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• How to generate thumbnails for less common video containers (mkv, ogm, mp4, flv, rmvb and mov) in wi

  - by fluxtendu

  So how to generate thumbnails for these containers? I know that the install of "DivX Plus Tech Preview: MKV on Windows 7" does it for MKV. But I think that only some registry changes are really necessary and I want it for other containers. If it's possible to avoiding the install of (always bloated) codecs packs it would be nice... Maybe only installing ffdshow or essential and separated codecs. (some time ago I have try reg files for vista without success...) Update: I have installed Win7codecs & tweaked a little its settings and I got almost everything I want. (I have also re-installed the relevant part of the divx plus tech preview to get something else than an all black preview for MKV) Issues that I still want to resolve: Find a cleaner & lighter method Almost all my rmvb and mov files got an all black preview (installing real media/quick time alternative doesn't help, is it the same with the officials?) With almost all containers (avi, mkv, ogm, mpg), I have (few) random files that don't get the preview. I could play them in WMP or another player and don't have found a pattern in the codecs used. All wmv, flv and mp4 have previews but I have less files in these containers. (I clear my thumbnails cache to test them) More generally I would like to understand how windows handle the containers & codecs to generate the previews. And a software that let me choose arbitrarily the pictures previewed would be convenient too

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• Moving symlinks into a folder based on id3 tags.

  - by Reti

  I'm trying to get my music folder into something sensible. Right now, I have all my music stored in /home/foo so I have all of the albums soft linked to ~/music. I want the structure to be ~/music/<artist>/<album> I've got all of the symlinks into ~/music right now so I just need to get the symlinks into the proper structure. I'm trying to do this by delving into the symlinked album, getting the artist name with id3info. I can do this, but I can't seem to get it to work correctly. for i in $( find -L $i -name "*.mp3" -printf "%h\n") do echo "$i" #testing purposes #find its artist #the stuff after read file just cuts up id3info to get just the artist name #$artist = find -L $i -name "*.mp3" | read file; id3info $file | grep TPE | sed "s|.*: \(.*\)|\1|"|head -n1 #move it to correct artist folder #mv "$i" "$artist" done Now, it does find the correct folder, but every time there is a space in the dir name it makes it a newline. Here's a sample of what I'm trying to do $ ls DJ Exortius/ The Trance Mix 3 Wanderlust - DJ Exortius [TRANCE DEEP VOCAL TECH]@ I'm trying to mv The Trance Mix 3 Wanderlust - DJ Exortius [TRANCE DEEP VOCAL TECH]@ into the real directory DJ Exortius. DJ Exortius already exists, so it's just a matter of moving it into the correct directory that's based on the id3 tag of the mp3 inside. Thanks! PS: I've tried easytag, but when I restructure the album, it moves it from /home/foo which is not what I want.

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• Limiting bandwith on an Windows 7 machine

  - by Mihai Damian

  I need to limit the bandwidth on my Windows 7 x64 machine. In the past (on XP) I've been able to use NetLimiter for similar tasks. However for some reason I can't get it to work anymore. For lower limits the bandwidth tests are able to exceed the limit by 10-50%; higher limits seem to be ignored completely and the bandwidth tests report download speeds of over 10 times the speed I set. I'm using speedtest.net and some similar service from my ISP for these tests. Anyway, I don't necessarily need a program as complex as NetLimiter since I only need to throttle my machine's bandwidth, not a specific program's. In case you are wondering why in the world I'd want to cripple my Internet speed, there is a funny story behind this. Long story short, my modem gets random disconnects. Tech support comes in, says my Internet speed is abnormally high and I must be using some tools to somehow make it go faster than it's supposed to and this messes up my modem. I check the connection with another computer and it seems that my PC is the only one in my network that gets abnormal speeds. I reinstall my OS, speed looks normal at first, after I install the batch of 50 or so updates, it goes back to abnormally high speeds and the disconnect problems are not solved. Now I don't have a clue if the explanation the tech team gave me was just a strategy to lay the blame on someone else, but I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt and see what happens if I really reduce my speed to their specification. Any help appreciated.

