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• Need a place to store a few bytes of meta information on storage media

  - by Jason C

  I'm working on an embedded project. I need a place to store some filesystem-independent meta information on a storage device. The device has an MSDOS partition table. The device also may have unallocated space (depending on its size) but it will be TRIMmed (and also may be blown away by new partitions in the future). I need a location on the device that is not unallocated and that has a low risk of being touched (outside of completely erasing the device). The device is only guaranteed to have an MBR at the point the meta data needs to first be written; meaning there are no EBRs/VBRs present that I could use. There are 446 bytes at the very start of the device available for MBR bootstrap code. Currently my only idea is to store data at the end of this block. However, the device is bootable and I have no way of knowing if I'd be blowing away bootstrap code or not. The sector size is 512 bytes and the MBR is the first sector, I'm pretty sure (correct me if I'm wrong) that that means the second sector is available for use by partition data, so I can't use that either. Does anybody have any ideas? I need 4 bytes of space.

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• Why are ISP's installing routers on my site when the feed is a form of ethernet already?

  - by Cosmin Prund

  I'm connected to 3 ISP's right now. Two of them already have routers at my site, the third one announced me "they need to install some equipment" when I requested BGP session. I can only assume they need to install a Router, since that connection is now working fine, using the usual /30 net block for the connection, and the "last-mile" solution is not going to change since they only installed it last week and the BGP was in the contract from the beginning. I simply don't understand this: the "feed" is already a form of ethernet. Even those they're using different technologies for the last mile, they're all entering the ISP router using an RJ45 WAN port. I assume the ISP router does something really important that can't be done by the Big Router on the other end of the connection. It must also be something that can hurt them if miss-configured, since they don't trust us (the client) to do the stuff on our router. And I'm not talking cheap throw-away routers here: One of the routers is Cisco 2800. Edit to add network details: I'm connected to 3 ISP's, two over Radio links, one over Fiber Optic. One of the radio links is going to get dropped and the other radio link will be turned into fiber sometime next year. The fiber is 20 Mbit, radio 1 is 40 Mbit and radio 2 is 2 Mbit. I've got a /24 of provider independent address space. I'm not doing out-of-the ordinary stuff with my network, I'm overly connected because my network needs to be "up" all the time.

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• Simple electric DC question. Currency consumption

  - by Bobb

  Suppose you have DC power supply and a consumer connected to it (i.e. computer PSU and a hard drive). Suppose PSU which was supplied with the consumer has output 5V 1A. So I assume that the consumer should not consume more than 1A. Suppose the original PSU is broken now and I want to replace it with the one I have which is 5V 10A. My guess is that current is something which depends on the consumer. So if the consumer consumes normally 1A then it will not consume more than that even if it is connected to 10A PSU. In other word - am I right assuming that the consumer will not burn out being connected to a power supply with higher current output? P.S. my understanding is that voltage is something independent from the consumer. If you give it higher voltage it will burn (voltage is from PSU to the consumer). However current must be in opposite - consumer sucks as much current as it need not as much as PSU can provide (of course given that max PSU current is greater than the consumer needs)

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• Routing and authenticating all access through squid

  - by Knight Samar

  Hi, I want to route all Internet access in my network through a Squid proxy server and authenticate and log all users. I want this to be a client-independent setting so that no one needs to do anything on their browsers or machines. I have set my network gateway as the proxy server so that all traffic will be sent to it. I have done this using options in DHCP server. Now I tried using squid as a transparent proxy, but then it won't authenticate in that mode. I tried using iptables to route all traffic to port 3128 but it won't popup the authentication dialog box from SQUID. I tried telling DHCP to give WPAD to all clients by placing a WPAD file on a webserver containing the following for automatic proxy configuration on clients: Changes in dhcpd.conf option wpad code 252 =test; option wpad "\n\000"; option wpad "http://192.168.1.5/wpad.dat\n"; The WPAD file: function FindProxyForURL(url,host) { return "PROXY squid-server-ip-address:3128 ; DIRECT "; } But the browsers (different versions of Firefox and IE) seem to ignore it. :( What should I do ?

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• Simple electric DC question. Current consumption

  - by Bobb

  Suppose you have DC power supply and a consumer connected to it (i.e. computer PSU and a hard drive). Suppose PSU which was supplied with the consumer has output 5V 1A. So I assume that the consumer should not consume more than 1A. Suppose the original PSU is broken now and I want to replace it with the one I have which is 5V 10A. My guess is that current is something which depends on the consumer. So if the consumer consumes normally 1A then it will not consume more than that even if it is connected to 10A PSU. In other word - am I right assuming that the consumer will not burn out being connected to a power supply with higher current output? P.S. my understanding is that voltage is something independent from the consumer. If you give it higher voltage it will burn (voltage is from PSU to the consumer). However current must be in opposite - consumer sucks as much current as it need not as much as PSU can provide (of course given that max PSU current is greater than the consumer needs)

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• Configuring Vmware virtual machines to run under different IPs and PC specs

  - by Alex

  Right now I'm using a simple VmWare virtual machine with preinstalled Win 7. The IP is assigned automatically (it's the same as main OS IP). Is it possible to create several virtual machines that have different hardware specifications and different IP addresses? Here is what I mean regarding these issues: Specs: Certainly, you can easily change some specifications in the Settings menu (RAM size, HDD size), but what about advanced settings? For example: advanced settings for the Processor: is it AMD (2500+,4000+, etc.. ) or Intel (core 2, Pentium, etc..) Ram - is it Corsair 4 Gb 1333 Mhz or Kingston 2 x 2 Gb 866Mhz or something else? Hdd - Is it Seagate Barracuda 80 gb 5400 Rpm or is it Samsung 500Gb 7200 Rpm or some random SSD? Programs that work under a Virtual Machine shouldn't have a clue if that's a VmWare or not. IPs: Every program that's launched under main OS use the real IP: 93.56.xx.xx All programs that are launched under virtual machine A use IP 1: 74.78.xx.xx All programs that are launched under virtual machine B use IP 2: 84.159.xx.xx I believe that you have to use either VPN or Proxy to solve this problem. The Sum Up: The idea is to create 2-3 independent virtual machines with different hardware specifications and IP addresses. Programs that work under a certain Virtual Machine shouldn't have a clue if that's a VmWare or the real PC. Any ideas/tips or experience regarding configuration will be appreciated!

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• file system that allow to specify different RAID level per directory and change it afterward

  - by Adam Ryczkowski

  I have 5 hard drives, where I want to keep my data. Some of my files are more important, and some of them are less. So some of them I wish to put on RAID-6, and for some it RAID-5 is sufficient. It is difficult to predict at the moment of creation of the arrays how much space of each type to declare. What I would do if I didn't hear about zfs, is partition the hard drives into identical 100GB partitions, and as my needs grow, assemble those partitions into md devices using linux-raid. Then, I'd combine those devices using lvm into logical volumes where I'd put my data. So when I'd need more space of e.g. RAID-6, I'd take 100GB partition from each hard drive and assemble them into another RAID-6 md device and would use it as physical storage for the logical volume group dedicated for RAID-6 data. Then I could grow the file system on this logical volume. On top of RAID-6 and RAID-5 Volume Groups (managed by lvm) would reside completely independent file systems, which I'd later merge with multiple mount --bind into a single directory structure that would reflect the logical structure of data rather that of the storage. But now, when I heard about the ZFS with all the performance, data-healing and compression capabilities I cannot stop thinking if it can help me. If so, what do you think would be the best setup?

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• Deploying multiple identical copies of a virtual machine for compute tasks

  - by Reid

  I have a compute task which has a large number of library dependencies. I would like to deploy it on some of my company's large Linux clusters, where I do not have root. I could probably track down, compile, and install the right versions of all the libraries, but this looks to be quite tedious and would have to be repeated if I deployed it again somewhere else. On the other hand, it's pretty easy to install on current Ubuntu. This led me to wonder about a virtual machine approach. Could I put together a virtual machine which booted up, ran the computation (with parameters from and results to the host), and then shut down? In other words, I'd like a command like this that I could run on the host: $ ./run-vm --ram N --task /path/on/host/foo.sh --results /another/host/dir/ This would boot the VM, run foo.sh, and put the (relatively small) results of the computation in /another/host/dir/. It's important to start up many instances of the VM simultaneously, both on a single node and multiple nodes of the cluster. So it would be nice if I didn't have to make many copies of the VM virtual disk and metadata. As the task instances are completely independent, the VMs would not need any network support once deployed, or any outside communications beyond reading and writing the host filesystem. Is this possible, and if so, how might I go about doing it? Are there assumptions I've made above which are bogus?

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• How can I monitor network traffic?

  - by WIndy Weather

  I have a home network with about 10 devices including BluRay player [netflix] and both windows and linux machines. I need to collect network traffic statistics so that if questions come up about how much traffic I'm using I have the answer independent of my ISP. I've looked at DD-WRT, but I see that even buying a new router that will be supported is a problem since I might get the wrong version of the hardware. I have a DIR-655 and a DIR-501 - neither of which is supported. I don't mind buying new hardware, but it looks like a crap-shoot to get one that will work. DD-WRT looks like a bad solution unless someone knows of a place to get a router that is guaranteed to work. Does someone know of an arduino or other SBC solution? I have plenty of NAT routers already, so I just need traffic statistics for external traffic. The network is GBit Ethernet inside and Cable / soon to be DSL outside. The DIR-655 only gives me "packets", not bytes transferred oddly enough. Thanks, ww

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• Thunderbird: export email account settings

  - by zpea

  I'd like to create a new profile for Thunderbird using the same mail accounts I already configured in my old profile. As it is quite a number of accounts, it would be great to have a way to export/import them instead of writing down the settings just to fill in again in the new profile. Using web search and search here I mainly found following suggestions that do not match what I need: Copy the whole profile: Not possible for me as I don't want to copy other settings, the downloaded mail data etc. and the old profile broke when running out of space in the home folder anyway. Use mozBackup: There seem to be several programs by that name (forks?). In any case, it's Windows-only and hence no option (I am mostly on Linux and prefer platform-independent solutions anyway) Use accountex: Seems to do what I want, but it is not compatible with current Thunderbird version (supports only up to version 3.1) Posts with various tips from 4 years ago: Top results in the web search with the G. But they do not work in current versions of Thunderbird either. Did I overlook anything? After all, it doesn't sound like I was looking for something nobody ever looked for.

