have a more in-depth look at “Unite” in our article here. Note: Use of “Unite” requires an Opera account. Got a slow internet connection? “Opera Turbo” can help with that by running the web traffic through their “compression servers” to speed up your web browsing. Keep in mind that “Opera Turbo” will not engage if you are accessing a secure website (i.e. your bank’s website) thus preserving your security. Note: “Opera Turbo” can be set up to automatically detect slow internet connections (i.e. crowded Wi-Fi in a cafe). Opera has a built-in “Private Browsing Mode” now for those who prefer anonymous browsing and want to keep the “history records clean” on their computer. To access it go to “Tabs and windows” and select “New private tab” or “New private window” as desired. When you open your new “Private Tab or Window” you will see the following message with details on how Opera will handle browsing information and a large “door hanger symbol”. Notice that the one tab is locked into “Private Browsing Mode” while the others are still working in “Regular Browsing Mode”. Very nice! A miniature version of the “door hanger symbol” will be present on any tab that is locked into “Private Browsing Mode”. If you are using Windows 7 then you will love how things look from your “Taskbar”. Here you can see four very nice looking thumbnails for the tabs that we had open. All that you have to do is click on the desired thumbnail… The “Context Menu” looks just as lovely as the thumbnails and definitely has some terrific functionality built into it. Add Enhanced Aero Capability If you love “Aero” and want more for your new Opera install then we have the perfect theme for you. The theme’s name is Z1-AV69 and once you have downloaded it you will need to place it in the “Skins Subfolder” in Opera’s “Program Files Folder”. Note: For our example we used version 1.10 but version 2.00 is now available (link provided below). Once you have restarted Opera, go to the “O Menu” and select “Appearance”. When the “Appearance Window” opens click on “Z1-Glass Skin” and then click “OK”. All of a sudden you will have more “Aero Goodness” to enjoy. Compare this screenshot with the one at the top of this article…the only part that is not transparent now is the browser window area itself. Want even more “Aero Goodness”? Right click on the “Tab Bar” and set “Tab Bar Placement” to “Left”. Note: You can achieve the same effect by setting the “Tab Bar Placement” to “Right”. With the “Speed Dial” visible you will be able to see your wallpaper with ease. While this is obviously not for everyone it does make for a great visual trick. Portable Versions Perhaps you need this wonderful new version of Opera to go with you wherever you do during the day. Not a problem…just visit the Opera USB website to choose a version that works best for you. You can select from “Zip or Exe” setup files and if needed update an older portable version using a “Zipped Update Files Package”. If you are updating an older version keep in mind that you will need to delete the old “OperaUSB.exe. File” due to changes with the new setup files. During our tests updating older portable versions went well for the most part but we did experience a few “odd UI quirks” here and there…so we recommend setting up a clean install if possible. Conclusion The new 10.50 release is a pleasure to use and is a recommended install for your system. Whether you are considering trying Opera for the first time or have been using it for a bit we think that you will pleased with everything that the 10.50 release has to offer. For those who would like to add User Scripts to Opera be certain to look at our how-to article here. Links Download Opera 10.50 for your location (Windows) Get the latest Snapshot versions for Linux & Mac Sign up for an Opera Link account View In-Depth detail on Opera 10.50’s features Download the Z1-AV69 Aero Theme Download Portable Opera 10.50 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Set the Speed Dial as the Opera Startup PageSet Up User Scripts in Opera BrowserScan Files for Viruses Before You Download With Dr.WebTurn Your Computer into a File, Music, and Web Server with Opera UniteSet the Default Browser on Ubuntu From the Command Line TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet How to Find Your Mac Address Use My TextTools to Edit and Organize Text

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• Tips on installing Visual Studio 2010 SP1

