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• Top ten things that don't make sense in The Walking Dead

  - by iamjames

  For those of you that don't know, The Walking Dead is a popular American TV show on AMC about a group of people trying to survive in a zombie-filled world.Here's the top ten eleven things that don't make sense on the show (and have never been explained) 1)  They never visit stores.  No Walmarts, Kmarts, Targets, shopping malls, pawn shops, gas stations, etc.  You'd think that would be the first place you'd visit for supplies, but they never have.  Not once.  There was a tiny corner store they visited in a small town, and while many products were already gone they did find several useful items.  2)  They never raid houses.  Why not?  One would imagine that they would want to search houses for useful items, but they don't.3)  They don't use 2 way radios.  Modern 2-way radios have a 36-mile range.  That's probably best possible range, but even if the range is only 10% of that, 3.6 miles, that's still more than enough for most situations, for the occasional "hey zombies attacking can you give me a hand?" or "there's zombies walking by stay inside until they leave" or "remember to pick up milk at the store love mom".  And yes they would need batteries or recharging, but they have been using gas-powered generators on the show and I'm sure a car charger would work.4)  They use gas-guzzling vehicles.  Every vehicle they have is from the 80s or 90s except for the new Kia SUV there for product placement.  Why?  They should all be driving new small SUVs or hybrids.  Visit a dealership and steal more fuel-efficient vehicles, because while the Walmart's might be empty from people raiding them for supplies, I'm sure most people weren't thinking "Gee, I should go car shopping" when the infection hit5)  They drive a motorcycle.  Seriously?  Let's find the least protective vehicle and drive that.  And while motorcycles get reasonable gas mileage, 5 people in a SUV gets better gas mileage per person than 5 people all driving motorcycles so it doesn't make economical sense either.6)  They drive loud vehicles.  The motorcycle used is commonly referred to as a chopper and is about as loud as a motorcycle can get.  The zombies are attracted to loud noise, so wouldn't it make more sense to drive vehicles that makes less sound?  Because as soon as you stop the bike and get off you're surrounded by zombies that heard you coming.  And it's not just the bike, the ~1980s Chevy SUV in the show is also very loud.7)  They never run out of food.  Seems like that would be a almost daily struggle, keeping enough food available for about a dozen people, yet I've never seen them visit a grocery store or local convenience store to stock up.8)  They don't carry swords, machetes, clubs, etc.  Let's face it, biting is not a very effective means of attack.  It's good for animals because they have fangs and little else, but humans have been finding better ways of killing each other since forever.  So why doesn't everyone on the show carry a sword or machete or at least a baseball bat?  Anything is better than wasting valuable bullets all the time.  Sure, dozen zombies approaching?  Shoot them.  One zombie approaching?  Save the bullet, cut off it's head.  9)  They do not wear protective clothing.  Human teeth are not exactly the sharpest teeth in the animal kingdom.  The leather shoes your dog ripped to shreds within minutes would probably take you days to bite through.  So why do they walk around half-naked?  Yes I know it's hot in Atlanta, but you'd think they'd at least have some tough leather coats or something for protection.  Maybe put a few small vent holes in the fabric if it's really hot.  Or better:  make your own chainmail.  Chainmail was used for thousands of years for protection from swords and is still used by scuba divers for protection from sharks.  If swords and sharks can't puncture it, human teeth don't stand a chance.  10)  They don't build barricades or dig trenches around properties.  In Season 2 they stayed at a farm in the middle of no where.  While being far away from people is a great way to stay far away from zombies, it would still make sense to build some sort of defenses.  Hordes of zombies would knock down almost any fence, but what about a trench or moat?  Maybe something not too wide so it can be jumped over easily but a zombie would fall into because I haven't seen too many jumping zombies on the show.  11)  They don't live in a mall or tall office building.  A mall would be perfect.  They have large security gates designed to keep even hundreds of people from breaking in and offer lots of supplies and food.  They're usually hundreds of thousands of square feet and fully enclosed, one could probably live their entire life happily in a mall.  Tall office building with on-site cafeteria would be another good choice.  They also usually offer good security and office furniture could be pushed out of the windows to crush approaching zombies, and the cafeteria is usually stocked to provide food for hundreds or thousands of office workers so food wouldn't be a problem for a long time. So there you have it, eleven things that don't make sense in The Walking Dead.  Have any of your own you'd like to add or were one of these things covered in the show?  Let me know in the comments.

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• Death March

  - by Nick Harrison

  It is a horrible sight to watch a project fail. There are few things as bad. Watching a project fail regardless of the reason is almost like sitting in a room with a "Dementor" from Harry Potter. It will literally suck all of the life and joy out of the room. Nearly every project that I have seen fail has failed because of political challenges or management challenges. Sometimes there are technical challenges that bring a project to its knees, but usually projects fail for less technical reasons. Here a few observations about projects failing for political reasons. Both the client and the consultants have to be committed to seeing the project succeed. Put simply, you cannot solve a problem when the primary stake holders do not truly want it solved. This could come from a consultant being more interested in extended the engagement. It could come from a client being afraid of what will happen to them once the problem is solved. It could come from disenfranchised stake holders. Sometimes a project is beset on all sides. When you find yourself working on a project that has this kind of threat, do all that you can to constrain the disruptive influences of the bad apples. If their influence cannot be constrained, you truly have no choice but to move on to a new project. Tough choices have to be made to make a project successful. These choices will affect everyone involved in the project. These choices may involve users not getting a change request through that they want. Developers may not get to use the tools that they want. Everyone may have to put in more hours that they originally planned. Steps may be skipped. Compromises will be made, but if everyone stays committed to the end goal, you can still be successful. If individuals start feeling disgruntled or resentful of the compromises reached, the project can easily be derailed. When everyone is not working towards a common goal, it is like driving with one foot on the break and one foot on the accelerator. Not only will you not get to where you are planning, you will also damage the car and possibly the passengers as well.   It is important to always keep the end result in mind. Regardless of the development methodology being followed, the end goal is not comprehensive documentation. In all cases, it is working software. Comprehensive documentation is nice but useless if the software doesn't work.   You can never get so distracted by the next goal that you fail to meet the current goal. Most projects are ultimately marathons. This means that the pace must be sustainable. Regardless of the temptations, you cannot burn the team alive. Processes will fail. Technology will get outdated. Requirements will change, but your people will adapt and learn and grow. If everyone on the team from the most senior analyst to the most junior recruit trusts and respects each other, there is no challenge that they cannot overcome. When everyone involved faces challenges with the attitude "This is my project and I will not let it fail" "You are my teammate and I will not let you fail", you will in fact not fail. When you find a team that embraces this attitude, protect it at all cost. Edward Yourdon wrote a book called Death March. In it, he included a graph for categorizing Death March project types based on the Happiness of the Team and the Chances of Success.   Chances are we have all worked on Death March projects. We will all most likely work on more Death March projects in the future. To a certain extent, they seem to be inevitable, but they should never be suicide or ugly. Ideally, they can all be "Mission Impossible" where everyone works hard, has fun, and knows that there is good chance that they will succeed. If you are ever lucky enough to work on such a project, you will know that sense of pride that comes from the eventual success. You will recognize a profound bond with the team that you worked with. Chances are it will change your life or at least your outlook on life. If you have not already read this book, get a copy and study it closely. It will help you survive and make the most out of your next Death March project.

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• SQLAuthority News – A Conversation with an Old Friend – Sri Sridharan

  - by pinaldave

  Sri Sridharan is my old friend and we often talk on GTalk. The subject varies from Life in India/USA, movies, musics, and of course SQL. We have our differences when we talk about food or movie but we always agree when we talk about SQL. Yesterday while chatting with him we talked about SQLPASS and the conversation lasted for a long time. Here is the conversation between us on GTalk. I have removed a few of the personal talks and formatted into paragraphs as GTalk often shows stuff out of formatting. Pinal: Sri, Congrats on running for the PASS BoD again. You were so close last year. What made you decide to run again this year? Sri: Thank you Pinal for your leadership in the PASS India Community and all the things you do out there. After coming so close last year, there was no doubt in my mind that I will run again. I was truly humbled by the support I got from the community. Growing up in India for over 25 years, you are brought up in a very competitive part of the world. Right from the pressure of staying in the top of the class from kindergarten to your graduation, the relentless push from your parents about studying and getting good grades (and nothing else matters), you land up essentially living in a pressure cooker. To survive that relentless pressure, you need to have a thick skin, ability to stand up for who you really are , what you want to accomplish and in the process stay true those values. I am striving for a greater cause, to make PASS an organization that can help people with their SQL Server careers, to make PASS relevant to its chapter members, to make PASS an organization that every SQL professional in the world wants to be connected with. Just because I did not get elected or appointed last year does not mean that these causes are not worth fighting. Giving up upon failing the first time is simply not in me. If I did that, what message would I send to those who voted for me? What message would I send to my kids? Pinal: As someone who has such strong roots in India, what can the Indian PASS Community expect from you? Sri: First of all, I think fostering a regional leadership is something PASS must encourage as part of its global growth plan. For PASS global being able to understand all the issues in a region of the world and make sound decisions will be a tough thing to do on a continuous basis. I expect people like you, chapter leaders, regional mentors, MVPs of the region start playing a bigger role in shaping the next generation of PASS. That is something I said in my campaign and I still stand by it. I would like to see growth in the number of chapters in India. The current count does not truly represent the full potential of that region. I was pretty thrilled to see the Bangalore SQLSaturday happen early this year. I would like to see more of SQLSaturday events, at least in the major metro cities. I know the issues in India are very different from the rest of the world. So the formula needs to be tweaked a little for it to work better in India. Once the SQLSaturday model is vetted out, maybe there could be enough justification to have SQLRally India. PASS needs to have a premier SQL event in that region. Going to USA or Europe for that matter is incredibly hard due to VISA issues etc. So this could be a case of where PASS comes closer to where the community is. Pinal: What portfolio would take on if you are elected to the PASS Board? Sri: There are some very strong folks on the PASS Board today. The President discusses the portfolios with the group and makes the final call on the portfolios. I am also a fan of having a team associated with the portfolios. In that case, one person is the primary for a portfolio but secondary on a couple of other portfolios. This way people on the board have a direct vested interest in a few portfolios. Personally, I know I would these portfolios good justice – Chapters, Global Growth and Events (SQLSat, SQLRally). I would try to see if we can get a director to focus on Volunteers.  To me that is very critical for growth in the international regions. Pinal: This is an interesting conversation with you Sri. I know you so long time but this is indeed inspiring to many. India is a big country and we appreciate your thoughts. Sri: Thank you very much for taking time to chat with me today. Cheers. There are pretty strong candidates for SQLPASS Board of Elections this year. I know all of them in person and honestly it is going to be extremely difficult to not to vote for anybody. I am indeed in a crunch right now how to pick one over another. Though the choice is difficult, I encourage you to vote for them. I am extremely confident that the new board of directors will all have the same goal – Better SQL Server Community. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Database, DBA, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL PASS, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• Basic WCF Unit Testing

