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  • What is the best website width? [on hold]

    - by Salvis Dišlers
    What is the best website width? I can't decide between 1200px max-width and 1236px....with 300px sidebar as enough or 320px? I personally like wide website, my current website is 1236px; but I hear it's considered very wide for eyesight and all those gadgets keeping in mind... The website is for reading - I mean, mostly articles with around 3000 words on average per page, so no matter - whether they look wide, whether they love to scroll down :) Also - what to decide about Banner size / sidebar? Probably the 300px I can put a 300px banner, but on 320px sidebar I could put 336px banner, if necessary...

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  • Orthographic Projection with variable FOV

    - by cubrman
    We are building agame with orthographic view. The problem we face is the fact that with different resolution you can see different area of the game world. E.g. if you have higher resolution you can see more around you. To solve this we currently use a common scale factor that every model is scaled by, depending on resolution. But this has drawbacks when drawing shadows - I cannot set a higher view angle for the orthographic shadow camera, while when using the perspective shadow camera I get significantly worse shadow quality. So the question is is there any way to controll FOV when using orthographic projection, or, more specifically, what is the easiest way to scale the world uniformly up or down with orthographic projection matrix? I saw that in 3ds MAX you can control FOV for an orthographic camera I wonder how they implemented it.

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  • Ask the Readers: How Do You Keep Your Email SPAM Free and Tidy?

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Email can be a fantastically efficient way to deal with communication, but not if it’s bogged down with SPAM messages and poorly organized. This week we want to hear all about the tips, tricks, and ninja-filters you use to keep your inbox tidy. Whether it’s special filters for your Bacon (spam-like marketing that you actually want to receive and occasional review), services you use to block spammers, or organization tips you use to keep your email inbox streamlined with no message unreplied to, we want to hear all about it. Sound off in the comments with your proclamations of your inbox-fu and how you maintain zen-like mastery over your email workflow. Be sure to check in on Friday for the What You Said roundup. How to Banish Duplicate Photos with VisiPic How to Make Your Laptop Choose a Wired Connection Instead of Wireless HTG Explains: What Is Two-Factor Authentication and Should I Be Using It?

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  • LXDE keybind "Raise" window not working

    - by Campa
    I am using LXDE* over Ubuntu Oneiric on a DELL Studio-XPS 64-bit machine and I can't get the keybind for raising windows to work. In my ~/.config/openbox/lxde-rc.xml I put: <!-- Iconify window: it works. --> <keybind key="A-Down"> <action name="Iconify"/> </keybind> <!-- Raise window: does nothing. --> <keybind key="A-Up"> <action name="Focus"/> <action name="Raise"/> </keybind> then I openbox --reconfigure, but no rasing windows keybindings. I could use the NextWindow action, but... not really the same. References: http://openbox.org/wiki/Help:Bindings http://openbox.org/wiki/Help:Actions *Nested question: how to know the version of installed LXDE?

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  • How should I select continuous integration tool?

    - by DeveloperDon
    I found this cool comparison table for integration servers on Wikipedia, but I am a little uncertain how to rank the tools vs. my needs and interests. The chart itself seems to have a lot of boxes marked unknown, so if you are comfortable updating it on Wikipedia, that could be great too. Are there a few top performing products so I can quickly narrow down to four or five options? Which products seems to have the largest user communities and most ongoing enhancements and integration with new tools? Are the open source offerings best, or are there high quality tools that can be a great deal for a single user at home? Will use of multiple systems (primary desktop, local only home network server, personal and work notebooks, multiple virtual machines spread across all) create problems and how can they be managed?

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  • What is Cyber Monday? [Infographic]

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Nearly everyone is familiar with Black Friday, the massive shopping day right after Thanksgiving, but Cyber Monday is a recent invention. Check out this infographic for the low down. Cyber Monday is only a scant six years old, an invention of online retailers looking to create a shopping day to compete with the in-store frenzy of Black Friday. Although quite a few retailers offer online Black Friday deals, Cyber Monday is a the biggest day for online deals–many shoppers fail to find the things they were looking for on Black Friday and turn to online sources. You can read more about Cyber Monday here or visit the link below for a higher resolution copy of the infographic. What Is Cyber Monday? [YouNeverLose via Mashable] How to See What Web Sites Your Computer is Secretly Connecting To HTG Explains: When Do You Need to Update Your Drivers? How to Make the Kindle Fire Silk Browser *Actually* Fast!

