Search Results

Search found 3574 results on 143 pages for 'difficult'.

Page 53/143 | < Previous Page | 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60  | Next Page >

  • How can one make the title bar text have better contrast on dark colors in Windows 8?

    - by zeel
    When Windows 8 color setting are set to a very dark color, such as black or navy blue, the title bar text and the minimize/maximize buttons are nearly invisible. This makes dark colors difficult to work with. In Windows 7 there was an advanced color options, this is gone in 8. The registry keys associated with this seem to still be present, but they have no effect. Is there a way to change this? Or a third party application that can do it? I don't want to use the ugly high contrast theme, I want to use the nice Win 8 theme with a dark color.

    Read the article

  • Image annotation with Inkscape, Pointer and explanation for objects in picture

    - by None
    I need straight paths with end markers for associating text to parts of the image. For better readability, it needs to be high-contrast, i.e. a white line with black outline. Stroke to path will create a group of a box and a circle from the line with end marker. This makes placement of the markers more difficult, as with the node tool it is just a matter of dragging the end nodes of a line segment. I will try to place the markers as line for now and only finally converting them to an outline.

    Read the article

  • Looking for concise set of instructions for upgrading Vmware 5.1 to 5.5

    - by Michael Martinez
    I'm trying to find a set of instructions for upgrading Vmware (ESXi and Vsphere) from 5.1 to 5.5, but all I'm finding online is a bunch of separate, incomplete knowledgebase articles which is making it difficult to get an overview of what's involved. What I'd like is a single, concise document that lists the steps involved. It could be a free online article, someone's blog, a small booklet, someone here who takes the trouble to write it out. Does such a thing exist? If so, can you provide the reference or even provide the text here. I'm running a very small, simple environment consisting of two ESXi hosts and Vsphere Standard edition. Thanks.

    Read the article

  • Pushing new mailbox limits for Exchange 2003 accounts

    - by Dobler
    There is this problem that I have every time I set up an account for a user on Exchange 2003. After I update the Mailbox limit to unlimited in the Exchange tab in the user preferences it does not seem to update right away. I remember reading somewhere that it takes several hours for the change to update in the database. I also remember typing in some terminal command that pushed the new updates immediately. What is that command, and why is it so difficult to find the answer to this problem on Google?

    Read the article

  • How to manage bookmarks?

    - by LNK2019
    Hi Everyone, I have 981 bookmarks and about 30 to 40 folders in my firefox browser. Now,they become very difficult to manage. I searched "bookmark management" etc in google but I can't find useful tutorial or guidelines to follow. I've been looking for answers for a long time. I tried Xmakrs ReaditLater lace. But they couldn't help me organize my bookmarks. Do you have any tips or suggestions on how to manage your bookmarks? In what situation you want to create a tag instead of a folder? Thanks

    Read the article

  • Export data to Excel from Silverlight/WPF DataGrid

    - by outcoldman
    Data export from DataGrid to Excel is very common task, and it can be solved with different ways, and chosen way depend on kind of app which you are design. If you are developing app for enterprise, and it will be installed on several computes, then you can to advance a claim (system requirements) with which your app will be work for client. Or customer will advance system requirements on which your app should work. In this case you can use COM for export (use infrastructure of Excel or OpenOffice). This approach will give you much more flexibility and give you possibility to use all features of Excel app. About this approach I’ll speak below. Other way – your app is for personal use, it can be installed on any home computer, in this case it is not good to ask user to install MS Office or OpenOffice just for using your app. In this way you can use foreign tools for export, or export to xml/html format which MS Office can read (this approach used by JIRA). But in this case will be more difficult to satisfy user tasks, like create document with landscape rotation and with defined fields for printing. At this article I'll show you how to work with Excel object from .NET 4 and Silverlight 4 with dynamic objects and give you an approach which allow you to export data from DataGrid Silverlight and WPF controls. Read more...