  - by Brian

  Coming from someone who loves the KISS method, I was surprised to find that I was making something entirely too complicated. I know, shocker right? Now I'm no unit testing ninja, and not really a WCF ninja either, but had a desire to test service calls without a) going to a database, or b) making sure that the entire WCF infrastructure was tip top. Who does? It's not the environment I want to test, just the logic I’ve written to ensure there aren't any side effects. So, for the K.I.S.S. method: Assuming that you're using a WCF service library (you are using service libraries correct?), it's really as easy as referencing the service library, then building out some stubs for bunking up data. The service contract We’ll use a very basic service contract, just for getting and updating an entity. I’ve used the default “CompositeType” that is in the template, handy only for examples like this. I’ve added an Id property and overridden ToString and Equals. [ServiceContract] public interface IMyService { [OperationContract] CompositeType GetCompositeType(int id); [OperationContract] CompositeType SaveCompositeType(CompositeType item); [OperationContract] CompositeTypeCollection GetAllCompositeTypes(); } The implementation When I implement the service, I want to be able to send known data into it so I don’t have to fuss around with database access or the like. To do this, I first have to create an interface for my data access: public interface IMyServiceDataManager { CompositeType GetCompositeType(int id); CompositeType SaveCompositeType(CompositeType item); CompositeTypeCollection GetAllCompositeTypes(); } For the purposes of this we can ignore our implementation of the IMyServiceDataManager interface inside of the service. Pretend it uses LINQ to Entities to map its data, or maybe it goes old school and uses EntLib to talk to SQL. Maybe it talks to a tape spool on a mainframe on the third floor. It really doesn’t matter. That’s the point. So here’s what our service looks like in its most basic form: public CompositeType GetCompositeType(int id) { //sanity checks if (id == 0) throw new ArgumentException("id cannot be zero."); return _dataManager.GetCompositeType(id); } public CompositeType SaveCompositeType(CompositeType item) { return _dataManager.SaveCompositeType(item); } public CompositeTypeCollection GetAllCompositeTypes() { return _dataManager.GetAllCompositeTypes(); } But what about the datamanager? The constructor takes care of that. I don’t want to expose any testing ability in release (or the ability for someone to swap out my datamanager) so this is what we get: IMyServiceDataManager _dataManager; public MyService() { _dataManager = new MyServiceDataManager(); } #if DEBUG public MyService(IMyServiceDataManager dataManager) { _dataManager = dataManager; } #endif The Stub Now it’s time for the rubber to meet the road… Like most guys that ever talk about unit testing here’s a sample that is painting in *very* broad strokes. The important part however is that within the test project, I’ve created a bunk (unit testing purists would say stub I believe) object that implements my IMyServiceDataManager so that I can deal with known data. Here it is: internal class FakeMyServiceDataManager : IMyServiceDataManager { internal FakeMyServiceDataManager() { Collection = new CompositeTypeCollection(); Collection.AddRange(new CompositeTypeCollection { new CompositeType { Id = 1, BoolValue = true, StringValue = "foo 1", }, new CompositeType { Id = 2, BoolValue = false, StringValue = "foo 2", }, new CompositeType { Id = 3, BoolValue = true, StringValue = "foo 3", }, }); } CompositeTypeCollection Collection { get; set; } #region IMyServiceDataManager Members public CompositeType GetCompositeType(int id) { if (id <= 0) return null; return Collection.SingleOrDefault(m => m.Id == id); } public CompositeType SaveCompositeType(CompositeType item) { var existing = Collection.SingleOrDefault(m => m.Id == item.Id); if (null != existing) { Collection.Remove(existing); } if (item.Id == 0) { item.Id = Collection.Count > 0 ? Collection.Max(m => m.Id) + 1 : 1; } Collection.Add(item); return item; } public CompositeTypeCollection GetAllCompositeTypes() { return Collection; } #endregion } So it’s tough to see in this example why any of this is necessary, but in a real world application you would/should/could be applying much more logic within your service implementation. This all serves to ensure that between refactorings etc, that it doesn’t send sparking cogs all about or let the blue smoke out. Here’s a simple test that brings it all home, remember, broad strokes: [TestMethod] public void MyService_GetCompositeType_ExpectedValues() { FakeMyServiceDataManager fake = new FakeMyServiceDataManager(); MyService service = new MyService(fake); CompositeType expected = fake.GetCompositeType(1); CompositeType actual = service.GetCompositeType(2); Assert.AreEqual<CompositeType>(expected, actual, "Objects are not equal. Expected: {0}; Actual: {1};", expected, actual); } Summary That’s really all there is to it. You could use software x or framework y to do the exact same thing, but in my case I just didn’t really feel like it. This speaks volumes to my not yet ninja unit testing prowess.

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• Process Centric Banking: Loan Origination Solution

  - by Manish Palaparthy

  There is an old proverb that goes, "The difference between theory and practice is greater in practice than in theory". So, we keep doing numerous "Proof of Concepts" with our own products on various business cases to analyze them deeply, understand and explain to our customers. We then present our learnings as they happened. The awareness of each PoC should help readers increase the trustworthiness of the results coming out of these PoCs. I present one such PoC where we invested a lot of time&effort.  Process Centric Banking : Loan Origination Solution Loan Origination is a process by which a borrower applies for a new loan and the lender processes that application. Loan origination includes the series of steps taken by the bank from the point the customer shows interest in a loan product all the way to disbursal of funds. The Loan Origination process is relevant for many kind of lenders in Financial services: Banks, Credit Unions, NBFCs(Non Banking Financial Companies) and so on. For simplicity sake, I will use "Bank" as the lending institution in the rest of my article.  Loan Origination is one of the core processes for Banks as it is the process by which the it creates assets against which the Institution earns most of its profits from. A well tuned loan origination process can affect the Bank in many positive ways. Banks have always shown great interest in automating the loan origination process for the above reason. However, due the constant changes in customer environment, market dynamics, prevailing economic conditions, cost pressures & regulatory environment they run into lot of challenges. Let me categorize some of these challenges for you Customer Environment Multiple Channels: Customer can use any of the available channels (Internet Banking, Email, Fax, Branch, Phone Banking, ATM, Broker, Mobile, Snail Mail) to perform all or some of the activities related to her Visibility into the origination process: Expect immediate update on the status of loan processing & alert messages Reduced Turn Around Time: Expect loans to be processed with least turn around time Reduced loan processing fees: Partly due to market dynamics the customer expects the loan processing fee to be negligible Market Dynamics Competitive environment:  The competition keeps creating many variants of loan products to attract customers, the bank needs to create similar product variants with better offers to attract customers or keep existing ones Ability to migrate loans from one vendor to another: It has become really easy for retail customers to move from one bank to the other given the low fee of loan processing and highly attractive offers. How does the bank protect it's customer base while actively engaging with potential customers banking with competitor banks Flexibility to react to market developments: Market development greatly influence loan processing, underwriting, asset valuation, risk mitigation rules. Can the bank modify rules and policies, the idea is not just to react to market developments but to pro-actively manage new developments Economic conditions Constant change in various rates and their implications on the rates and rules applied when on-boarding a loan: How quickly can the bank apply changes to rates offered to customers when the central bank changes various rates Requirements of Audit by the central banker: Tough economic conditions have demanded much more stringent audit rules and tests. The banks needs to produce ready reports(historic & operational) for audit compliance Risk Mitigation: While risk mitigation has always been a key concern for the bank, this is the area where the bank's underwriters & risk analysts spend the maximum time when processing a loan application. In order to reduce TAT the bank cannot compromise on its risk mitigation strategies Cost pressures Reduce Cost of processing per application: To deliver a reduced loan processing fee to the customer, the bank needs to keep its cost per processing loan application low. Meet customer TAT expectations while reducing the queues and the systems being used to process the loan application: The loan application could potentially be spending a lot of time waiting in the queue for further processing. Different volumes & patterns of applications demand different queuing algorithms. The bank needs to have real-time visibility into these queues and have the flexibility to change queuing algorithms at runtime  Increase the use of electronic communication and reduce the branch channel usage: Lesser automation leads not only leads to Increased turn around time, it also impacts more costs to reach out to customers The objective of our PoC was to implement a Loan Origination Solution whose ownership lies with the bank and effectively meet the challenges listed above. We built a simple story board for the solution We then went about implementing our storyboard using Oracle BPM Suite, Webcenter Content : Imaging. The web UI has been built on ADF technolgies, while the integration with core-services has been implemented using the underlying SOA infrastructure. The BPM process model is quite exhaustive can meet all the challenges listed above to reasonable degree. A bank intending to implement an end-to-end Loan Origination Solution has multiple options at it's disposal. It can Develop a customer Loan Origination Application from scratch: Gives maximum opportunity to build what you want but inflexible to upgrade and maintain. Higher TCO in long term Buy a Packaged application & customize it: Customizing a generic loan application can be tedious and prove as difficult as above. Build it using many disparate & un-integrated tools: Initially seems easier than developing from scratch. But, without integrated tool sets this is not a viable approach either or A solution based on a Framework: Independent Services and Business Process Modeling provide decoupled architecture that is flexible. We built this framework end-to-end with processes the core process of loan origination & several sub-processes such as Analyse and define customer needs, customer credit verification, identity check processes, legal review process, New customer registration & risk assessment.