  - by Jon Galloway

  Visual Studio SP1 went up on MSDN downloads (here) on March 8, and will be released publicly on March 10 here. Release announcements: Soma: Visual Studio 2010 enhancements Jason Zander: Announcing Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 I started on this post with tips on installing VS2010 SP1 when I realized I’ve been writing these up for Visual Studio and .NET framework SP releases for a while (e.g. VS2008 / .NET 3.5 SP1 post, VS2005 SP1 post). Looking back the years of Visual Studio SP installs (and remembering when we’d get up to SP6 for a Visual Studio release), I’m happy to see that it just keeps getting easier. Service Packs are a lot less finicky about requiring beta software to be uninstalled, install more quickly, and are just generally a lot less scary. If I can’t have a jetpack, at least my future provided me faster, easier service packs. Disclaimer: These tips are just general things I've picked up over the years. I don't have any inside knowledge here. If you see anything wrong, be sure to let me know in the comments. You may want to check the readme file before installing - it's short, and it's in that new-fangled HTML format. On with the tips! Before starting, uninstall Visual Studio features you don't use Visual Studio service packs (and other Microsoft service packs as well) install patches for the specific features you’ve got installed. This is a big reason to always do a custom install when you first install Visual Studio, but it’s not difficult to update your existing installation. Here’s the quick way to do that: Tap the windows key and type “add or remove programs” and press enter (or click on the “Add or remove programs” link if you must).   Type “Visual Studio 2010” in the search box in the upper right corner, click on the Visual Studio program (the one with the VS infinity looking logo) and click on Uninstall/Change. Click on Add or Remove Features The next part’s up to you – what features do you actually use? I’ve been doing primarily ASP.NET MVC development in C# lately, so I selected Visual C# and Visual Web Developer. Remember that you can install features later if needed, and can also install the express versions if you want. Selecting everything just because it’s there - or you paid for it – means that you install updates for everything, every time. When you’ve made your changes, click on the Update button to uninstall unused features. Shut down all instances of Visual Studio It probably goes without saying that you should close a program down before installing it, partly to avoid the file-in-use-reboot-after-install horror. Additional "hunch / works on my machine" quality tip: On one computer I saw a note in the setup log about Visual Studio a prompt for user input to close Visual Studio, although I never saw the prompt. Just to  be sure, I'd personally open up Task Manager and kill any devenv.exe processes I saw running, as it couldn't hurt. Use the web installer I use the Web Installers whenever possible. There’s no point in downloading the DVD unless you’re doing multiple installs or won’t have internet access. The DVD IS is 1.5GB, since it needs to be able to service every possible supported installation option on both x86 and x64. The web installer is 776 KB (smaller than calc.exe), so you can start the installation right away. Like other web installers, the real benefit is that it only installs the updates you need (hence the reason for step 1 – uninstalling unused components). Instead of 1.5GB, my download was roughly 530MB. If you’re installing from MSDN (this link takes you right to the Visual Studio installs), select the first one on the list: The first step in the installation process is to analyze the machine configuration and tell you what needs to be installed. Since I've trimmed down my features, that's a pretty short list. The time's not far off where I may not install SQL Server on my dev machines, just using SQL Server Compact - that would shorten the list further. When I hit next, you can see that the download size has shrunk considerably. When I start the install, note that the installation begins while other components are downloading - another benefit of the web install. On my mid-range desktop machine, the install took 25 minutes. What if it takes longer? According to Heath Stewart (Visual Studio installer guru), average SP1 installs take roughly 45 minutes. An installation which takes hours to complete may be a sign of a problem: see his post Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 installing for over 2 hours could be a sign of a problem. Why so long? Yes, even 25 minutes is a while. Heath's got another blog post explaining why the update can take longer than the initial install (see: A patch may take as long or longer to install than the target product) which explains all the additional steps and complexities a patch needs to deal with, as well as some mitigation steps that deployment authors can take to mitigate the impact. Other things to know about Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Installs over Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Beta That's nice. Previous Visual Studio versions did a number of annoying things when you installed SP's over beta's - fail with weird errors, get part way through and tell you needed to cancel and uninstall first, etc. I've installed this on two machines that had random beta stuff installed without tears. That Readme file you didn't read I mentioned the readme file earlier (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=210711 ). Some interesting things I picked up in there: 2.1.3. Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 installation may fail when a USB drive or other removeable drive is connected 2.1.4. Visual Studio must be restarted after Visual Studio 2010 SP1 tooling for SQL Server Compact (Compact) 4.0 is installed 2.2.1. If Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 is uninstalled, Visual Studio 2010 must be reinstalled to restore certain components 2.2.2. If Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 is uninstalled, Visual Studio 2010 must be reinstalled before SP1 can be installed again 2.4.3.1. Async CTP If you installed the pre-SP1 version of Async CTP but did not uninstall it before you installed Visual Studio 2010 SP1, then your computer will be in a state in which the version of the C# compiler in the .NET Framework does not match the C# compiler in Visual Studio. To resolve this issue: After you install Visual Studio 2010 SP1, reinstall the SP1 version of the Async CTP from here. Hardware acceleration for Visual Studio is disabled on Windows XP Visual Studio 2010 SP1 disables hardware acceleration when running on Windows XP (only on XP). You can turn it back on in the Visual Studio options, under Environment / General, as shown below. See Jason Zander's post titled Performance Troubleshooting Article and VS2010 SP1 Change.

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• How To Skip Commercials in Windows 7 Media Center

