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• Why should I not do a masters degree

  - by aurel

  I have left university on July 2010 where I studied web design (as we all know you learn more by your self but that’s not the issue at the moment). Since then I have not managed to find a job (apart from a one month work experience), from the way things are going, and by taking into account the fact that all my university friends are in the same situation, I don’t think that I am going to find a job soon (within the industry) Now as we all do, even though I don’t have a job, I am still working on personal projects and try to keep up to date (I don’t need a job or uni to do this) – but I am thinking, because there is not work available, would it be worth going back to uni for a master degree? I know I don’t need it and I know that is unlikely that I will learn anything important, as I believe in self learning, and in most cases it is a lot more effective (but I have to say I don’t mind going back to school) The only reason I am thinking of doing the master is, (and this is where I need your help): If it takes me a year to get a job, then on the interview, would the employer think “what the hell did this guy do since he left university” – now if I go to university that would solve this problem. Or I’m I making up a problem that does not exist Plus, I know that employers need examples of sites that I have been working on, at the moment I only have 3 (as when working on personal projects, where their is not time limit I tend drag things in order to get them perfect, and they never get perfect) – so by going back to uni, then this problem maybe solved I said all this as I have read a lot about the fact that you don’t need to have a masters degree to work on web design market (and I totally agree) but considering my concern, the question is should I do a masters course to avoid just spending hours in my room working and learning in my own (but that it would be hard to convince employers that I was really learning in my room) Maybe because I’m still young age 22 not that old anyway :), but I don’t have the “dream” of being rich, so if I were to tell the truth I don’t really care of the fact that I don’t have a job (at the moment), because regardless, I am working on what I love every day, but I know that in the future when I will need the job I may find it harder to get one, if I neglect doing so now Every time I ask a question that I’m not sure about, I keep going on and on, but I really hope you get what I am trying to get across. By the way the course that I am looking at for a masters says that it would teach me how to do these: e-commerce e-government e-science e-learning I don’t know any of them, a part from e-commerce Thanks

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• Is there a pedagogical game engine?

  - by K.G.

  I'm looking for a book, website, or other resource that gives modern 3D game engines the same treatment as Operating Systems: Design and Implementation gave operating systems. I have read Jason Gregory's Game Engine Architecture, which I enjoyed. However, by intent the author treated components of the architecture as atomic units, whereas what I'm interested in is the plumbing between those units that makes a coherent whole out of ideally loosely coupled parts. In books such as these, one usually reads that "that's academic," but that's the point! I have also read Julian Gold's Object-oriented Game Development, which likewise was good, but I feel is beginning to show its age. Since even mobile platforms these days are multicore and have fast video memory, those kinds of things (concurrency, display item buffering) would ideally be covered. There are other resources, such as the Doom 3 source code, which is highly instructive for its being a shipped product. The problem with those is as follows: float Q_rsqrt( float number ) { long i; float x2, y; const float threehalfs = 1.5F; x2 = number * 0.5F; y = number; i = * ( long * ) &y; // evil floating point bit level hacking i = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 ); // what the f***? y = * ( float * ) &i; y = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); // 1st iteration // y = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); // 2nd iteration, this can be removed return y; } To wit, while brilliant, this kind of source requires more enlightenment than I can usually muster upon first read. In summary, here's my white whale: For an adult reader with experience in programming. I wish I could save all the trees killed by every. Single. Game Programming book ever devoting the first two chapters to "Now just what is a variable anyway?" In C or C++, very preferably C++. Languages that are more concise are fantastic for teaching, except for when what you want to learn is how to cope with a verbose language. There is also the benefit of the guardrails that C++ doesn't provide, such as garbage collection. Platform agnostic. I'm sincerely afraid that this book is out there and it's Visual C++/DirectX oriented. I'm a Linux guy, and I'd do what it takes, but I would very much like to be able to use OpenGL. Thanks for everything! Before anyone gets on my case about it, Fast inverse square root was from Quake III Arena, not Doom 3!

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• SQL: empty string vs NULL value

  - by Jacek Prucia

  I know this subject is a bit controversial and there are a lot of various articles/opinions floating around the internet. Unfortunatelly, most of them assume the person doesn't know what the difference between NULL and empty string is. So they tell stories about surprising results with joins/aggregates and generally do a bit more advanced SQL lessons. By doing this, they absolutely miss the whole point and are therefore useless for me. So hopefully this question and all answers will move subject a bit forward. Let's suppose I have a table with personal information (name, birth, etc) where one of the columns is an email address with varchar type. We assume that for some reason some people might not want to provide an email address. When inserting such data (without email) into the table, there are two available choices: set cell to NULL or set it to empty string (''). Let's assume that I'm aware of all the technical implications of choosing one solution over another and I can create correct SQL queries for either scenario. The problem is even when both values differ on the technical level, they are exactly the same on logical level. After looking at NULL and '' I came to a single conclusion: I don't know email address of the guy. Also no matter how hard i tried, I was not able to sent an e-mail using either NULL or empty string, so apparently most SMTP servers out there agree with my logic. So i tend to use NULL where i don't know the value and consider empty string a bad thing. After some intense discussions with colleagues i came with two questions: am I right in assuming that using empty string for an unknown value is causing a database to "lie" about the facts? To be more precise: using SQL's idea of what is value and what is not, I might come to conclusion: we have e-mail address, just by finding out it is not null. But then later on, when trying to send e-mail I'll come to contradictory conclusion: no, we don't have e-mail address, that @!#$ Database must have been lying! Is there any logical scenario in which an empty string '' could be such a good carrier of important information (besides value and no value), which would be troublesome/inefficient to store by any other way (like additional column). I've seen many posts claiming that sometimes it's good to use empty string along with real values and NULLs, but so far haven't seen a scenario that would be logical (in terms of SQL/DB design). P.S. Some people will be tempted to answer, that it is just a matter of personal taste. I don't agree. To me it is a design decision with important consequences. So i'd like to see answers where opion about this is backed by some logical and/or technical reasons.

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• Has test driven development (TDD) actually benefited a real world project?