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• A Visual Studio Release Grows in Brooklyn

  - by andrewbrust

  Yesterday, Microsoft held its flagship launch event for Office 2010 in Manhattan.  Today, the Redmond software company is holding a local launch event for Visual Studio (VS) 2010, in Brooklyn.  How come information workers get the 212 treatment and developers are relegated to 718? Well, here’s the thing: the Brooklyn Marriott is actually a great place for an event, but you need some intimate knowledge of New York City to know that.  NBC’s Studio 8H, where the Office launch was held yesterday (and from where SNL is broadcast) is a pretty small venue, but you’d need some inside knowledge to recognize that.  Likewise, while Office 2010 is a product whose value is apparent.  Appreciating VS 2010’s value takes a bit more savvy.  Setting aside its year-based designation, this release of VS, counting the old Visual Basic releases, is the 10th version of the product.  How can a developer audience get excited about an integrated development environment when it reaches double-digit version numbers?  Well, it can be tough.  Luckily, Microsoft sent Jay Schmelzer, a Group Program Manager from the Visual Studio team in Redmond, to come tell the Brooklyn audience why they should be excited. Turns out there’s a lot of reasons.  Support fro SharePoint development is a big one.  In previous versions of VS, that support has been anemic, at best.  Shortage of SharePoint developers is a huge issue in the industry, and this should help.  There’s also built in support for Windows Azure (Microsoft’s cloud platform) and, through a download, support for the forthcoming Windows Phone 7 platform.  ASP.NET MVC, a “close-to-the-metal” Web development option that does away with the Web Forms abstraction layer, has a first-class presence in VS.  So too does jQuery, the Open Source environment that makes JavaScript development a breeze.  The jQuery support is so good that Microsoft now contributes to that Open Source project and offers IntelliSense support for it in the code editor. Speaking of the VS code editor, it now supports multi-monitor setups, zoom-in, and block selection.  If you’re not a developer, this may sound confusing and minute.  I’ll just say that for people who are developers these are little things that really contribute to productivity, and that translates into lower development costs. The really cool demo, though, was around Visual Studio 2010’s new debugging features.  This stuff is hard to showcase, but I believe it’s truly breakthrough technology: imagine being able to step backwards in time to see what might have caused a bug.  Cool?  Now imagine being able to do that, even if you weren’t the tester and weren’t present while the testing was being done.  Then imagine being able to see a video screen capture of what the tester was doing with your app when the bug occurred.  VS 2010 allows all that.  This could be the demise of the IWOMM (“it works on my machine”) syndrome. After the keynote, I asked Schmelzer if any of Microsoft’s competitors have debugging tools that come close to VS 2010’s.  His answer was an earnest “we don’t think so.”  If that’s true, that’s a big deal, and a huge advantage for developer teams who adopt it.  It will make software development much cheaper and more efficient.  Kind of like holding a launch event at the Brooklyn Marriott instead of 30 Rock in Manhattan! VS 2010 (version 10) and Office 2010 (version 14) aren’t the only new product versions Microsoft is releasing right now.  There’s also SQL Server 2008 R2 (version 10.5), Exchange 2010 (version 8, I believe), SharePoint 2010 (version 4) and, of course, Windows 7.  With so many new versions at such levels of maturity, I think it’s fair to say Microsoft has reached middle-age.  How does a company stave off a potential mid-life crisis, especially when with young Turks like Google coming along and competing so fiercely?  Hard to say.  But if focusing on core value, including value that’s hard to play into a sexy demo, is part oft the answer, then Microsoft’s doing OK.  And if some new tricks, like Windows Phone 7, can gain some traction, that might round things out nicely. Are the legacy products old tricks, or are they revised classics?  I honestly don’t know, because it’s the market’s prerogative to pass that judgement.  I can say this though: based on today’s show, I think Microsoft’s been doing its homework.

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• 7 Steps To Cut Recruiting Costs & Drive Exceptional Business Results

  - by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies

  By Steve Viarengo, Vice President Product Management, Oracle Taleo Cloud Services  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 In good times, trimming operational costs is an ongoing goal. In tough times, it’s a necessity. In both good times and bad, however, recruiting occurs. Growth increases headcount in good times, and opportunistic or replacement hiring occurs in slow business cycles. By employing creative recruiting strategies in tandem with the latest technology developments, you can reduce recruiting costs while driving exceptional business results. Here are some critical areas to focus on. 1.  Target Direct Cost Savings Total recruiting process expenses are the sum of external costs plus internal labor costs. Most organizations can reduce recruiting expenses with direct cost savings. While additional savings on indirect costs can be realized from process improvement and efficiency gains, there are direct cost savings and benefits readily available in three broad areas: sourcing, assessments, and green recruiting. 2. Sourcing: Reduce Agency Costs Agency search firm fees can amount to 35 percent of a new employee’s annual base salary. Typically taken from the hiring department budget, these fees may not be visible to HR. By relying on internal mobility programs, referrals, candidate pipelines, and corporate career Websites, organizations can reduce or eliminate this agency spend. And when you do have to pay third-party agency fees, you can optimize the value you receive by collaborating with agencies to identify referred candidates, ensure access to candidate data and history, and receive automatic notifications and correspondence. 3. Sourcing: Reduce Advertising Costs You can realize significant cost reductions by placing all job positions on your corporate career Website. This will allow you to reap a substantial number of candidates at minimal cost compared to job boards and other sourcing options. 4.  Sourcing: Internal Talent Pool Internal talent pools provide a way to reduce sourcing and advertising costs while delivering improved productivity and retention. Internal redeployment reduces costs and ramp-up time while increasing retention and employee satisfaction. 5.  Sourcing: External Talent Pool Strategic recruiting requires identifying and matching people with a given set of skills to a particular job while efficiently allocating sourcing expenditures. By using an e-recruiting system (which drives external talent pool management) with a candidate relationship database, you can automate prescreening and candidate matching while communicating with targeted candidates. Candidate relationship management can lower sourcing costs by marketing new job opportunities to candidates sourced in the past. By mining the talent pool in this fashion, you eliminate the need to source a new pool of candidates for each new requisition. Managing and mining the corporate candidate database can reduce the sourcing cost per candidate by as much as 50 percent. 6.  Assessments: Reduce Turnover Costs By taking advantage of assessments during the recruitment process, you can achieve a range of benefits, including better productivity, superior candidate performance, and lower turnover (providing considerable savings). Assessments also save recruiter and hiring manager time by focusing on a short list of qualified candidates. Hired for fit, such candidates tend to stay with the organization and produce quality work—ultimately driving revenue.  7. Green Recruiting: Reduce Paper and Processing Costs You can reduce recruiting costs by automating the process—and making it green. A paperless process informs candidates that you’re dedicated to green recruiting. It also leads to direct cost savings. E-recruiting reduces energy use and pollution associated with manufacturing, transporting, and recycling paper products. And process automation saves energy in mailing, storage, handling, filing, and reporting tasks. Direct cost savings come from reduced paperwork related to résumés, advertising, and onboarding. Improving the recruiting process through sourcing, assessments, and green recruiting not only saves costs. It also positions the company to improve the talent base during the recession while retaining the ability to grow appropriately in recovery. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}

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• C# Open Source software that is useful for learning Design Patterns

  - by Fathom Savvy

  In college I took a class in Expert Systems. The language the book taught (CLIPS) was esoteric - Expert Systems: Principles and Programming, Fourth Edition. I remember having a tough time with it. So, after almost failing the class, I needed to create the most awesome Expert System for my final presentation. I chose to create an expert system that would calculate risk analysis for a person's retirement portfolio. In short, the system would provide the services normally performed by one's financial adviser. In other words, based on personality, age, state of the macro economy, and other factors, should one's portfolio be conservative, moderate, or aggressive? In the appendix of the book (or on the CD-ROM), there was this in-depth example program for something unrelated to my presentation. Over my break, I read and re-read every line of that program until I understood it to the letter. Even though it was unrelated, I learned more than I ever could by reading all of the chapters. My presentation turned out to be pretty damn good and I received praises from my professor and classmates. So, the moral of the story is..., by understanding other people's code, you can gain greater insight into a language/paradigm than by reading canonical examples. Still, to this day, I am having trouble with everyday design patterns such as the Factory Pattern. I would like to know if anyone could recommend open source software that would help me understand the Gang of Four design patterns, at the very least. I have read the books, but I'm having trouble writing code for the concepts in the real world. Perhaps, by studying code used in today's real world applications, it might just "click". I realize a piece of software may only implement one kind of design pattern. But, if the pattern is an implementation you think is good for learning, and you know what pattern to look for within the source, I'm hoping you can tell me about it. For example, the System.Linq.Expressions namespace has a good example of the Visitor Pattern. The client calls Expression.Accept(new ExpressionVisitor()), which calls ExpressionVisitor (VisitExtension), which calls back to Expression (VisitChildren), which then calls Expression (Accept) again - wooah, kinda convoluted. The point to note here is that VisitChildren is a virtual method. Both Expression and those classes derived from Expression can implement the VisitChildren method any way they want. This means that one type of Expression can run code that is completely different from another type of derived Expression, even though the ExpressionVisitor class is the same in the Accept method. (As a side note Expression.Accept is also virtual). In the end, the code provides a real world example that you won't get in any book because it's kinda confusing. To summarize, If you know of any open source software that uses a design pattern implementation you were impressed by, please list it here. I'm sure it will help many others besides just me. public class VisitorPatternTest { public void Main() { Expression normalExpr = new Expression(); normalExpr.Accept(new ExpressionVisitor()); Expression binExpr = new BinaryExpression(); binExpr.Accept(new ExpressionVisitor()); } } public class Expression { protected internal virtual Expression Accept(ExpressionVisitor visitor) { return visitor.VisitExtension(this); } protected internal virtual Expression VisitChildren(ExpressionVisitor visitor) { if (!this.CanReduce) { throw Error.MustBeReducible(); } return visitor.Visit(this.ReduceAndCheck()); } public virtual Expression Visit(Expression node) { if (node != null) { return node.Accept(this); } return null; } public Expression ReduceAndCheck() { if (!this.CanReduce) { throw Error.MustBeReducible(); } Expression expression = this.Reduce(); if ((expression == null) || (expression == this)) { throw Error.MustReduceToDifferent(); } if (!TypeUtils.AreReferenceAssignable(this.Type, expression.Type)) { throw Error.ReducedNotCompatible(); } return expression; } } public class BinaryExpression : Expression { protected internal override Expression Accept(ExpressionVisitor visitor) { return visitor.VisitBinary(this); } protected internal override Expression VisitChildren(ExpressionVisitor visitor) { return CreateDummyExpression(); } protected internal Expression CreateDummyExpression() { Expression dummy = new Expression(); return dummy; } } public class ExpressionVisitor { public virtual Expression Visit(Expression node) { if (node != null) { return node.Accept(this); } return null; } protected internal virtual Expression VisitExtension(Expression node) { return node.VisitChildren(this); } protected internal virtual Expression VisitBinary(BinaryExpression node) { return ValidateBinary(node, node.Update(this.Visit(node.Left), this.VisitAndConvert<LambdaExpression>(node.Conversion, "VisitBinary"), this.Visit(node.Right))); } }