  - by DigitalGeekery

  If you use Windows 7 Media Center to record live TV, you’re probably interested in skipping through commercials. After all, a big reason to record programs is to avoid commercials, right? Today we focus on a fairly simple and free way to get you skipping commercials in no time. In Windows 7, the .wtv file format has replaced the dvr-ms file format used in previous versions of Media Center for Recorded TV. The .wtv file format, however, does not work very well with commercial skipping applications.  The Process Our first step will be to convert the recorded .wtv files to the previously used dvr-ms file format. This conversion will be done automatically by WtvWatcher. It’s important to note that this process deletes the original .wtv file after successfully converting to .dvr-ms. Next, we will use DVRMSToolBox with the DTB Addin to handle commercials skipping. This process does not “cut” or remove the commercials from the file. It merely skips the commercials during playback. WtvWatcher Download and install the WTVWatcher (link below). To install WtvWatcher, you’ll need to have Windows Installer 3.1 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. If you get the Publisher cannot be verified warning you can go ahead and click Install. We’ve completely tested this app and it contains no malware and runs successfully.   After installing, the WtvWatcher will pop up in the lower right corner of your screen. You will need to set the path to your Recorded TV directory. Click on the button for “Click here to set your recorded TV path…”   The WtvWatcher Preferences window will open…   …and you’ll be prompted to browse for your Recorded TV folder. If you did not change the default location at setup, it will be found at C:\Users\Public\Recorded TV. Click “OK” when finished. Click the “X” to close the Preferences screen. You should now see WtvWatcher begin to convert any existing WTV files.   The process should only take a few minutes per file. Note: If WtvWatcher detects an error during the conversion process, it will not delete the original WTV file.    You will probably want to run WtvWatcher on startup. This will allow WtvWatcher too constantly scan for new .wtv files to convert. There is no setting in the application to run on startup, so you’ll need to copy the WTV icon from your desktop into your Windows start menu “Startup” directory. To do so, click on Start > All Programs, right-click on Startup and click on Open all users. Drag and drop, or cut and paste, the WtvWatcher desktop shortcut into the Startup folder. DVRMSToolBox and DTBAddIn Next, we need to download and install the DVRMSToolBox and the DTBAddIn. These two pieces of software will do the actual commercial skipping. After downloading the DVRMSToolBox zip file, extract it and double-click the setup.exe file.  Click “Next” to begin the installation.   Unless DVRMSToolBox will only be used by Administrator accounts, check the “Modify File Permissions” box. Click “Next.” When you get to the Optional Components window, uncheck Download/Install ShowAnalyzer. We will not be using that application. When the installation is complete, click “Close.”    Next we need to install the DTBAddin. Unzip the download folder and run the appropriate .msi file for your system. It is available in 32 & 64 bit versions. Just double click on the file and take the default options. Click “Finish” when the install is completed. You will then be prompted to restart your computer. After your computer has restarted, open DVRMSToolBox settings by going to Start > All Programs, DVRMSToolBox, and click on DVRMStoMPEGSettings. On the MC Addin tab, make sure that Skip Commercials is checked. It should be by default.   On the Commercial Skip tab, make sure the Auto Skip option is selected. Click “Save.”   If you try to watch recorded TV before the file conversion and commercial indexing process is complete you’ll get the following message pop up in Media Center. If you click Yes, it will start indexing the commercials if WtvWatcher has already converted it to dvr-ms. Now you’re ready to kick back and watch your recorded tv without having to wait through those long commercial breaks. Conclusion The DVRMSToolBox is a powerful and complex application with a multitude of features and utilities. We’ve showed you a quick and easy way to get your Windows Media Center setup to skip commercials. This setup, like virtually all commercial skipping setups, is not perfect. You will occasionally find a commercial that doesn’t get skipped. Need help getting your Windows 7 PC configured for TV? Check out our previous tutorial on setting up live TV in Windows Media Center. Links Download WTV Watcher Download DVRMSToolBox Download DTBAddin Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Increase Skip and Replay Intervals in Windows 7 Media CenterSchedule Updates for Windows Media CenterIntegrate Hulu Desktop and Windows Media Center in Windows 7Add Color Coding to Windows 7 Media Center Program Guide TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet How to Find Your Mac Address Use My TextTools to Edit and Organize Text

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• Errors trying to run MongoDB