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• Outlook 2010 IMAP account - send on behalf

  - by Master of Celebration

  So I was looking for a possibility to manage the mail distribution of online shops, newsfeeds, etc. and have a nice solution via distribution groups aka. alias addresses. In example, I register an account on eBay using "[email protected]" (where org.com is my company obviously). That address is an alias and can be managed on my on-premise mail server setting destination to somebody's mailbox independent from logging on to eBay - in case somebody else shall do the eBay-stuff, I can quick change the destination of that alias :-) So far, so good - and now to the problem: Using Microsoft Outlook 2010 and an IMAP account on our mail server, I cannot figure out how to remove that "on behalf of"-string visible in the from-field when sending a message under that [email protected] address. That's quite a pity, because especially eBay doesn't accept/forward mails not coming from the registered address.. Using other mail clients (e.g. Mozilla Thunderbird), the problem does not occur so I guess it's Outlook specific. I cannot "grant" permission to "send as", because that address is not a mailbox, but rather an alias only. Furthermore, the mail accounts are not Exchange, but IMAP! Does anybody have any other ideas to "remove" that annoying string? Consideration: We have to use Microsoft Outlook for some reason! :-)

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• Splitting an HTTP request into multiple byte-range requests

  - by redpola

  I have arrived at the unusual situation of having two completely independent Internet connections to my home. This has the advantage of redundancy etc but the drawback that both connections max out at about 6Mb/s. So one individual outbound http request is directed by my "intelligent gateway" (TP-LINK ER6120) out over one or the other connection for its lifetime. This works fine over complex web pages and utilises both external connects fine. However, single-http-request downloads are limited to the maximum rate of one of the two connections. So I'm thinking, surely I can setup some kind of proxy server to direct all my http requests to. For each incoming http request, the proxy server will issue multiple byte-range requests for the desired data and manage the reassembly and delivery of that data to the client's request. I can see this has some overhead, and also some edge cases where there will be blocking problems waiting for data. I also imagine webmasters of single-servers would rather I didn't hit them with 8 byte-range requests instead of one request. How can I achieve this http request deconstruct/reconstruction? Or am I just barking mad?

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• pgpool2+streaming replication failover on only 2 servers?

  - by aneez

  I am trying to configure pgpool2 and postgresql 9.1 to handle failover. I currently have streaming replication running, and are using pgpool2 for read-only load balancing. I have 2 servers in my setup, both running postgresql - 1 master and 1 slave. The master is also running pgpool2. My question is how do I configure this setup to handle failover? Specifically in the case that the master crashes, and the slave has to take over and run pgpool2 as well. Most documentation and examples I have been able to find assumes that pgpool2 is running on a separate server and thus "never" crashes. I may or may not be attacking the problem using the wrong tools. In my production setup I have a total of 3 identical servers all in independent locations. The main goal of the setup is to achieve a high uptime. Thus failover should be automatic, and bringing a failed node back up should cause only minimal downtime. I want all 3 nodes to be as close to identical as possible, and be able to run with just 1 or 2 nodes available. And if possible I want to use load balancing to improve performance. If anyone can help me gain some insight into how to do this using my current setup or suggest a different/better setup. Thank you!

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• Laptop does not charge old or new battery with Old and New AC adapters.

  - by Jeff

  My Sager computer has been having a strange issue with the charging. For a long time it would be working perfectly as long as I was active on it. After I'd leave idle for a while it would suddenly decide it didn't want to use AC power anymore and would just discharge the battery until it shutdown because of low battery levels. Was not a huge deal to me since I just sent it to standby when done with it and it worked fine. Recently, however, it would not detect AC power while the battery was in. It ran from the battery just fine but until you powered it down, unplugged the battery, then plugged in the AC adapter it would not be on AC. In addition if I plug the battery back in after it's on AC power, it will see it but the battery won't charge though it can still discharge it. This is OS independent. I tried both a replacement battery and a replacement AC adapter. Neither solved my issue. I'm fairly comfortable opening and servicing a laptop but I don't know where to start. I'd like to avoid replacing my system board if possible. Any Ideas?

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• Windows 7, network transmit (send) not working

  - by user326287

  My Win 7 works 2 years without problem. But now, I can't transmit (send) big data on LAN/Internet. I can: - Ping anything - Browse Internet, download files at full speed - Send e-mails with very small attachments. - Testing download speed on Speedtest.net, measure stable full speed. I can't: - Testing upload speed on Speedtest.net. Upload stuck.. - Save/send email messages with big (128k) attachment, independent from e-mail provider or e-mail box. THIS IS NOT A HARDWARE/CABLE/CARD OR OTHER NETWORK DEVICES PROBLEM! When I boot from a Linux Live CD, without ANY hardware change, all data sending, testing works correctly, at full speed. I have tried already in Win 7: - Disable Windows/3rd party Firewall completely - Reset IP stack parameters (netsh int ip reset c:\resetlog.txt) - Computer restore - Reinstall LAN driver When I inspect the packets in Wireshark in Windows, I see lot's of (maybe 60% of sent packets) "TCP Retransmission". Sometimes receive "TCP Dup Ack" or "TCP Out-of-Order". Linux don't do this. Thank you for the help.

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• A free standing ASP.NET Pager Web Control