  - by James

  I am not new to coding. I have been coding (seriously) for over 15 years now. I have always had some testing for my code. However, over the last few months I have been learning test driven design/development (TDD) using Ruby on Rails. So far, I'm not seeing the benefit. I see some benefit to writing tests for some things, but very few. And while I like the idea of writing the test first, I find I spend substantially more time trying to debug my tests to get them to say what I really mean than I do debugging actual code. This is probably because the test code is often substantially more complicated than the code it tests. I hope this is just inexperience with the available tools (RSpec in this case). I must say though, at this point, the level of frustration mixed with the disappointing lack of performance is beyond unacceptable. So far, the only value I'm seeing from TDD is a growing library of RSpec files that serve as templates for other projects/files. Which is not much more useful, maybe less useful, than the actual project code files. In reading the available literature, I notice that TDD seems to be a massive time sink up front, but pays off in the end. I'm just wondering, are there any real world examples? Does this massive frustration ever pay off in the real world? I really hope I did not miss this question somewhere else on here. I searched, but all the questions/answers are several years old at this point. It was a rare occasion when I found a developer who would say anything bad about TDD, which is why I have spent as much time on this as I have. However, I noticed that nobody seems to point to specific real-world examples. I did read one answer that said the guy debugging the code in 2011 would thank you for have a complete unit testing suite (I think that comment was made in 2008). So, I'm just wondering, after all these years, do we finally have any examples showing the payoff is real? Has anybody actually inherited or gone back to code that was designed/developed with TDD and has a complete set of unit tests and actually felt a payoff? Or did you find that you were spending so much time trying to figure out what the test was testing (and why it was important) that you just tossed out the whole mess and dug into the code?

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• How to move a website and domain name without experiencing downtime for emails or site?

  - by user4842

  Okay, I have a pretty complex problem, so I'll get right to it. I'm a designer who built a new website for my client. Their old site is hosted at GoDaddy, as well as their email. Problem is, the guy who built the original site decided to put the original domain name and hosting under HIS personal GoDaddy account. Well, that turned out to be a bad move for several reasons. Here's how it's all tied together. The original domain name, www.domainoriginal.com, was actually purchased at Network Solutions. The original web designer pointed the nameservers from Network Solutions to his GoDaddy account, where the email and hosting is setup. The new domain name, www.domainnew.com, was purchased under a new and separate GoDaddy account belonging to the company, and the new website was built under a 3rd party platform (Big Commerce). So, the www.domainnew.com is already pointed to the new website using A records at new GoDaddy account. All is fine there. However, they still need www.domainoriginal.com to point to the NEW website as well. (The old one can simply be deleted, it is NOT important). AND, they want to keep their old email addresses intact and working as well, but under the NEW GoDaddy account. Obviously, I have no DNS control at Network Solutions, and I have no idea what kind of control I have at GoDaddy under the old account because the web designer will not let me see inside his account. But, he and GoDaddy both tell me nothing can be done other than to repoint the nameservers to Network Solutions, and then repoint the A record to my new website, www.domainnew.com, and point the MX Records to GoDaddy. I'm told the downtime would be 24-48 hours if I do this. Ideally, we'd like to do a domain name transfer and get www.domainoriginal.com in the new GoDaddy account created by the company. But, I'm told this could take up to 7 days. Does this mean the site and email will be down for 7 days? And any emails sent during this time, would they be lost forever? If I do this, how long could I expect the site and email to go down? And, will the emails be permanently lost? I've gotten different answers from everybody at GoDaddy so I kind of don't trust them anymore... Any help would be greatly appreciated Thanks, Tyson

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• Traditional POS is Dead

  - by David Dorf

  Traditional POS is dead -- I've heard that one before. Here's an excerpt from Joe Skorupa's blog over at RIS where he relayed ten trends that were presented at NRF. 7. Mobile POS signals death of traditional POS. Shoppers don't love self-checkout, but they prefer it to long queues or dealing with associates. Fixed POS is expensive and bulky. Mobile POS frees floor space for other purposes and converts associates from being cashiers to being sales assistants that provide new levels of customer service and incremental basket sales. In addition to unplugging the POS, new alternatives are starting to take hold - thin client, POS as a service, and replacing POS software with e-commerce platforms. I'll grant that in some situations for some retailers there might be an opportunity to to ditch the traditional POS, but for the majority of retailers that's just not practical. Take it from a guy that had to wake up at 3am after every Thanksgiving to monitor POS systems across the US on Black Friday. If a retailer's website goes down on Black Friday, they will take a significant hit. If a retailer's chain-wide POS system goes down on Black Friday, that retailer will cease to exist. Mobile POS works great for Apple because the majority of purchases are one or two big-ticket items that don't involve cash. There's still a traditional POS in every store to fall back on (its just hidden). Try this at home: Choose your favorite e-commerce site and add an item to the cart while timing how long it takes. Now multiply that by 15 to represent the 15 items you might buy at store like Target. The user interface isn't optimized for bulk purchases, and that's how it should be. The webstore and POS are designed for different purposes. Self-checkout is a great addition to POS and so is mobile checkout. But they add capabilities to POS, not replace it. Centralized architectures, even those based in the cloud, are quite viable as long as there's resiliency in the registers. You cannot assume perfect access to the network, so a POS must always be able to sell regardless of connectivity. Clearly the different selling channels should be sharing common functionality. Things like calculating tax, accepting coupons, and processing electronic payments can be shared, usually through a service-oriented architecture. This lowers costs and providers greater consistency, both of which help retailers. On paper these technologies look really good and we should continue to push boundaries, but I'm not ready to call the patient dead just yet.