  - by SomeKittens

  I'm running Ubuntu Server 12.04 (32 bit) on an old (1998) computer. Everything's working fine until I try and start MongoDB. somekittens@DLserver01:~$ mongo MongoDB shell version: 2.2.2 connecting to: test Sun Dec 16 22:47:50 Error: couldn't connect to server 127.0.0.1:27017 src/mongo/shell/mongo.js:91 exception: connect failed Googling the error lead me to all sorts of "repair" options, none of which fixed anything. I've also removed MongoDB and installed it again (using apt-get, have not built from source). Mongo's log shows the following error: Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 warning: 32-bit servers don't have journaling enabled by default. Please use --journal if you want durability. Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] MongoDB starting : pid=758 port=27017 dbpath=/var/lib/mongodb 32-bit host=DLserver01 Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] ** NOTE: when using MongoDB 32 bit, you are limited to about 2 gigabytes of data Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] ** see http://blog.mongodb.org/post/137788967/32-bit-limitations Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] ** with --journal, the limit is lower Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] db version v2.2.2, pdfile version 4.5 Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] git version: d1b43b61a5308c4ad0679d34b262c5af9d664267 Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] build info: Linux domU-12-31-39-01-70-B4 2.6.21.7-2.fc8xen #1 SMP Fri Feb 15 12:39:36 EST 2008 i686 BOOST_LIB_VERSION=1_49 Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] options: { config: "/etc/mongodb.conf", dbpath: "/var/lib/mongodb", logappend: "true", logpath: "/var/log/mongodb/mongodb.log" } Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] Unable to check for journal files due to: boost::filesystem::basic_directory_iterator constructor: No such file or directory: "/var/lib/mongodb/journal" ************** Unclean shutdown detected. Please visit http://dochub.mongodb.org/core/repair for recovery instructions. ************* Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] exception in initAndListen: 12596 old lock file, terminating Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 dbexit: Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to close listening sockets... Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to flush diaglog... Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to close sockets... Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] shutdown: waiting for fs preallocator... Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] shutdown: closing all files... Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] closeAllFiles() finished Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 dbexit: really exiting now Running through the recovery instructions lead to the following adventure: somekittens@DLserver01:/var/log/mongodb$ mongod --repair Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 warning: 32-bit servers don't have journaling enabled by default. Please use --journal if you want durability. Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] MongoDB starting : pid=1887 port=27017 dbpath=/data/db/ 32-bit host=DLserver01 Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] ** NOTE: when using MongoDB 32 bit, you are limited to about 2 gigabytes of data Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] ** see http://blog.mongodb.org/post/137788967/32-bit-limitations Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] ** with --journal, the limit is lower Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] db version v2.2.2, pdfile version 4.5 Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] git version: d1b43b61a5308c4ad0679d34b262c5af9d664267 Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] build info: Linux domU-12-31-39-01-70-B4 2.6.21.7-2.fc8xen #1 SMP Fri Feb 15 12:39:36 EST 2008 i686 BOOST_LIB_VERSION=1_49 Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] options: { repair: true } Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] exception in initAndListen: 10296 ********************************************************************* ERROR: dbpath (/data/db/) does not exist. Create this directory or give existing directory in --dbpath. See http://dochub.mongodb.org/core/startingandstoppingmongo ********************************************************************* , terminating Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 dbexit: Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to close listening sockets... Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to flush diaglog... Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to close sockets... Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] shutdown: waiting for fs preallocator... Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] shutdown: closing all files... Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] closeAllFiles() finished Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 dbexit: really exiting now somekittens@DLserver01:/var/log/mongodb$ sudo mkdir /data somekittens@DLserver01:/var/log/mongodb$ sudo mkdir /data/db somekittens@DLserver01:/var/log/mongodb$ mongod --repair Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 warning: 32-bit servers don't have journaling enabled by default. Please use --journal if you want durability. Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] MongoDB starting : pid=1909 port=27017 dbpath=/data/db/ 32-bit host=DLserver01 Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] ** NOTE: when using MongoDB 32 bit, you are limited to about 2 gigabytes of data Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] ** see http://blog.mongodb.org/post/137788967/32-bit-limitations Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] ** with --journal, the limit is lower Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] db version v2.2.2, pdfile version 4.5 Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] git version: d1b43b61a5308c4ad0679d34b262c5af9d664267 Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] build info: Linux domU-12-31-39-01-70-B4 2.6.21.7-2.fc8xen #1 SMP Fri Feb 15 12:39:36 EST 2008 i686 BOOST_LIB_VERSION=1_49 Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] options: { repair: true } Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] exception in initAndListen: 10309 Unable to create/open lock file: /data/db/mongod.lock errno:13 Permission denied Is a mongod instance already running?, terminating Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 dbexit: Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to close listening sockets... Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to flush diaglog... Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to close sockets... Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] shutdown: waiting for fs preallocator... Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] shutdown: closing all files... Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] closeAllFiles() finished Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] shutdown: removing fs lock... Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] couldn't remove fs lock errno:9 Bad file descriptor Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 dbexit: really exiting now somekittens@DLserver01:/var/log/mongodb$ service mongodb stop stop: Unknown instance: somekittens@DLserver01:/var/log/mongodb$ sudo mongod --repair Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 warning: 32-bit servers don't have journaling enabled by default. Please use --journal if you want durability. Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] MongoDB starting : pid=1921 port=27017 dbpath=/data/db/ 32-bit host=DLserver01 Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] ** NOTE: when using MongoDB 32 bit, you are limited to about 2 gigabytes of data Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] ** see http://blog.mongodb.org/post/137788967/32-bit-limitations Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] ** with --journal, the limit is lower Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] db version v2.2.2, pdfile version 4.5 Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] git version: d1b43b61a5308c4ad0679d34b262c5af9d664267 Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] build info: Linux domU-12-31-39-01-70-B4 2.6.21.7-2.fc8xen #1 SMP Fri Feb 15 12:39:36 EST 2008 i686 BOOST_LIB_VERSION=1_49 Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] options: { repair: true } Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] Unable to check for journal files due to: boost::filesystem::basic_directory_iterator constructor: No such file or directory: "/data/db/journal" Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] finished checking dbs Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 dbexit: Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to close listening sockets... Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to flush diaglog... Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to close sockets... Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] shutdown: waiting for fs preallocator... Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] shutdown: closing all files... Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] closeAllFiles() finished Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] shutdown: removing fs lock... Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 dbexit: really exiting now Which didn't change anything. What can I do to resolve this? It's an old computer (640MB RAM, single-core P2). Could that be causing it?