  - by Rick Strahl

  Paging in ASP.NET has been relatively easy with stock controls supporting basic paging functionality. However, recently I built an MVC application and one of the things I ran into was that I HAD TO build manual paging support into a few of my pages. Dealing with list controls and rendering markup is easy enough, but doing paging is a little more involved. I ended up with a small but flexible component that can be dropped anywhere. As it turns out the task of creating a semi-generic Pager control for MVC was fairly easily. Now I’m back to working in Web Forms and thought to myself that the way I created the pager in MVC actually would also work in ASP.NET – in fact quite a bit easier since the whole thing can be conveniently wrapped up into an easily reusable control. A standalone pager would provider easier reuse in various pages and a more consistent pager display regardless of what kind of 'control’ the pager is associated with. Why a Pager Control? At first blush it might sound silly to create a new pager control – after all Web Forms has pretty decent paging support, doesn’t it? Well, sort of. Yes the GridView control has automatic paging built in and the ListView control has the related DataPager control. The built in ASP.NET paging has several issues though: Postback and JavaScript requirements If you look at paging links in ASP.NET they are always postback links with javascript:__doPostback() calls that go back to the server. While that works fine and actually has some benefit like the fact that paging saves changes to the page and post them back, it’s not very SEO friendly. Basically if you use javascript based navigation nosearch engine will follow the paging links which effectively cuts off list content on the first page. The DataPager control does support GET based links via the QueryStringParameter property, but the control is effectively tied to the ListView control (which is the only control that implements IPageableItemContainer). DataSource Controls required for Efficient Data Paging Retrieval The only way you can get paging to work efficiently where only the few records you display on the page are queried for and retrieved from the database you have to use a DataSource control - only the Linq and Entity DataSource controls  support this natively. While you can retrieve this data yourself manually, there’s no way to just assign the page number and render the pager based on this custom subset. Other than that default paging requires a full resultset for ASP.NET to filter the data and display only a subset which can be very resource intensive and wasteful if you’re dealing with largish resultsets (although I’m a firm believer in returning actually usable sets :-}). If you use your own business layer that doesn’t fit an ObjectDataSource you’re SOL. That’s a real shame too because with LINQ based querying it’s real easy to retrieve a subset of data that is just the data you want to display but the native Pager functionality doesn’t support just setting properties to display just the subset AFAIK. DataPager is not Free Standing The DataPager control is the closest thing to a decent Pager implementation that ASP.NET has, but alas it’s not a free standing component – it works off a related control and the only one that it effectively supports from the stock ASP.NET controls is the ListView control. This means you can’t use the same data pager formatting for a grid and a list view or vice versa and you’re always tied to the control. Paging Events In order to handle paging you have to deal with paging events. The events fire at specific time instances in the page pipeline and because of this you often have to handle data binding in a way to work around the paging events or else end up double binding your data sources based on paging. Yuk. Styling The GridView pager is a royal pain to beat into submission for styled rendering. The DataPager control has many more options and template layout and it renders somewhat cleaner, but it too is not exactly easy to get a decent display for. Not a Generic Solution The problem with the ASP.NET controls too is that it’s not generic. GridView, DataGrid use their own internal paging, ListView can use a DataPager and if you want to manually create data layout – well you’re on your own. IOW, depending on what you use you likely have very different looking Paging experiences. So, I figured I’ve struggled with this once too many and finally sat down and built a Pager control. The Pager Control My goal was to create a totally free standing control that has no dependencies on other controls and certainly no requirements for using DataSource controls. The idea is that you should be able to use this pager control without any sort of data requirements at all – you should just be able to set properties and be able to display a pager. The Pager control I ended up with has the following features: Completely free standing Pager control – no control or data dependencies Complete manual control – Pager can render without any data dependency Easy to use: Only need to set PageSize, ActivePage and TotalItems Supports optional filtering of IQueryable for efficient queries and Pager rendering Supports optional full set filtering of IEnumerable<T> and DataTable Page links are plain HTTP GET href Links Control automatically picks up Page links on the URL and assigns them (automatic page detection no page index changing events to hookup) Full CSS Styling support On the downside there’s no templating support for the control so the layout of the pager is relatively fixed. All elements however are stylable and there are options to control the text, and layout options such as whether to display first and last pages and the previous/next buttons and so on. To give you an idea what the pager looks like, here are two differently styled examples (all via CSS):   The markup for these two pagers looks like this: <ww:Pager runat="server" id="ItemPager" PageSize="5" PageLinkCssClass="gridpagerbutton" SelectedPageCssClass="gridpagerbutton-selected" PagesTextCssClass="gridpagertext" CssClass="gridpager" RenderContainerDiv="true" ContainerDivCssClass="gridpagercontainer" MaxPagesToDisplay="6" PagesText="Item Pages:" NextText="next" PreviousText="previous" /> <ww:Pager runat="server" id="ItemPager2" PageSize="5" RenderContainerDiv="true" MaxPagesToDisplay="6" /> The latter example uses default style settings so it there’s not much to set. The first example on the other hand explicitly assigns custom styles and overrides a few of the formatting options. Styling The styling is based on a number of CSS classes of which the the main pager, pagerbutton and pagerbutton-selected classes are the important ones. Other styles like pagerbutton-next/prev/first/last are based on the pagerbutton style. The default styling shown for the red outlined pager looks like this: .pagercontainer { margin: 20px 0; background: whitesmoke; padding: 5px; } .pager { float: right; font-size: 10pt; text-align: left; } .pagerbutton,.pagerbutton-selected,.pagertext { display: block; float: left; text-align: center; border: solid 2px maroon; min-width: 18px; margin-left: 3px; text-decoration: none; padding: 4px; } .pagerbutton-selected { font-size: 130%; font-weight: bold; color: maroon; border-width: 0px; background: khaki; } .pagerbutton-first { margin-right: 12px; } .pagerbutton-last,.pagerbutton-prev { margin-left: 12px; } .pagertext { border: none; margin-left: 30px; font-weight: bold; } .pagerbutton a { text-decoration: none; } .pagerbutton:hover { background-color: maroon; color: cornsilk; } .pagerbutton-prev { background-image: url(images/prev.png); background-position: 2px center; background-repeat: no-repeat; width: 35px; padding-left: 20px; } .pagerbutton-next { background-image: url(images/next.png); background-position: 40px center; background-repeat: no-repeat; width: 35px; padding-right: 20px; margin-right: 0px; } Yup that’s a lot of styling settings although not all of them are required. The key ones are pagerbutton, pager and pager selection. The others (which are implicitly created by the control based on the pagerbutton style) are for custom markup of the ‘special’ buttons. In my apps I tend to have two kinds of pages: Those that are associated with typical ‘grid’ displays that display purely tabular data and those that have a more looser list like layout. The two pagers shown above represent these two views and the pager and gridpager styles in my standard style sheet reflect these two styles. Configuring the Pager with Code Finally lets look at what it takes to hook up the pager. As mentioned in the highlights the Pager control is completely independent of other controls so if you just want to display a pager on its own it’s as simple as dropping the control and assigning the PageSize, ActivePage and either TotalPages or TotalItems. So for this markup: <ww:Pager runat="server" id="ItemPagerManual" PageSize="5" MaxPagesToDisplay="6" /> I can use code as simple as: ItemPagerManual.PageSize = 3; ItemPagerManual.ActivePage = 4;ItemPagerManual.TotalItems = 20; Note that ActivePage is not required - it will automatically use any Page=x query string value and assign it, although you can override it as I did above. TotalItems can be any value that you retrieve from a result set or manually assign as I did above. A more realistic scenario based on a LINQ to SQL IQueryable result is even easier. In this example, I have a UserControl that contains a ListView control that renders IQueryable data. I use a User Control here because there are different views the user can choose from with each view being a different user control. This incidentally also highlights one of the nice features of the pager: Because the pager is independent of the control I can put the pager on the host page instead of into each of the user controls. IOW, there’s only one Pager control, but there are potentially many user controls/listviews that hold the actual display data. The following code demonstrates how to use the Pager with an IQueryable that loads only the records it displays: protected voidPage_Load(objectsender, EventArgs e) {     Category = Request.Params["Category"] ?? string.Empty;     IQueryable<wws_Item> ItemList = ItemRepository.GetItemsByCategory(Category);     // Update the page and filter the list down     ItemList = ItemPager.FilterIQueryable<wws_Item>(ItemList); // Render user control with a list view Control ulItemList = LoadControl("~/usercontrols/" + App.Configuration.ItemListType + ".ascx"); ((IInventoryItemListControl)ulItemList).InventoryItemList = ItemList; phItemList.Controls.Add(ulItemList); // placeholder } The code uses a business object to retrieve Items by category as an IQueryable which means that the result is only an expression tree that hasn’t execute SQL yet and can be further filtered. I then pass this IQueryable to the FilterIQueryable() helper method of the control which does two main things: Filters the IQueryable to retrieve only the data displayed on the active page Sets the Totaltems property and calculates TotalPages on the Pager and that’s it! When the Pager renders it uses those values, plus the PageSize and ActivePage properties to render the Pager. In addition to IQueryable there are also filter methods for IEnumerable<T> and DataTable, but these versions just filter the data by removing rows/items from the entire already retrieved data. Output Generated and Paging Links The output generated creates pager links as plain href links. Here’s what the output looks like: <div id="ItemPager" class="pagercontainer"> <div class="pager"> <span class="pagertext">Pages: </span><a href="http://localhost/WestWindWebStore/itemlist.aspx?Page=1" class="pagerbutton" />1</a> <a href="http://localhost/WestWindWebStore/itemlist.aspx?Page=2" class="pagerbutton" />2</a> <a href="http://localhost/WestWindWebStore/itemlist.aspx?Page=3" class="pagerbutton" />3</a> <span class="pagerbutton-selected">4</span> <a href="http://localhost/WestWindWebStore/itemlist.aspx?Page=5" class="pagerbutton" />5</a> <a href="http://localhost/WestWindWebStore/itemlist.aspx?Page=6" class="pagerbutton" />6</a> <a href="http://localhost/WestWindWebStore/itemlist.aspx?Page=20" class="pagerbutton pagerbutton-last" />20</a>&nbsp;<a href="http://localhost/WestWindWebStore/itemlist.aspx?Page=3" class="pagerbutton pagerbutton-prev" />Prev</a>&nbsp;<a href="http://localhost/WestWindWebStore/itemlist.aspx?Page=5" class="pagerbutton pagerbutton-next" />Next</a></div> <br clear="all" /> </div> </div> The links point back to the current page and simply append a Page= page link into the page. When the page gets reloaded with the new page number the pager automatically detects the page number and automatically assigns the ActivePage property which results in the appropriate page to be displayed. The code shown in the previous section is all that’s needed to handle paging. Note that HTTP GET based paging is different than the Postback paging ASP.NET uses by default. Postback paging preserves modified page content when clicking on pager buttons, but this control will simply load a new page – no page preservation at this time. The advantage of not using Postback paging is that the URLs generated are plain HTML links that a search engine can follow where __doPostback() links are not. Pager with a Grid The pager also works in combination with grid controls so it’s easy to bypass the grid control’s paging features if desired. In the following example I use a gridView control and binds it to a DataTable result which is also filterable by the Pager control. The very basic plain vanilla ASP.NET grid markup looks like this: <div style="width: 600px; margin: 0 auto;padding: 20px; "> <asp:DataGrid runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="True" ID="gdItems" CssClass="blackborder" style="width: 600px;"> <AlternatingItemStyle CssClass="gridalternate" /> <HeaderStyle CssClass="gridheader" /> </asp:DataGrid> <ww:Pager runat="server" ID="Pager" CssClass="gridpager" ContainerDivCssClass="gridpagercontainer" PageLinkCssClass="gridpagerbutton" SelectedPageCssClass="gridpagerbutton-selected" PageSize="8" RenderContainerDiv="true" MaxPagesToDisplay="6" /> </div> and looks like this when rendered: using custom set of CSS styles. The code behind for this code is also very simple: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { string category = Request.Params["category"] ?? ""; busItem itemRep = WebStoreFactory.GetItem(); var items = itemRep.GetItemsByCategory(category) .Select(itm => new {Sku = itm.Sku, Description = itm.Description}); // run query into a DataTable for demonstration DataTable dt = itemRep.Converter.ToDataTable(items,"TItems"); // Remove all items not on the current page dt = Pager.FilterDataTable(dt,0); // bind and display gdItems.DataSource = dt; gdItems.DataBind(); } A little contrived I suppose since the list could already be bound from the list of elements, but this is to demonstrate that you can also bind against a DataTable if your business layer returns those. Unfortunately there’s no way to filter a DataReader as it’s a one way forward only reader and the reader is required by the DataSource to perform the bindings.  However, you can still use a DataReader as long as your business logic filters the data prior to rendering and provides a total item count (most likely as a second query). Control Creation The control itself is a pretty brute force ASP.NET control. Nothing clever about this other than some basic rendering logic and some simple calculations and update routines to determine which buttons need to be shown. You can take a look at the full code from the West Wind Web Toolkit’s Repository (note there are a few dependencies). To give you an idea how the control works here is the Render() method: /// <summary> /// overridden to handle custom pager rendering for runtime and design time /// </summary> /// <param name="writer"></param> protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter writer) { base.Render(writer); if (TotalPages == 0 && TotalItems > 0) TotalPages = CalculateTotalPagesFromTotalItems(); if (DesignMode) TotalPages = 10; // don't render pager if there's only one page if (TotalPages < 2) return; if (RenderContainerDiv) { if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(ContainerDivCssClass)) writer.AddAttribute("class", ContainerDivCssClass); writer.RenderBeginTag("div"); } // main pager wrapper writer.WriteBeginTag("div"); writer.AddAttribute("id", this.ClientID); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(CssClass)) writer.WriteAttribute("class", this.CssClass); writer.Write(HtmlTextWriter.TagRightChar + "\r\n"); // Pages Text writer.WriteBeginTag("span"); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(PagesTextCssClass)) writer.WriteAttribute("class", PagesTextCssClass); writer.Write(HtmlTextWriter.TagRightChar); writer.Write(this.PagesText); writer.WriteEndTag("span"); // if the base url is empty use the current URL FixupBaseUrl(); // set _startPage and _endPage ConfigurePagesToRender(); // write out first page link if (ShowFirstAndLastPageLinks && _startPage != 1) { writer.WriteBeginTag("a"); string pageUrl = StringUtils.SetUrlEncodedKey(BaseUrl, QueryStringPageField, (1).ToString()); writer.WriteAttribute("href", pageUrl); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(PageLinkCssClass)) writer.WriteAttribute("class", PageLinkCssClass + " " + PageLinkCssClass + "-first"); writer.Write(HtmlTextWriter.SelfClosingTagEnd); writer.Write("1"); writer.WriteEndTag("a"); writer.Write("&nbsp;"); } // write out all the page links for (int i = _startPage; i < _endPage + 1; i++) { if (i == ActivePage) { writer.WriteBeginTag("span"); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(SelectedPageCssClass)) writer.WriteAttribute("class", SelectedPageCssClass); writer.Write(HtmlTextWriter.TagRightChar); writer.Write(i.ToString()); writer.WriteEndTag("span"); } else { writer.WriteBeginTag("a"); string pageUrl = StringUtils.SetUrlEncodedKey(BaseUrl, QueryStringPageField, i.ToString()).TrimEnd('&'); writer.WriteAttribute("href", pageUrl); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(PageLinkCssClass)) writer.WriteAttribute("class", PageLinkCssClass); writer.Write(HtmlTextWriter.SelfClosingTagEnd); writer.Write(i.ToString()); writer.WriteEndTag("a"); } writer.Write("\r\n"); } // write out last page link if (ShowFirstAndLastPageLinks && _endPage < TotalPages) { writer.WriteBeginTag("a"); string pageUrl = StringUtils.SetUrlEncodedKey(BaseUrl, QueryStringPageField, TotalPages.ToString()); writer.WriteAttribute("href", pageUrl); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(PageLinkCssClass)) writer.WriteAttribute("class", PageLinkCssClass + " " + PageLinkCssClass + "-last"); writer.Write(HtmlTextWriter.SelfClosingTagEnd); writer.Write(TotalPages.ToString()); writer.WriteEndTag("a"); } // Previous link if (ShowPreviousNextLinks && !string.IsNullOrEmpty(PreviousText) && ActivePage > 1) { writer.Write("&nbsp;"); writer.WriteBeginTag("a"); string pageUrl = StringUtils.SetUrlEncodedKey(BaseUrl, QueryStringPageField, (ActivePage - 1).ToString()); writer.WriteAttribute("href", pageUrl); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(PageLinkCssClass)) writer.WriteAttribute("class", PageLinkCssClass + " " + PageLinkCssClass + "-prev"); writer.Write(HtmlTextWriter.SelfClosingTagEnd); writer.Write(PreviousText); writer.WriteEndTag("a"); } // Next link if (ShowPreviousNextLinks && !string.IsNullOrEmpty(NextText) && ActivePage < TotalPages) { writer.Write("&nbsp;"); writer.WriteBeginTag("a"); string pageUrl = StringUtils.SetUrlEncodedKey(BaseUrl, QueryStringPageField, (ActivePage + 1).ToString()); writer.WriteAttribute("href", pageUrl); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(PageLinkCssClass)) writer.WriteAttribute("class", PageLinkCssClass + " " + PageLinkCssClass + "-next"); writer.Write(HtmlTextWriter.SelfClosingTagEnd); writer.Write(NextText); writer.WriteEndTag("a"); } writer.WriteEndTag("div"); if (RenderContainerDiv) { if (RenderContainerDivBreak) writer.Write("<br clear=\"all\" />\r\n"); writer.WriteEndTag("div"); } } As I said pretty much brute force rendering based on the control’s property settings of which there are quite a few: You can also see the pager in the designer above. unfortunately the VS designer (both 2010 and 2008) fails to render the float: left CSS styles properly and starts wrapping after margins are applied in the special buttons. Not a big deal since VS does at least respect the spacing (the floated elements overlay). Then again I’m not using the designer anyway :-}. Filtering Data What makes the Pager easy to use is the filter methods built into the control. While this functionality is clearly not the most politically correct design choice as it violates separation of concerns, it’s very useful for typical pager operation. While I actually have filter methods that do something similar in my business layer, having it exposed on the control makes the control a lot more useful for typical databinding scenarios. Of course these methods are optional – if you have a business layer that can provide filtered page queries for you can use that instead and assign the TotalItems property manually. There are three filter method types available for IQueryable, IEnumerable and for DataTable which tend to be the most common use cases in my apps old and new. The IQueryable version is pretty simple as it can simply rely on on .Skip() and .Take() with LINQ: /// <summary> /// <summary> /// Queries the database for the ActivePage applied manually /// or from the Request["page"] variable. This routine /// figures out and sets TotalPages, ActivePage and /// returns a filtered subset IQueryable that contains /// only the items from the ActivePage. /// </summary> /// <param name="query"></param> /// <param name="activePage"> /// The page you want to display. Sets the ActivePage property when passed. /// Pass 0 or smaller to use ActivePage setting. /// </param> /// <returns></returns> public IQueryable<T> FilterIQueryable<T>(IQueryable<T> query, int activePage) where T : class, new() { ActivePage = activePage < 1 ? ActivePage : activePage; if (ActivePage < 1) ActivePage = 1; TotalItems = query.Count(); if (TotalItems <= PageSize) { ActivePage = 1; TotalPages = 1; return query; } int skip = ActivePage - 1; if (skip > 0) query = query.Skip(skip * PageSize); _TotalPages = CalculateTotalPagesFromTotalItems(); return query.Take(PageSize); } The IEnumerable<T> version simply  converts the IEnumerable to an IQuerable and calls back into this method for filtering. The DataTable version requires a little more work to manually parse and filter records (I didn’t want to add the Linq DataSetExtensions assembly just for this): /// <summary> /// Filters a data table for an ActivePage. /// /// Note: Modifies the data set permanently by remove DataRows /// </summary> /// <param name="dt">Full result DataTable</param> /// <param name="activePage">Page to display. 0 to use ActivePage property </param> /// <returns></returns> public DataTable FilterDataTable(DataTable dt, int activePage) { ActivePage = activePage < 1 ? ActivePage : activePage; if (ActivePage < 1) ActivePage = 1; TotalItems = dt.Rows.Count; if (TotalItems <= PageSize) { ActivePage = 1; TotalPages = 1; return dt; } int skip = ActivePage - 1; if (skip > 0) { for (int i = 0; i < skip * PageSize; i++ ) dt.Rows.RemoveAt(0); } while(dt.Rows.Count > PageSize) dt.Rows.RemoveAt(PageSize); return dt; } Using the Pager Control The pager as it is is a first cut I built a couple of weeks ago and since then have been tweaking a little as part of an internal project I’m working on. I’ve replaced a bunch of pagers on various older pages with this pager without any issues and have what now feels like a more consistent user interface where paging looks and feels the same across different controls. As a bonus I’m only loading the data from the database that I need to display a single page. With the preset class tags applied too adding a pager is now as easy as dropping the control and adding the style sheet for styling to be consistent – no fuss, no muss. Schweet. Hopefully some of you may find this as useful as I have or at least as a baseline to build ontop of… Resources The Pager is part of the West Wind Web & Ajax Toolkit Pager.cs Source Code (some toolkit dependencies) Westwind.css base stylesheet with .pager and .gridpager styles Pager Example Page © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  