    Read the article

  • SQL SERVER – Concat Function in SQL Server – SQL Concatenation

    - by pinaldave
    Earlier this week, I was delivering Advanced BI training on the subject of “SQL Server 2008 R2″. I had great time delivering the session. During the session, we talked about SQL Server 2010 Denali. Suddenly one of the attendees suggested his displeasure for the product. He said, even though, SQL Server is now in moving very fast and have proved many times a good enterprise solution, it does not have some basic functions. I naturally asked him for example and he suggested CONCAT() which exists in MySQL and Oracle. The answer is very simple – the equalent function in SQL Server to CONCAT() is ‘+’ (plus operator without quotes). Method 1: Concatenating two strings SELECT 'FirstName' + ' ' + 'LastName' AS FullName Method 2: Concatenating two Numbers SELECT CAST(1 AS VARCHAR(10)) + 'R' + CAST(2 AS VARCHAR(10)) Method 3: Concatenating values from table columns SELECT FirstName + ' ' + LastName FROM AdventureWorks.Person.Contact Well, this may look very simple but sometime it is very difficult to find the information for simple things only. Do you have any such example which you would like to share with community? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL String, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

    Read the article

  • What approaches exist to setting up continent/country/city drop down menus?

    - by Dave
    How easy (or difficult) is it to have a Continent/Country/City drop down menu? Where one select from Drop Down Menus (for example): 1 - Europe 2 - UK 3 - London and then writes the Province/Area (for example: Essex). Realistically, how long should it take an experienced web developer to write the code of the above, as well as to link this selection to a Browse function and database storing? I do not have a geographical database yet and I am wondering what the fastest and cheapest way to add it to the drop down menu is. Is there any way to get that geographical database for free? I can see this type of geographical drop down menu in thousands of websites, but I am struggling as to how to implement it ASAP. Follow Up: Tks All x your answers and comments so far. I hear what you are saying. I understand that there are rare occasions of Countries with multiple (same) name Cities and that it might be disputable whether a Country belongs to a certain Continent/Region or not (see Russia x example, Europe or Asia?). Anyway, please take a look, for instance, at this website Sign UP screen http://www.couchsurfing.org/register.html My question then is: Where do I get that list (Country/Cities) and how do I create that _array? Manually copying it somewhere else (which would take me ages) or are there ready made lists that can be downloaded from somewhere for free?

    Read the article

  • Best Practices for Renaming, Refactoring, and Breaking Changes with Teams

    - by David in Dakota
    What are some Best Practices for refactoring and renaming in team environments? I bring this up with a few scenarios in mind: If a library that is commonly referenced is refactored to introduce a breaking change to any library or project that references it. E.g. arbitrarily changing the name of a method. If projects are renamed and solutions must be rebuilt with updated references to them. If project structure is changed to be "more organized" by introducing folders and moving existing projects or solutions to new locations. Some additional thoughts/questions: Should changes like this matter or is resulting pain an indication of structure gone awry? Who should take responsibility for fixing errors related to a breaking change? If a developer makes a breaking change should they be responsible for going into affected projects and updating them or should they alert other developers and prompt them to change things? Is this something that can be done on a scheduled basis or is it something that should be done as frequently as possible? If a refactoring is put off for too long it is increasingly difficult to reconcile but at the same time in a day spending 1 hour increments fixing a build because of changes happening elsewhere. Is this a matter of a formal communication process or can it be organic?

    Read the article

  • SQLAuthority News – Updated Favorite Scripts and Best Articles Page

    - by pinaldave
    I have been writing on this blog for around 4 years now and have contributed with more than 1300 blog posts. Many times, I have been asked regarding what is my most favorite article or which is the most essential script for developers and DBA. This is very difficult to answer as I so much effort has been put on my blog and a large amount of content has been generated. However, I do keep a running list of my most favorite scripts and articles. This same are listed on the side bar of this blog as well; I am including them here. Top Downloads PDF Downloads Script Downloads Script Bank Favorite Scripts All Scripts – 1 All Scripts – 2 All Scripts – 3 Top Articles Best Articles Favorite Articles – 1 Favorite Articles – 2 I have kept list of all the published articles here. As the list is long and I keep forgetting many stuffs, I personally use my custom search engine to find solutions on my blog. I suggest you all to give it a try to find your solutions. [email protected] Do let me know your suggestions on what other sections you would like me to work on and build. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Bookmark, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

    Read the article

  • December release of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework is available now.