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• Change or Reset Windows Password from a Ubuntu Live CD

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  If you can’t log in even after trying your twelve passwords, or you’ve inherited a computer complete with password-protected profiles, worry not – you don’t have to do a fresh install of Windows. We’ll show you how to change or reset your Windows password from a Ubuntu Live CD. This method works for all of the NT-based version of Windows – anything from Windows 2000 and later, basically. And yes, that includes Windows 7. You’ll need a Ubuntu 9.10 Live CD, or a bootable Ubuntu 9.10 Flash Drive. If you don’t have one, or have forgotten how to boot from the flash drive, check out our article on creating a bootable Ubuntu 9.10 flash drive. The program that lets us manipulate Windows passwords is called chntpw. The steps to install it are different in 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Ubuntu. Installation: 32-bit Open up Synaptic Package Manager by clicking on System at the top of the screen, expanding the Administration section, and clicking on Synaptic Package Manager. chntpw is found in the universe repository. Repositories are a way for Ubuntu to group software together so that users are able to choose if they want to use only completely open source software maintained by Ubuntu developers, or branch out and use software with different licenses and maintainers. To enable software from the universe repository, click on Settings > Repositories in the Synaptic window. Add a checkmark beside the box labeled “Community-maintained Open Source software (universe)” and then click close. When you change the repositories you are selecting software from, you have to reload the list of available software. In the main Synaptic window, click on the Reload button. The software lists will be downloaded. Once downloaded, Synaptic must rebuild its search index. The label over the text field by the Search button will read “Rebuilding search index.” When it reads “Quick search,” type chntpw in the text field. The package will show up in the list. Click on the checkbox near the chntpw name. Click on Mark for Installation. chntpw won’t actually be installed until you apply the changes you’ve made, so click on the Apply button in the Synaptic window now. You will be prompted to accept the changes. Click Apply. The changes should be applied quickly. When they’re done, click Close. chntpw is now installed! You can close Synaptic Package Manager. Skip to the section titled Using chntpw to reset your password. Installation: 64-bit The version of chntpw available in Ubuntu’s universe repository will not work properly on a 64-bit machine. Fortunately, a patched version exists in Debian’s Unstable branch, so let’s download it from there and install it manually. Open Firefox. Whether it’s your preferred browser or not, it’s very readily accessible in the Ubuntu Live CD environment, so it will be the easiest to use. There’s a shortcut to Firefox in the top panel. Navigate to http://packages.debian.org/sid/amd64/chntpw/download and download the latest version of chntpw for 64-bit machines. Note: In most cases it would be best to add the Debian Unstable branch to a package manager, but since the Live CD environment will revert to its original state once you reboot, it’ll be faster to just download the .deb file. Save the .deb file to the default location. You can close Firefox if desired. Open a terminal window by clicking on Applications at the top-left of the screen, expanding the Accessories folder, and clicking on Terminal. In the terminal window, enter the following text, hitting enter after each line: cd Downloadssudo dpkg –i chntpw* chntpw will now be installed. Using chntpw to reset your password Before running chntpw, you will have to mount the hard drive that contains your Windows installation. In most cases, Ubuntu 9.10 makes this simple. Click on Places at the top-left of the screen. If your Windows drive is easily identifiable – usually by its size – then left click on it. If it is not obvious, then click on Computer and check out each hard drive until you find the correct one. The correct hard drive will have the WINDOWS folder in it. When you find it, make a note of the drive’s label that appears in the menu bar of the file browser. If you don’t already have one open, start a terminal window by going to Applications > Accessories > Terminal. In the terminal window, enter the commands cd /medials pressing enter after each line. You should see one or more strings of text appear; one of those strings should correspond with the string that appeared in the title bar of the file browser earlier. Change to that directory by entering the command cd <hard drive label> Since the hard drive label will be very annoying to type in, you can use a shortcut by typing in the first few letters or numbers of the drive label (capitalization matters) and pressing the Tab key. It will automatically complete the rest of the string (if those first few letters or numbers are unique). We want to switch to a certain Windows directory. Enter the command: cd WINDOWS/system32/config/ Again, you can use tab-completion to speed up entering this command. To change or reset the administrator password, enter: sudo chntpw SAM SAM is the file that contains your Windows registry. You will see some text appear, including a list of all of the users on your system. At the bottom of the terminal window, you should see a prompt that begins with “User Edit Menu:” and offers four choices. We recommend that you clear the password to blank (you can always set a new password in Windows once you log in). To do this, enter “1” and then “y” to confirm. If you would like to change the password instead, enter “2”, then your desired password, and finally “y” to confirm. If you would like to reset or change the password of a user other than the administrator, enter: sudo chntpw –u <username> SAM From here, you can follow the same steps as before: enter “1” to reset the password to blank, or “2” to change it to a value you provide. And that’s it! Conclusion chntpw is a very useful utility provided for free by the open source community. It may make you think twice about how secure the Windows login system is, but knowing how to use chntpw can save your tail if your memory fails you two or eight times! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Reset Your Ubuntu Password Easily from the Live CDChange Your Forgotten Windows Password with the Linux System Rescue CDHow to Create and Use a Password Reset Disk in Windows Vista & Windows 7Reset Your Forgotten Password the Easy Way Using the Ultimate Boot CD for WindowsHow to install Spotify in Ubuntu 9.10 using Wine TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Add a Custom Title in IE using Spybot or Spyware Blaster When You Need to Hail a Taxi in NYC Live Map of Marine Traffic NoSquint Remembers Site Specific Zoom Levels (Firefox) New Firefox release 3.6.3 fixes 1 Critical bug Dark Side of the Moon (8-bit)

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• Recover Deleted Files on an NTFS Hard Drive from a Ubuntu Live CD