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  • Booting briefly shows CLI login and then black

    - by lepusfelix
    When I boot to Ubuntu on my dualboot system, it appears to boot normally, up to the point when I would normally expect to see the lightDM graphical login screen. However, I see a CLI login screen, which I assume is tty1. Before I get a chance to actually login to it, though, it drops to a black screen with a flashing cursor. Pressing ctrl+alt+f1 does nothing. When I hit the power button on the laptop, I see the usual scrolling text as Ubuntu shuts down. I know that this is related to me having installed the proprietary ATI drivers for the video card. Purging the drivers gave me back a GUI, but unfortunately no working desktop environment, and switching to the mesa drivers returned me to the black screen issue. The only way I can get a stable working CLI is through booting to advanced options and choosing a root shell prompt, as even the failsafe X session doesn't function for me.

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  • Rationale behind freeware projects

    - by VexXtreme
    I've seen some freeware projects in the past where the author(s) invested a significant amount of their personal time and resources and never even considered charging for the software. A lot of these projects were donation based, and from what I've heard, donationware can never be a viable business model (even to simply support development costs) because most people choose not to donate if given an option. A lot of these projects eventually shut down because their authors could not sustain them further. Granted, some people simply like making the community happy (or something), but if you're struggling to keep your project alive, why not charge some small amount such as $10 simply to stay operational? If people find your software useful (and a lot of people found those projects VERY useful) they won't have a problem paying such a small amount. The question is: if you have a popular app that people like and download in great numbers, why not put a price tag on it? Why do it for free?

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  • What should I use Ubuntu for? [closed]

    - by Sean francis Ballais
    I need some of your precious advice co-Ubuntu users. I have been a full Ubuntu user for a few months now and our old 2005 model PC just broke down and so my parents gave me a new PC (notebook). I have installed Windows 7 Ultimate for some reason. Now, my problem is that, since I am a amateur graphic designer, website developer, software developer and other professions a normal teenager won't try and I am using Adobe Creative Suite CS6 Master Collection for my multimedia creation and web development needs, what could I use Ubuntu Linux for? Software development? Website Usability Testing? Other Multimedia stuff? Etc.? Need real help because my mind is getting confused in what should I use Ubuntu for... Any help will be welcomed with appreciation. :D P.S. Don't suggest to me any games because I'm no gamer.

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  • Can I create a hybrid software-RAID array with disks of different sizes?

    - by stueng
    Products such as Synology offer something called Synology Hybrid RAID http://www.synology.com/us/products/features/RAID.php This RAID type allows you to make best use of your disks available by using all the disk space available as long as at least two disks share the same increased size where a typical RAID setup would simply "throw away" the extra space I would like to build a NAS with 4 disks available. I will begin by populating it with 3 X 3TB to give me 6TB usable. By the time I have filled this 6TB I imagine that 4TB disks will have come down in price, so at this stage I would add a 4th 4TB disk to give me an additional 3TB of space. When I next run out of space I will change one of the original 3TB disks with a 4TB disk giving me an additional 1TB of space. This is not possible with a typical RAID configuration, only with these "hybrid RAID" types I am wondering if I can acheive a similar "hybrid RAID" with Ubuntu? or another linux distro?

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  • Book: Pro SQL Server 2008 Service Broker: Klaus Aschenbrenner

    - by Greg Low
    I've met Klaus a number of times now and attended a few of his sessions at conferences. Klaus is doing a great job of evangelising Service Broker. I wish the SQL Server team would give it as much love. Service Broker is a wonderful technology, let down by poor resourcing. Microsoft did an excellent job of building the plumbing for this product in SQL Server 2005 but then provided no management tools and no prescriptive guidance. Everyone then seemed surprized that the takeup of it was slow. I even...(read more)

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  • Cutting desktop power usage

    - by steevc
    I'm on a general energy saving mission. I've finally swapped my old CRT monitor for a LCD, so the next step it to optimise the PC power usage. It's using an AMD 64 X2 4600+ CPU which I know can trottle down, but seems to be running at a constant 2.4GHz. A while back I heard about Granola. I've installed it, but when I try to run it I get granola[10568]: Error opening scaling governor file '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor' in read mode granola[10568]: Is cpufreq enabled in this kernel and do you have a CPU which supports DVFS? granola[10568]: Can't manage DVFS for any CPUs I'm happy to use other applications if Granola is not optimal or viable.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, January 30, 2011