    - by Jialiang
    The code samples in Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework are updated on 2010-12-13. Download address: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/57459#DownloadId=185534 Updated code sample index categorized by technologies: http://1code.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=All-In-One%20Code%20Framework%20Sample%20Catalog (it also allows you to download individual code samples instead of the entire All-In-One Code Framework sample package.) If it’s the first time that you hear about Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework, please watch the introduction video on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO5Li3APU58, or read the introduction on our homepage http://1code.codeplex.com/,  and this Port25 article http://port25.technet.com/archive/2010/01/18/the-all-in-one-code-framework.aspx.  -------------- New ASP.NET Code Samples VBASPNETAJAXWebChat and CSASPNETAJAXWebChat Most of you have some experience in chatting with friends on the web. So you may want to know how to make a web chat application, it seems to be quite complicated. But ASP.NET gives you the power to buiild a chat room easily. In this code sample, we will construct our own web chat room with the amazing AJAX feature. The principle is simple relatively. As we all know, a base chat application need 4 base controls: one List control to show the chat room members, one List control to show the message list, one TextBox control to input messages and one button to send message. User inputs his message in the textbox first and then presses Send button, it will send the message to the server. The message list will update every 2 seconds to get the newest message list in the chat room from the server. We need to know, it is hard for us to make an AJAX web chat application like a windows form application because we cannot keep the connection after one web request ended. So a lot of events which communicates between client side and server side cannot be realized. The common workaround is to make web requests in every some seconds to check whether the server side has been updated. But another technique called COMET makes it possible. But it is different with AJAX and will not be talked in details in this KB. For more details about COMET, we can get some clues from the Reference.   CSASPNETCurrentOnlineUserList and VBASPNETCurrentOnlineUserList This sample demos a system that needs to display a list of current online users' information. As a matter of fact, Membership.GetNumberOfUsersOnline Method  can get the number of online users and there is a convenient approach to check whether the user is online by using Membership.GetUser(string userName).IsOnline property,however many asp.net projects are not using membership.So in this case,the sample shows how to display a list of current online users' information without using membership provider. It is not difficult to check whether the user is online by using session.Many projects tend to be used “Session_End” event to mark a user as “Offline”,however ,it may not be a good idea,because it can’t detect the user status accurately. In addition, "Session_End" event is only available in the "InProc" session mode. If you are storing session states in the State Server or SQL Server, "Session_End" event will never fire. To handle this issue, we need to save the user online status to a  global DataTable or  DataBase. In the sample application, define a global DataTable to store the information of online users.Use XmlHttpRequest in the pages to update and check user's last active time at intervals and also retrieve information on how many users are still online. The sample project can auto delete offline users' information from a global DataTable by checking users’ last active time. A step-by-step guide illustrating how to display a list of current online users' information without using membership provider: 1. Login page. Let user sign in and add current user’s information to a global datatable while Initialize the global datatable which used to store information of current online users. 2. Current online user list page. Use XmlHttpRequest in this page to update and check user's last active time at intervals and also retrieve information on how many users are still online. 3. If user closes the page without clicking  the sign out link button ,the sample project can auto mark the user as offline and delete offline users' information from a global DataTable which used to store information of current online users  by checking users’ last active time. Then the current online user list will be like this:   CSASPNETIPtoLocation This sample demonstrates how to find the geographical location from an IP address. As we know, it is not hard for us to get the IP address of visitors via Request.ServerVariable property, but it is really difficult for us to know where they come from. To achieve this feature, the sample uses a free third party web service from http://freegeoip.appspot.com/, which returns the information about an IP address we send to the server in the format of XML, JSON or CSV. It makes all things easier.   