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• Rules for Naming

  - by PointsToShare

  © 2011 By: Dov Trietsch. All rights reserved Naming Documents (or is it “Document, Naming”?) Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name And for that name which is no part of thee Take all myself.  Shakespeare – Romeo and Juliet Act II, Scene 2 We normally only use the bold portion of the famous Shakespearean quote above, but it is really out of context. As the play unfolds, we learn that a name is all too powerful. Indeed it is because of their names that the doomed lovers die. There might be life and death in a name (BTW, when I wrote this monogram, I was in Hatfield, PA. Remember the Hatfields and the McCoys?) This is a bit extreme, but in the field of Knowledge Management (KM) names are of the utmost importance as well. When I write an article about managing SharePoint sites, how should I name it? “Managing a site” or “Site, managing”? Nine times out of ten I’d opt for the latter. Almost everything we do is “Managing” so to make life easier for a person looking for meaningful content, we title our articles starting with the differentiator rather than the common factor. As a rule of thumb, we start the name with the noun rather than the verb. It is not what we do that is the primary key; it is what we do it to. So, answer this – is it a “rule of thumb” or a “thumb rule?” This is tough. A lot of what we do when naming is a judgment call. Both thumb and rule are nouns, albeit concrete and abstract (more about this later), but to most people “thumb rule” is meaningless while “rule of thumb” is an idiom. The difference between knowledge and information is that knowledge is meaningful information placed in context. Thus I elect the “rule of thumb”. It is the more meaningful title. Abstract and Concrete are relative terms. Many nouns (and verbs) that are abstract to a commoner, are concrete to a practitioner of one profession or another and may even have different concrete meanings in different professional jargons. Think about “running”. To an executive it means running a business, to a marathoner its meaning is much more literal. Generally speaking, we store and disseminate knowledge within a practice more than we do it in general. Even dictionaries encyclopedias define terms as they apply to different audiences. The rule of thumb is to put the more concrete first, but within the audience’s jargon. Even the title of this monogram is a question. Do I name it “Naming Documents” or “Documents, Naming”? Well, my own rule of thumb (“Here he goes again!?”) states that the latter is better because it starts with a noun, but this is a document about naming more than it about documents. The rules of naming also apply to graphs and charts, excel spreadsheets, and so on. Thus, I vote for the former.  A better title could have been “Naming Objects” only the word “Object” is a bit too abstract. How about just “Naming” or “Naming, rules of”? You get the drift. One of the ways to resolve all of this is to store the documents in Knowledge-Bases, which may become the subjects of a future punditry. Knowledge bases use keywords to describe their content.  Use a Metadata store for the keywords to at least attempt some common grounds. Here is another general rule (rule of thumb?!!) – put at least the one keyword in the title. Use subtitles. Here is an example: Migrating documents – Screening, cleaning, and organizing our knowledge. The main keyword is “documents”, next is “migrating”, other keywords also appear in the subtitle. They are “screening”, “cleaning”, and “organizing”. Any questions? Send me an amply named document by email: [email protected]

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• What Counts for A DBA: Observant

  - by drsql

  When walking up to the building where I work, I can see CCTV cameras placed here and there for monitoring access to the building. We are required to wear authorization badges which could be checked at any time. Do we have enemies?  Of course! No one is 100% safe; even if your life is a fairy tale, there is always a witch with an apple waiting to snack you into a thousand years of slumber (or at least so I recollect from elementary school.) Even Little Bo Peep had to keep a wary lookout.    We nerdy types (or maybe it was just me?) generally learned on the school playground to keep an eye open for unprovoked attack from simpler, but more muscular souls, and take steps to avoid messy confrontations well in advance. After we’d apprehensively negotiated adulthood with varying degrees of success, these skills of watching for danger, and avoiding it,  translated quite well to the technical careers so many of us were destined for. And nowhere else is this talent for watching out for irrational malevolence so appropriate as in a career as a production DBA.   It isn’t always active malevolence that the DBA needs to watch out for, but the even scarier quirks of common humanity.  A large number of the issues that occur in the enterprise happen just randomly or even just one time ever in a spurious manner, like in the case where a person decided to download the entire MSDN library of software, cross join every non-indexed billion row table together, and simultaneously stream the HD feed of 5 different sporting events, making the network access slow while the corporate online sales just started. The decent DBA team, like the going, gets tough under such circumstances. They spring into action, checking all of the sources of active information, observes the issue is no longer happening now, figures that either it wasn’t the database’s fault and that the reboot of the whatever device on the network fixed the problem.  This sort of reactive support is good, and will be the initial reaction of even excellent DBAs, but it is not the end of the story if you really want to know what happened and avoid getting called again when it isn’t even your fault.   When fires start raging within the corporate software forest, the DBA’s instinct is to actively find a way to douse the flames and get back to having no one in the company have any idea who they are.  Even better for them is to find a way of killing a potential problem while the fires are small, long before they can be classified as raging. The observant DBA will have already been monitoring the server environment for months in advance.  Most troubles, such as disk space and security intrusions, can be predicted and dealt with by alerting systems, whereas other trouble can come out of the blue and requires a skill of observing ongoing conditions and noticing inexplicable changes that could signal an emerging problem.  You can’t automate the DBA, because the bankable skill of a DBA is in detecting the early signs of unexpected problems, and working out how to deal with them before anyone else notices them.    To achieve this, the DBA will check the situation as it is currently happening,  and in many cases is likely to have been the person who submitted the problem to the level 1 support person in the first place, just to let the support team know of impending issues (always well received, I tell you what!). Database and host computer settings, configurations, and even critical data might be profiled and captured for later comparisons. He’ll use Monitoring tools, built-in, commercial (Not to be too crassly commercial or anything, but there is one such tool is SQL Monitor) and lots of homebrew monitoring tools to monitor for problems and changes in the server environment.   You will know that you have it right when a support call comes in and you can look at your monitoring tools and quickly respond that “response time is well within the normal range, the query that supports the failing interface works perfectly and has actually only been called 67% as often as normal, so I am more than willing to help diagnose the problem, but it isn’t the database server’s fault and is probably a client or networking slowdown causing the interface to be used less frequently than normal.” And that is the best thing for any DBA to observe…

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• Using Lightbox with _Screen