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• Dell R320 RAID 10 with CacheCade

  - by Geekman

  I'm looking for a higher-performance build for our 1RU Dell R320 servers, in terms of IOPS. Right now I'm fairly settled on: 4 x 600 GB 3.5" 15K RPM SAS RAID 1+0 array This should give good performance, but if possible, I want to also add an SSD Cache into the mix, but I'm not sure if there's enough room? According to the tech-specs, there's only up to 4 total 3.5" drive bays available. Is there any way to fit at least a single SSD drive along-side the 4x3.5" drives? I was hoping there's a special spot to put the cache SSD drive (though from memory, I doubt there'd be room). Or am I right in thinking that the cache drives are simply drives plugged in "normally" just as any other drive, but are nominated as CacheCade drives in the PERC controller? Are there any options for having the 4x600GB RAID 10 array, and the SSD cache drive, too? Based on the tech-specs (with up to 8x2.5" drives), maybe I need to use 2.5" SAS drives, leaving another 4 bays spare, plenty of room for the SSD cache drive. Has anyone achieved this using 3.5" drives, somehow?

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• Are there any tests I can run on a network to simulate 100 heavy network users?

  - by marc.gayle

  I will be hosting a Ruby on Rails workshop at a small hotel in the near future, and while they have 'Wifi' everywhere on the property, and the property normally hosts 150 - 300 people, I am not 100% confident that they have hosted 150 tech people that tend to have heavy web surfing habits/needs. Their tech department is also 1 or 2 guys. Are there any automated tests I can download and run from my laptop, on the network, that would simulate 100 'heavy users' on the network at the same time? Their broadband pipe is a 15mbps cable connection. Would that suffice for the general surfing needs of 100 - 150 techies? I know all it takes is 1 or 2 bit torrenters to kill the entire network, but assuming we can at the very least block those ports or encourage the attendees not to file share on the network, would that speed suffice for general surfing needs? What are good resources online that would allow me to quickly get up to speed on the IT related issues, so that I can ask their sysadmins the right questions? Edit: Note that I am fairly technical, so assume I can get up to speed quickly even with technical manuals, etc.

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• Limiting bandwith on an Windows 7 machine

  - by Mihai Damian

  I need to limit the bandwidth on my Windows 7 x64 machine. In the past (on XP) I've been able to use NetLimiter for similar tasks. However for some reason I can't get it to work anymore. For lower limits the bandwidth tests are able to exceed the limit by 10-50%; higher limits seem to be ignored completely and the bandwidth tests report download speeds of over 10 times the speed I set. I'm using speedtest.net and some similar service from my ISP for these tests. Anyway, I don't necessarily need a program as complex as NetLimiter since I only need to throttle my machine's bandwidth, not a specific program's. In case you are wondering why in the world I'd want to cripple my Internet speed, there is a funny story behind this. Long story short, my modem gets random disconnects. Tech support comes in, says my Internet speed is abnormally high and I must be using some tools to somehow make it go faster than it's supposed to and this messes up my modem. I check the connection with another computer and it seems that my PC is the only one in my network that gets abnormal speeds. I reinstall my OS, speed looks normal at first, after I install the batch of 50 or so updates, it goes back to abnormally high speeds and the disconnect problems are not solved. Now I don't have a clue if the explanation the tech team gave me was just a strategy to lay the blame on someone else, but I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt and see what happens if I really reduce my speed to their specification. Any help appreciated.

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• How do I determine how future-proof and stable a router is?

  - by Aarthi

  I mentioned in my last question that my wireless router had a bad habit of crashing. After consulting with the Super User chatroom, as well as my sysadmin, I've decided I may as well purchase a new router. However, I'm unsure how to evaluate all these tech specs that get touted about. The two things that seem to be the most important to me are: (1) keeping my router future-proof (as standards evolve and change), and (2) ensuring its stability. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what, exactly, I should be looking for in the tech specs or the item description that can give me a good idea of how stable or future-proof my decide will be. What should I look for? Can I determine stability without having to try the device out myself? Please note: I'm not a battle-hardened power user by any means, so I'll likely be reliant on the given firmware for my router. My last router lasted me like four years, so I mostly just want something that'll cover a 500 sqft apartment in New York with minimal crashing, so that I can watch Hulu in peace. And make Skype calls. If it helps, the router models that I'm currently decided between are this ASUS one and this LinkSys one.