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  Accidentally deleting a file is a terrible feeling. Not being able to boot into Windows and undelete that file makes that even worse. Fortunately, you can recover deleted files on NTFS hard drives from an Ubuntu Live CD. To show this process, we created four files on the desktop of a Windows XP machine, and then deleted them. We then booted up the same machine with the bootable Ubuntu 9.10 USB Flash Drive that we created last week. Once Ubuntu 9.10 boots up, open a terminal by clicking Applications in the top left of the screen, and then selecting Accessories > Terminal. To undelete our files, we first need to identify the hard drive that we want to undelete from. In the terminal window, type in: sudo fdisk –l and press enter. What you’re looking for is a line that ends with HPSF/NTFS (under the heading System). In our case, the device is “/dev/sda1”. This may be slightly different for you, but it will still begin with /dev/. Note this device name. If you have more than one hard drive partition formatted as NTFS, then you may be able to identify the correct partition by the size. If you look at the second line of text in the screenshot above, it reads “Disk /dev/sda: 136.4 GB, …” This means that the hard drive that Ubuntu has named /dev/sda is 136.4 GB large. If your hard drives are of different size, then this information can help you track down the right device name to use. Alternatively, you can just try them all, though this can be time consuming for large hard drives. Now that you know the name Ubuntu has assigned to your hard drive, we’ll scan it to see what files we can uncover. In the terminal window, type: sudo ntfsundelete <HD name> and hit enter. In our case, the command is: sudo ntfsundelete /dev/sda1 The names of files that can recovered show up in the far right column. The percentage in the third column tells us how much of that file can be recovered. Three of the four files that we originally deleted are showing up in this list, even though we shut down the computer right after deleting the four files – so even in ideal cases, your files may not be recoverable. Nevertheless, we have three files that we can recover – two JPGs and an MPG. Note: ntfsundelete is immediately available in the Ubuntu 9.10 Live CD. If you are in a different version of Ubuntu, or for some other reason get an error when trying to use ntfsundelete, you can install it by entering “sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs” in a terminal window. To quickly recover the two JPGs, we will use the * wildcard to recover all of the files that end with .jpg. In the terminal window, enter sudo ntfsundelete <HD name> –u –m *.jpg which is, in our case, sudo ntfsundelete /dev/sda1 –u –m *.jpg The two files are recovered from the NTFS hard drive and saved in the current working directory of the terminal. By default, this is the home directory of the current user, though we are working in the Desktop folder. Note that the ntfsundelete program does not make any changes to the original NTFS hard drive. If you want to take those files and put them back in the NTFS hard drive, you will have to move them there after they are undeleted with ntfsundelete. Of course, you can also put them on your flash drive or open Firefox and email them to yourself – the sky’s the limit! We have one more file to undelete – our MPG. Note the first column on the far left. It contains a number, its Inode. Think of this as the file’s unique identifier. Note this number. To undelete a file by its Inode, enter the following in the terminal: sudo ntfsundelete <HD name> –u –i <Inode> In our case, this is: sudo ntfsundelete /dev/sda1 –u –i 14159 This recovers the file, along with an identifier that we don’t really care about. All three of our recoverable files are now recovered. However, Ubuntu lets us know visually that we can’t use these files yet. That’s because the ntfsundelete program saves the files as the “root” user, not the “ubuntu” user. We can verify this by typing the following in our terminal window: ls –l We want these three files to be owned by ubuntu, not root. To do this, enter the following in the terminal window: sudo chown ubuntu <Files> If the current folder has other files in it, you may not want to change their owner to ubuntu. However, in our case, we only have these three files in this folder, so we will use the * wildcard to change the owner of all three files. sudo chown ubuntu * The files now look normal, and we can do whatever we want with them. Hopefully you won’t need to use this tip, but if you do, ntfsundelete is a nice command-line utility. It doesn’t have a fancy GUI like many of the similar Windows programs, but it is a powerful tool that can recover your files quickly. See ntfsundelete’s manual page for more detailed usage information Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Reset Your Ubuntu Password Easily from the Live CDUse Ubuntu Live CD to Backup Files from Your Dead Windows ComputerCreate a Bootable Ubuntu 9.10 USB Flash DriveCreate a Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash Drive the Easy WayGuide to Using Check Disk in Windows Vista TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Windows 7 Easter Theme YoWindoW, a real time weather screensaver Optimize your computer the Microsoft way Stormpulse provides slick, real time weather data Geek Parents – Did you try Parental Controls in Windows 7? Change DNS servers on the fly with DNS Jumper

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• My nVidia GeForce 8600M GT card stopped working: "extension GLX missing on display 0:0"