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• Them and us

  - by Plip

  As much as we try and create inclusive societies throughout the globe time and time again we revert to our tribal and clan origins back in the distant past, be those line split across the obvious like  Nationality, Religion or even the Football teams we follow. Microsoft to me has always been a “them”. I was always on the outside looking in, free to say as I wished and have an external objective viewpoint. Now, after my first week (well four days but who’s counting) Microsoft is an “us” for me. So when I look up in the Atrium of Building 1 at Microsoft’s UK headquarters I see banners like the one above and I already genuinely feel a part of this much bigger community. I looked up at that and I felt a sense of pride to be part of something bigger, something which is out there touching peoples lives everywhere (for the good and the bad). My objectivity has made me who I am today. I’m open to other ideas and concepts, I’ve worked hard to be understanding across the board be it from technology through to cultural differences in my life and it’s vital to me that I preserve that so I now have to learn how I balance the “them” of Microsoft to the “us” of Microsoft and maintain the objectivity. It’s my job to advise people on the best way to do things, which won’t always mean “Use Microsoft Technology X”, sometimes it’ll be my responsibility to say “Don’t use Microsoft Technology X”. My first and foremost responsibility is to the customer, to give them the best advice that I can and I want to maintain that. Yeah, I’m sure I’ll be tarred by some as a Microsoft guy, for many years I’ve had just that, but those out there in the non Microsoft communities I’ve engaged in I think know that I’m the first to say when I think something is a bit naff. So, here’s my ask to you ‘the community’. Keep me honest. If I start to sound like a fanboi I want you to find me and give me a slap. It’s all too easy to forget reality sometimes and I want to make sure I stay well and truly routed in that reality. Also, no matter how much I embed myself within Microsoft I fear I will never understand Microsoft’s marketing team. In the Gents just under the WP7 banner shown above I was faced with this. Draw your own conclusions on what it’s message is.

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• Actor and Sprite, who should own these properties?

  - by Gerardo Marset

  I'm writing sort of a 2D game engine for making the process of creating games easier. It has two classes, Actor and Sprite. Actor is used for interactive elements (the player, enemies, bullets, a menu, an invisible instance that controls score, etc) and Sprite is used for animated (or not) images with transparency (or not). The actor may have an assigned sprite that represents it on the screen, which may change during the game. E.g. in a top-down action game you may have an actor with a sprite of a little guy that changes when attacking, walking, and facing different directions, etc. Currently the actor has x and y properties (its coordinates in the screen), while the sprite has an index property (the number of the frame currently being shown by the sprite). Since the sprite doesn't know which actor it belongs to (or if it belongs to an actor at all), the actor must pass its x and y coordinates when drawing the sprite. Also, since a actors may reset its sprite each frame (and usually do), the sprite's index property must be passed from the old to the new sprite like so (pseudocode): function change_sprite(new_sprite) old_index = my.sprite.index my.sprite = new_sprite() my.sprite.index = old_index % my.sprite.frames end I always thought this was kind of cumbersome, but it never was a big problem. Now I decided to add support for more properties. Namely a property to draw the sprite rotated, a property to draw it flipped, it a property draw it stretched, etc. These should probably belong to the sprite and not the actor, but if they do, the actor would have to pass them from the old to the new sprite each time it changes... On the other hand, if they belonged to the actor, the actor would have to pass each property to the sprite when drawing it (since the sprite doesn't know which actor it belongs to, and it shouldn't, since sprites aren't just meant to be used by actors, really). Another option I thought of would be having an extra class that owns all these properties (plus index, x and y) and links an actor with a sprite, but that doesn't come without drawbacks. So, what should I do with all these properties? Thanks!

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• What causes Multi-Page allocations?

  - by SQLOS Team

  Writing about changes in the Denali Memory Manager In his last post Rusi mentioned: " In previous SQL versions only the 8k allocations were limited by the ‘max server memory’ configuration option.  Allocations larger than 8k weren’t constrained." In SQL Server versions before Denali single page allocations and multi-Page allocations are handled by different components, the Single Page Allocator (which is responsible for Buffer Pool allocations and governed by 'max server memory') and the Multi-Page allocator (MPA) which handles allocations of greater than an 8K page. If there are many multi-page allocations this can affect how much memory needs to be reserved outside 'max server memory' which may in turn involve setting the -g memory_to_reserve startup parameter. We'll follow up with more generic articles on the new Memory Manager structure, but in this post I want to clarify what might cause these larger allocations. So what kinds of query result in MPA activity? I was asked this question the other day after delivering an MCM webcast on Memory Manager changes in Denali. After asking around our Dev team I was connected to one of our test leads Sangeetha who had tested the plan cache, and kindly provided this example of an MPA intensive query: A workload that has stored procedures with a large # of parameters (say > 100, > 500), and then invoked via large ad hoc batches, where each SP has different parameters will result in a plan being cached for this “exec proc” batch. This plan will result in MPA.   Exec proc_name @p1, ….@p500 Exec proc_name @p1, ….@p500 . . . Exec proc_name @p1, ….@p500 Go   Another workload would be large adhoc batches of the form: Select * from t where col1 in (1, 2, 3, ….500) Select * from t where col1 in (1, 2, 3, ….500) Select * from t where col1 in (1, 2, 3, ….500) … Go  In Denali all page allocations are handled by an "Any size page allocator" and included in 'max server memory'. The buffer pool effectively becomes a client of the any size page allocator, which in turn relies on the memory manager. - Guy Originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlosteam/

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• What to do when you inherit an unmaintainable codebase?

  - by GordonM

  I'm currently working at a company with 2 other PHP developers aside from me, and 1 junior developer. The senior developer who originally built the system we're all working on has resigned and will only be here for a matter of weeks. The other developer, who is the only other guy who knows anything about the system, is unhappy here and is looking for a new job. I'm very real danger of being left behind as the only experienced developer on this codebase. Since I've joined this company I've tried to push for better coding standards, project documentation, etc and I do think I've made some headway, but the vast majority of the code is simply unmaintainable and uncommented. A lot of this has to do with the need to get things done fast at points in the project before I joined, but now the technical debt is enormous, even with the two developers who do understand the system on board. Without them, it will simply be impossible to do anything with it. The senior developer is working on trying to at least comment all his code before he leaves but I think the codebase is simply too vast to properly document in the remaining time. Besides, when he does comment it still doesn't make things as clear as it could. If the system was better organized and documented I could probably start refactoring it incrementally, but the whole thing is so tightly coupled that it's very difficult to make any changes in one module without having unintended knock-on effects in other modules. Naturally, there's no unit tests either, and I honestly don't think this codebase could possibly be unit tested anyway given how it's implemented. There also never seems to be enough time to get things done even with 3 developers and 1 junior developer. With one developer and one junior, neither of which had significant input into the early design of the system, I don't see how we could possibly get anything done with keeping the current system working, implementing new features as needed and developing a replacement for the current codebase that is better organized. Is there an approach I can take to cope with this situation, or should I be getting my own CV in order as well at this point? If it was just me and the junior designer who would be left I'd go for the latter option almost without question. However, there's a team of front-end developers and content managers as well, and I'm worried what would become of them if I left and put them in a position where there would be no developers at all. The department might just be closed down altogether under such circumstances, and then I'd have their unemployment on my conscience as well!