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• Embedded Windows XP

  - by Kyle

  My company acquired a brake press for bending large structural steel plates. We received it second hand and it came with an embedded copy of windows XP. Now for the part that's driving me nuts: plug and play has been turned off, also accessibility options has been disabled. What does this mean for me? Keyboards will not work! Nothing that plugs into a USB port will work and it does not have a CD ROM drive. I have tried to turn on plug and play using the on screen keyboard but it is not there since accessibility options is turned off. I would just get an updated copy of the the embedded OS but they come from Sweden and are extremely expensive. I assume there has got to be a way to get a USB devices to work. We need to get a wifi adapter on it so I can use team viewer and remotely configure it for our needs. Things to keep in mind: There is no keyboard so everything has to be done with the mouse There is no PS2 port for a keyboard just a mouse. Odd. I am 5 states away from this location and have been working with a tech who is physically installing the machine. System 32 seems to be missing A LOT of files, the tech told me there is only 8 folders in there and no other files (I don't even understand how Windows is running like this). If anyone has ANY ideas I would appreciate it, I am unsure where to go from here.

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• How to create a WHM/cPanel account, without creating a new sub-domain?

  - by Cyclops

  I have a basic VPS (full root access), with WHM/cPanel, and am learning the ropes. I'm trying to create a new account for an existing domain (mysite.com), and so far WHM won't let me - it either wants a sub-domain or fake domain, but won't allow two accounts for one domain. In the beginning, there was only the root account, and it wouldn't let me login to cPanel - a quick chat with tech support, and I am informed that I need to create a second account, which I did. So now I have an account, call it ns1me, for domain mysite.com. Now I want to create a django account. I go through the same process, but WHM won't allow me to use mysite.com as the domain for django. The docs recommend a sub-domain, so I fill the box in with django.mysite.com. I then realize that has actually created a sub-domain - going to django.mysite.com shows me its home directory, along with helpful information about what version of Apache, Python, and other mods its running (thanks, Apache). I really don't want a sub-domain, so that's out. Another chat with tech support, and they recommend a fake domain name, as it won't create anything. Sure enough, using a domain of djangomysite.com works, and WHM allows me to create a django account. But of course, I can't send email to [email protected] (where I could to [email protected]). What I want, is to be able to create a second account, associated with mysite.com (so I can run cPanel logged in as django, send email to [email protected], etc) - without creating a whole new sub-domain, or fake domain.

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• Nvidia GTX 660m crashes games

  - by dcap

  I just recently bought a Lenovo y580 with both HD intel graphics and an Nvidia GTX 660m. It works great except for one thing: playing games. Every time I load a game, either with Steam or Games for Windows Live, games will end up crashing. I've already talked with lenovo tech support and they couldn't help other than send my new laptop for repair which would take 7 days. So before I do that I thought I'd ask around. These are the games I've tested and what happens when they load: Civilization V: Game loads fine but once it gets loaded to the game, there's noticeable "tearing" popping up and certain things flash. Within a minute of this, the game crashes. Does the same thing regardless if Vsync is on or off. Total War Shogun2: Game gets to the menu screen. The background of the menu screen shows what is expected - slideshow of in-game environments rendered on high settings (this is expected). However, within 2 seconds of the menu loading up it crashes. Age of Empires 3 (Non-steam): This game is several years old so it should work on this brand new laptop fine. However the results are similar to that of Civilization V. Noticeable "Tearing" and after a few seconds it'll freeze/crash. I've done tests on all these games with both the latest stable Nvidia driver 285 as well as the nightly build 307. In addition, Nvidia control panel is set on using the dedicated graphics card for all programs. So is there anything I can do to fix this or will I have to send it back for a week to tech support?

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• When good programmers go bad!

  - by Ed Bloom

  Hi, I'm a team lead/dev who manages a team of 10 programmers. Most of them are hard working talented guys. But of late, I've got this one person who while highly talented and has delivered great work for me in the past, has just become completely unreliable. It's not his ability - that is not in question - he's proven that many times. He just looks bored now. Is blatantly not doing much work (despite a LOT of pressure being put on the team to meet tight deadlines etc.) He just doesn't seem to care and looks bored. I'm partially guilty for not having addressed this before now - I was afraid to have to lose a talented guy given the workload I've got on. But at this stage it's becoming a problem and affecting those around him. Can anyone spare their thoughts or words of wisdom on how I should go about dealing this. I want the talented AND motivated guy back. Otherwise he's gonna have to go. Thanks, Ed

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• What's the "best" database for embedded?