  - by Wolter Hellmund

  So I turned on my computer and log into my gnome-shell session to find that the shell is gone, and there is instead a very thick panel with a vertically repeated pattern of the gradient the Unity panel displays. I ran some tests and found out that my graphic acceleration was failing. I have attached some outputs of some commands to help helpers help me: Some command outputs Video card: nVidia GeForce 8600M GT (note that it is not an Optimus card). Output of lspci | grep VGA: 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G84 [GeForce 8600M GT] (rev a1) Output of glxinfo: Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". Error: couldn't find RGB GLX visual or fbconfig Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0". Contents of /var/log/Xorg.0.log: NVIDIA: Failed to load the NVIDIA kernel module. Please check your NVIDIA: system's kernel log for additional error messages. UnloadModule: "nvidia" Unloading nvidia Failed to load module "nvidia" (module-specific error, 0) If I use the Aditional Drivers system application, I see none of the drivers active, and when I try to activate any, I get an error telling me to check the jockey.log file. The contents of /var/log/jockey.log are: 2012-09-20 23:11:32,690 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_173).enabled(): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:11:32,690 DEBUG: nvidia_173 is not the alternative in use 2012-09-20 23:11:34,606 DEBUG: BroadcomWLHandler enabled(): kmod disabled, bcm43xx: blacklisted, b43: enabled, b43legacy: enabled 2012-09-20 23:11:34,657 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_173_updates).enabled(): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:11:34,657 DEBUG: nvidia_173_updates is not the alternative in use 2012-09-20 23:11:36,647 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_current).enabled(): target_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:11:36,648 DEBUG: KMH enabled: False 2012-09-20 23:11:38,642 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_current_updates).enabled(): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:11:38,642 DEBUG: nvidia_current_updates is not the alternative in use 2012-09-20 23:11:40,546 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_173).enabled(): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:11:40,546 DEBUG: nvidia_173 is not the alternative in use 2012-09-20 23:11:40,620 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_173).enabled(): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:11:40,620 DEBUG: nvidia_173 is not the alternative in use 2012-09-20 23:11:40,629 DEBUG: BroadcomWLHandler enabled(): kmod disabled, bcm43xx: blacklisted, b43: enabled, b43legacy: enabled 2012-09-20 23:11:40,698 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_173_updates).enabled(): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:11:40,698 DEBUG: nvidia_173_updates is not the alternative in use 2012-09-20 23:11:40,759 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_current).enabled(): target_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:11:40,760 DEBUG: KMH enabled: False 2012-09-20 23:11:40,826 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_current_updates).enabled(): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:11:40,826 DEBUG: nvidia_current_updates is not the alternative in use 2012-09-20 23:11:45,415 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_current).enabled(): target_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:11:45,415 DEBUG: KMH enabled: False 2012-09-20 23:11:47,367 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_current).enabled(): target_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:11:47,367 DEBUG: KMH enabled: False 2012-09-20 23:11:55,961 WARNING: modinfo for module nvidia_current failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module nvidia_current 2012-09-20 23:11:55,962 ERROR: XorgDriverHandler.enable(): package or module not installed, aborting 2012-09-20 23:12:27,780 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_current).enabled(): target_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:12:27,781 DEBUG: KMH enabled: False 2012-09-20 23:12:27,840 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_current).enabled(): target_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:12:27,840 DEBUG: KMH enabled: False 2012-09-20 23:12:43,196 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_173).enabled(): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:12:43,197 DEBUG: nvidia_173 is not the alternative in use 2012-09-20 23:12:43,208 DEBUG: BroadcomWLHandler enabled(): kmod disabled, bcm43xx: blacklisted, b43: enabled, b43legacy: enabled 2012-09-20 23:12:43,269 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_173_updates).enabled(): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:12:43,269 DEBUG: nvidia_173_updates is not the alternative in use 2012-09-20 23:12:43,333 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_current).enabled(): target_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:12:43,333 DEBUG: KMH enabled: False 2012-09-20 23:12:43,393 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_current).enabled(): target_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:12:43,394 DEBUG: KMH enabled: False 2012-09-20 23:12:43,465 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_current_updates).enabled(): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:12:43,465 DEBUG: nvidia_current_updates is not the alternative in use 2012-09-20 23:12:43,531 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_current).enabled(): target_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:12:43,531 DEBUG: KMH enabled: False 2012-09-20 23:12:43,587 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_current).enabled(): target_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:12:43,587 DEBUG: KMH enabled: False 2012-09-20 23:12:43,663 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_173).enabled(): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:12:43,663 DEBUG: nvidia_173 is not the alternative in use 2012-09-20 23:12:43,672 DEBUG: BroadcomWLHandler enabled(): kmod disabled, bcm43xx: blacklisted, b43: enabled, b43legacy: enabled 2012-09-20 23:12:43,738 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_173_updates).enabled(): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:12:43,739 DEBUG: nvidia_173_updates is not the alternative in use 2012-09-20 23:12:43,803 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_current).enabled(): target_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:12:43,803 DEBUG: KMH enabled: False 2012-09-20 23:12:43,863 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_current).enabled(): target_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:12:43,863 DEBUG: KMH enabled: False 2012-09-20 23:12:43,930 DEBUG: NVidia(nvidia_current_updates).enabled(): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-09-20 23:12:43,930 DEBUG: nvidia_current_updates is not the alternative in use 2012-09-20 23:24:16,305 DEBUG: Shutting down Things I have tried Checked the video card on a Windows session. Reran nvidia-xconfig. Purged all nvidia software from my computer, and reinstall it. Run nvidia-xconfig. Tried a different kernel.