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• MOSSLover Lives On&hellip;

  - by MOSSLover

  A while back, maybe 6 months, I got some bad news about 2010.  Microsoft was removing Office from the MOSS equivalent of 2010, so basically my alias would be obsolete the second 2010 caught on in the community.  I thought about it for some time.  I had some discussions with friends in the community.  I even noticed that the MOSSMan changed his twitter id.  I started my blog around a WSS 3.0 project when I worked for LRS in there St. Louis Office in February/March 2007.  So I think it’s fitting to keep the name, because my community involvement centers around 2007.  My first ever speaking ordeal was at the Kansas City Office Geeks meeting in November of 2007 on Disaster Recovery where about three people attended.  The first user group meeting I ever attended was around the month of June 2007 at the KC .Net User Group about two weeks after my braces were installed.  It’s definitely fitting to say that 2007 paved the way for everything that happened in the past 2/2 1/2 years.  If anyone asks what MOSSLover means I added a description on twitter and I also added my name.  I added my name for other reasons, because I’m sick of people thinking I am the guy in the photo.  Also, I’d like people to recognize me for who I am.  Everyone should expect less of the hat in the upcoming year and more of my hair.  I’ve taken a vow to wear the hat less and less this year.  I am sick of buying hats, plus I want to move forward to gain more self confidence.  The hat does not really help.  I will still wear a t-shirt and jeans in most of my presentations.  That is who I am and it will not change any time soon.  If you expect to see me in a skirt good luck with that as it won’t be happening unless I am forced at gun point.  I hope you guys have a good weekend.  Later all… Technorati Tags: MOSSLover,Cardinal's Hat,Becky Isserman

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• Career advice: stay with PHP or start a new career in something else ( .Net?)

  - by Christian P

  I'm planning on moving to NY in 6-12 months tops, so I'm forced to find a new job. When I'm planing to start my life in another city it's also probably a good time to think about career changes. I've found a lot of different opinions about PHP vs .Net vs Java and this is not topic here. I don't want to start a new fight about which language is better. Knowing programming language is not the most important thing for being a software developer. To be a really good developer you need to know OOP, design patterns, testing... and language is just a tool to make things happen. So back to my question. I have mixed experience in IT - 1 year as an IT support guy (Windows administration and support), around 2 years of experience in embedded programming (VB.Net 2005) and for the last 2 years I'm working with PHP/MySQL. I have worked with Magento web shop, assisted in some projects in Symfony, modified few Drupal sites. My main concerns are following: Do I continue to improve my skills in PHP e.g. to start learning some major PHP framework like Zend, Symfony maybe get some PHP certification. Or do I start learning .NET or Java. I'm more familiar to .NET so I'll probably choose it if choice falls between .NET and Java ( or you could convince me to choose Java :). Career-wise, I don't know what is the best choice. Learning new framework and language is more time consuming then improving my existing skills in PHP. But with .NET you have a lot of possibilities (Windows 7 Phone development, Silverlight, WPF) and possibly bigger chances to find better jobs. PHP jobs are less payed then .NET, at least, according to my researches (correct me if I'm wrong). But if I start now with .NET I'm just a beginner and my salary will be low. I need at least 2+ years of experience in some language to even try to find some job that is paying higher than $50-60k in NY. My main goal in next 2-3 years is to try to find a job in a $60-80k category. Don't get me wrong, I'm not just chasing money, but money is an important factor when you're trying to start a family. I'm 27 years old and I feel that there isn't a lot of room for wrong decisions regarding my career, so any advice will be very welcome. Update Thank you all for spending time to help me with my problem. All of the answers and comments have been very helpful. I have decided to stick with PHP but also to learn C# and Silverlight 4. We'll see where the life will take me.

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• Best Advice Ever: Learn By Helping Others

  - by Argenis

  I remember when back in 2001 my friend and former SQL Server MVP Carlos Eduardo Rojas was busy earning his MVP street-cred in the NNTP forums, aka Newsgroups. I always thought he was playing the Sheriff trying to put some order in a Wild Wild West town by trying to understand what these people were asking. He spent a lot of time doing this stuff – and I thought it was just plain crazy. After all, he was doing it for free. What was he gaining from all of that work? It was not until the advent of Twitter and #SQLHelp that I realized the real gain behind helping others. Forget about the glory and the laurels of others thanking you (and thinking you’re the best thing ever – ha!), or whatever award with whatever three letter acronym might be given to you. It’s about what you learn in the process of helping others. See, when you teach something, it’s usually at a fixed date and time, and on a specific topic. But helping others with their issues or general questions is something that goes on 24x7, on whatever topic under the sun. Just go look at sites like DBA.StackExchange.com, or the SQLServerCentral forums. It’s questions coming in literally non-stop from all corners or the world. And yet a lot of people are willing to help you, regardless of who you are, where you come from, or what time of day it is. And in my case, this process of helping others usually leads to me learning something new. Especially in those cases where the question isn’t really something I’m good at. The delicate part comes when you’re ready to give an answer, but you’re not sure. Often times I’ll try to validate with Internet searches and what have you. Often times I’ll throw in a question mark at the end of the answer, so as not to look authoritative, but rather suggestive. But as time passes by, you get more and more comfortable with that topic. And that’s the real gain.  I have done this for many years now on #SQLHelp, which is my preferred vehicle for providing assistance. I cannot tell you how much I’ve learned from it. By helping others, by watching others help. It’s all knowledge and experience you gain…and you might not be getting all that in your day job today. Such thing, my dear reader, is invaluable. It’s what will differentiate yours amongst a pack of resumes. It’s what will get you places. Take it from me - a guy who, like you, knew nothing about SQL Server.