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, January 30, 2011Popular ReleasesWPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.3: Version: 2.0.0.3 (Milestone 3): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...Rawr: Rawr 4.0.17 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 and on the Version Notes page: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes As of the 4.0.16 release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you...VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.4.2: Version 7.4.2 of VivoSocial has been released. If you experienced any issues with the previous version, please update your modules to the 7.4.2 release and see if they persist. If you have any questions about this release, please post them in our Support forums. If you are experiencing a bug or would like to request a new feature, please submit it to our issue tracker. Web Controls * Updated Business Objects and added a new SQL Data Provider File. Groups * Fixed a security issue whe...PHP Manager for IIS: PHP Manager 1.1.1 for IIS 7: This is a minor release of PHP Manager for IIS 7. It contains all the functionality available in 56962 plus several bug fixes (see change list for more details). Also, this release includes Russian language support. SHA1 codes for the downloads are: PHPManagerForIIS-1.1.0-x86.msi - 6570B4A8AC8B5B776171C2BA0572C190F0900DE2 PHPManagerForIIS-1.1.0-x64.msi - 12EDE004EFEE57282EF11A8BAD1DC1ADFD66A654VFPX: VFP2C32 2.0.0.8 Release Candidate: This release includes several bugfixes, new functions and finally a CHM help file for the complete library.EnhSim: EnhSim 2.3.3 ALPHA: 2.3.3 ALPHAThis release supports WoW patch 4.06 at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Added back in a p...DB>doc for Microsoft SQL Server: 1.0.0.0: Initial release Supported output HTML WikiPlex markup Raw XML Supported objects Tables Primary Keys Foreign Keys ViewsmojoPortal: 2.3.6.1: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2361-released.aspx Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0 The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code. To download the source code see the Source Code Tab I recommend getting the latest source code using TortoiseHG, you can get the source code corresponding to this release here.Office Web.UI: Alpha preview: This is the first alpha release. Very exciting moment... This download is just the demo application : "Contoso backoffice Web App". No source included for the moment, just the app, for testing purposes and for feedbacks !! This package includes a set of official MS Office icons (143 png 16x16 and 132 png 32x32) to really make a great app ! Please rate and give feedback ThanksParallel Programming with Microsoft Visual C++: Drop 6 - Chapters 4 and 5: This is Drop 6. It includes: Drafts of the Preface, Introduction, Chapters 2-7, Appendix B & C and the glossary Sample code for chapters 2-7 and Appendix A & B. The new material we'd like feedback on is: Chapter 4 - Parallel Aggregation Chapter 5 - Futures The source code requires Visual Studio 2010 in order to run. There is a known bug in the A-Dash sample when the user attempts to cancel a parallel calculation. We are working to fix this.Catel - WPF and Silverlight MVVM library: 1.1: (+) Styles can now be changed dynamically, see Examples application for a how-to (+) ViewModelBase class now have a constructor that allows services injection (+) ViewModelBase services can now be configured by IoC (via Microsoft.Unity) (+) All ViewModelBase services now have a unit test implementation (+) Added IProcessService to run processes from a viewmodel with directly using the process class (which makes it easier to unit test view models) (*) If the HasErrors property of DataObjec...NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Excel Template, version 1.0.1.160: The NodeXL Excel template displays a network graph using edge and vertex lists stored in an Excel 2007 or Excel 2010 workbook. What's NewThis release improves NodeXL's Twitter and Pajek features. See the Complete NodeXL Release History for details. Installation StepsFollow these steps to install and use the template: Download the Zip file. Unzip it into any folder. Use WinZip or a similar program, or just right-click the Zip file in Windows Explorer and select "Extract All." Close Ex...Kooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 3.0 CTP: Files in this downloadkooboo_CMS.zip: The kooboo application files Content_DBProvider.zip: Additional content database implementation of MSSQL, RavenDB and SQLCE. Default is XML based database. To use them, copy the related dlls into web root bin folder and remove old