  - by mawg

  I'm an embedded guy, not a database guy. I've been asked to redesign an existing system which has bottlenecks in several places. The embedded device is based around an ARM 9 processor running at 220mHz. There should be a database of 50k entries (may increase to 250k) each with 1k of data (max 8 filed). That's approximate - I can try to get more precise figures if necessary. They are currently using SqlLite 2 and planning to move to SqlLite 3. Without starting a flame war - I am a complete d/b newbie just seeking advice - is that the "best" decision? I realize that this might be a "how long is a piece of string?" question, but any pointers woudl be greatly welcomed. I don't mind doing a lot of reading & research, but just hoped that you could get me off to a flying start. Thanks. p.s Again, a total rewrite, might not even stick with embedded Linux, but switch to eCos, don't worry too much about one time conversion between d/b formats. Oh, and accesses should be infrequent, at most one every few seconds. edit: ok, it seems they have 30k entries (may reach 100k or more) of only 5 or 6 fields each, but at least 3 of them can be a search key for a record. They are toying with "having no d/b at all, since the data are so simple", but it seems to me that with multiple keys, we couldn't use fancy stuff like a quicksort() type search (recursive, binary search). Any thoughts on "no d/b", just data-structures? Btw, one key is 800k - not sure how well SqlLite handles that (maybe with "no d/b" I have to hash that 800k to something smaller?)

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• Perl script matching a certain patern

  - by kivien

  Assuming the file.txt is as follows:- John Depp is a great guy. He is very inteligent. He can do anything. Come and meet John Depp. The perl code is as follows:- open ( FILE, "file.txt" ) || die "can't open file!"; @lines = <FILE>; close (FILE); $string = "John Depp"; foreach $line (@lines) { if ($line =~ $string) { print "$line"; } } The output is going to be first and fourth line. I want to make it working for the file having random line breaks rather than one English sentence per line. I mean it should also work for the following:- John Depp is a great guy. He is very inteligent. He can do anything. Come and meet John Depp. The output should be first and fourth sentence. Any ideas please?

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• How can I print lines that match a pattern in Perl?

  - by kivien

  Assuming the file.txt having just one sentence per line as follows:- John Depp is a great guy. He is very inteligent. He can do anything. Come and meet John Depp. The perl code is as follows:- open ( FILE, "file.txt" ) || die "can't open file!"; @lines = <FILE>; close (FILE); $string = "John Depp"; foreach $line (@lines) { if ($line =~ $string) { print "$line"; } } The output is going to be first and fourth line. I want to make it working for the file having random line breaks rather than one English sentence per line. I mean it should also work for the following:- John Depp is a great guy. He is very inteligent. He can do anything. Come and meet John Depp. The output should be first and fourth sentence. Any ideas please?

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• How can I remove duplicate nodes in XQuery?

  - by Brabster

  I have an XML document I generate on the fly, and I need a function to eliminate any duplicate nodes from it. My function looks like: declare function local:start2() { let $data := local:scan_books() return <books>{$data}</books> }; Sample output is: <books> <book> <title>XML in 24 hours</title> <author>Some Guy</author> </book> <book> <title>XML in 24 hours</title> <author>Some Guy</author> </book> </books> I want just the one entry in my books root tag, and there are other tags, like say pamphlet in there too that need to have duplicates removed. Any ideas? Updated following comments. By unique nodes, I mean remove multiple occurrences of nodes that have the exact same content and structure.

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• TextMate tips for Rails Development

  - by Ganesh Shankar

  Working on Rails code for a bit has started me on the spiral into obsessively customising my dev environment (I say obsessive as at the last Rails meetup I went to there was some guy who was raving about shaving milliseconds off each line of code and therefore upto half an hour a day... I hope I don't become that guy...) I spend most of my time in TextMate so it seemed like a great place to start the optimising... So far I've added a few TextMate bundles like Git Bundle, Project Plus and the theme from Railscasts. I've noticed some of the other TextMate users I've come into contact with using heaps of nifty keyboard shortcuts and other plugins to help make their dev environment more friendly. Looking around the net, I was a bit overwhelmed by the amount of shortcuts and plugins available... So I was hoping to hear from other Rails developers out there: What are some good keyboard shortcuts and plugins that I should be aware of for TextMate with specific reference to Rails Development? I've read this question on SO: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/99807/what-are-some-useful-textmate-shortcuts but I was wondering if there was something a bit more specific to Rails development.

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• Can someone copyright an SQL query?