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• All my sites are 403 but the server is running. Errors on startup

  - by Craig

  We gave access to a contractor to install a firewall and somehow while he was doing it he fracked something up. Everything went off-line about 24 hours ago and we are effectively out of business until I solve this and the person who messed up the thing is not returning calls. I found a few errors. First, I'm not a server guy - I can look at log files and normally everything runs fine. All 'services' are running according to 1and1 server monitoring and mail is being delivered just fine. The whole thing was off-line until I (probably stupidly) updated the kernel from 6.2 to 6.3 this morning and I got everything back except the http access. All the domains (~200 of them) are returning a 403 error and nothing is recorded in the access log. On every restart I see this error in the messages log file: init: Failed to spawn ttyS0 main process: unable to execute: No such file or directory and a little later these: kernel: WARNING: at kernel/sched.c:5914 thread_return+0x232/0x79d() (Not tainted) kernel: Hardware name: X9SCL/X9SCM kernel: Modules linked in: xt_iprange iptable_filter ip_tables ip6t_REJECT nf_conntrack_ipv6 nf_defrag_ipv6 xt_state nf_conntrack ip6table_filter ip6_tables ipv6 ext4 jbd2 serio_raw i2c_i801 i2c_core sg iTCO_wdt iTCO_vendor_support e1000e ext3 jbd mbcache raid1 sd_mod crc_t10dif ahci dm_mirror dm_region_hash dm_log dm_mod [last unloaded: scsi_wait_scan] kernel: Pid: 367, comm: md3_raid1 Not tainted 2.6.32-220.2.1.el6.x86_64 #1 kernel: Call Trace: kernel: [<ffffffff81069997>] ? warn_slowpath_common+0x87/0xc0 kernel: [<ffffffff810699ea>] ? warn_slowpath_null+0x1a/0x20 kernel: [<ffffffff814eccc5>] ? thread_return+0x232/0x79d kernel: [<ffffffff8126a4d9>] ? cpumask_next_and+0x29/0x50 kernel: [<ffffffff813e9c05>] ? md_super_wait+0x55/0x90 kernel: [<ffffffff81090a10>] ? autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x40 kernel: [<ffffffff813ebf46>] ? md_update_sb+0x206/0x3f0 kernel: [<ffffffff813ee922>] ? md_check_recovery+0x3f2/0x6d0 kernel: [<ffffffffa005b129>] ? raid1d+0x49/0x1050 [raid1] kernel: [<ffffffff814ed985>] ? schedule_timeout+0x215/0x2e0 kernel: [<ffffffff814ef447>] ? _spin_unlock_irqrestore+0x17/0x20 kernel: [<ffffffff813eb336>] ? md_thread+0x116/0x150 kernel: [<ffffffff81090a10>] ? autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x40 kernel: [<ffffffff813eb220>] ? md_thread+0x0/0x150 kernel: [<ffffffff810906a6>] ? kthread+0x96/0xa0 kernel: [<ffffffff8100c14a>] ? child_rip+0xa/0x20 kernel: [<ffffffff81090610>] ? kthread+0x0/0xa0 kernel: [<ffffffff8100c140>] ? child_rip+0x0/0x20 And something is wrong with the Named/BIND resulting in the same error for all domains: zone DOMAINEXAMPLE.com/IN: loading from master file DOMAINEXAMPLE.com failed: file not found zone DOMAINEXAMPLE.com/IN: not loaded due to errors. _default/DOMAINEXAMPLE.com/IN: file not found I'm pretty sure this is not enough information to solve the problem, but I'm willing to engage someone who can work this out for me. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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• It's not just “Single Sign-on” by Steve Knott (aurionPro SENA)

  - by Greg Jensen

  It is true that Oracle Enterprise Single Sign-on (Oracle ESSO) started out as purely an application single sign-on tool but as we have seen in the previous articles in this series the product has matured into a suite of tools that can do more than just automated single sign-on and can also provide rapidly deployed, cost effective solution to many demanding password management problems. In the last article of this series I would like to discuss three cases where customers faced password scenarios that required more than just single sign-on and how some of the less well known tools in the Oracle ESSO suite “kitbag” helped solve these challenges. Case #1 One of the issues often faced by our customers is how to keep their applications compliant. I had a client who liked the idea of automated single sign-on for most of his applications but had a key requirement to actually increase the security for one specific SOX application. For the SOX application he wanted to secure access by using two-factor authentication with a smartcard. The problem was that the application did not support two-factor authentication. The solution was to use a feature from the Oracle ESSO suite called authentication manager. This feature enables you to have multiple authentication methods for the same user which in this case was a smartcard and the Windows password.  Within authentication manager each authenticator can be configured with a security grade so we gave the smartcard a high grade and the Windows password a normal grade. Security grading in Oracle ESSO can be configured on a per application basis so we set the SOX application to require the higher grade smartcard authenticator. The end result for the user was that they enjoyed automated single sign-on for most of the applications apart from the SOX application. When the SOX application was launched, the user was required by ESSO to present their smartcard before being given access to the application. Case #2 Another example solving compliance issues was in the case of a large energy company who had a number of core billing applications. New regulations required that users change their password regularly and use a complex password. The problem facing the customer was that the core billing applications did not have any native user password change functionality. The customer could not replace the core applications because of the cost and time required to re-develop them. With a reputation for innovation aurionPro SENA were approached to provide a solution to this problem using Oracle ESSO. Oracle ESSO has a password expiry feature that can be triggered periodically based on the timestamp of the users’ last password creation therefore our strategy here was to leverage this feature to provide the password change experience. The trigger can launch an application change password event however in this scenario there was no native change password feature that could be launched therefore a “dummy” change password screen was created that could imitate the missing change password function and connect to the application database on behalf of the user. Oracle ESSO was configured to trigger a change password event every 60 days. After this period if the user launched the application Oracle ESSO would detect the logon screen and invoke the password expiry feature. Oracle ESSO would trigger the “dummy screen,” detect it automatically as the application change password screen and insert a complex password on behalf of the user. After the password event had completed the user was logged on to the application with their new password. All this was provided at a fraction of the cost of re-developing the core applications. Case #3 Recent popular initiatives such as the BYOD and working from home schemes bring with them many challenges in administering “unmanaged machines” and sometimes “unmanageable users.” In a recent case, a client had a dispersed community of casual contractors who worked for the business using their own laptops to access applications. To improve security the around password management the security goal was to provision the passwords directly to these contractors. In a previous article we saw how Oracle ESSO has the capability to provision passwords through Provisioning Gateway but the challenge in this scenario was how to get the Oracle ESSO agent to the casual contractor on an unmanaged machine. The answer was to use another tool in the suite, Oracle ESSO Anywhere. This component can compile the normal Oracle ESSO functionality into a deployment package that can be made available from a website in a similar way to a streamed application. The ESSO Anywhere agent does not actually install into the registry or program files but runs in a folder within the user’s profile therefore no local administrator rights are required for installation. The ESSO Anywhere package can also be configured to stay persistent or disable itself at the end of the user’s session. In this case the user just needed to be told where the website package was located and download the package. Once the download was complete the agent started automatically and the user was provided with single sign-on to their applications without ever knowing the application passwords. Finally, as we have seen in these series Oracle ESSO not only has great utilities in its own tool box but also has direct integration with Oracle Privileged Account Manager, Oracle Identity Manager and Oracle Access Manager. Integrated together with these tools provides a complete and complementary platform to address even the most complex identity and access management requirements. So what next for Oracle ESSO? “Agentless ESSO available in the cloud” – but that will be a subject for a future Oracle ESSO series!                                                                                                                               