  Although, I have to admit that I discovered Bernard Bout's ideas and concepts about implementing a lightbox in Visual FoxPro quite a while ago, there was no "spare" time in active projects that allowed me to have a closer look into his solution(s). Luckily, these days I received a demand to focus a little bit more on this. This article describes the steps about how to integrate and make use of Bernard's lightbox class in combination with _Screen in Visual FoxPro. The requirement in this project was to be able to visually lock the whole application (_Screen area) and guide the user to an information that should not be ignored easily. Depending on the importance any current user activity should be interrupted and focus put onto the notification. Getting the "meat", eh, source code Please check out Bernard's blog on Foxite directly in order to get the latest and greatest version. As time of writing this article I use version 6.0 as described in this blog entry: The Fastest Lightbox Ever The Lightbox class is sub-classed from the imgCanvas class from the GdiPlusX project on VFPx and therefore you need to have the source code of GdiPlusX as well, and integrate it into your development environment. The version I use is available here: Release GDIPlusX 1.20 As soon as you open the bbGdiLightbox class the first it, VFP might ask you to update the reference to the gdiplusx.vcx. As we have the sources, no problem and you have access to Bernard's code. The class itself is pretty easy to understand, some properties that you do not need to change and three methods: Setup(), ShowLightbox() and BeforeDraw() The challenge - _Screen or not? Reading Bernard's article about the fastest lightbox ever, he states the following: "The class will only work on a form. It will not support any other containers" Really? And what about _Screen? Isn't that a form class, too? Yes, of course it is but nonetheless trying to use _Screen directly will fail. Well, let's have look at the code to see why: WITH This .Left = 0 .Top = 0 .Height = ThisForm.Height .Width = ThisForm.Width .ZOrder(0) .Visible = .F.ENDWITH During the setup of the lightbox as well as while capturing the image as replacement for your forms and controls, the object reference Thisform is used. Which is a little bit restrictive to my opinion but let's continue. The second issue lies in the method ShowLightbox() and introduced by the call of .Bitmap.FromScreen(): Lparameters tlVisiblilty* tlVisiblilty - show or hide (T/F)* grab a screen dump with controlsIF tlVisiblilty Local loCaptureBmp As xfcBitmap Local lnTitleHeight, lnLeftBorder, lnTopBorder, lcImage, loImage lnTitleHeight = IIF(ThisForm.TitleBar = 1,Sysmetric(9),0) lnLeftBorder = IIF(ThisForm.BorderStyle < 2,0,Sysmetric(3)) lnTopBorder = IIF(ThisForm.BorderStyle < 2,0,Sysmetric(4)) With _Screen.System.Drawing loCaptureBmp = .Bitmap.FromScreen(ThisForm.HWnd,; lnLeftBorder,; lnTopBorder+lnTitleHeight,; ThisForm.Width ,; ThisForm.Height) ENDWITH * save it to a property This.capturebmp = loCaptureBmp ThisForm.SetAll("Visible",.F.) This.DraW() This.Visible = .T.ELSE ThisForm.SetAll("Visible",.T.) This.Visible = .F.ENDIF My first trials in using the class ended in an exception - GdiPlusError:OutOfMemory - thrown by the Bitmap object. Frankly speaking, this happened mainly because of my lack of knowledge about GdiPlusX. After reading some documentation, especially about the FromScreen() method I experimented a little bit. Capturing the visible area of _Screen actually was not the real problem but the dimensions I specified for the bitmap. The modifications - step by step First of all, it is to get rid of restrictive object references on Thisform and to change them into either This.Parent or more generic into This.oForm (even better: This.oControl). The Lightbox.Setup() method now sets the necessary object reference like so: *====================================================================* Initial setup* Default value: This.oControl = "This.Parent"* Alternative: This.oControl = "_Screen"*====================================================================With This .oControl = Evaluate(.oControl) If Vartype(.oControl) == T_OBJECT .Anchor = 0 .Left = 0 .Top = 0 .Width = .oControl.Width .Height = .oControl.Height .Anchor = 15 .ZOrder(0) .Visible = .F. EndIfEndwith Also, based on other developers' comments in Bernard articles on his lightbox concept and evolution I found the source code to handle the differences between a form and _Screen and goes into Lightbox.ShowLightbox() like this: *====================================================================* tlVisibility - show or hide (T/F)* grab a screen dump with controls*====================================================================Lparameters tlVisibility Local loControl m.loControl = This.oControl If m.tlVisibility Local loCaptureBmp As xfcBitmap Local lnTitleHeight, lnLeftBorder, lnTopBorder, lcImage, loImage lnTitleHeight = Iif(m.loControl.TitleBar = 1,Sysmetric(9),0) lnLeftBorder = Iif(m.loControl.BorderStyle < 2,0,Sysmetric(3)) lnTopBorder = Iif(m.loControl.BorderStyle < 2,0,Sysmetric(4)) With _Screen.System.Drawing If Upper(m.loControl.Name) == Upper("Screen") loCaptureBmp = .Bitmap.FromScreen(m.loControl.HWnd) Else loCaptureBmp = .Bitmap.FromScreen(m.loControl.HWnd,; lnLeftBorder,; lnTopBorder+lnTitleHeight,; m.loControl.Width ,; m.loControl.Height) EndIf Endwith * save it to a property This.CaptureBmp = loCaptureBmp m.loControl.SetAll("Visible",.F.) This.Draw() This.Visible = .T. Else This.CaptureBmp = .Null. m.loControl.SetAll("Visible",.T.) This.Visible = .F. Endif {loadposition content_adsense} Are we done? Almost... Although, Bernard says it clearly in his article: "Just drop the class on a form and call it as shown." It did not come clear to my mind in the first place with _Screen, but, yeah, he is right. Dropping the class on a form provides a permanent link between those two classes, it creates a valid This.Parent object reference. Bearing in mind that the lightbox class can not be "dropped" on the _Screen, we have to create the same type of binding during runtime execution like so: *====================================================================* Create global lightbox component*==================================================================== Local llOk, loException As Exception m.llOk = .F. m.loException = .Null. If Not Vartype(_Screen.Lightbox) == "O" Try _Screen.AddObject("Lightbox", "bbGdiLightbox") Catch To m.loException Assert .F. Message m.loException.Message EndTry EndIf m.llOk = (Vartype(_Screen.Lightbox) == "O")Return m.llOk Through runtime instantiation we create a valid binding to This.Parent in the lightbox object and the code works as expected with _Screen. Ease your life: Use properties instead of constants Having a closer look at the BeforeDraw() method might wet your appetite to simplify the code a little bit. Looking at the sample screenshots in Bernard's article you see several forms in different colors. This got me to modify the code like so: *====================================================================* Apply the actual lightbox effect on the captured bitmap.*====================================================================If Vartype(This.CaptureBmp) == T_OBJECT Local loGfx As xfcGraphics loGfx = This.oGfx With _Screen.System.Drawing loGfx.DrawImage(This.CaptureBmp,This.Rectangle,This.Rectangle,.GraphicsUnit.Pixel) * change the colours as needed here * possible colours are (220,128,0,0),(220,0,0,128) etc. loBrush = .SolidBrush.New(.Color.FromArgb( ; This.Opacity, .Color.FromRGB(This.BorderColor))) loGfx.FillRectangle(loBrush,This.Rectangle) EndwithEndif Create an additional property Opacity to specify the grade of translucency you would like to have without the need to change the code in each instance of the class. This way you only need to change the values of Opacity and BorderColor to tweak the appearance of your lightbox. This could be quite helpful to signalize different levels of importance (ie. green, yellow, orange, red, etc...) of notifications to the users of the application. Final thoughts Using the lightbox concept in combination with _Screen instead of forms is possible. Already Jim Wiggins comments in Bernard's article to loop through the _Screen.Forms collection in order to cascade the lightbox visibility to all active forms. Good idea. But honestly, I believe that instead of looping all forms one could use _Screen.SetAll("ShowLightbox", .T./.F., "Form") with Form.ShowLightbox_Access method to gain more speed. The modifications described above might provide even more features to your applications while consuming less resources and performance. Additionally, the restrictions to capture only forms does not exist anymore. Using _Screen you are able to capture and cover anything. The captured area of _Screen does not include any toolbars, docked windows, or menus. Therefore, it is advised to take this concept on a higher level and to combine it with additional classes that handle the state of toolbars, docked windows and menus. Which I did for the customer's project.

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• CSS3 Gradients to reproduce an 'inner glow' effect from Illustrator with border-radius applied

  - by iamfriendly

  Hello all! First post on here so please be kind :) I am in the process of trying to get my head properly around CSS3 Gradients (specifically radial ones) and in doing so I think I've set myself a relatively tough challenge. In Adobe Illustrator I have created a 'button' style which can be seen here: http://bit.ly/aePPtV (jpg image). To create this image I created a rectangle with a background colour of rgb(63,64,63) or #3F403F, then 'stylized' it to have a 15px border radius. I then applied an 'inner glow' to it with a 25% opacity, 8px blur, white from the center. Finally, I applied a 3pt white stroke on it. (I'm telling you all of this in case you wished to reproduce it, if the image above isn't sufficient.) So, my question is thus: is it possible to recreate this 'button' using CSS without the need for an image? I am aware of the 'limitations' of Internet Explorer (and for the sake of this experiment, I couldn't give a monkeys). I am also aware of the small 'bug' in webkit which incorrectly renders an element with a background colour, border-radius and a border (with a different color to the background-color) - it lets the background color bleed through on the curved corners. My best attempt so far is fairly pathetic, but for reference here is the code: section#featured footer p a { color: rgb(255,255,255); text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px rgba(0,0,0,0.6); text-decoration: none; padding: 5px 10px; border-radius: 15px; -moz-border-radius: 15px; -webkit-border-radius: 15px; border: 3px solid rgb(255,255,255); background: rgb(98,99,100); background: -moz-radial-gradient( 50% 50%, farthest-side, #626364, #545454 ); background: -webkit-gradient( radial, 50% 50%, 1px, 50% 50%, 5px, from(rgb(98,99,100)), to(rgb(84,84,84)) ); } Basically, terrible. Any hints or tips gratefully accepted and thank you very much in advance for them!

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• FILESTREAM/FILETABLE Clarifications for Implementation

  - by user1209734

  Recently our team was looking at FILESTREAM to expand the capabilities of our proprietary application. The main purpose of this app is managing the various PDFS, Images and documents to all of the parts we manufacture. Our ASP application uses a few third party tools to allow viewing of these files. We currently have 980GB of data on the Fileserver. We have around 200GB of Binary data in SQL Server that we would like to extract since it is not performing well hence FILESTREAM seems to be a good compromise to the two major data storage/access issues. A few things are not exactly clear to us: FILESTREAM Can or Cannot store its data on a drive that is not locally attached. We already have a File Server with a RAID 10 (1.5TB drives). This server stores all of the documents right now, would we have to move these drives to the SQL Server for FILESTREAM? That would be a tough bullet to bite since the server also is doubling as the Application Server (Two VMs on one physical server). FILETABLE stores the common metadata about the files but where is the Full Text part of it stored to allow searching of files like doc/docx? Is this separate? Are you able to freely add criteria to this to search by? If so any links to clarify would be appreciated. Can FILETABLE be referenced in another table with a foreign key? Thank you in advance EDIT: For those having these questions this web video covered everything and more in terms of explaining filestream from 2008 to 2012 and the cavets to consider (I would seriously rep him if I could): http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechDays/Techdays-2012-the-Netherlands/2270 In conclusion we will not be using FILESTREAM as it would be way to huge of an upsurge to accommodate for investment. EDIT 2: Update to #1 - After carefully assessing FileTable in addition to FILESTREAM we got a winning combination. We did have to move the files over to the new server (wasn't to painful since they were on the same VM).It honestly took more time to write an extraction tool to dump the binary data within SQL to the File System. Update to #2 - This was seperate but again Bob had an excellent webinar explaining this: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/Europe/2012/DBI411 Update to #3 - Using TFT inheritance we recycled the Docs table we had (minus the huge binary blobs) which required very little changes in our legacy apps. This was a huge upshot for the developer team.