content provider dlls. Content provider has the name like "Kooboo.CMS.Content.Persistence.SQLServer.dll" View_Engines.zip: Supports of Razor, webform and NVelocity view engine. Copy the dlls into web root bin folder to enable...UOB & ME: UOB ME 2.6: UOB ME 2.6????: ???? V1.0: ???? V1.0 ??Password Generator: 2.2: Parallel password generation Password strength calculation ( Same method used by Microsoft here : https://www.microsoft.com/protect/fraud/passwords/checker.aspx ) Minor code refactoringVisual Studio 2010 Architecture Tooling Guidance: Spanish - Architecture Guidance: Francisco Fagas http://geeks.ms/blogs/ffagas, Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), localized the Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance for the Spanish communities, based on http://vsarchitectureguide.codeplex.com/releases/view/47828. Release Notes The guidance is available in a xps-only (default) or complete package. The complete package contains the files in xps, pdf and Office 2007 formats. 2011-01-24 Publish version 1.0 of the Spanish localized bits.ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome, jQuery Ajax helpers (controls): 1.6.2: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form, Popup and Pager the html generation has been optimized, the html page size is much smaller nowFacebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 0.6: new Facebook Graph objects: Application, Page, Post, Comment Improved Intellisense documentation new Graph Api connections: albums, photos, posts, feed, home, friends JSON Toolkit upgraded to version 0.9 (beta release) with bug fixes and new features bug fixed: error when handling empty JSON arrays bug fixed: error when handling JSON array with square or large brackets in the message bug fixed: error when handling JSON obejcts with double quotation in the message bug fixed: erro...Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework: Visual Studio 2008 Code Samples 2011-01-23: Code samples for Visual Studio 2008New ProjectsAnaida - WebSocket Client/Adapter: Anaida is a WebSocket Client Library/Adapter. With 3 versions for Java, Silverlight and C#CutPasteAssign: Visual Studio extension to assist in the common refactoring of assigning parameters to local variables.Drori Photos: Photos of Drori the photographerD-Solution: App de D-SolutionEnigma Home Inventory: Most consumers do not have an itemized list of proof of ownership. Enigma Home Inventory may take the hassle out of arguing with the insurance companies. This project is aimed to be for a simple inventory program for end users who are not computer savvy.FastKnow: is a CMS & wikiFileSignatures: FileSignatures aims to create a class library that can identify the file format based on file contents. The project is written in C# 3.0, and can be used in .NET 3.5 and 4.0 projects.Genrsis: The aim of the Genrsis project is to be a suite of products that you can use to build things, starting with a workflow-based project management tool. Built in C#, it should be a one-stop place to get well-integrated products to get you up and running.MVC Demos: MVC 2 and MVC 3 examples with ajax and json.MVC Templates for DevExpress: Scaffolding templates for use in ASP.NET MVC 2 with DevExpress MVC Extensions for ASP.NET MVCPixel Replacer: The Pixel Replacer is a simple library for replacing pixel colors with a new color, by setting a filter rule.ReviewPal - The Code Review Companion for .Net.: ReviewPal, the Code Review Companion for .Net. This is an Add-In / Extension for Visual Studio 2008 & Visual Studio 2010. The aim of the Add-In / Extension is to do a source code review within the Visual Studio IDE where code makes more sense and most readable.SMVector3: Vector3 class implemented as float array or with SIMD instructions with the same interface so it is transparant whether you decide to use one version or another. You can also chance version during the life cycle of the projects.uRibbon - Office 2007 Ribbon control for VB.NET: Office 2007 ribbon control, with Orb and graphic transitions. After searching for many day looking for an Office 2007-like ribbon bar, I finally gave up and decided to write my own. It's in decent shape as-is. But anyone interested in helping me to continue the devlopment??vtcheck: This will read a target binary and check to see if it is detected by VirusTotal.Web Scheduled Task Framework: A simple set of classes intended to allow the standalone scheduling of tasks (arbitrary code to execute) on a .net website without requiring access to the operating system.WP7 codeproject app: A Windows Phone 7 app for browsing codeproject.com.zhongjh: ?????????,???????。???????????: ???????????