  - by Samutz

  I work for a school district. Every year we have to export a list of students from our student management system and send it to a company that handles our online exams. So to do this export, we had to hire someone who knew the inner workings of our student management system. He wrote an sql (Adaptive Sybase SQL Anywhere) query to export the students to a csv file like we needed. This was before I started working for the district, so for a while I assumed this was an actually application, until it came time for me to do the export myself. And every year he charges us $500 to update this query to export the students for the current year. So when I discovered it was only a query (.bat file and .sql file), my thought was "I can update this myself". All I have to do is change the years in the query (eg. 2009 to 2010). The query (.sql file) itself has this comment at the top: // This code was writtend by [the guy] // and is the property of [his company]...Copyright 2005,2006,2008,2009 // This code MAY NOT BE USED without the expressed written consent of // [his company]. (Yes, it really does says "writtend".) So now my boss is worried that we're violating the copyright. And that the guy is gonna find out that I updated the query myself because we haven't asked him to update it this year and take legal action. So back to the subject's question: Can he really copyright this query? And if so, is modifying it ourselves a copyright violation? In my mind, a single query isn't program code. It's more a command line command. But I don't know what it's considered legally.

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• ECM (Niche Vs Mass Market)

  - by Luj Reyes

  Hi Everyone, I recently started a little company with a couple of guys. Ours is the typical startup, a lot of ideas, dreams, talent and work hours :P. Our initial business plan was to develop a DM (Document Manager) with several features found on DropBox and other tools but with a big differentiator. Then we got in the team this Business Guy (I must say that several of us could be called 'Business Guys' but we are mainly hackers, he is just Another 'Networking Guy'), and along with him came this market analysis for a DM aimed at a very specific and narrow niche. We have many elements to believe in his market study and the idea is the classic "The market is X million, so if we grab a 10%...", and the market is really there to grab because all big providers deemed it too little and fled, let's say that the market is 5 million USD and demand very specific features. If we decide to go for this niche product we face a sales cycle of about 7 months, and the main goal of these revenue is to develop more ambitious projects. (Institutional VC is out of the question if you want to keep a marginal ownership of your company in my country). The only overlap between the niche and the mass market product features is the ability to store documents; everything else requires that we focus all of our efforts towards one or the other. I've studied a lot about the differences between Mass and Niche Markets, but I want to hear from people with actual experience. So everything comes down to this: If you have a really “saleable” idea what is the right thing to do: to go for the niche or go for the big prize and target primarily the mass market? Thanks for your input

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• ASP.net site looks completely different on IE, Firefox, and Chrome; why?

  - by DavidR

  I'm doing css for a website. I send the html and css to a guy, he puts it into ASP.net. The problem is that the transfer didn't end well for my code and it needs some fixing. The problem is that when I look at it in Chrome, or Firefox, or IE8, I get three completely different renderings. I spent a good amount of time trying to fix a drop-down menu that is supposed to appear while hovering over a link. The one he had in place from ASP.net worked in IE, kinda worked in Firefox, and was completely broken in Chrome (I haven't tested Safari or Opera.) Just getting it to look basically the same in firefox and chrome was a struggle. The html source is showing me two completely different pages as well. Does anyone have experience with this? I know nothing of ASP.net, and it seems like the guy is modifying my layout with a wsyiwyg (I found tables used in random places, which I did not put there.) Faced with this, what is my best option? Is this fixable, or am I in over my head?

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• Top navigation link in Magento that I can't get rid of

  - by Chris Baily

  I'm working on a new theme for an existing Magento installation, and I've got a rogue link. The last guy apparently decided to hard code a link to the AW Blog extension he was using in the top navigation. See here: derm2go.com - link is "articles". I'm getting rid of AW Blog in favor of an integrated wordpress install, but when I uninstall AW Blog, the site breaks (everything after the nav dissapears) and I get this error in my logs: 2011-11-19T08:56:19+00:00 ERR (3): Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening 'Mage/Blog/Helper/Data.php' for inclusion (include_path='/chroot/home/dermtwog/derm2go.com/html/app/code/local:/chroot/home/dermtwog/derm2go.com/html/app/code/community:/chroot/home/dermtwog/derm2go.com/html/app/code/core:/chroot/home/dermtwog/derm2go.com/html/lib:.:/usr/share/pear') in /chroot/home/dermtwog/derm2go.com/html/lib/Varien/Autoload.php on line 93 I've searched everywhere, I can think of that might effect the nav menu, and I don't know where the link is coming from - it's not in the CMS/static blocks, its not in any of the default template files on the server (I deleted and reinstalled all of them) and it's showing up even when I change templates, so it's probably not in on the sub themes. Does anyone out there know of other files it could be hiding in? I'm assuming the last guy did a quick and dirty hack somehow - and maybe messed with core files? Would really rather not have to do a full reinstall.