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• boost::asio buffer impossible to convert parameter from char to const mutable_buffer&

  - by Ekyo777

  visual studio tells me "error C2664: 'boost::asio::mutable_buffer::mutable_buffer(const boost::asio::mutable_buffer&)': impossible to convert parameter 1 from 'char' to 'const boost::asio::mutable_buffer&' at line 163 of consuming_buffers.hpp" I am unsure of why this happen nor how to solve it(otherwise I wouldn't ask this ^^') but I think it could be related to those functions.. even tough I tried them in another project and everything worked fine... but I can hardly find what's different so... here comes code that could be relevant, if anything useful seems to be missing I'll be glad to send it. packets are all instances of this class. class CPacketBase { protected: const unsigned short _packet_type; const size_t _size; char* _data; public: CPacketBase(unsigned short packet_type, size_t size); ~CPacketBase(); size_t get_size(); const unsigned short& get_type(); virtual char* get(); virtual void set(char*); }; this sends a given packet template <typename Handler> void async_write(CPacketBase* packet, Handler handler) { std::string outbuf; outbuf.resize(packet->get_size()); outbuf = packet->get(); boost::asio::async_write( _socket , boost::asio::buffer(outbuf, packet->get_size()) , handler); } this enable reading packets and calls a function that decodes the packet's header(unsigned short) and resize the buffer to send it to another function that reads the real data from the packet template <typename Handler> void async_read(CPacketBase* packet, Handler handler) { void (CTCPConnection::*f)( const boost::system::error_code& , CPacketBase*, boost::tuple<Handler>) = &CTCPConnection::handle_read_header<Handler>; boost::asio::async_read(_socket, _buffer_data , boost::bind( f , this , boost::asio::placeholders::error , packet , boost::make_tuple(handler))); } and this is called by async_read once a packet is received template <typename Handler> void handle_read_header(const boost::system::error_code& error, CPacketBase* packet, boost::tuple<Handler> handler) { if (error) { boost::get<0>(handler)(error); } else { // Figures packet type unsigned short packet_type = *((unsigned short*) _buffer_data.c_str()); // create new packet according to type delete packet; ... // read packet's data _buffer_data.resize(packet->get_size()-2); // minus header size void (CTCPConnection::*f)( const boost::system::error_code& , CPacketBase*, boost::tuple<Handler>) = &CTCPConnection::handle_read_data<Handler>; boost::asio::async_read(_socket, _buffer_data , boost::bind( f , this , boost::asio::placeholders::error , packet , handler)); } }

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• node.js / socket.io, cookies only working locally

  - by Ben Griffiths

  I'm trying to use cookie based sessions, however it'll only work on the local machine, not over the network. If I remove the session related stuff, it will however work just great over the network... You'll have to forgive the lack of quality code here, I'm just starting out with node/socket etc etc, and finding any clear guides is tough going, so I'm in n00b territory right now. Basically this is so far hacked together from various snippets with about 10% understanding of what I'm actually doing... The error I see in Chrome is: socket.io.js:1632GET http://192.168.0.6:8080/socket.io/1/?t=1334431940273 500 (Internal Server Error) Socket.handshake ------- socket.io.js:1632 Socket.connect ------- socket.io.js:1671 Socket ------- socket.io.js:1530 io.connect ------- socket.io.js:91 (anonymous function) ------- /socket-test/:9 jQuery.extend.ready ------- jquery.js:438 And in the console for the server I see: debug - served static content /socket.io.js debug - authorized warn - handshake error No cookie My server is: var express = require('express') , app = express.createServer() , io = require('socket.io').listen(app) , connect = require('express/node_modules/connect') , parseCookie = connect.utils.parseCookie , RedisStore = require('connect-redis')(express) , sessionStore = new RedisStore(); app.listen(8080, '192.168.0.6'); app.configure(function() { app.use(express.cookieParser()); app.use(express.session( { secret: 'YOURSOOPERSEKRITKEY', store: sessionStore })); }); io.configure(function() { io.set('authorization', function(data, callback) { if(data.headers.cookie) { var cookie = parseCookie(data.headers.cookie); sessionStore.get(cookie['connect.sid'], function(err, session) { if(err || !session) { callback('Error', false); } else { data.session = session; callback(null, true); } }); } else { callback('No cookie', false); } }); }); var users_count = 0; io.sockets.on('connection', function (socket) { console.log('New Connection'); var session = socket.handshake.session; ++users_count; io.sockets.emit('users_count', users_count); socket.on('something', function(data) { io.sockets.emit('doing_something', data['data']); }); socket.on('disconnect', function() { --users_count; io.sockets.emit('users_count', users_count); }); }); My page JS is: jQuery(function($){ var socket = io.connect('http://192.168.0.6', { port: 8080 } ); socket.on('users_count', function(data) { $('#client_count').text(data); }); socket.on('doing_something', function(data) { if(data == '') { window.setTimeout(function() { $('#target').text(data); }, 3000); } else { $('#target').text(data); } }); $('#textbox').keydown(function() { socket.emit('something', { data: 'typing' }); }); $('#textbox').keyup(function() { socket.emit('something', { data: '' }); }); });

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• Constraint Satisfaction Problem

  - by Carl Smotricz

  I'm struggling my way through Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach in order to alleviate my natural stupidity. In trying to solve some of the exercises, I've come up against the "Who Owns the Zebra" problem, Exercise 5.13 in Chapter 5. This has been a topic here on SO but the responses mostly addressed the question "how would you solve this if you had a free choice of problem solving software available?" I accept that Prolog is a very appropriate programming language for this kind of problem, and there are some fine packages available, e.g. in Python as shown by the top-ranked answer and also standalone. Alas, none of this is helping me "tough it out" in a way as outlined by the book. The book appears to suggest building a set of dual or perhaps global constraints, and then implementing some of the algorithms mentioned to find a solution. I'm having a lot of trouble coming up with a set of constraints suitable for modelling the problem. I'm studying this on my own so I don't have access to a professor or TA to get me over the hump - this is where I'm asking for your help. I see little similarity to the examples in the chapter. I was eager to build dual constraints and started out by creating (the logical equivalent of) 25 variables: nationality1, nationality2, nationality3, ... nationality5, pet1, pet2, pet3, ... pet5, drink1 ... drink5 and so on, where the number was indicative of the house's position. This is fine for building the unary constraints, e.g. The Norwegian lives in the first house: nationality1 = { :norway }. But most of the constraints are a combination of two such variables through a common house number, e.g. The Swede has a dog: nationality[n] = { :sweden } AND pet[n] = { :dog } where n can range from 1 to 5, obviously. Or stated another way: nationality1 = { :sweden } AND pet1 = { :dog } XOR nationality2 = { :sweden } AND pet2 = { :dog } XOR nationality3 = { :sweden } AND pet3 = { :dog } XOR nationality4 = { :sweden } AND pet4 = { :dog } XOR nationality5 = { :sweden } AND pet5 = { :dog } ...which has a decidedly different feel to it than the "list of tuples" advocated by the book: ( X1, X2, X3 = { val1, val2, val3 }, { val4, val5, val6 }, ... ) I'm not looking for a solution per se; I'm looking for a start on how to model this problem in a way that's compatible with the book's approach. Any help appreciated.

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• Complex relationship between tables in NHibernate

  - by Ilya Kogan

  Hi all, I'm writing a Fluent NHibernate mapping for a legacy Oracle database. The challenge is that the tables have composite primary keys. If I were at total freedom, I would redesign the relationships and auto-generate primary keys, but other applications must write to the same database and read from it, so I cannot do it. These are the two tables I'll focus on: Example data Trips table: 1, 10:00, 11:00 ... 1, 12:00, 15:00 ... 1, 16:00, 19:00 ... 2, 12:00, 13:00 ... 3, 9:00, 18:00 ... Faults table: 1, 13:00 ... 1, 23:00 ... 2, 12:30 ... In this case, vehicle 1 made three trips and has two faults. The first fault happened during the second trip, and the second fault happened while the vehicle was resting. Vehicle 2 had one trip, during which a fault happened. Constraints Trips of the same vehicle never overlap. So the tables have an optional one-to-many relationship, because every fault either happens during a trip or it doesn't. If I wanted to join them in SQL, I would write: select ... from Faults left outer join Trips on Faults.VehicleId = Trips.VehicleId and Faults.FaultTime between Trips.TripStartTime and Trips.TripEndTime and then I'd get a dataset where every fault appears exactly once (one-to-many as I said). Note that there is no Vehicles table, and I don't need one. But I did create a view that contains all VehicleIds from both tables, so I can use it as a junction table. What am I actually looking for? The tables are huge because they cover years of data, and every time I only need to fetch a range of a few hours. So I need a mapping and a criteria that will run something like the following SQL underneath: select ... from Faults left outer join Trips on Faults.VehicleId = Trips.VehicleId and Faults.FaultTime between Trips.TripStartTime and Trips.TripEndTime where Faults.FaultTime between :p0 and :p1 Do you have any ideas how to achieve it? Note 1: Currently the application shouldn't write to the database, so persistence is not a must, although if the mapping supports persistence, it may help at some point in the future. Note 2: I know it's a tough one, so if you give me a great answer, you will be properly rewarded :) Thank you for reading this long question, and now I only hope for the best :)

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• c# - How do you get a variable's name as it was physically typed in its declaration?

  - by Petras

  The class below contains the field city. I need to dynamically determine the field's name as it is typed in the class declaration i.e. I need to get the string "city" from an instance of the object city. I have tried to do this by examining its Type in DoSomething() but can't find it when examining the contents of the Type in the debugger. Is it possible? public class Person { public string city = "New York"; public Person() { } public void DoSomething() { Type t = city.GetType(); string field_name = t.SomeUnkownFunction(); //would return the string "city" if it existed! } } Some people in their answers below have asked me why I want to do this. Here's why. In my real world situation, there is a custom attribute above city. [MyCustomAttribute("param1", "param2", etc)] public string city = "New York"; I need this attribute in other code. To get the attribute, I use reflection. And in the reflection code I need to type the string "city" MyCustomAttribute attr; Type t = typeof(Person); foreach (FieldInfo field in t.GetFields()) { if (field.Name == "city") { //do stuff when we find the field that has the attribute we need } } Now this isn't type safe. If I changed the variable "city" to "workCity" in my field declaration in Person this line would fail unless I knew to update the string if (field.Name == "workCity") //I have to make this change in another file for this to still work, yuk! { } So I am trying to find some way to pass the string to this code without physically typing it. Yes, I could declare it as a string constant in Person (or something like that) but that would still be typing it twice. Phew! That was tough to explain!! Thanks Thanks to all who answered this * a lot*. It sent me on a new path to better understand lambda expressions. And it created a new question.