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  • Self learning automated movement

    - by Super1
    I am trying to make a small demo in Javascript, I have a black border and a car the car travels randomly and a line is drawn of its trail. When the user click inside the area it creates an object (we'll call this the wall). If the car hits the wall then it goes back 3 paces and tries a different route. When its hit the wall it needs to log down its location so it does NOT make that mistake again. Here is my example: http://jsfiddle.net/Jtq3E/ How can I get the car to move by itself and create a trail?

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  • jQuery with SharePoint solutions

    - by KunaalKapoor
    For me jQuery is the 'Plan-B' for everything.And most of my projects include the use of jQuery for something or the other, so I decided to write a small note on what works best while using jQuery along with SharePoint.I prefer to use the jQuery JavaScript library, which is far more robust, easier to use, and allows for plugins. Follow the steps below to add jQuery to your master page. For office 365, the prefered location to add jQuery files is the "Site Asserts" library.Deployment Best PracticesThey are only as good as the context it’s being referenced.  In other words, take into account your world before applying it.Script your deployment options.  Folder in SPD. Use the file system.  Make external references.  The JQuery library is on the Microsoft Ajax Content Delivery Network. You may even choose to publish to and from the document library. (pros and cons to this approach)Reference options when referencing the script.ScriptLink will make sure it’s loaded at the top of the page and only loaded once. You need Visual Studio or SPDContent Editor Web Part (CEWP).  Drop it on the page and it’s there.  Easy but dangerousCustom Actions. Great for global deployments of JQuery.  Loads it on every page. It also works in Sandbox installations.Deployment Maintenance Dont’sDon’t add scripts directly to your Master Page. That’s way too much effort because the pages are hard to maintain.Don’t add scripts directly to the CEWP.  Use a content link instead. That will allow for reuse. If you or someone deletes the CEWP you won’t lose code in the web partSecurity.  Any scripts run with the same privileges of the current user.  In other words, you can’t get in trouble.Development Best PracticesDon’t abuse the DOM.  There are better options to load the DOM without hitting it 1,000 times.User other performance boosters.Try other libraries.  Try some custom codeAvoid String conversionMinify your filesUse CAML to reduce number of returns rowsOnly update your JQuery library AFTER RIGOROUS REGRESSION TESTINGCRUD operations can come with some funSP Services wraps SharePoint’s web services for executionThe Bing SDK is pretty easy to use.  You can add it to your page with a script,  put it into a content editor web part and connect it from the address parameters in a list.Steps:1. Go to jquery.com and download the latest jQuery library to your desktop. You want to get the compressed production version, not the development version.2. Open SharePoint Designer (SPD) and connect to the root level of your site's site collection.In SPD, open the "Style Library" folder. Create a folder named "Scripts" inside of the Style Library. Drag the jQuery library JavaScript file from your desktop into the Scripts folder.In the Scripts folder, create a new JavaScript file and name it (e.g. "actions.js").3. If you are using visual studio add a folder for js, you can create a new folder at the root level or if you prefer more cleaner solutions like me, you can use the layouts folder which cleans out on deactivation/uninstall.4. Within the <head> tag of the master page, add a script reference to the jQuery library just above the content place holder named "PlaceHolderAdditonalPageHead" (and above your custom CSS references, if applicable) as follows:<script src="/Style%20Library/Scripts/{jquery library file}.js" type="text/javascript"></script>Immediately after the jQuery library reference add a script reference to your custom scripts file as follows:<script src="/Style%20Library/Scripts/actions.js" type="text/javascript"></script>Inside your script tag, you can test if jQuery is already defined and if not, then add it to the page.<script type='text/javascript'>  if (typeof jQuery == 'undefined')    document.write('<scr'+'ipt type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.6.1.min.js"></sc'+'ript>');</script>For the inquisitive few... Read on if you'd like :)Why jQuery on SharePoiny is AwesomeIt’s all about that visual wow factor.  You can get past that, “But it looks like SharePoint”  Take a long list view and put it into JQuery with pagination, etc and you are the hero.  It’s also about new controls you get with JQuery that you couldn’t do before.Why jQuery with SharePoint should be AwfulAlthough it’s fairly easy to get jQuery up and running. Copy/Paste can cause a problem.  If you don’t understand what it’s doing in the Client Object Model and the Document Object Model then it will do things on your site that were completely unexpected. Many blogs will note workarounds they employed on their sites. Why it’s not working: Debugging “sucks”.You need to develop small blocks of functionality, Test it by putting in some alerts  and console.log. Set breakpoints and monitor the DOM via Firebug and some IE development toolsPerformance - It happens all the time. But you should look at the tradeoffs. More time may give you more functionality.Consistency - ”But it works fine on my computer. So test on many browsers.  Take into account client resourcesHarm the Farm -  You need to code wisely and negatively test.  Don’t be the cause of a DoS attack that’s really JQuery asking for a resource over and over and over again.  So code wisely. Do negative testing. Monitor Server Resources.They also did a demo where JQuery did an endless loop to pull data from a list. It’s a poor decision but also an easy mistake.  They spiked their server resources within a couple seconds and had to shut down the call before it brought it down.ConclusionJQuery is now another tool in your tool kit. You don’t have to use it. Use it where it makes sense and where it helps you get your job done.Don’t abuse it, you will pay for it laterIt will add to page bloat so take that into accountIt can slow your performance

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  • Knowing your user is key--Part 1: Motivation