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• How can I be prepared to join a company?

  - by Aerovistae

  There's more to it than that, but this title was the best way I could think of to sum it up. I'm a senior in a good computer science program, and I'm graduating early. About to start interviews and all whatnot. I'm not a super-experienced programmer, not one of those people who started in middle school. I'm decent at this, but I'm not among the best, not nearly. I have to do an awful lot of googling. So today I'm meeting some fellow for lunch at a campus cafe to discuss some front-end details when this tall, good-looking guy begs pardon, says he's new to campus, says he's wondering if we know where he can go to sign up for recruiting developers. Quickly evolves into long conversation: he's the CEO of a seems-to-be-doing-well start-up. Hiring passionate interns and full-times. Sounds great! I take one look at his site on my own computer later, immediately spot a major bug. No idea how to fix it, but I see it. I go over to the page code, and good god. It's the standard amount of code you would expect from a full-scale web application, a couple dozen pages of HTML and scripts. I don't even know where to start reading it. I've built sites from scratch, but obviously never on that scale, nor have I ever worked on one of that scale. I have no idea which bit might generate the bug. But that sets me thinking: How could someone like me possibly settle into an environment like that? A start-up is a very high-pressure working environment. I don't know if I can work at that pace under those constraints-- I would hate to let people down. And with only 10 employees, it's not like anyone has much time to help you get your bearings. Somewhere in there is a question. Can you see it? I'm asking for general advice here. Maybe even anecdotal advice. Is joining a start-up right out of college a scary process? Am I overestimating what it would take to figure out the mass of code behind this site? What's the likelihood a decent but only moderately-experienced coder could earn his pay at such a place? For instance, I know nothing of server-side/back-end programming. Never touched it. That scares me.

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• HTML5 game programming style

  - by fnx

  I am currently trying learn javascript in form of HTML5 games. Stuff that I've done so far isn't too fancy since I'm still a beginner. My biggest concern so far has been that I don't really know what is the best way to code since I don't know the pros and cons of different methods, nor I've found any good explanations about them. So far I've been using the worst (and propably easiest) method of all (I think) since I'm just starting out, for example like this: var canvas = document.getElementById("canvas"); var ctx = canvas.getContext("2d"); var width = 640; var height = 480; var player = new Player("pic.png", 100, 100, ...); also some other global vars... function Player(imgSrc, x, y, ...) { this.sprite = new Image(); this.sprite.src = imgSrc; this.x = x; this.y = y; ... } Player.prototype.update = function() { // blah blah... } Player.prototype.draw = function() { // yada yada... } function GameLoop() { player.update(); player.draw(); setTimeout(GameLoop, 1000/60); } However, I've seen a few examples on the internet that look interesting, but I don't know how to properly code in these styles, nor do I know if there are names for them. These might not be the best examples but hopefully you'll get the point: 1: Game = { variables: { width: 640, height: 480, stuff: value }, init: function(args) { // some stuff here }, update: function(args) { // some stuff here }, draw: function(args) { // some stuff here }, }; // from http://codeincomplete.com/posts/2011/5/14/javascript_pong/ 2: function Game() { this.Initialize = function () { } this.LoadContent = function () { this.GameLoop = setInterval(this.RunGameLoop, this.DrawInterval); } this.RunGameLoop = function (game) { this.Update(); this.Draw(); } this.Update = function () { // update } this.Draw = function () { // draw game frame } } // from http://www.felinesoft.com/blog/index.php/2010/09/accelerated-game-programming-with-html5-and-canvas/ 3: var engine = {}; engine.canvas = document.getElementById('canvas'); engine.ctx = engine.canvas.getContext('2d'); engine.map = {}; engine.map.draw = function() { // draw map } engine.player = {}; engine.player.draw = function() { // draw player } // from http://that-guy.net/articles/ So I guess my questions are: Which is most CPU efficient, is there any difference between these styles at runtime? Which one allows for easy expandability? Which one is the most safe, or at least harder to hack? Are there any good websites where stuff like this is explained? or... Does it all come to just personal preferance? :)

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• TechEd 2010 Day Three: The Database Designer (Isn't)

  - by BuckWoody

  Yesterday at TechEd 2010 here in New Orleans I worked the front-booth, answering general SQL Server questions for the masses. I was actually a little surprised to find most of the questions I got were from folks that wanted to know more about Stream Insight and Master Data Services. In past conferences I've been asked a lot of "free consulting" questions, about problems folks have had from older products. I don't mind that a bit - in fact, I'm always happy to help in any way I can. But this time people are really interested in the new features in the product, and I like that they are thinking ahead, not just having to solve problems in production. My presentation was on "Database Design in an Hour". We had the usual fun, and SideShow Bob made an appearance - I kid you not. The guy in the back of the room looked just like Sideshow Bob, so I quickly held a "bes thair" contest, and he won. Duing the presentation, I explain the tools you can use to design databases. I also explain that the "Database Designer" tool in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) isn't truly a desinger - it uses non-standard notation, doesn't have a meta-data dictionary, and worst of all, it works at the physical level. In other words, whatever you do in SSMS will automatically change the field/table/relationship structures in the database. We fixed this in SSMS 2008 and higher by adding an option to block that, but the tool is not a good design function nonetheless. To be fair, no one I know of at Microsoft recommends that it is - but I was shocked to hear so many developers in the room defending it as a good tool. I think the main issue for someone who doesn't have to work with Relational Systems a great deal is that it can be difficult to figure out Foreign Keys. The syntax makes them look "backwards", so it's just easier to grab a field and place it on the table you want to point to. There are options. You can download a couple of free tools (CA has a community edition of ER-WIN, Quest has one, and Embarcadero also has one) and if you design more than one or two databases a year, it may be worth buying a true design tool. For years I used Visio, but we changed it so that it doesn't forward-engineer (create the DDL) any more, so it isn't a true design tool either. So investigate those free and not-so-free tools. You'll find they help you in your job - but stay away from the Database Designer in SSMS. Or I'll send Sideshow Bob over there to straighten you out. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• How quickly to leave contract-to-hire gig where you don't want to be hired? [closed]