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• Safari Frames Invisible Scrollbar

  - by mobiuschic42

  I'm working on a website that uses not just frames, but frames within frames (ew, I know, but I don't get to choose). It actually works OK most of the time, but I'm running into a problem with some of the frames within frames in Safari (only). Some of the two-deep frames render in Safari with a small space on the right-hand side of the frame - I think it's just the ones with scroll set to "no", but fiddling with the scroll settings hasn't fixed it yet. It basically looks like there should be a scroll bar there, but there isn't. I've been working on this awhile and tried a lot of things: changing the heights of the rows, changing the scroll settings, adding a colls='100%' tag, changing the heights of the contents of the frames, as well as checking to make sure widths are set to 100% throughout. Nothing's fixed it so far. Does any one know what's happening here? Here's the basic gist of the code and some screenshots - please forgive the lack of proper quotes; it still renders and fixing them all in this codebase would be a losing battle: <html> <frameset id=fset frameborder=0 border=0 framespacing=0 onbeforeunload="onAppClosing()" onload="onAppInit()" rows="125px,*,0"> <frame src="navFrame.html" name=ControlPanel marginwidth=0 marginheight=0 frameborder=0 scrolling=no noresize> <frame src="contentFrame.html" name=C marginwidth=0 marginheight=0 frameborder=0 scrolling=no> <frame src="invisiFrame.html" name=PING marginwidth=0 marginheight=0 frameborder=0 noresize> <noframes><body>Tough luck.</center></body></noframes> </frameset></html> Inside that second frame (named "C" and with src of "contentFrame") is this: <HTML> <HEAD><META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head> <frameset rows="48px,*,28px" border=0 frameborder=0 framespacing=0> <frame src="pageTitle.html" name=Title marginwidth=0 marginheight=0 noresize scrolling=no frameborder=0> <frame src="content.html" name=ScreenBody marginwidth=0 marginheight=0 frameborder=0> <frame src="submitBar.html" name=ContextPanel marginwidth=0 marginheight=0 frameborder=0 scrolling=no noresize> </FRAMESET> </HTML> The frames that are troublesome are the first frame (named "Title" with src of "pageTitle.html") and the last frame (named "ContextPanel" with src of "submitBar.html") both have their widths set to 100% and heights are either 100%, not set, or a value less than or equal to their row height. Here is an image of the problem:

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• How to set background in OpenGL captured image from OpenCV

  - by user325487

  Hey All, i'm relatively new to Artoolkitplus and openGL i'm having a tough time getting the image i capture through openCV to be set as the background image in OpenGL ... I also cannot convert the image i take through the camera using opencv to be scaled to 320x280 from 640x480 .. i also have to save my image and load if for things to work... here's my code //////////// int findMarker() { IplImage* image = cvQueryFrame( capture ); if( !capture ) { fprintf( stderr, "ERROR: capture is NULL \n" ); getchar(); return -1; } if( !image ) { fprintf( stderr, "ERROR: frame is null...\n" ); getchar(); } //cvShowImage( "Capture", frame ); //image = cvCloneImage( frame ); try{ if(!cvSaveImage("immagineTmp.jpg",image)) printf("Could not save\n"); } catch(void*) {} image = cvLoadImage("immagineTmp.jpg", 1); cvShowImage( "Image", image ); glLoadIdentity(); ////////////// glDisable(GL_DEPTH_TEST); glOrtho(0,640,0,480,-1,1); glGenTextures(1, &bgid); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, bgid); // Create Linear Filtered Texture glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, bgid); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER,GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER,GL_LINEAR); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, 3, image-width, image-height, 0, GL_RGB, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, image-imageData); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, bgid); glBegin(GL_QUADS); glTexCoord2f(0.0f, 0.0f); glVertex3f(-1.2f, -1.0f, -2.0f); glTexCoord2f(1.0f, 0.0f); glVertex3f( 1.2f, -1.0f, -2.0f); glTexCoord2f(1.0f, 1.0f); glVertex3f( 1.2f, 1.0f, -2.0f); glTexCoord2f(0.0f, 1.0f); glVertex3f(-1.2f, 1.0f, -2.0f); glEnd(); glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST); glLoadIdentity(); //////////// // do the OpenGL camera setup glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION); glLoadMatrixf(tracker-getProjectionMatrix()); int markerId = tracker-calc((unsigned char *)(image-imageData)); float conf = tracker-getConfidence(); // use the result of calc() to setup the OpenGL transformation glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW); glLoadMatrixf(tracker-getModelViewMatrix()); if(markerId!=-1) { printf("\n\nFound marker %d (confidence %d%%)\n\nPose-Matrix:\n ", markerId, (int(conf*100.0f))); for(int i=0; i<16; i++) printf("%.2f %s", tracker-getModelViewMatrix()[i], (i%4==3)?"\n " : ""); } cvReleaseImage(&image); return 0; }

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• Is it correct or incorrect for a Java JAR to contain its own dependencies?

  - by 4herpsand7derpsago

  I guess this is a two-part question. I am trying to write my own Ant task (MyFirstTask) that can be used in other project's build.xml buildfiles. To do this, I need to compile and package my Ant task inside its own JAR. Because this Ant task that I have written is fairly complicated, it has about 20 dependencies (other JAR files), such as using XStream for OX-mapping, Guice for DI, etc. I am currently writing the package task in the build.xml file inside the MyFirstTask project (the buildfile that will package myfirsttask.jar, which is the reusable Ant task). I am suddenly realizing that I don't fully understand the intention of a Java JAR. Is it that a JAR should not contain dependencies, and leave it to the runtime configuration (the app container, the runtime environment, etc.) to supply it with the dependencies it needs? I would assume if this is the case, an executable JAR is an exception to the rule, yes? Or, is it the intention for Java JARs to also include their dependencies? Either way, I don't want to be forcing my users to be copying-n-pasting 25+ JARs into their Ant libs; that's just cruel. I like the way WAR files are set up, where the classpath for dependencies is defined under the classes/ directory. I guess, ultimately, I'd like my JAR structure to look like: myfirsttask.jar/ com/ --> the root package of my compiled binaries config/ --> config files, XML, XSD, etc. classes/ --> all dependencies, guice-3.0.jar, xstream-1.4.3.jar, etc. META-INF/ MANIFEST.MF I assume that in order to accomplish this (and get the runtime classpath to also look into the classes/ directory), I'll need to modify the MANIFEST.MF somehow (I know there's a manifest attribute called ClassPath, I believe?). I'm just having a tough time putting everything together, and have a looming/lingering question about the very intent of JARs to begin with. Can someone please confirm whether Oracle intends for JARs to contain their dependencies or not? And, either way, what I would have to do in the manifest (or anywhere else) to make sure that, at runtime, the classpath can find the dependencies stored under the classes/ directory? Thanks in advance!

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• ocjective-c Obtain return value from public method

  - by Felix

  I'm pretty new to objective-C (and C in general) and iPhone development and am coming from the java island, so there are some fundamentals that are quite tough to learn for me. I'm diving right into iOS5 and want to use storyboards. For now I am trying to setup a list in a UITableViewController that will be filled with values returned by a web service in the future. For now, I just want to generate some mock objects and show their names in the list to be able to proceed. Coming from java, my first approach would be to create a new Class that provides a global accessible method to generate some objects for my list: #import <Foundation/Foundation.h> @interface MockObjectGenerator : NSObject +(NSMutableArray *) createAndGetMockProjects; @end Implementation is... #import "MockObjectGenerator.h" // Custom object with some fields #import "Project.h" @implementation MockObjectGenerator + (NSMutableArray *) createAndGetMockObjects { NSMutableArray *mockProjects = [NSMutableArray alloc]; Project *project1 = [Project alloc]; Project *project2 = [Project alloc]; Project *project3 = [Project alloc]; project1.name = @"Project 1"; project2.name = @"Project 2"; project3.name = @"Project 3"; [mockProjects addObject:project1]; [mockProjects addObject:project2]; [mockProjects addObject:project3]; } And here is my ProjectTable.h that is supposed to control my ListView #import <UIKit/UIKit.h> @interface ProjectsTable : UITableViewController @property (strong, nonatomic) NSMutableArray *projectsList; @end And finally ProjectTable.m #import "ProjectsTable.h" #import "Project.h" #import "MockObjectGenerator.h" @interface ProjectsTable { @synthesize projectsList = _projectsList; -(id)initWithStyle:(UITableViewStyle:style { self = [super initWithStyle:style]; if (self) { _projectsList = [[MockObjectGenerator createAndGetMockObjects] copy]; } return self; } - (NSInteger)numberOfSectionsInTableView:(UITableView *)tableView { // only one section for all return 1; - (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section { NSLog(@"%d entries in list", _projectsList.count); return _projectsList.count; - (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath { // the identifier of the lists prototype cell is set to this string value static NSString *CellIdentifier = @"projectCell"; UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier]; Project *project = [_projectsList objectAtIndex:indexPath.row]; cell.textLabel.text = project.name } So while I think everything is correctly set, I expect the tableView to show my three mock objects in its rows. But it stays empty and the NSLog method prints "0 entries in list" into the console. So what am I doing wrong? Any help is appreciated. Best regards Felix

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• Weird networking problem ( Linksys, Windows 7 )