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• Contracting as a Software Developer in the UK

  - by Frez

  Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} Having had some 15 years’ experience of working as a software contractor, I am often asked by developers who work as permanent employees (permies) about the pros and cons of working as a software consultant through my own limited company and whether the move would be a good one for them. Whilst it is possible to contract using other financial vehicles such as umbrella companies, this article will only consider limited companies as that is what I have experience of using. Contracting or consultancy requires a different mind-set from being a permanent member of staff, and not all developers are capable of this shift in attitude. Whilst you can look forward to an increase in the money you take home, there are real risks and expenses you would not normally be exposed to as a permie. So let us have a look at the pros and cons: Pros: More money There is no doubt that whilst you are working on contracts you will earn significantly more than you would as a permanent employee. Furthermore, working through a limited company is more tax efficient. Less politics You really have no need to involve yourself in office politics. When the end of the day comes you can go home and not think or worry about the power struggles within the company you are contracted to. Your career progression is not tied to the company. Expenses from gross income All your expenses of trading as a business will come out of your company’s gross income, i.e. before tax. This covers travelling expenses provided you have not been at the same client/location for more than two years, internet subscriptions, professional subscriptions, software, hardware, accountancy services and so on. Cons: Work is more transient Contracts typically range from a couple of weeks to a year, although will most likely start at 3 months. However, most contracts are extended either because the project you have been brought in to help with takes longer to deliver than expected, the client decides they can use you on other aspects of the project, or the client decides they would like to use you on other projects. The temporary nature of the work means that you will have down-time between contracts while you secure new opportunities during which time your company will have no income. You may need to attend several interviews before securing a new contract. Accountancy expenses Your company is a separate entity and there are accountancy requirements which, unless you like paperwork, means your company will need to appoint an accountant to prepare your company’s accounts. It may also be worth purchasing some accountancy software, so talk to your accountant about this as they may prefer you to use a particular software package so they can integrate it with their systems. VAT You will need to register your company for VAT. This is tax neutral for you as the VAT you charge your clients you will pass onto the government less any VAT you are reclaiming from expenses, but it is additional paperwork to undertake each quarter. It is worth checking out the Fixed Rate VAT Scheme that is available, particularly after the initial expenses of setting up your company are over. No training Clients take you on based on your skills, not to train you when they will lose that investment at the end of the contract, so understand that it is unlikely you will receive any training funded by a client. However, learning new skills during a contract is possible and you may choose to accept a contract on a lower rate if this is guaranteed as it will help secure future contracts. No financial extras You will have no free pension, life, accident, sickness or medical insurance unless you choose to purchase them yourself. A financial advisor can give you all the necessary advice in this area, and it is worth taking seriously. A year after I started as a consultant I contracted a serious illness, this kept me off work for over two months, my client was very understanding and it could have been much worse, so it is worth considering what your options might be in the case of illness, death and retirement. Agencies Whilst it is possible to work directly for end clients there are pros and cons of working through an agency.  The main advantage is cash flow, you invoice the agency and they typically pay you within a week, whereas working directly for a client could have you waiting up to three months to be paid. The downside of working for agencies, especially in the current difficult times, is that they may go out of business and you then have difficulty getting the money you are owed. Tax investigation It is possible that the Inland Revenue may decide to investigate your company for compliance with tax law. Insurance is available to cover you for this. My personal recommendation would be to join the PCG as this insurance is included as a benefit of membership, Professional Indemnity Some agencies require that you are covered by professional indemnity insurance; this is a cost you would not incur as a permie. Travel Unless you live in an area that has an abundance of opportunities, such as central London, it is likely that you will be travelling further, longer and with more expense than if you were permanently employed at a local company. This not only affects you monetarily, but also your quality of life and the ability to keep fit and healthy. Obtaining finance If you want to secure a mortgage on a property it can be more difficult or expensive, especially if you do not have three years of audited accounts to show a mortgage lender.   Caveat This post is my personal opinion and should not be used as a definitive guide or recommendation to contracting and whether it is suitable for you as an individual, i.e. I accept no responsibility if you decide to take up contracting based on this post and you fare badly for whatever reason.

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• Windows Phone Developer Spotlight: Nikolai Joukov

  - by Lori Lalonde

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/lorilalonde/archive/2014/06/04/windows-phone-developer-spotlight-nikolai-joukov.aspxAs part of an ongoing series, I plan to include a spotlight post on people within the community that are stars in their field and area of expertise. For my first spotlight post, I interviewed Nikolai Joukov, who is a regular attendee at my local area .NET User Group (CTTDNUG), and has also participated in many of the Mobile and Cloud workshops we have hosted over the past few years. Nikolai stood out immediately, because of his passion for developing mobile apps, his interest in continuous learning, and his drive to publish quality apps that people will find useful and entertaining. Background: Nikolai immigrated to Canada in 1995, and has been working in IT since 1997. He moved on to become an independent contractor in 2005, and has worked at various large scale organizations over the course of his career, including BMO, Enbridge, Economical Insurance, Equitable Life, Manulife and Sun Life. Nikolai is an accomplished Windows Phone and Windows Store publisher, with 11 published Windows Phone apps, and 8 published Windows Store apps. He has almost 6000 downloads and favourable reviews. Q & A with Nikolai How many years have you been developing Windows Phone apps? 2 years When did you develop your very first Windows Phone app, and what was it about? Actually, the very first app I wrote was for the Microsoft “Smart Phone” back in 2004. This phone was given to me by Microsoft during the Developers Days Conference in Toronto. It was some kind of experimental model named Smart Phone, but you had to use VB 3 to develop the applications. Needless to say, this was not very successful at that time. My app was a Stock Trades Calculator. Very primitive, but it was working for me. The phone was heavy and the battery barely lasted 4 hours. Microsoft stopped supporting it few months later and the phone stopped working shortly after, but I still have it as a souvenir. For Windows Phone, my first app was “Trip Packing Assistant”. This is a simple trip packing check list that allows you to list items by category, set required quantity of items, and mark off the item in the list when it is packed. I designed it for me and my wife Galina, since we love to travel and this program helps manage our list for us. How did you get started in Windows Phone development? I have to say thanks to our .NET User Group for introducing me to Windows Phone development. I was intrigued and decided to give it a try. In October 2012 during a 2 day training event that ObjectSharp hosted in London, I met Bruce Johnson. On his advice, I registered for Developer Movement, and it is was a good push to actually complete the apps that I started. You have a great series of travel guide apps both for Windows Phone and Windows Store. Tell us about how you came up with the idea to develop those apps and what process you went through to put it all together. Like I said earlier, my wife and I love to travel. Before I created Trip Packing Assistant, every time we were planning to travel somewhere new, Galina would spend 3-4 weeks doing research. She would create a Word document with all of the information. We didn’t want to have to carry our laptop with us all the time, so we printed out the Word document she created, and would take it with us. After we returned from the trip, we would bring back tons of pictures and materials. Then our friends started to ask us about our materials before they planned their trips to the same places we had visited. So I decided to give it a try and started making apps for Windows Phone and for Windows 8. I hope these applications will help people who are planning to travel. So, all of the pictures used in the travel apps you created were actually taken by you during these amazing trips? Yes Do you have another Windows Store/Windows Phone project in development right now? If so, can you give us a hint at what it will be about? I want to stay with travel apps for now. But this time I will try to write an app for us (Galina and I). Usually we go on the trip, then I write the apps after we have all this beautiful pictures in our hands. We are planning a trip to Rome. This app will not have the pictures, but I want to add a map with points of interest and all information that can be useful for us. Then we will go on our trip and test it on location. As well I am planning to work on my existing apps to make them better. What learning resources would you recommend for other developers that want to get started in Window Store and Windows Phone development? I would start with dev.windowsphone.com to get all tools and samples, also links to training materials. I like MVA (Microsoft Virtual Academy). Their videos are really useful and it is free. Pluralsight is good too but it is not free and I do not have a subscription anymore. Our .NET User Group meetings give good insights too. I went to all meetings and full day training events. When you start to develop your app, you need to do research for specific questions that arise during development. The Developer Portal and Nokia Developer are good resources too. Wrap Up Thanks Nikolai for participating in my first Spotlight blog post! Shown below is Nikolai’s publisher page in the Windows Phone Store and his publisher page in the Windows Store. Simply click on it to be taken to there to check out his portfolio of apps. Be sure to download his apps and try them out! They are all free! Nikolai’s Windows Phone apps   Nikolai’s Windows Store Apps

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• Thou shalt not put code on a piedestal - Code is a tool, no more, no less