    - by erikanollwebb
    I was thinking where the best place to start in this blog would be and finally came back to a theme that I think is pretty critical--successful gamification in the enterprise comes down to knowing your user.  Lots of folks will say that gamification is about understanding that everyone is a gamer.  But at least in my org, that argument won't play for a lot of people.  Pun intentional.  It's not that I don't see the attraction to the idea--really, very few people play no games at all.  If they don't play video games, they might play solitaire on their computer.  They may play card games, or some type of sport.  Mario Herger has some great facts on how much game playing there is going on at his Enterprise-Gamification.com website. But at the end of the day, I can't sell that into my organization well.  We are Oracle.  We make big, serious software designed run your whole business.  We don't make Angry Birds out of your financial reporting tools.  So I stick with the argument that works better.  Gamification techniques are really just good principals of user experience packaged a little differently.  Feedback?  We already know feedback is important when using software.  Progress indicators?  Got that too.  Game mechanics may package things in a more explicit way but it's not really "new".  To know how to use game mechanics, and what a user experience team is important for, is totally understanding who our users are and what they are motivated by. For several years, I taught college psychology courses, including Motivation.  Motivation is generally broken down into intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.  There's intrinsic, which comes from within the individual.  And there's extrinsic, which comes from outside the individual.  Intrinsic motivation is that motivation that comes from just a general sense of pleasure in the doing of something.  For example, I like to cook.  I like to cook a lot.  The kind of cooking I think is just fun makes other people--people who don't like to cook--cringe.  Like the cake I made this week--the star-spangled rhapsody from The Cake Bible: two layers of meringue, two layers of genoise flavored with a raspberry eau de vie syrup, whipped cream with berries and a mousseline buttercream, also flavored with raspberry liqueur and topped with fresh raspberries and blueberries. I love cooking--I ask for cooking tools for my birthday and Christmas, I take classes like sushi making and knife skills for fun.  I like reading about you can make an emulsion of egg yolks, melted butter and lemon, cook slowly and transform them into a sauce hollandaise (my use of all the egg yolks that didn't go into the aforementioned cake).  And while it's nice when people like what I cook, I don't do it for that.  I do it because I think it's fun.  My former boss, Ultan Ó Broin, loves to fish in the sea off the coast of Ireland.  Not because he gets prizes for it, or awards, but because it's fun.  To quote a note he sent me today when I asked if having been recently ill kept him from the beginning of mackerel season, he told me he had already been out and said "I can fish when on a deathbed" (read more of Ultan's work, see his blogs on User Assistance and Translation.). That's not the kind of intensity you get about something you don't like to do.  I'm sure you can think of something you do just because you like it. So how does that relate to gamification?  Gamification in the enterprise space is about uncovering the game within work.  Gamification is about tapping into things people already find motivating.  But to do that, you need to know what that user is motivated by. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is one of those areas where over-the-top gamification seems to work (not to plug a competitor in this space, but you can search on what Bunchball* has done with a company just a little north of us on 101 for the CRM crowd).  Sales people are naturally competitive and thrive on that plus recognition of their sales work.  You can use lots of game mechanics like leaderboards and challenges and scorecards with this type of user and they love it.  Show my whole org I'm leading in sales for the quarter?  Bring it on!  However, take the average accountant and show how much general ledger activity they have done in the last week and expose it to their whole org on a leaderboard and I think you'd see a lot of people looking for a new job.  Why?  Because in general, accountants aren't extraverts who thrive on competition in their work.  That doesn't mean there aren't game mechanics that would work for them, but they won't be the same game mechanics that work for sales people.  It's a different type of user and they are motivated by different things. To break this up, I'll stop here and post now.  I'll pick this thread up in the next post. Thoughts? Questions? *Disclosure: To my knowledge, Oracle has no relationship with Bunchball at this point in time.