CSASPNETBackgroundWorker Sometimes we do an operation which needs long time to complete. It will stop the response and the page is blank until the operation finished. In this case, we want the operation to run in the background, and in the page, we want to display the progress of the running operation. Therefore, the user can know the operation is running and can know the progress. CSASPNETInheritingFromTreeNode In windows forms TreeView, each tree node has a property called "Tag" which can be used to store a custom object. Many customers want to implement the same tag feature in ASP.NET TreeView. This project creates a custom TreeView control named "CustomTreeView" to achieve this goal. CSASPNETRemoteUploadAndDownload and VBASPNETRemoteUploadAndDownload This code sample was created in response to a code sample request in our new code sample request frunction for customers. The code samples demonstrate uploading files to and downloading files from a remote HTTP or FTP server. In .NET Framework 2.0 and higher versions, there are some lightweight class libraries which support HTTP and FTP protocol transmission. By using these classes, we can achieve this programming requirement.   CSASPNETImageEditUpload and VBASPNETImageEditUpload This demo will shows how to insert, edit and update a common image with the type of "jpg", "png", "gif" or "bmp" . We mainly use two different SqlDataSources with the same database to bind to GridView and FormView in order to establish the “cascading” effort. Besides we apply our self-made ImageHanlder to encoding or decoding images of different types, and use context to output the stream of images. We will explicitly assign the binary streams of images through the event of “FormView_ItemInserting” or “Form_ItemUpdating” to synchronize the stream both in what we can see on an aspx page as well as in what’s really stored in the database.   WebBrowser Control, Network and other Windows General New Code Samples   CSWebBrowserSuppressError and VBWebBrowserSuppressError The sample demonstrates how to make WebBrowser suppress errors, such as script error, navigation error and so on.   CSWebBrowserWithProxy and VBWebBrowserWithProxy The sample demonstrates how to make WebBrowser use a proxy server.   CSWebDownloadProgress and VBWebDownloadProgress The sample demonstrates how to show progress during the download. It also supplies the features to Start, Pause, Resume and Cancel a download.   CppSetDesktopWallpaper, CSSetDesktopWallpaper and VBSetDesktopWallpaper This code sample application allows you select an image, view a preview (resized smaller to fit if necessary), select a display style among Tile, Center, Stretch, Fit (Windows 7 and later) and Fill (Windows 7 and later), and set the image as the Desktop wallpaper. CSWindowsServiceRecoveryProperty and VBWindowsServiceRecoveryProperty CSWindowsServiceRecoveryProperty example demonstrates how to use ChangeServiceConfig2 to configure the service "Recovery" properties in C#. This example operates all the options you can see on the service "Recovery" tab, including setting the "Enable actions for stops with errors" option in Windows Vista and later operating systems. This example also include how to grant the shut down privilege to the process, so that we can configure a special option in the "Recovery" tab - "Restart Computer Options...".   New Office Development Code Samples   CSOneNoteRibbonAddIn and VBOneNoteRibbonAddIn The code sample demonstrates a OneNote 2010 COM add-in that implements IDTExtensibility2. The add-in also supports customizing the Ribbon by implementing the IRibbonExtensibility interface. It is a skeleton OneNote add-in that developers can extend it to implement more functions. The code sample was requested by a customer in our code sample request service. We expect that this could help developers in the community.   New Windows Shell Code Samples   CppShellExtPreviewHandler, CSShellExtPreviewHandler and VBShellExtPreviewHandler In the past two months, we released the code samples of Windows Context Menu Handler, Infotip Handler, and Thumbnail Handler. This is the fourth part of the shell extension series: Preview Handler. The code samples demo the C++, C# and VB.NET implementation of a preview handler for a new file type registered with the .recipe extension. Preview handlers are called when an item is selected to show a lightweight, rich, read-only preview of the file's contents in the view's reading pane. This is done without launching the file's associated application. Windows Vista and later operating systems support preview handlers. To be a valid preview handler, several interfaces must be implemented. This includes IPreviewHandler (shobjidl.h); IInitializeWithFile, IInitializeWithStream, or IInitializeWithItem (propsys.h); IObjectWithSite (ocidl.h); and IOleWindow (oleidl.h). There are also optional interfaces, such as IPreviewHandlerVisuals (shobjidl.h), that a preview handler can implement to provide extended support. Windows API Code Pack for Microsoft .NET Framework makes the implementation of these interfaces very easy in .NET. The example preview handler provides previews for .recipe files. The .recipe file type is simply an XML file registered as a unique file name extension. It includes the title of the recipe, its author, difficulty, preparation time, cook time, nutrition information, comments, an embedded preview image, and so on. The preview handler extracts the title, comments, and the embedded image, and display them in a preview window.   In response to many customers' request, we added setup projects in every shell extension samples in this release. Those setup projects allow you to deploy the shell extensions to your end users' machines. ---------- Download address: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/57459#DownloadId=185534 Updated code sample index categorized by technologies: http://1code.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=All-In-One%20Code%20Framework%20Sample%20Catalog (it also allows you to download individual code samples instead of the entire All-In-One Code Framework sample package.) If you have any feedback for us, please email: [email protected]. We look forward to your comments.