  - by Ralf Westphal

  “Write great code and everything else becomes easier” is what Paul Pagel believes in. That´s his version of an adage by Brian Marick he cites: “treat code as an end, not just a means.” And he concludes: “My post-Agile world is software craftsmanship.” I wonder, if that´s really the way to go. Will “simply” writing great code lead the software industry into the light? He´s alluding to the philosopher Kant who proposed, a human beings should never be treated as a means, but always as an end. But should we transfer this ethical statement into the world of software? I doubt it.   Reason #1: Human beings are categorially different from code. They are autonomous entities who need to find a way of living happily together. To Kant it seemed this goal could only be reached if nobody (ab)used a human being for his/her purposes. Because using a human being, i.e. treating it as a means, would contradict the fundamental autonomy and freedom of human beings. People should hold up a symmetric view of their relationships: Since nobody wants to be (ab)used, nobody should (ab)use anybody else. If you want to be treated decently, with respect, in accordance with your own free will - which means as an end - then do the same to other people. Code is dead, it´s a product, it´s a tool for people to reach their goals. No company spends any money on code other than to save money or earn money in the long run. Code is not a puppy. Enterprises do not commission software development to just feel good in its company. Code is not a buddy. Code is a slave, if you will. A mechanical slave, a non-tangible robot. Code is a tool, is a tool. And if we start to treat it differently, if we elevate its status unduely… I guess that will contort our relationship in a contraproductive way. Please get me right: Just because something is “just a tool”, “just a product” does not mean we should not be careful while designing, building, using it. Right to the contrary. We should be very careful when writing code – but not for the code´s sake! We should be careful because we respect our customers who are fellow human beings who should be treated as an end. If we are careless, neglectful, ignorant when producing code on their behalf, then we´re using them. Being sloppy means you´re caring more for yourself that for your customer. You´re then treating the customer as a means to fulfill some of your own needs. That´s plain unethical behavior.   Reason #2: The focus should always be on your purpose, not on any tool. But if code is treated as an end, then the focus is on the code. That might sound right, because where else should be your focus as a software developer? But, well, I´d say, your focus should be on delivering value to your customer. Because in the end your customer does not care if you write a single line of code. She just wants her problem to be solved. Solving problems is the purpose of any contractor. Code must be treated just as a means, a tool we know how to handle very well. But if we´re really trying to be craftsmen then we should be conscious about exactly that and act ethically. That means we must never be so focused on our tool as to be unable to suggest better solutions to the problems of our customers than code.   I´m all with Paul when he urges us to “Write great code”. Sure, if you need to write code, then by all means do so. Write the best code you can think of – and then try to improve it. Paul has all the best intentions when he signs Brians “treat code as an end” - but as we all know: “The road to hell is paved with best intentions” ;-) Yes, I can imagine a “hell of code focus”. In fact, I don´t need to imagine it, I´m seeing it quite often. Because code hell is whereever two developers stand together and are so immersed in talking about all sorts of coding tricks, design patterns, code smells, technologies, platforms, tools that they lose sight of the big picture. Talking about TDD or SOLID or refactoring is a sign of consciousness – relative to the “cowboy coders” view of the world. But from yet another point of view TDD, SOLID, and refactoring are just cures for ailments within a system. And I fear, if “Writing great code” is the only focus or the main focus of software development, then we as an industry lose the ability to see that. Focus draws a line around something, it defines a horizon for perceptions and thinking. So if we focus on code our horizon ends where “the land of code” ends. I don´t think that should be our professional attitude.   So what about Software Craftsmanship as the next big thing after Agility? I think Software Craftsmanship has an important message for all software developers and beyond. But to make it the successor of the Agility movement seems to miss a point. Agility never claimed to solve all software development problems, I´d say. So to blame it for having missed out on certain aspects of it is wrong. If I had to summarize Agility in one word I´d say “Value”. Agility put value for the customer back in software development. Focus on delivering value early and often – that´s Agility´s mantra. All else follows from that. And I ask you: Is that obsolete? Is delivering value not hip anymore? No, sure not. That´s our very purpose as software developers. So how can Agility become obsolete and need to be replaced? We need to do away with this “either/or”-thinking. It´s either Agility or Lean or Software Craftsmanship or whatnot. Instead we should start integrating concepts and movements. Think “both/and”. Think Agility plus Software Craftsmanship plus Lean plus whatnot. We don´t neet to tear down anything from a piedestal and replace it with a new idol. Instead we should do away with piedestals and arrange whatever is helpful is a circle. Then we can turn to concepts, movements for whatever they are best. After 10 years of Agility we should be able to identify what it was good at – and keep that. Keep Agility around and add whatever Agility was lacking or never concerned with. Add whatever is at the core of Software Craftsmanship. Add whatever is at the core of Lean etc. But don´t call out the age of Post-Agility. Because it better never will end. Because once we start to lose Agility´s core we´re losing focus of the customer.

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• I'm a contract developer and I think I'm about to get screwed [closed]

  - by kagaku

  I do contract development on the side. You could say that I'm a contract developer? Considering I've only ever had one client I'd say that's not exactly the truth - more like I took a side job and needed some extra cash. It started out as a "rebuild our website and we'll pay you $10k" type project. Once that was complete (a bit over schedule, but certainly not over budget), the company hired me on as a "long term support" contractor. The contract is to go from March of this year, expiring on December 31st of this year - 10 months. Over which a payment is to be paid on the 30th of each month for a set amount. I've been fulfilling my end of the contract on all points - doing server maintenence, application and database changes, doing huge rush changes and pretty much just going above and beyond. Currently I'm in the middle of development of an iPhone mobile application (PhoneGap based) which is nearing completion (probably 3-4 weeks from submission). It has not been all peaches and flowers though. Each and every month when my paycheck comes due, there always seems to be an issue of sorts. These issues did not occur during the initial project, only during the support contract. The actual contract states that my check should be mailed out on the 30th of the month. I have received my check on time approximately once (on time being about 2-3 days within the 30th). I've received my paycheck as late as the 15th of the next month - over two weeks late. I've put up with it because I need the paycheck. There have been promises and promises of "we'll send it out on time next time! I promise" - only to receive it just as late the next month. When I ask about payment they give me a vibe like "why are you only worried about money?" - unfortunately I don't have the luxury of not worrying about money. The last straw was with my August payment, which should have been mailed on August 30th. I received it on September 12th. The reason for the delay? "USPS is delaying it man! we sent it out on the 1st!" is the reason I got. When I finally got the check in the mail, the postage on the envelope was marked September 10th - the date it was run through the postage machine. I've been outright lied to, at this point. I carry on working, because again - I need a paycheck. I orchestrated the move of our application to a new server, developed a bunch of new changes and continued work on the iPhone app. All told I probably went over my hourly allotment (I'm paid for 40 hours a month, I probably put in at least 50). On Saturday, the 1st, I gave the main contact at the company (a company of 3, by the way - this is not some big corporation) a ring and filled him in on the status of my work for the past two weeks. Unusually I hadn't heard from him since the middle of September. His response was "oh... well, that is nice and uh.. good job. well, we've been talking within the company about things and we've certainly got some decisions ahead of us..." - not verbatim but you get the idea (I hope?). I got out of this conversation that the site is not doing very well (which it's not) and they're considering pulling the plug. Crap, this contract is going to end early - there goes Christmas! Fine, that's alright, no problem. I'll get paid for the last months work and call it a day. Unfortunately I still haven't gotten last months check, and I'm getting dicked around now. "Oh.. we had problems transferring funds, we'll try and mail it out tomorrow" and "I left a VM with the finance guy, but I can't get ahold of him". So I'm getting the feeling I'm not getting paid for all the work I put in for September. This is obviously breach of contract, and I am pissed. Thinking irrationally, I considered changing all their passwords and holding their stuff hostage. Before I think it through (by the way, I am NOT going to do this, realized it would probably get me in trouble), I go and try some passwords for our various accounts. Google Apps? Oh, I'm no longer administrator here. Godaddy? Whoops, invalid password. Disqus? Nope, invalid password here too. Google Adsense / Analytics? Invalid password. Dedicated server account manager? Invalid password. Now, I have the servers root password - I just built the box last week and haven't had a chance to send the guy the root password. Wasn't in a rush, I manage the server and they never touch it. Now all of a sudden all the passwords except this one are changed; the writing is on the wall - I am out. Here's the conundrum. I have the root password, they do not. If I give them this password all the leverage I have is gone, out the door and out of my hands. During this argument of why am I not getting paid the guy sends me an email saying "oh by the way, what's the root username and password to the server?". Considering he knows absolutely nothing, I gave him an "admin" account which really has almost no rights. I still have exclusive access to the server, I just don't know where to go. I can hold their data hostage, but I'm almost positive this is the wrong thing to do. I'd consider it blackmail, regardless of whether or not I have gotten paid yet. I can "break" something on the server and give them the whole "well, if you were paying me I could fix it!" spiel. This works from a "well he's not holding their stuff hostage" point of view, but what stops them from hiring some one else to just fix the issue at hand? For all I know the guys nephew is a "l33t hax0r" and can figure it out for free. I can give in, document as much as I can and take him to small claims court. This is breach of contract, I'm not getting paid. I have a case, right? ???? Does anyone have any experience in this? What can I do? What are my options? I'm broke, I can't afford a lawyer and I can barely afford not getting this paycheck. My wife doesn't work (I work two jobs so she doesn't have to work - we have a 1 year old) and is already looking at getting a part time job to cover the bills. Long term we'll be fine, but this has pissed me off beyond belief! Help me out, I'm about to get screwed.

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• Inserting THEAD element into embedded HTML using jQuery