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• Company Review: Google Products

  Google, Inc offers an array of products and services to all of its end-users. However their search capabilities are the foundation for Google’s current success and their primary business focus. Currently, Google offers over twenty different search applications that allow users to search the internet for books, maps, videos, images, products and much more. Their product decisions have allowed users demands to be met while focusing on the free based model. This allows users to access Google data free of charge and indirectly gives Google a strong competitive advantage of other competitors along with the accuracy of the search results. According to Google, Inc, they offer the following types of searching capabilities: Alerts Get email updates on the topics of your choice Blog Search Find blogs on your favorite topics  Books Search the full text of books  Custom Search Create a customized search experience for your community  Desktop Search and personalize your computer  Dictionary Search for definitions of words and phrases Directory Search the web, organized by topic or category Earth Explore the world from your computer Finance Business info, news and interactive charts GOOG-411 Find and connect for free with businesses from your phone  Images Search for images on the web Maps View maps and directions News Search thousands of news stories Patent Search Search the full text of US Patents Product Search Search for stuff to buy Scholar Search scholarly papers Toolbar Add a search box to your browser Trends Explore past and present search trends Videos Search for videos on the web Web Search Search billions of web pages Web Search Features Find movies, music, stocks, books and more mapping Google’s free based business model is only one way it differentiates itself from its competition. There is also a strong focus on the accuracy of search results and the speed in which they are returned to the end-user. Quality function deployment (QFD) is a structured method used to help connect user needs to the design features of a project proposed to address those needs. This method is particularly useful in accounting for needs that are not easily articulated or precisely defined according to the U. S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration. Due to the fact that QFD is so customer driven Google is always in a constant state of change in attempt to reengineer its search algorithms, and other dependant systems so that end-users requirements are constantly being met. Value engineering is a key example of this, Google is constantly trying to improve all aspects of its products, improve system maintainability, and system interoperability. Bridgefield Group defines value engineering as an organized methodology that identifies and selects the lowest lifecycle cost options in design, materials and processes that achieves the desired level of performance, reliability and customer satisfaction. In addition, it seeks to remove unnecessary costs in the above areas and is often a joint effort with cross-functional internal teams and relevant suppliers. Common issues that appear when developing large scale systems like Google’s search applications include modular design of a product and/or service and providing accurate value analysis. A design approach that adheres to four fundamental tenets of cohesiveness, encapsulation, self-containment, and high binding to design a system component as an independently operable unit subject to change is how the Open System Joint Task Force defines modular design. More specifically M. S. Schmaltz defines modular software design as having a large collection of statements strung together in one partition of in-line code; we segment or divide the statements into logical groups called modules. Each module performs one or two tasks, and then passes control to another module. By breaking up the code into "bite-sized chunks", so to speak, we are able to better control the flow of data and control. This is especially true in large software systems. Value analysis is a process to evaluate products and services based on effectiveness, safety, and cost. Value analysis involves assessing the quality as well as the cost of a product or service as defined by the Healthcare Financial Management Association.  “Operations Management deals with the design and management of products, processes, services and supply chains. It considers the acquisition, development, and utilization of resources that firms need to deliver the goods and services their clients want.” (MIT,2010) Google, Inc encourages an open environment between all employees, also known as Googlers. This is reinforced by a cross-section team or cross-functional teams comprised from multiple departments assigned to every project so that every department like marketing, finance, and quality assurance has input on every project. In addition, Google is known for their openness to new ideas regardless of the status or seniority of an employee. In fact, Google allows for 20% of an employee’s time can be devoted to developing new ideas and/or pet projects. HumTech.com defines a cross-functional team as a collection of people with varied levels of skills and experience brought together to accomplish a task. As the name implies, Cross-Functional Team members come from different organizational units. Cross-Functional Teams may be permanent or ad hoc. Google’s search application product strategy primarily focuses on mass customization. This is allows Google to create a base search application and allows results to be returned to the end-users quickly based on specific parameters and search settings. In addition, they also store the data that is returned in case other desire the same results based on other end-users supplying the same customized settings. This allows Google to appear to render search results in virtually real-time to the user while allowing for complete customization of the searching criteria. Greg Vogl, a professor at Uganda Martyrs University, defines mass customization as when a business gives its customers the opportunity to tailor its products or services to the customer's specifications. The IT staff at Google play a key role in ensuring that the search application’s product strategy is maintained simply because the IT staff designs, develops, and maintains all of their proprietary applications. In fact, they also maintain all network infrastructure to ensure that it is available to all end-users. References: http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/ http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/freight/publications/ftat_user_guide/sec5.htm http://www.bridgefieldgroup.com/bridgefieldgroup/glos9.htm#V http://www.acq.osd.mil/osjtf/termsdef.html http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~mssz/Pascal-CGS2462/prog-dsn.html http://www.hfma.org/publications/business_caring_newsletter/exclusives/Supply+and+Inventory+Terms+Defined.htm http://mitsloan.mit.edu/omg/om-definition.php http://www.humtech.com/opm/grtl/ols/ols3.cfm http://www.gregvogl.net/courses/mis1/glossary.htm

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