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• Got problem when uploading the html into the webview in iphone sdk.

  - by Monish Kumar

  Hi Guy's NSString* appendString=@""; appendString = [appendString stringByAppendingString:@"<body>"]; appendString =[appendString stringByAppendingString:@"<table background='footer.png' width='320' height='45' style='background-repeat:no-repeat'>"]; appendString =[appendString stringByAppendingString:@"<tr>"]; appendString =[appendString stringByAppendingString:@"<td align='left' width='57' height='31' style='padding: 6px 0 0 0' ><a href='/map/'><img src='details_Back.png'/></a></td>"]; appendString =[appendString stringByAppendingString:@"<td align='left' valign='middle' style='padding: 0 0 0 65px; font-family:Helvetica; font-size:21px ; font-weight:bold ; color:#FFF'>Details</td>"]; appendString =[appendString stringByAppendingString:@"</tr>"]; appendString =[appendString stringByAppendingString:@"</table>"]; appendString =[appendString stringByAppendingString:@"<br>"]; returnString = [returnString stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"<body>" withString:appendString]; printf("\n return string :%s",[returnString UTF8String]); [myWebView loadHTMLString:returnString baseURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://abc.api.abcdefg.com/"]]; here in the above code the footer.png and details_back.png are the local images stored in my resource folder. Here the problem is I am gettin the background image from the server link I had passed to the webview as baseurl but the images footer.png and details_back.png which were stored in resource is not displayed. if I use the resource bundle as the baseurl then I am not displayed the background image from the server link. Can anyone please give me the suggestions to get rid of rid of this problem. thanks to all guy's, Monish.

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• Are there any code critique sites or similar resources?

  - by Ukko

  I have noticed when people post example code illustrating some issue that they are having often they will gather a number of comments addressing the quality of the code they presented and not the actual problem asked. This is very helpful--if not well directed. Often, this is wasted effort since the asker is often not receptive and the code is often chopped down to something small to post leaving lots of rough edges. In the old days you would see people asking questions like this on comp.lang.lisp and other parts of the comp.lang hierarchy. But that bit of the net kind of sank into the sewers of neglect. Is there a comparable one-stop-shop today? I am partially asking for selfish reasons, I know how to write good idiomatic C, Lisp, O'Caml, and Java code. But I learned C++ pre-template and STL, those rusty skills are not really applicable to today's C++. I have picked up languages like Scala in a vacuum and get by, but am I really doing it correctly? There are so many ways you can abuse a language, I am currently working against a codebase of Fortran written in C, and I recognize and loathe the "that guy" who wrote it. I don't want to be someone else's "that guy" if I can help it. Just because it works does not mean that one did not totally miss the boat on how it should have been done. Do you seek out this type of critique? If so how, where and why? What types of benefits do you derive from it? How about abuse and trolls?

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• Want to add a functional language to my toolchest. Haskell or Erlang?

  - by sean.johnson

  I've been an OO/procedural guy my whole career except in school where I did a lot of logic programming (Prolog). I work on an amazing variety of projects (freelancer) and so I don't want the tools I know and understand to hold me back from using the right tool for the job. I've decided I should know a functional programming language. I've narrowed the field to Haskell and Erlang. What are the pros and cons, advantages and disadvantages, and major trade offs of Haskell and Erlang? How do I decide in a rational way, which is the better path? This is a big time investment, so I'd like to chose wisely. Is there a good case to be made for something else entirely? F#, Scala Ocaml? (BTW, I'm normally a Ruby/C/Obj.C guy, so I'm not terribly impressed or dependent on the JVM as a runtime. It's completely neutral to me. It's a fine runtime, I don't hold it for or against a language. I don't use Microsoft products though, so a .NET runtime would be a negative.)

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• What are your Programming Falacies/Myths?