  - by robalot

  I'm trying to use jQuery to insert HTML into a table element. I've been messing variations of the selector (below) with no luck. Can someone help me? My Selector: $j('#ctl00_body_gridData_dom').children('table:first').append("<thead><tr><td colspan='6'>&nbsp;</td><td align='center' colspan='7'>EM SPECS</td><td align='center' colspan='7'>FISH</td><td colspan='11'>&nbsp;</td></tr></thead>"); Here's what I am trying to do... I want to insert this: <thead> <tr> <td colspan="6"> &nbsp; </td> <td align="center" colspan="7"> EM SPECS </td> <td align="center" colspan="7"> FISH </td> <td colspan="11"> &nbsp; </td> </tr> </thead> The sample below is what I want the end result to look like... So It Looks Like This: Jquery Event Pool <table id="ctl00_body_gridData" style="width: 2000px; -moz-user-select: none;" border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td id="ctl00_body_gridData_dom" class="GridData" style="vertical-align: top; height: 245px;" valign="top"> <table style="width: 100%;" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <thead> <tr> <td colspan="6"> &nbsp; </td> <td align="center" colspan="7"> EM SPECS </td> <td align="center" colspan="7"> FISH </td> <td colspan="11"> &nbsp; </td> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr id="ctl00_body_gridData_top_head" class="headerlineGrid"> <td width="16"> <div style="width: 16px;"></div> </td> <td onclick="ctl00_body_gridData.ClickHandler(event,this,4,0)" ondblclick="ctl00_body_gridData.DblClickHandler(event,null,4,0)" onmousemove="ctl00_body_gridData.MoveHandler(event,this,0,0)" onmouseover="ctl00_body_gridData.OverHandler(event,this,0)" onmouseout="ctl00_body_gridData.OutHandler(event,this,0)" onmousedown="ctl00_body_gridData.DownHandler(event,this,4,0)" onmouseup="ctl00_body_gridData.UpHandler(event,this,4,0)" style="width: 89px;" class="HeadingCell" align="center"> <div style="text-align: center; overflow: hidden; width: 89px;"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="white-space: nowrap; text-align: center;" class="HeadingCellText" align="center"> Work<br>Package</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </td> <td onclick="ctl00_body_gridData.ClickHandler(event,this,6,0)" ondblclick="ctl00_body_gridData.DblClickHandler(event,null,6,0)" onmousemove="ctl00_body_gridData.MoveHandler(event,this,1,0)" onmouseover="ctl00_body_gridData.OverHandler(event,this,0)" onmouseout="ctl00_body_gridData.OutHandler(event,this,0)" onmousedown="ctl00_body_gridData.DownHandler(event,this,6,0)" onmouseup="ctl00_body_gridData.UpHandler(event,this,6,0)" style="width: 62px;" class="HeadingCell" align="center"> <div style="text-align: center; overflow: hidden; width: 62px;"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="white-space: nowrap; text-align: center;" class="HeadingCellText" align="center"> Work<br>Order</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </td> <td onclick="ctl00_body_gridData.ClickHandler(event,this,9,0)" ondblclick="ctl00_body_gridData.DblClickHandler(event,null,9,0)" onmousemove="ctl00_body_gridData.MoveHandler(event,this,2,0)" onmouseover="ctl00_body_gridData.OverHandler(event,this,0)" onmouseout="ctl00_body_gridData.OutHandler(event,this,0)" onmousedown="ctl00_body_gridData.DownHandler(event,this,9,0)" onmouseup="ctl00_body_gridData.UpHandler(event,this,9,0)" style="width: 66px;" class="HeadingCell" align="center"> <div style="text-align: center; overflow: hidden; width: 66px;"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="white-space: nowrap; text-align: center;" class="HeadingCellText" align="center"> FCR<br>Group</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </td> <td onclick="ctl00_body_gridData.ClickHandler(event,this,12,0)" ondblclick="ctl00_body_gridData.DblClickHandler(event,null,12,0)" onmousemove="ctl00_body_gridData.MoveHandler(event,this,3,0)" onmouseover="ctl00_body_gridData.OverHandler(event,this,0)" onmouseout="ctl00_body_gridData.OutHandler(event,this,0)" onmousedown="ctl00_body_gridData.DownHandler(event,this,12,0)" onmouseup="ctl00_body_gridData.UpHandler(event,this,12,0)" style="width: 105px;" class="HeadingCell" align="center"> <div style="text-align: center; overflow: hidden; width: 105px;"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="white-space: nowrap; text-align: center;" class="HeadingCellText" align="center">Contractor</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </td> <td onclick="ctl00_body_gridData.ClickHandler(event,this,15,0)" ondblclick="ctl00_body_gridData.DblClickHandler(event,null,15,0)" onmousemove="ctl00_body_gridData.MoveHandler(event,this,4,0)" onmouseover="ctl00_body_gridData.OverHandler(event,this,0)" onmouseout="ctl00_body_gridData.OutHandler(event,this,0)" onmousedown="ctl00_body_gridData.DownHandler(event,this,15,0)" onmouseup="ctl00_body_gridData.UpHandler(event,this,15,0)" style="width: 159px;" class="HeadingCell" align="center"> <div style="text-align: center; overflow: hidden; width: 159px;"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="white-space: nowrap; text-align: center;" class="HeadingCellText" align="center"> Capital/Expense<br>Group</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </td> <td onclick="ctl00_body_gridData.ClickHandler(event,this,19,0)" ondblclick="ctl00_body_gridData.DblClickHandler(event,null,19,0)" onmousemove="ctl00_body_gridData.MoveHandler(event,this,5,0)" onmouseover="ctl00_body_gridData.OverHandler(event,this,0)" onmouseout="ctl00_body_gridData.OutHandler(event,this,0)" onmousedown="ctl00_body_gridData.DownHandler(event,this,19,0)" onmouseup="ctl00_body_gridData.UpHandler(event,this,19,0)" style="width: 99px;" class="HeadingCell" align="center"> <div style="text-align: center; overflow: hidden; width: 99px;"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="white-space: nowrap; text-align: center;" class="HeadingCellText" align="center">Cost Type</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </td> <td onclick="ctl00_body_gridData.ClickHandler(event,this,20,0)" ondblclick="ctl00_body_gridData.DblClickHandler(event,null,20,0)" onmousemove="ctl00_body_gridData.MoveHandler(event,this,6,0)" onmouseover="ctl00_body_gridData.OverHandler(event,this,0)" onmouseout="ctl00_body_gridData.OutHandler(event,this,0)" onmousedown="ctl00_body_gridData.DownHandler(event,this,20,0)" onmouseup="ctl00_body_gridData.UpHandler(event,this,20,0)" style="width: 81px;" class="HeadingCell" align="center"> <div style="text-align: center; overflow: hidden; width: 81px;"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="white-space: nowrap; text-align: center;" class="HeadingCellText" align="center"> Commit<br>Dollars</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </td> <td onclick="ctl00_body_gridData.ClickHandler(event,this,21,0)" ondblclick="ctl00_body_gridData.DblClickHandler(event,null,21,0)" onmousemove="ctl00_body_gridData.MoveHandler(event,this,7,0)" onmouseover="ctl00_body_gridData.OverHandler(event,this,0)" onmouseout="ctl00_body_gridData.OutHandler(event,this,0)" onmousedown="ctl00_body_gridData.DownHandler(event,this,21,0)" onmouseup="ctl00_body_gridData.UpHandler(event,this,21,0)" style="width: 81px;" class="HeadingCell" align="center"> <div style="text-align: center; overflow: hidden; width: 81px;"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="white-space: nowrap; text-align: center;" class="HeadingCellText" align="center"> Commit<br>Hours</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </td> <td onclick="ctl00_body_gridData.ClickHandler(event,this,22,0)" ondblclick="ctl00_body_gridData.DblClickHandler(event,null,22,0)" onmousemove="ctl00_body_gridData.MoveHandler(event,this,8,0)" onmouseover="ctl00_body_gridData.OverHandler(event,this,0)" onmouseout="ctl00_body_gridData.OutHandler(event,this,0)" onmousedown="ctl00_body_gridData.DownHandler(event,this,22,0)" onmouseup="ctl00_body_gridData.UpHandler(event,this,22,0)" style="width: 86px;" class="HeadingCell" align="center"> <div style="text-align: center; overflow: hidden; width: 86px;"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="white-space: nowrap; text-align: center;" class="HeadingCellText" align="center"> Commit<br>Quantity</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </td> <td onclick="ctl00_body_gridData.ClickHandler(event,this,23,0)" ondblclick="ctl00_body_gridData.DblClickHandler(event,null,23,0)" onmousemove="ctl00_body_gridData.MoveHandler(event,this,9,0)" onmouseover="ctl00_body_gridData.OverHandler(event,this,0)" onmouseout="ctl00_body_gridData.OutHandler(event,this,0)" onmousedown="ctl00_body_gridData.DownHandler(event,this,23,0)" onmouseup="ctl00_body_gridData.UpHandler(event,this,23,0)" style="width: 76px;" class="HeadingCell" align="center"> <div style="text-align: center; overflow: hidden; width: 76px;"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="white-space: nowrap; text-align: center;" class="HeadingCellText" align="center"> Control<br>Budget</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </td> <td onclick="ctl00_body_gridData.ClickHandler(event,this,24,0)" ondblclick="ctl00_body_gridData.DblClickHandler(event,null,24,0)" onmousemove="ctl00_body_gridData.MoveHandler(event,this,10,0)" onmouseover="ctl00_body_gridData.OverHandler(event,this,0)" onmouseout="ctl00_body_gridData.OutHandler(event,this,0)" onmousedown="ctl00_body_gridData.DownHandler(event,this,24,0)" onmouseup="ctl00_body_gridData.UpHandler(event,this,24,0)" style="width: 46px;" class="HeadingCell" align="center"> <div style="text-align: center; overflow: hidden; width: 46px;"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="white-space: nowrap; text-align: center;" class="HeadingCellText" align="center">FTC</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </td> <td onclick="ctl00_body_gridData.ClickHandler(event,this,25,0)" ondblclick="ctl00_body_gridData.DblClickHandler(event,null,25,0)" onmousemove="ctl00_body_gridData.MoveHandler(event,this,11,0)" onmouseover="ctl00_body_gridData.OverHandler(event,this,0)" onmouseout="ctl00_body_gridData.OutHandler(event,this,0)" onmousedown="ctl00_body_gridData.DownHandler(event,this,25,0)" onmouseup="ctl00_body_gridData.UpHandler(event,this,25,0)" style="width: 88px;" class="HeadingCell" align="center"> <div style="text-align: center; overflow: hidden; width: 88px;"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="white-space: nowrap; text-align: center;" class="HeadingCellText" align="center"> Total<br>Forecast</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </td> <td onclick="ctl00_body_gridData.ClickHandler(event,this,26,0)" ondblclick="ctl00_body_gridData.DblClickHandler(event,null,26,0)" onmousemove="ctl00_body_gridData.MoveHandler(event,this,12,0)" onmouseover="ctl00_body_gridData.OverHandler(event,this,0)" onmouseout="ctl00_body_gridData.OutHandler(event,this,0)" onmousedown="ctl00_body_gridData.DownHandler(event,this,26,0)" onmouseup="ctl00_body_gridData.UpHandler(event,this,26,0)" style="width: 50px;" class="HeadingCell" align="center"> <div style="text-align: center; overflow: hidden; width: 50px;"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="white-space: nowrap; text-align: center;" class="HeadingCellText" align="center"> Ctr<br>COB</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </td> <td onclick="ctl00_body_gridData.ClickHandler(event,this,27,0)" ondblclick="ctl00_body_gridData.DblClickHandler(event,null,27,0)" onmousemove="ctl00_body_gridData.MoveHandler(event,this,13,0)" onmouseover="ctl00_body_gridData.OverHandler(event,this,0)" onmouseout="ctl00_body_gridData.OutHandler(event,this,0)" onmousedown="ctl00_body_gridData.DownHandler(event,this,27,0)" onmouseup="ctl00_body_gridData.UpHandler(event,this,27,0)" style="width: 49px;" class="HeadingCell" align="center"> <div style="text-align: center; overflow: hidden; width: 49px;"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="white-space: nowrap; text-align: center;" class="HeadingCellText" align="center"> Ctr<br>CCB</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </td> <td onclick="ctl00_body_gridData.ClickHandler(event,this,28,0)" ondblclick="ctl00_body_gridData.DblClickHandler(event,null,28,0)" onmousemove="ctl00_body_gridData.MoveHandler(event,this,14,0)" onmouseover="ctl00_body_gridData.OverHandler(event,this,0)" onmouseout="ctl00_body_gridData.OutHandler(event,this,0)" onmousedown="ctl00_body_gridData.DownHandler(event,this,28,0)" onmouseup="ctl00_body_gridData.UpHandler(event,this,28,0)" style="width: 81px;" class="HeadingCell" align="center"> <div style="text-align: center; overflow: hidden; width: 81px;"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="white-space: nowrap; text-align: center;" class="HeadingCellText" align="center"> Ctr<br> Commit<br>$</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </td> <td onclick="ctl00_body_gridData.ClickHandler(event,this,29,0)" ondblclick="ctl00_body_gridData.DblClickHandler(event,null,29,0)" onmousemove="ctl00_body_gridData.MoveHandler(event,this,15,0)" onmouseover="ctl00_body_gridData.OverHandler(event,this,0)" onmouseout="ctl00_body_gridData.OutHandler(event,this,0)" onmousedown="ctl00_body_gridData.DownHandler(event,this,29,0)" onmouseup="ctl00_body_gridData.UpHandler(event,this,29,0)" style="width: 81px;" class="HeadingCell" align="center"> <div style="text-align: center; overflow: hidden; width: 81px;"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="white-space: nowrap; text-align: center;" class="HeadingCellText" align="center"> Ctr<br> Commit<br>Hours</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </td> <td onclick="ctl00_body_gridData.ClickHandler(event,this,30,0)" ondblclick="ctl00_body_gridData.DblClickHandler(event,null,30,0)" onmousemove="ctl00_body_gridData.MoveHandler(event,this,16,0)" onmouseover="ctl00_body_gridData.OverHandler(event,this,0)" onmouseout="ctl00_body_gridData.OutHandler(event,this,0)" onmousedown="ctl00_body_gridData.DownHandler(event,this,30,0)" onmouseup="ctl00_body_gridData.UpHandler(event,this,30,0)" style="width: 86px;" class="HeadingCell" align="center"> <div style="text-align: center; overflow: hidden; width: 86px;"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="white-space: nowrap; text-align: center;" class="HeadingCellText" align="center"> Ctr<br> Commit<br>Quantity</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </td> <td onclick="ctl00_body_gridData.ClickHandler(event,this,31,0)" ondblclick="ctl00_body_gridData.DblClickHandler(event,null,31,0)" onmousemove="ctl00_body_gridData.MoveHandler(event,this,17,0)" onmouseover="ctl00_body_gridData.OverHandler(event,this,0)" onmouseout="ctl00_body_gridData.OutHandler(event,this,0)" onmousedown="ctl00_body_gridData.DownHandler(event,this,31,0)" onmouseup="ctl00_body_gridData.UpHandler(event,this,31,0)" style="width: 95px;" class="HeadingCell" align="center"> <div style="text-align: center; overflow: hidden; width: 95px;"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="white-space: nowrap; text-align: center;" class="HeadingCellText" align="center"> Ctr<br>% Compl.</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </td> <td onclick="ctl00_body_gridData.ClickHandler(event,this,32,0)" ondblclick="ctl00_body_gridData.DblClickHandler(event,null,32,0)" onmousemove="ctl00_body_gridData.MoveHandler(event,this,18,0)" onmouseover="ctl00_body_gridData.OverHandler(event,this,0)" onmouseout="ctl00_body_gridData.OutHandler(event,this,0)" onmousedown="ctl00_body_gridData.DownHandler(event,this,32,0)" onmouseup="ctl00_body_gridData.UpHandler(event,this,32,0)" style="width: 105px;" class="HeadingCell" align="center"> <div style="text-align: center; overflow: hidden; width: 105px;"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="white-space: nowrap; text-align: center;" class="HeadingCellText" align="center"> Contractor<br>CFTC</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </td> </tr> <tr> <td id="ctl00_body_gridData_expcolgrp_0" width="16" align="center"></td> <td class="GroupHeading" colspan="20"> FCR<br>Group: Engineering</td> </tr> <tr> <td id="ctl00_body_gridData_expcolgrp_1" width="16" align="center"></td> <td class="GroupHeading" colspan="20"> FCR<br>Group: Pipe</td> </tr> <tr> <td id="ctl00_body_gridData_expcolgrp_2" width="16" align="center"></td> <td class="GroupHeading" colspan="20"> FCR<br>Group: Concrete</td> </tr> <tr> <td id="ctl00_body_gridData_expcolgrp_3" width="16" align="center"></td> <td class="GroupHeading" colspan="20"> FCR<br>Group: Insulation</td> </tr> <tr> <td id="ctl00_body_gridData_expcolgrp_4" width="16" align="center"></td> <td class="GroupHeading" colspan="20"> FCR<br>Group: Buildings</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </body> </html>