  - by nono

  So you move to a big new city with tons of software development opportunity, having taken a six month contract-to-hire job. The company treats you really well and has a good team and work environment. However, the recruiter assured you when offering the gig that it would be a good position in which you can advance your learning from more senior developers (a primary concern of yours) but you're starting to realize that a job recruiter isn't going to understand that the team in question isn't very up on modern software practices (you start to sympathize with this guy and read his post over and over again: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1586166/career-killer-nhibernate-oop-design-patterns-domain-driven-design-test-driv) and that much of the company's software is very old and very very poorly architected, and the company (like so many others) seems to be only concerned with continually extending the software without investing in any structural improvements. You're absolutely dismayed at how long it takes your team (including) to fulfill simple feature requests (maybe 500-1000% longer than with better designed software that you've worked on in the past), but no one else there seems to think anything of it. You find that the work and the company's business are intensely uninteresting to you, but due to the convoluted design of their various software systems, fulfilling the work will require as much mental engagement as any other development position. You feel a bit naive about not having asked the right questions during your interview process, and for not having anticipated that your team at your former podunk company might possibly be light-years ahead of any team in Big Shiny City, but you know you don't want to stay at this place, and (were it not for your personal, after-hours studying and personal programming efforts) fear that you might actually give a worse interview after completing your 6 months than you did when you started at the place. You read about how hard of a time local companies are having filling their positions with qualified software development candidates. You read all sorts of fabulous sounding job postings online and feel like you're really missing out. In spite of the comfortable environment you feel like you would willingly accept a somewhat more demanding or aggressive lifestyle to feel like you are learning and progressing and producing something meaningful. My questions are: how quickly do you leave and how do you go about giving a polite reason for departing? The contract is written to allow them to "can" you and to allow you to leave with 2 weeks notice. Do you ethically owe the 6 months? Upon taking the position, the company told you they were not interested in candidates who were intending to only stay for 6 months and then leave (you were not intending to bail after 6 months, at that time), so perhaps they might be fine if you split now, knowing that you don't want to stick around for the full time hire?

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• Boot error aftter clean Ubuntu 13.04 install: [Reboot and select proper boot device]

  - by IcarusNM

  I am having the same problem as this guy where a fresh Ubuntu install completes beautifully but will not boot. I get the ASUS (?) "Reboot and select proper boot device" error, first with Xubuntu 13.10 and after finally giving up there, and Xubuntu 13.4, I am back to regular Ubuntu 13.4. ASUS motherboard Z77, Intel chipset. Standard internal SATA 500GB HD. 64-bit. All-new hardware less than 3 months old. It was running Ubuntu 12.04LTC great until I tried this upgrade. I have re-installed from scratch every which way: with LVM, without LVM; with the default partitions, with my own partitions. With ext3 or ext4. Alongside; replace; upgrade. No difference. On the last two tries, I have booted afterward from the same USB stick, downloaded and run boot-repair, and now I guess I am off to the boot-repair support email with my URLs from that. It did all kinds of cool stuff but ultimately made no difference. I never got anything like this with Ubuntu 12.04. I've now probably re-installed Ubuntu 13.04 ten times slightly different ways. I finally found how to skip the language packs, so at least that sped things up! :) This starts from the ubuntu-13.04-desktop-amd64.iso and UNetbootin as suggested on the official instructions for USB thumb drive creation from OSX. That part all works fine (booting the USB on the PC and trying Ubuntu and/or installing from there on the PC HD.) I have no CD drive on this PC, but I suppose I could get one. I would rather find some Linux install that works from USB like I've always done. After running boot-repair twice, in the ASUS BIOS I now see three different UEFI boot options in the priority list, and they are all labeled exactly the same: ubuntu (P6: WDC WD5000AAKX-00U6AA0) Then there's a non-UEFI option: P6: WDC WD5000AAKX-00U6AA0 (476940MB) And a fifth option appeared after the first boot-repair: Windows Boot Manager (P6: WDC WD5000AAKX-00U6AA0) I have tried all 5 of these, and I get exactly the same error. I have never had Windows installed on this HD. ASUS is calling it Windows Boot Manaer but I presume that's a mistaken label for whatever boot-repair did. I can boot on USB and run GParted and it looks great. The partitions all look normal. I found another case of this online with no solution posted. I can't find much about it online. Needs a Master Boot Record wipe/redo?? I'm not sure how.

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• Insanity&ndash;Day 1

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  Some people do those posts about “Here’s what I’m going to do to change my life”. I don’t really like those. I’m a “don’t tell me what you’re going to do, tell me what you’re doing/have done” type of guy. So while I could say how I’m going to change my life and be healthier and happier and thinner in 60 days, I’m just going to tell you how I’m progressing through the Insanity workout. Insanity is a workout-in-a-box. It’s a collection of DVDs that you work out to. Nothing new here, except that the program is intense. It’s core tenet of the program is intensity – you workout at an elevated heart rate for 3 minutes with a short break in between, as opposed to traditional interval training where you go hard for a short time and recover for a few minutes. The other aspect of it is commitment. There is a timetable to follow – you workout 6 days a week with one rest day. This isn’t meant to be a “pick it up whenever you feel like it” type of program. The videos themselves are kind of…I don’t want to say low quality, but not as polished as I expected. Maybe that’s what they were going for. By that I mean they show shots of cameramen and the production equipment during the workout. Otherwise, it’s the Insanity leader Shawn T. leading a group of pretty fit folks through this gruelling workout. And ultimately, those little production nit-picks are irrelevant compared to the actual workout. Holy crap. I haven’t done an aerobics class in like…ever. And watching the video before my actual workout, I thought “That doesn’t look too hard”. Believe me, it is. No weights, no machines, just various exercises done in circuits and with increasing speed. By the end of the workout, I was drenched. So that was day one. Some stats just so I can track it: I’m 286 lbs at my last weigh-in a week ago or so. Should be interesting to see what 60 days of this does! D