  - by pms1969

  I recently started a new job and as is typical of all jobs, if you've left, you get blamed for everything. Not long after I started there was a change required for an app (web based) that we maintain, and it was quickly pointed out that the actual code for this site had been lost a long time ago, and the only changes we could make to the it were ones that required changes to mark-up [it was a pre-compiled site]. Being new, I needed a little help finding my way around the code, and enlisted the services of one of my colleagues. Made my changes, and then re-enlisted his help to deploy it. While prepping for the deployment (getting the app on the QA server) we discovered that there were actually 2 different, very similarly named, folders in our source repository. It transpired that for the last year or so, mark-up changes had been made to the site directly, and these were the only differences with the code in the slightly incorrectly named folder in source control. So we did have all the code, and can now properly support the site. This put me in mind of a trick we played on a junior programmer once in a previous job, where we told him he couldn't/shouldn't do a certain thing in code as this would likely bring the server to it's knees and cost the company thousands of pounds (a gag that last months :-). And another one in the first programming job I took on - the batch commission run was just going to crash once a month and there was nothing to be done about it, causing a call out, and call out compensation for the on-call guy (a bug I fixed as soon as I became the on-call guy - 2am call outs don't work for me). So I was wondering... What other programming fallacies/myths are out there that are worth sharing?

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• Stop Spinning Your Wheels&hellip; Sage Advice for Aspiring Developers