  - by Rohit Nair

  Okay it's a bit tough to figure out where to start from, but here is the basic summary of the issue: During general internet usage, there are times when any attempt to visit a website stalls at "Waiting for somedomain.com". This problem occurs in Firefox, IE and Chrome. No website will load, INCLUDING the router configuration page at 192.168.1.1. Curiously, ping works fine, and other network apps such as MSN Messenger continue to work and I can send and receive messages. Disconnecting and reconnecting to the wireless network seems to fix the problem for a bit, but there are times when it relapses into not loading after every 2-3 http requests. Restarting the router seems to fix the issue, but it can crop up hours or days later. I have a CCNA cert and I know my way around the Windows family of operating systems, so I'm going to list all the things I've tried here. Other computers on the network seem to suffer the same problem, which makes me think it might be a specific problem with something in Win7. The random nature of this issue makes it a bit difficult to confirm, but I can definitely say that I have experienced this on the following systems: Windows 7 64-bit on my desktop Windows Vista 32-bit on my desktop ( the desktop has 2 wireless NICs and the problem existed on both ) Windows Vista 32-bit on my laptop ( both with wireless and wired ) Windows XP SP3 on another laptop ( both wireless and wired ) Using Wireshark to sniff packets seemed to indicate that although HTTP requests were being SENT out, no packets were coming in to respond to the HTTP request. However, other network apps continued to work i.e I would still receive IMs on Windows Live Messenger. Disabling IPV6 had no effect. Updating router firmware to the latest stock firmware by Linksys had no effect. Switching to dd-wrt firmware had no effect. By "no effect" I mean that although the restart required by firmware updates fixed the problem at the time, it still came back. A couple of weeks back, after a LOT of googling and flipping of various options, I figured it might be a case of router slowdown ( http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Router%5FSlowdown ) caused by the fact that I occasionally run a torrent client. I tried changing the configuration as suggested in that router slowdown link, and restarted the router. However I have not run the torrent client for 12 days now, and yet I still randomly experience this problem. Currently the computer I am using is running Windows 7 64-bit. I would just like to reiterate some of the reasons that I was confused by the issue. Even the router config page at 192.168.1.1 would not load, indicating that it's not a problem with the WAN link, but probably a router issue or a local computer issue. For some reason, disconnecting and reconnecting to the wireless network immediately seems to fix the problem. Updating the router firmware, even switching to open source firmware did nothing. So it seemed to be a computer issue. On the other hand, I have not seen any mass outrage of people having networking problems with Windows 7 and Linksys routers, especially a problem of this sort, and I have tweaked every network setting I could think of. Although HTTP seems to have trouble, ping works fine, DNS lookups work fine, other networking apps work fine. However if I disconnect from Windows Live Messenger and try to reconnect, it fails to reconnect. So although it could receive data over the existing TCP/IP connection, trying to start a new one failed? Does anyone have any further ideas on debugging or fixing this issue? I am reasonably certain there are no viruses or other malicious apps on my network, and I am also reasonably certain that nobody is accessing my router without my consent. Router: Linksys WRT54G2 1.0 running dd-wrt firmware Wireless Card: Alfa AWUS036H OS: Windows 7 64-bit EDIT: I tried switching to a clean wireless channel free from interference, but the problem still persisted. I tried connecting directly with a cable, but the problem still persisted. Signed A very confused and bewildered geek whose knowledge seems to be useless in the face of this frustrating network issue.

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• Configuring a PIX 506e for Asterisk

  - by orthogonal3

  Hi all! I'm having problems configuring a old Cisco PIX running 6.3 and wondered if anyone can lend a hand? Simply put I have a PIX 506e that I want to put in my VoIP data path. I can't update it and getting a compat version of Java for that version of PIX is tough so I can't log onto the web interface. The PIX straddles two networks..... 192.168.5.0 on the inside, ...50.0 on the outside both net masks are 255.255.255.0 I have a local Asterisk server cluster with a single service IP (<local asterisk>) SIP is on UDP 5060 and RTP (for the voip data) is on UDP 18000-18999 I know thats a big range but hey may as well. I need the 192.168.5.0 net to have web and ftp access for updates and the like. DHCP, DNS and NTP is already provided on that network so I don't need external DNS access. So I think I want the following rules: SIP or RTP from <my itsp> arriving at <outside voip ip> NATed to <local asterisk> SIP or RTP able to do the reverse route (should be covered by high sec - low sec??) HTTP and FTP access outbound for software update for the servers etc I have the following config at the minute - and I think I'm almost there (I hope)... interface ethernet0 auto interface ethernet1 auto nameif ethernet0 outside security0 nameif ethernet1 inside security100 enable password wouldyouliketobeapeppertoo encrypted passwd wouldyouliketobeapeppertoo encrypted hostname afirewall domain-name adomain fixup protocol dns maximum-length 512 fixup protocol ftp 21 fixup protocol h323 h225 1720 fixup protocol h323 ras 1718-1719 fixup protocol http 80 fixup protocol rsh 514 fixup protocol rtsp 554 fixup protocol sip 5060 fixup protocol sip udp 5060 fixup protocol skinny 2000 fixup protocol smtp 25 fixup protocol sqlnet 1521 fixup protocol tftp 69 access-list acl_ping permit icmp any any access-list voip permit ip host <my itsp> host <local asterisk> mtu outside 1500 mtu inside 1500 ip address outside <outside pix ip> 255.255.255.0 ip address inside <inside pix ip> 255.255.255.0 arp timeout 14400 global (outside) 1 <outside generic ip> nat (inside) 1 192.168.5.0 255.255.255.0 0 0 static (inside,outside) <outside voip ip> <local asterisk> netmask 255.255.255.255 0 0 static (outside,inside) <local asterisk> <outside voip ip> netmask 255.255.255.255 0 0 access-group acl_ping in interface outside access-group acl_ping in interface inside route outside 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 <my next hop router> 1 route outside <my itsp> 255.255.255.255 <my next hop router> 1 I think I just need a hand with the access-lists and NAT/static rules. Would anyone be able to help as I've RTFM'd the Cisco docs a few times and they're heavy. Wishing I'd completed my CCNA now! Thanks all for any help, Phil

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• Cablemodem (SBG6580) firewall denying some outbound traffic? Why? Not configured [migrated]

  - by lairdb

  I finally got around to turning the syslog on for my cablemodem (Motorola Surfboard SBG6580) and I'm seeing about the expected amount of inbound attackage being blocked... 2014-05-30 21:59:02 Local0.Alert 192.168.111.1 May 31 04:58:56 2014 SYSLOG[0]: [Host 192.168.111.1] UDP 12.230.209.198,4500 --> 66.27.xx.xx,61459 DENY:Firewall interface [IP Fragmented Packet] attack 2014-05-30 21:59:02 Local0.Alert 192.168.111.1 May 31 04:58:56 2014 SYSLOG[0]: [Host 192.168.111.1] TCP 17.172.232.109,5223 --> 66.27.xx.xx,53814 DENY:Firewall interface access request 2014-05-30 21:59:02 Local0.Alert 192.168.111.1 May 31 04:58:57 2014 SYSLOG[0]: [Host 192.168.111.1] UDP 12.230.209.198,443 --> 66.27.xx.xx,53385 DENY: Firewall interface [IP Fragmented Packet] attack 2014-05-30 21:59:02 Local0.Alert 192.168.111.1 May 31 04:58:57 2014 SYSLOG[0]: [Host 192.168.111.1] UDP 12.230.209.198,4500 --> 66.27.xx.xx,61459 DENY:Firewall interface [IP Fragmented Packet] attack 2014-05-30 21:59:10 Local0.Alert 192.168.111.1 May 31 04:59:04 2014 SYSLOG[0]: [Host 192.168.111.1] UDP 12.230.209.198,443 --> 66.27.xx.xx,59960 DENY: Firewall interface [IP Fragmented Packet] attack 2014-05-30 21:59:10 Local0.Alert 192.168.111.1 May 31 04:59:04 2014 SYSLOG[0]: [Host 192.168.111.1] UDP 12.230.209.198,4500 --> 66.27.xx.xx,61459 DENY:Firewall interface [IP Fragmented Packet] attack ...and that's great. (Sad, but great.) But I'm also seeing a HUGE amount of what appears to be denied outbound connectivity: 2014-05-30 16:30:10 Local0.Alert 192.168.111.1 May 30 23:30:04 2014 SYSLOG[0]: [Host 192.168.111.1] TCP 192.168.111.100,58969 --> 38.81.66.127,443 DENY: Inbound or outbound access request 2014-05-30 16:30:10 Local0.Alert 192.168.111.1 May 30 23:30:04 2014 SYSLOG[0]: [Host 192.168.111.1] TCP 192.168.111.100,58969 --> 38.81.66.127,443 DENY: Inbound or outbound access request 2014-05-30 16:30:10 Local0.Alert 192.168.111.1 May 30 23:30:04 2014 SYSLOG[0]: [Host 192.168.111.1] TCP 192.168.111.100,58965 --> 162.222.41.13,443 DENY: Inbound or outbound access request 2014-05-30 16:30:10 Local0.Alert 192.168.111.1 May 30 23:30:04 2014 SYSLOG[0]: [Host 192.168.111.1] TCP 192.168.111.100,58965 --> 162.222.41.13,443 DENY: Inbound or outbound access request 2014-05-30 16:30:10 Local0.Alert 192.168.111.1 May 30 23:30:04 2014 SYSLOG[0]: [Host 192.168.111.1] TCP 192.168.111.100,58964 --> 38.81.66.179,443 DENY: Inbound or outbound access request 2014-05-30 16:30:10 Local0.Alert 192.168.111.1 May 30 23:30:04 2014 SYSLOG[0]: [Host 192.168.111.1] TCP 192.168.111.100,58964 --> 38.81.66.179,443 DENY: Inbound or outbound access request ...and Spot checking suggests that it's all legitimate traffic (Opening connections to CrashPlan, etc.), I have no restrictions configured in the modem; I don't see why it should be blocking anything. Am I misreading the log entry, and it's not actually being denied? (Seems unlikely.) Is the ISP (TWC) pushing deny tables that are not exposed in the UI? (Tinfoil hat too tight.) I'm confused. (The good news, such as it is, is that AFAIK I'm not experiencing any actual issues... but maybe I am; tough to tell.) Thanks.

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