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• Usage of Pirated software at a company

  - by hakesh

  Hi, I am redirected from stack over flow since the topic is ethics rather than about programming. Thank you for letting me know that. and please give me advices. So, I started to work at a company as an engineer a couple of months ago. It's a small company and what they basically do is answering service on phones. Now they are switching from normal phones to IP phones so that computers take more important place in the work. However, all the computers used by workers are equipped with pirated software ,even their operating systems are. Moreover, they don't even buy one license to make copies for other computers. In other words, they do not spend any money for the software in office. I am not saying copying a licensed one is legit, but the situation is too much. There is one guy who did installing those pirated soft. He does not feel any sense of guilt and even justified when I asked about it. and he is not even a specialist. He just searched on the internet to install pirated software. Our boss does not have any knowledge of computers, so he took cheaper way. How do you guys think about this? Since I am still new to the company, I am not doing maintenance or managing on those cracked computers. But I have to use those software daily. And later on I will be doing support, help desk kind of staff. I really don't want to take responsibility for operating pirated software. and from an aspect of developer and engineer, pirated software are not able to get legal support and it may work unexpectedly. So, I am thinking about changing job. Am I thinking too much? should I wait until I have more credit from the boss and try to change his policy? So far, the boss does not take any words from me. Any opinions are welcome. Thank you

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• Did I choose proper career path? [closed]

  - by Liston Catch

  I am a C# Junior. My company has it's own enterprise documents-flow system written, my job along with 10 other programmers is to write modules/add-ons for it. I am totally bored of this job, I dont like Microsoft's technologies stack (dont hate me here, just subjective), but it's plain boring, enterprise is boring (subjective again, everyone's tastes differ), days on this work last long and I am tired of it. In short - I dont like my job. In my spare time I am doing PHP-development and I totally like it. I am also doing web-design, so I am LAMP-kind of guy who loves his Ubuntu and does design aswell. I know that most programmers don't do design themselves, so some person is either all about design or all about coding, but I enjoy both and do both. I often get interesting sites orders, I love to make whole websites with all the design, I love the feeling of site completeness, I enjoy talking with customers. I like that PHP is simple and skill cap is lower than one of java, meaning I can become expert in it after some years. But C# (and J2EE also) pay more, and I am doing really good in C#. But I dont like it. I can go for J2EE, platform itself seems more fun to me rather than .NET, but EE development is still boring to me. But it seems higher payed, easier to find job (since PHP is too common for its easiness. But if you are expert in something it doesnt matter, right? Just a higher skillcap.) Question: I want to go on with freelance. I want to have an opportunity to start my own startup in web. Actually I have a browser-game already written by myself, it earns me around 500$ per month which I am really proud of since I am 21 only and still noob in coding. I want to find part-time PHP job. 3 days per week so I can get some stable income, I can work in team and learn from them, social factor matters aswell as ensurance and diversity. I also want my total income (freelance + part-time job + own startup maybe)to be not too much less than one I have working in EE development sector. Maximum of 25% lower, but not more. Is it all possible if I stick with web-development (LAMP + HTML/CSS/JS/Jquery/AJAX)? Or is it easier to reach my goals with EE development?

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• Should we persist with an employee still writing bad code after many years?

  - by user94986

  I've been assigned the task of managing developers for a well-established company. They have a single developer who specialises in all their C++ coding (since forever), but the quality of the work is abysmal. Code reviews and testing have revealed many problems, one of the worst being memory leaks. The developer has never tested his code for leaks, and I discovered that the applications could leak many MBs with only a minute of use. User's were reporting huge slowdowns, and his take was, "it's nothing to do with me - if they quit and restart, it's all good again." I've given him tools to detect and trace the leaks, and sat down with him for many hours to demonstrate how the tools are used, where the problems occur, and what to do to fix them. We're 6 months down the track, and I assigned him to write a new module. I reviewed it before it was integrated into our larger code base, and was dismayed to discover the same bad coding as before. The part that I find incomprehensible is that some of the coding is worse than amateurish. For example, he wanted a class (Foo) that could populate an object of another class (Bar). He decided that Foo would hold a reference to Bar, e.g.: class Foo { public: Foo(Bar& bar) : m_bar(bar) {} private: Bar& m_bar; }; But (for other reasons) he also needed a default constructor for Foo and, rather than question his initial design, he wrote this gem: Foo::Foo() : m_bar(*(new Bar)) {} So every time the default constructor is called, a Bar is leaked. To make matters worse, Foo allocates memory from the heap for 2 other objects, but he didn't write a destructor or copy constructor. So every allocation of Foo actually leaks 3 different objects, and you can imagine what happened when a Foo was copied. And - it only gets better - he repeated the same pattern on three other classes, so it isn't a one-off slip. The whole concept is wrong on so many levels. I would feel more understanding if this came from a total novice. But this guy has been doing this for many years and has had very focussed training and advice over the past few months. I realise he has been working without mentoring or peer reviews most of that time, but I'm beginning to feel he can't change. So my question is, would you persist with someone who is writing such obviously bad code?

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• Java???????·????????Java EE????JAX-RS 2.0??????Java Developers Workshop 2012 Summer????