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  • XmlWriter and lower ASCII characters

    - by Rick Strahl
    Ran into an interesting problem today on my CodePaste.net site: The main RSS and ATOM feeds on the site were broken because one code snippet on the site contained a lower ASCII character (CHR(3)). I don't think this was done on purpose but it was enough to make the feeds fail. After quite a bit of debugging and throwing in a custom error handler into my actual feed generation code that just spit out the raw error instead of running it through the ASP.NET MVC and my own error pipeline I found the actual error. The lovely base exception and error trace I got looked like this: Error: '', hexadecimal value 0x03, is an invalid character. at System.Xml.XmlUtf8RawTextWriter.InvalidXmlChar(Int32 ch, Byte* pDst, Boolean entitize)at System.Xml.XmlUtf8RawTextWriter.WriteElementTextBlock(Char* pSrc, Char* pSrcEnd)at System.Xml.XmlUtf8RawTextWriter.WriteString(String text)at System.Xml.XmlWellFormedWriter.WriteString(String text)at System.Xml.XmlWriter.WriteElementString(String localName, String ns, String value)at System.ServiceModel.Syndication.Rss20FeedFormatter.WriteItemContents(XmlWriter writer, SyndicationItem item, Uri feedBaseUri)at System.ServiceModel.Syndication.Rss20FeedFormatter.WriteItem(XmlWriter writer, SyndicationItem item, Uri feedBaseUri)at System.ServiceModel.Syndication.Rss20FeedFormatter.WriteItems(XmlWriter writer, IEnumerable`1 items, Uri feedBaseUri)at System.ServiceModel.Syndication.Rss20FeedFormatter.WriteFeed(XmlWriter writer)at System.ServiceModel.Syndication.Rss20FeedFormatter.WriteTo(XmlWriter writer)at CodePasteMvc.Controllers.ApiControllerBase.GetFeed(Object instance) in C:\Projects2010\CodePaste\CodePasteMvc\Controllers\ApiControllerBase.cs:line 131 XML doesn't like extended ASCII Characters It turns out the issue is that XML in general does not deal well with lower ASCII characters. According to the XML spec it looks like any characters below 0x09 are invalid. If you generate an XML document in .NET with an embedded &#x3; entity (as mine did to create the error above), you tend to get an XML document error when displaying it in a viewer. For example, here's what the result of my  feed output looks like with the invalid character embedded inside of Chrome which displays RSS feeds as raw XML by default: Other browsers show similar error messages. The nice thing about Chrome is that you can actually view source and jump down to see the line that causes the error which allowed me to track down the actual message that failed. If you create an XML document that contains a 0x03 character the XML writer fails outright with the error: '', hexadecimal value 0x03, is an invalid character. The good news is that this behavior is overridable so XML output can at least be created by using the XmlSettings object when configuring the XmlWriter instance. In my RSS configuration code this looks something like this:MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(); var settings = new XmlWriterSettings() { CheckCharacters = false }; XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create(ms,settings); and voila the feed now generates. Now generally this is probably NOT a good idea, because as mentioned above these characters are illegal and if you view a raw XML document you'll get validation errors. Luckily though most RSS feed readers however don't care and happily accept and display the feed correctly, which is good because it got me over an embarrassing hump until I figured out a better solution. How to handle extended Characters? I was glad to get the feed fixed for the time being, but now I was still stuck with an interesting dilemma. CodePaste.net accepts user input for code snippets and those code snippets can contain just about anything. This means that ASP.NET's standard request filtering cannot be applied to this content. The code content displayed is encoded before display so for the HTML end the CHR(3) input is not really an issue. While invisible characters are hardly useful in user input it's not uncommon that odd characters show up in code snippets. You know the old fat fingering that happens when you're in the middle of a coding session and those invisible characters do end up sometimes in code editors and then end up pasted into the HTML textbox for pasting as a Codepaste.net snippet. The question is how to filter this text? Looking back at the XML Charset Spec it looks like all characters below 0x20 (space) except for 0x09 (tab), 0x0A (LF), 0x0D (CR) are illegal. So applying the following filter with a RegEx should work to remove invalid characters:string code = Regex.Replace(item.Code, @"[\u0000-\u0008,\u000B,\u000C,\u000E-\u001F]", ""); Applying this RegEx to the code snippet (and title) eliminates the problems and the feed renders cleanly.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in .NET  XML   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • How to estimate tasks in scrum?

    - by Arian
    Let's say we have a backlog of User Stories, each with an estimated number of Story Points, and now we're doing the Sprint Planning. Now, the Stories should be broken down into tasks and many Scrum resources suggest that each task should be estimated in person-hours. Since all questions have been discussed by the team at this point, estimating a task should not take longer than a minute. However, since a task should not be longer than a day, assuming a three week sprint with 8 developers means 120 tasks, and taking two hours only for estimations seems to be a bit much to me. I know that experienced teams can skip or short-cut task estimations, but let's say we're not at that stage yet. In your experience, how many tasks are there in a sprint* and how long should it take to estimate all of them? (Estimating only half of them doesn't make much sense, does it?) (*) I know that depends on sprint length and team size, so let's assume 8 developers and three weeks.