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• Big Data – Buzz Words: What is MapReduce – Day 7 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned what is Hadoop. In this article we will take a quick look at one of the four most important buzz words which goes around Big Data – MapReduce. What is MapReduce? MapReduce was designed by Google as a programming model for processing large data sets with a parallel, distributed algorithm on a cluster. Though, MapReduce was originally Google proprietary technology, it has been quite a generalized term in the recent time. MapReduce comprises a Map() and Reduce() procedures. Procedure Map() performance filtering and sorting operation on data where as procedure Reduce() performs a summary operation of the data. This model is based on modified concepts of the map and reduce functions commonly available in functional programing. The library where procedure Map() and Reduce() belongs is written in many different languages. The most popular free implementation of MapReduce is Apache Hadoop which we will explore tomorrow. Advantages of MapReduce Procedures The MapReduce Framework usually contains distributed servers and it runs various tasks in parallel to each other. There are various components which manages the communications between various nodes of the data and provides the high availability and fault tolerance. Programs written in MapReduce functional styles are automatically parallelized and executed on commodity machines. The MapReduce Framework takes care of the details of partitioning the data and executing the processes on distributed server on run time. During this process if there is any disaster the framework provides high availability and other available modes take care of the responsibility of the failed node. As you can clearly see more this entire MapReduce Frameworks provides much more than just Map() and Reduce() procedures; it provides scalability and fault tolerance as well. A typical implementation of the MapReduce Framework processes many petabytes of data and thousands of the processing machines. How do MapReduce Framework Works? A typical MapReduce Framework contains petabytes of the data and thousands of the nodes. Here is the basic explanation of the MapReduce Procedures which uses this massive commodity of the servers. Map() Procedure There is always a master node in this infrastructure which takes an input. Right after taking input master node divides it into smaller sub-inputs or sub-problems. These sub-problems are distributed to worker nodes. A worker node later processes them and does necessary analysis. Once the worker node completes the process with this sub-problem it returns it back to master node. Reduce() Procedure All the worker nodes return the answer to the sub-problem assigned to them to master node. The master node collects the answer and once again aggregate that in the form of the answer to the original big problem which was assigned master node. The MapReduce Framework does the above Map () and Reduce () procedure in the parallel and independent to each other. All the Map() procedures can run parallel to each other and once each worker node had completed their task they can send it back to master code to compile it with a single answer. This particular procedure can be very effective when it is implemented on a very large amount of data (Big Data). The MapReduce Framework has five different steps: Preparing Map() Input Executing User Provided Map() Code Shuffle Map Output to Reduce Processor Executing User Provided Reduce Code Producing the Final Output Here is the Dataflow of MapReduce Framework: Input Reader Map Function Partition Function Compare Function Reduce Function Output Writer In a future blog post of this 31 day series we will explore various components of MapReduce in Detail. MapReduce in a Single Statement MapReduce is equivalent to SELECT and GROUP BY of a relational database for a very large database. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss Buzz Word – HDFS. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• SQL SERVER – What is a Technology Evangelist?

  - by pinaldave

  When you hear that someone is an “evangelist” the first thing that might pop into your mind is the Christian church.  In fact, the term did come from Christianity, and basically means someone who spreads the news about their faith.  In the technology world, the same definition is true. Technology evangelists are individuals who, professionally or in their spare time, spread the news about the latest new products.  Sounds like a salesperson, right?  No they are absolutely different. Salespeople also keep up to date with a large number of people, and like to convince others to buy their product – and some will go to any lengths to sell!  An evangelist, on the other hand, is brutally honest about the product, even if sometimes it means not making a sale.  An evangelist is out there to tell the TRUTH.  A salesperson needs to make sales. An Evangelist offers a Solution independent of Technology used – a Salesperson offers Particular Technology. With this definition in mind, you can probably think of a few technology evangelists you already know.  Maybe it’s a relative or a neighbor, someone who loves keeping up with the latest trends and is always willing to tell you about them if you ask even the simplest question.  And, in fact, they probably are evangelists and don’t even know it.  For a long time, the work of technology evangelism was in the hands of community and community technology leaders. Luckily now various organizations have understood the importance of the community and helping community to reach their goals. This has lead them to create role of “Technology Evangelists”. Let me talk about one of the most famous Evangelist of the SQL Server technology. Technology Evangelist only belongs to technology and above any country, race, location or any other thing. They are dedicated to the technology. Vinod Kumar is such a man, who have given a lot to community. For years he was a Technology Evangelist for Microsoft, and maintained a blog that was dedicated to spreading his enthusiasm for his favorite products.  He is one of the most respected Evangelists in the field, and has done a lot of work to define the job for other professionals. Vinod’s career has since progressed to the Microsoft Technology Center (read his post), but he is continuing to be a strong presence in the evangelism community.  I have a lot of respect for Vinod.  He has done a lot for the community and technology evangelism.  Everybody has dream to serve community the way he does, and he is a great role model for evangelists everywhere. On his blog, Vinod created one of the best descriptions of a Technology Evangelist.  It defined the position and also made the distinction between evangelist and salesperson extremely clear.  I will include the highlights of that list here, because no one can say it better than Vinod: Bundle of energy – Passion is their middle name Wonderful Story tellers Empathy, Trust, Loyalty, Openness, Accessibility and Warmth Technology Enthusiast – Doers Love people, people and more people – Community oriented Unique Style and Leadership qualities !!! Self-Confident, Self-Motivated but a student (To read the full list, see: Evangelism Beyond Borders with Evangelists) His blog is a must-read for anyone interested in technology evangelism as a career or simply a hobby.  His advice about how to gain an audience and become a trusted advisor is the best in the business. I think there is an evangelist in everyone. I, too, consider myself a technology evangelist.  Regular readers of this blog will recognize that I am dedicated to bringing information to the masses, and that I pride myself on being both brutally and honest and giving every product fair consideration. I think there is no better way of saying following subject. “Once an Evangelist – Always an Evangelist!” Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)     Filed under: About Me, Database, MVP, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Evangelist

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