  - by ???02

  ???Java??????????????????1?????“GlassFish Guy”??????????????·????????????·????????????8???????Java Developers Workshop 2012 Summer???????????????Java EE????2??????????????????????????????????(???) Java EE??????“????·?????”????? ??????·?????????Java????????????·???? Java??????????????????????????????Java??????????Java????????·????????????????????????????????Java????????Java EE 7?JAX-RS?????????????????? 1?????????Java EE 7 and HTML5: Developing for the Cloud????????Java EE??????????????·?????????????????????????????????? Java EE?????????2009?10?????????Java EE 6??????????????????????????4,000????????????????17?????????·????Java EE 6??????????????Java EE 6?????????????????????Java EE 6??????10??????? ?????????????????WAR???????????EJB??? ????Java EE???EJB????·???????????????????????????·???????(DD)?????????????????????Java EE 6????????????EJB?“?????”?????????POJO????????????????EJB????????????????????POJO?WAR??????????????????????DD???????????????????????????????????????(????) ??1??????????????????CDI(Context Dependency Injection)????DI????Java EE 5??????????????????????????????????Java EE 6?CDI???????????·?????????????DI???????????????????Spring Framework??????????????????????????Java EE???DI??????????????????????? ????????????Java EE????????????????????????????Amazon Web Services?Windows Azure????IaaS?Google App Engine????PaaS?Salesforce.com????SaaS?????????????????????·?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ????????Java EE???????????????????????????????Java EE?????????????????·????????????Java EE??????????????????????????????????????????·?????????????? ??????????????????Java EE 7??????????????Java EE 8??????·??????????????????????????HTML5??3???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????Java EE???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????Cloud Application Service(??)??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???HTML5??????“Web??????·??????”????JSON?WebSockets??????????????Java EE???????????????Web????????????????????????WebSocket???????????????????????·?????????????WebSocket?????Java EE????????????????????????????? ???Java EE 7????????API????????????????????? ??????????????????·?????????????????????·????????????????????????????5??API??Java EE 7??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????(????)???? Java EE 7?????????????????API????????????????????????????2013??2??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Web???(http://javaee-spec.java.net/)???????????????????????????????? ??????????Project Avatar???????????Project Avatar??????????Java????????????????????????????Java????????????HTML5???????????????????????????HTML?Java???????????????????????Java EE???????????????????????????????? JAX-RS 2.0?Java??????????????????? ???????2?????????JAX-RS 2.0: RESTful Java on Steroids???Java????RESTful?????????????API???JAX-RS?????Java EE 7???????JAX-RS 2.0???????????????????????????????? ?????????“RESTful”???????????????????? ????????????????????????????? ?????????????? ???????????????? ??????????????(??)??? ????????????????????(?????????????????) ????Java EE????????API?????????????JAX-RS 1.0??JAX-RS 1.0???POJO????API???HTTP??????????????????????????????????????????????? ????????????JAX-RS 2.0???????????8??????????/???????????? ?Client API ?Client-side and Server-side Asynchronous ?Filters and Interceptors ?Improved Connection Negotiation ?Validation ?Hypermedia ?Alignment with JSR 330 ?Model-View-Controller JAX-RS 2.0??????????????·????????????????????Model-View-Controller?????????????????????Model-View-Controller?????????JSF????MVC???????????????JAX-RS???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???Client API???????????????HTTP??????·????????????????????????API???????????????JAX-RS 2.0?Client API???JAX-RS?????API??????????????Java EE?????????????REST??????????????????? ?Filters&Interceptors????????????????????????JAX-RS??????????????????JAX-RS 1.0???????????JAX-RS 2.0??????????????????????? ?Asynchronus??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?Connect Negotiation???Validation???????????????????????Validation????????????????Bean Validation?????JAX-RS?????????????????????????? ?Hypermedia???????????????????Web???????????????????HATEOAS(Hypermedia As The Engine Of App State)?????JAX-RS????????????????????????????????Asynchronus???????????????????????????? JAX-RS 2.0???????????JSR 330:Dependency Injection for Java???????????????????Client API??????????????????????????????????????JAX-RS 2.0??????????????????????Web???????????·??????????(http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=339)????????????????????????????????????????

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• How-To Configure Weblogic, Agile PLM and an F5 LTM

  - by Brian Dunbar

  Agile, Weblogic, and an F5 walk into a bar ... I've got this Agile PLM v 9.3 Running on WebLogic, two managed servers. An F5 BigIP LTM. We're upgrading from Agile v 9.2.1.4 running on OAS. The problem is that while the Windows client works fine the Java client does not. My setup is identical to one outlined in F5's doc: http://www.f5.com/pdf/deployment-guides/bea-bigip45-dg.pdf When I launch the java client it returns this error "Server is not valid or is unavailable." Oracle claims Agile PLM is setup correctly, but won't comment on the specifics of the load balancer. F5 reports the configuration is correct but can't comment on the specifics of the application. I am merely the guy in a vortex of finger-pointing who wants my application to work. It's that or give up on WLS and move back to OAS. Which has it's own problems but at least we know how it works. Any ideas?

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• Ideal Bacula appliance?

  - by Ricket

  I'm an intern at a small company and we (the IT department of two) manage <100 client computers and a handful of servers. Currently we're using a company's appliance to handle backup; it does a small backup every night and a full backup every weekend, and a guy comes on Wednesday to take an offsite backup drive (and gives back last week's drive to swap with it). Lately this system, mainly the appliance, has been having problems, so we are looking for an alternative. I'm researching other companies but also looking into what we might expect from trying to do this ourselves. There will undoubtedly be a large learning curve, but hey, that's what serverfault is for, right? :) So anyway I was looking at Bacula. Feature list sounds great, documentation is plentiful, but it's only software. So my question is, what is the ideal backup server to run the Bacula server software on? And not only the server but other related appliances. Our current backup appliance uses only hard drives, not tape drives. It has several plugged into it at one time, in hotswap bays on the front of the machine. I couldn't help but notice though, it's hardly more than Windows XP with hard drive bays, a PCI eSATA card (which connects to another appliance extension piece with 2 more bays), and their software. Since the company will take back their appliance if/when we cancel with them, where can I go to configure a server with these kinds of things? Maybe I'm being naive, I'm sure Dell (and any other computer company) sells them in the small business section of their website, but I wanted to make sure that there's not some other more recommended place that other companies are getting their hardware from, and that I don't need anything special for Bacula.

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