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  • Power management issues on an Asus N55

    - by Andrea Borga
    I noticed that with respect to Win7 on my Asus N55 Ubuntu 12.04 tend to overheat the system. After startup the fan controller takes control of the fan, I could here it slowing down, after a few second following a login the fan increases its speed again. Though there are no processor hungry process: top shows only Xorg consuming 4%. Even with the system monitor the CPUs load look ok. Is it a power management related problem? This can cause battery life troubles in general, and electronics is never happy to be overheated. Is there a better tool to root the cause of the issue?

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  • Ever wonder why Earth spins?

    - by Gopinath
    Have you ever wonder why Earth spins on its axis and completes a revolution every day? Is there any force that keeps Earth spinning? Is that because of  Gravity or any Magnetic force? Check out this video to learn why Earth spins and the basics of physics behind the magic If you find that above video is in simple English and it’s not convincing physicist inside you, lets hear from a NASA scientist in the embedded video. A NASA scientist explains how Earth rotation has started, how fast it was billions of years ago and what caused it to slow down to 24 hours to complete a revolution   Thanks @pinaldev

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  • Best tool to recover removed files

    - by plua
    Using Ubuntu 10.10, I have a startup script that automatically removes my 'working directory'. This is a simple folder on my Desktop where I place a bunch of files that I use throughout the day. These are temporary files I need to store just for that one session. In order to keep things clean, my startup script does: rm -rf /home/user/Desktop/workdir mkdir /home/user/Desktop/workdir Works great. Till the moment I had some important files there and forgot to move them before shutting down. A few (2-3) sessions ago this happened and I now realize I need to recover the "workdir" directory. But several new ones have been created and removed in the meantime. What is the best way to recover this - if possible? I read about tools like scalpel but it seems they will scan my whole HD. I know the name of the folder and would like to just look for this workdir folder. What is best?

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  • Preventing pop-up dialogs when connecting an MTP device

    - by DrownedSensors
    I'm using Lubuntu 14.04 with a Samsung Galaxy S3 running Android 4.3. Each time I connect my phone via USB, I get the following dialog: Unable to open MTP device '[usb:002,023]' A few moments later, I get the "Removable medium is inserted" dialog, prompting me to open in File Manager. After that, the phone is connected and fully accessible. So MTP works. The problem is that I plug in my phone to charge every time I sit down, and unplug it every time I step away. Dismissing these two dialogs every time is a pain. I would think the "Removable medium" dialog is the easier candidate. How do I tell Ubuntu to take no action and stop prompting me? For the MTP error, all the discussion I can find is for people who can't get MTP working at all. For me, it's working, but only after throwing this initial error. I've verified that my device is present in /lib/udev/rules.d/69-libmtp.rules

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  • VS 11 vs VS 2012 [closed]

    - by Alex
    I'm using Visual Studio 11 Beta at home, mainly for learning purposes. But now it's possible to download VS 2012 RC. Does it make sense to install it instead? Does it have many changes comparing with VS 11? I know that VS 11 doesn't work with Azure, was it fixed in VS 2012? EDIT: Actually I found this: What’s new in the RC since Beta, which describes changes in RC and if I decide to install it, I don't need to uninstall previous version: We’ve enabled upgrade from beta to RC, so if you’re using the same product edition (e.g. Professional, Ultimate, etc.), you do not need to uninstall the beta first. Simply run the Visual Studio 2012 RC installer, which will uninstall the right Beta bits and lay down the RC bits, all at once.

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  • Are there any alternative JS ports of Box2D?

    - by Petteri Hietavirta
    I have been thinking about creating a top down 2D car game for HTML5. For my first game I wrote the physics and collisions my self but for this one I would like to use some ready made library. I found out Box2D and its JS port. http://box2d-js.sourceforge.net It seems to be quite old port, made in 2008. Is it lacking many features of current Box2D or does it have major issues with it? And are there any alternatives for it?

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  • SSIS 2012 Moving and Resizing

    - by andyleonard
    Occasionally someone will email or post a comment about how all MVPs are Microsoft shills. I’m sure I enjoy those comments about as much as the Developer Teams at Microsoft. Let me start by saying that’s simply not true. In fact, it is completely off the mark – at least when it comes to the MVPs I know and with whom I interact. If anything, we are Microsoft’s harshest critics. Just last week, I sent someone at Microsoft an email with the following complaint (paraphrased): I do not like chasing down...(read more)

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