  - by Mark Rackley

  So… lately I’ve been tasked with helping bring some non-developers over the hump and become full-fledged, all around, SharePoint developers. Well, only time will tell if I’m successful or a complete failure. Good thing about failures though, you know what NOT to do next time! Anyway, I’ve been writing some sort of code since I was about 10 years old; so I sometimes take for granted the effort some people have to go through to learn a new technology. I guess if I had to say I was an “expert” in one thing it would be learning (and getting “stuff” done) in new technologies. Maybe that’s why I’ve embraced SharePoint and the SharePoint community. SharePoint is the first technology I haven’t been able to master or get everything done without help from other people. I KNOW I’ll never know it all and I learn something new every day.  It keeps it interesting, it keeps me motivated, and keeps me involved. So, what some people may consider a downside of SharePoint, I definitely consider a plus. Crap.. I’m rambling. Where was I? Oh yeah… me trying to be helpful. Like I said, I am able to quickly and effectively pick up new languages, technology, etc. and put it to good use. Am I just brilliant? Well, my mom thinks so.. but maybe not. Maybe I’ve just been doing it for a long time…. 25 years in some form or fashion… wow I’m old… Anyway, what I lack in depth I make up for in breadth and being the “go-to” guy wherever I work when someone needs to “get stuff done”.  Let’s see if I can take some of that experience and put it to practical use to help new people get up to speed faster, learn things more effectively, and become that go-to guy. First off…  make sure you… Know The Basics I don’t have the time to teach new developers the basics, but you gotta know them. I’ve only been “taught” two languages.. Fortran 77 and C… everything else I’ve picked up from “doing”. I HAD to know the basics though, and all new developers need to understand the very basics of development.  97.23% of all languages will have the following: Variables Functions Arrays If statements For loops / While loops If you think about it, most development is “if this, do this… or while this, do this…”.  “This” may be some unique method to your language or something you develop, but the basics are the basics. YES there are MANY other development topics you need to understand, but you shouldn’t be scratching your head trying to figure out what a ”for loop” is… (Also learn about classes and hashtables as quickly as possible). Once you have the basics down it makes it much easier to… Learn By Doing This may just apply to me and my warped brain.  I don’t learn a new technology by reading or hearing someone speak about it. I learn by doing. It does me no good to try and learn all of the intricacies of a new language or technology inside-and-out before getting my hands dirty. Just show me how to do one thing… let me get that working… then show me how to do the next thing.. let me get that working… Now, let’s see what I can figure out on my own. Okay.. now it starts to make sense. I see how the language works, I can step through the code, and before you know it.. I’m productive in a new technology. Be careful here though…. make sure you… Don’t Reinvent The Wheel People have been writing code for what… 50+ years now? So, why are you trying to tackle ANYTHING without first Googling it with Bing to see what others have done first? When I was first learning C# (I had come from a Java background) I had to call a web service.  Sure! No problem! I’d done this many times in Java. So, I proceeded to write an HTTP Handler, called the Web Service and it worked like a charm!!!  Probably about 2.3 seconds after I got it working completely someone says to me “Why didn’t you just add a Web Reference?” Really? You can do that?  oops… I just wasted a lot of time. Before undertaking the development of any sort of utility method in a new language, make sure it’s not already handled for you… Okay… you are starting to write some code and are curious about the possibilities? Well… don’t just sit there… Try It And See What Happens This is actually one of my biggest pet peeves. “So… ‘x++’ works in C#, but does it also work in JavaScript?”   Really? Did you just ask me that? In the time it spent for you to type that email, press the send button, me receive the email, get around to reading it, and replying with “yes” you could have tested it 47 times and know the answer! Just TRY it! See what happens! You aren’t doing brain surgery. You aren’t going to kill anyone, and you BETTER not be developing in production. So, you are not going to crash any production systems!! Seriously! Get off your butt and just try it yourself. The extra added benefit is that it doesn’t work, the absolute best way to learn is to… Learn From Your Failures I don’t know about you… but if I screw up and something doesn’t work, I learn A LOT more debugging my problem than if everything magically worked. It’s okay that you aren’t perfect! Not everyone can be me? In the same vein… don’t ask someone else to debug your problem until you have made a valiant attempt to do so yourself. There’s nothing quite like stepping through code line by line to see what it’s REALLY doing… and you’ll never feel more stupid sometimes than when you realize WHY it’s not working.. but you realize... you learn... and you remember. There is nothing wrong with failure as long as you learn from it. As you start writing more and more and more code make sure that you ALWAYS… Develop for Production You will soon learn that the “prototype” you wrote last week to show as a “proof of concept” is going to go directly into production no matter how much you beg and plead and try to explain it’s not ready to go into production… it’s going to go straight there.. and it’s like herpes.. it doesn’t go away and there’s no fixing it once it’s in there.  So, why not write ALL your code like it will be put in production? It MIGHT take a little longer, but in the long run it will be easier to maintain, get help on, and you won’t be embarrassed that it’s sitting on a production server for everyone to use and see. So, now that you are getting comfortable and writing code for production it is important to to remember the… KISS Principle… Learn It… Love It… Keep It Simple Stupid Seriously.. don’t try to show how smart you are by writing the most complicated code in history. Break your problem up into discrete steps and write each step. If it turns out you have some redundancy, you can always go back and tweak your code later.  How bad is it when you write code that LOOKS cocky? I’ve seen it before… some of the most abstract and complicated classes when a class wasn’t even needed! Or the most elaborate unreadable code jammed into one really long line when it could have been written in three lines, performed just as well, and been SOOO much easier to maintain. Keep it clear and simple.. baby steps people. This will help you learn the technology, debug problems, AND it will help others help you find your problems if they don’t have to decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls just to figure out what you are trying to do…. Really.. don’t be that guy… try to curb your ego and… Keep an Open Mind No matter how smart you are… how fast you type… or how much you get paid, don’t let your ego get in the way. There is probably a better way to do everything you’ve ever done. Don’t become so cocky that you can’t think someone knows more than you. There’s a lot of brilliant, helpful people out there willing to show you tricks if you just give them a chance. A very super-awesome developer once told me “So what if you’ve been writing code for 10 years or more! Does your code look basically the same? Are you not growing as a developer?” Those 10 years become pretty meaningless if you just “know” that you are right and have not picked up new tips, tricks, methods, and patterns along the way. Learn from others and find out what’s new in development land (you know you don’t have to specifically use pointers anymore??). Along those same lines… If it’s not working, first assume you are doing something wrong. You have no idea how much it annoys people who are trying to help you when you first assume that the help they are trying to give you is wrong. Just MAYBE… you… the person learning is making some small mistake? Maybe you didn’t describe your problem correctly? Maybe you are using the wrong terminology? “I did exactly what you said and it didn’t work.”  Oh really? Are you SURE about that? “Your solution doesn’t work.”  Well… I’m pretty sure it works, I’ve used it 200 times… What are you doing differently? First try some humility and appreciation.. it will go much further, especially when it turns out YOU are the one that is wrong. When all else fails…. Try Professional Training Some people just don’t have the mindset to go and figure stuff out. It’s a gift and not everyone has it. If everyone could do it I wouldn’t have a job and there wouldn’t be professional training available.  So, if you’ve tried everything else and no light bulbs are coming on, contact the experts who specialize in training. Be careful though, there is bad training out there. Want to know the names of some good places? Just shoot me a message and I’ll let you know. I’m boycotting endorsing Andrew Connell anymore until I get that free course dangit!! So… that’s it.. that’s all I got right now. Maybe you thought all of this is common sense, maybe you think I’m smoking crack. If so, don’t just sit there, there’s a comments section for a reason. Finally, what about you? What tips do you have to help this aspiring to learn the dark arts??

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