    Read the article

  • Learn Lean Software Development and Kanban Systems

    - by Ben Griswold
    I did an in-house presentation on Lean Software Development (LSD) and Kanban Systems this week.  Beyond what I had previously learned from various podcasts, I knew little about either topic prior to compiling my slide deck.  In the process of building my presentation, I learned a ton.  I found the concepts weren’t very difficult to grok; however, I found little detailed information was available online. Hence this post which is merely a list of valuable resources. Principles of Lean Thinking, Mary Poppendieck Lean Software Development, May Poppendieck Lean Programming, Mary Poppendieck Lean Software Development, Wikipedia Implementing Lean Software Thinking: From Concept to Cash, Poppendieck Lean Software Development Overview, Darrell Norton Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement The Toyota Way Extreme Toyota: Radical Contradictions That Drive Success at the World’s Best Manufacturer Elegant Code Cast 17 – David Laribee on Lean / Kanban Herding Code Episode 42: Scott Bellware on BDD and Lean Development Seven Principles of Lean Software Development, Przemys?aw Bielicki Kanban Boards for Agile Project Management with Zen Author Nate Kohari Herding Code 55: Nate Kohari brings Your Moment of Zen James Shore on Kanban Systems Agile Zen Product Site A Leaner Form of Agile, David Laribee Kanban as Alternative Agile Implementation, Mark Levison Lean Software Development, Dr. Christoph Steindl Glossary of Lean Manufacturing Terms Why Pull? Why Kanban?, Corey Ladas

    Read the article

  • No-Weld Multi-Monitor Stand Crafted From Sturdy Metal Framing

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    As far as DIY stands for multiple monitors go, this design has to be the sturdiest and least difficult to construct model we’ve seen in some time. Read on to see how one DIYer cleverly crafted a solid metal triple monitor stand with no welding involved. Tinker and gamer Opteced wanted a new stand for his Eyefinity setup but wasn’t in a hurry to spend a pile of cash on a custom stand. His DIY solution is just as sturdy as a commercial metal stand but is made out of inexpensive hardware store parts–the main supports and base are made from Unistrut, a simple metal framing material. Unlike many DIY stands made from metal rods and piping, this build doesn’t require any sort of welding or custom pipe threading. In fact, the metal struts are so over engineered for the task of holding up flat-panel monitors he was able to simply partially saw through them and bend them to the shape he wanted. Hit up the link below for additional pictures of the build. Unistrut Monitor Stand [via Hack A Day] 8 Deadly Commands You Should Never Run on Linux 14 Special Google Searches That Show Instant Answers How To Create a Customized Windows 7 Installation Disc With Integrated Updates

    Read the article

  • SSMS - Please get keyboard shortcuts working for schemas

    - by simonsabin
    My current client is using schemas which is good as it provides nice seperation. However it causes me pain on a daily basis. The reason. I can't use the built in keyboard shortcuts in SQL Server management studio. I can't believe how painfully annoying this is. It's just madness that SQL Server's own tool doesn't support a best practice feature.  You can vote on the connect item here to get this sorted https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/349116/keyboard-shortcut-alt-f1-sp-help-doesnt-work-for-tables-belonging-to-non-default-schemas I've blogged about this before, but this just annoys me so much I'm posting about it again. Surely it can't be difficult to change. The other option is to open up SSMS so we can use add-Ins. I've blogged that before and you can vote on that suggestion here https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/265567 I've also raised a connect item to give other improvements to keyboard shortcuts https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/390612/improvements-to-keyboard-shortcuts-in-ssms

    Read the article

  • Google Translation API Integration in .NET

    - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama
    This blog has been quite for some time because i was very busy at professional font but now I have decided to post on this blog too. I am constantly posting my article on my personal blog at http://jalpesh.blogspot.com. But now this blog will also have same blog post so i can reach to more community. Language localization is one of important thing of site of application nowadays. If you want your site or application more popular then other then it should support more then language. Some time it becomes difficult to translate all the sites into other languages so for i have found a great solution. Now you can use Google Translation API to translate your site or application dynamically. Here are steps you required to follow to integrate Google Translation API into Microsoft.NET Applications. First you need download class library dlls from the following site. http://code.google.com/p/google-language-api-for-dotnet/ Go this site and download GoogleTranslateAPI_0.1.zip. Then once you have done that you need to add reference GoogleTranslateAPI.dll like following. Now you are ready to use the translation API from Google. Here is the code for that. string Text = "This is a string to translate"; Console.WriteLine("Before Translation:{0}", Text); Text=Google.API.Translate.Translator.Translate(Text,Google.API.Translate.Language.English,Google.API.Translate.Language.French); Console.WriteLine("Before Translation:{0}", Text); That’s it it will return the string translated from English to French. But make you are connected to internet :)… Happy Programming Technorati Tags: GoogleAPI,Translate

    Read the article

  • SmartAssembly Support: How to change the maps folder

    - by Bart Read
    If you've set up SmartAssembly to store error reports in a SQL Server database, you'll also have specified a folder for the map files that are used to de-obfuscate error reports (see Figure 1). Whilst you can change the database easily enough you can't change the map folder path via the UI - if you click on it, it'll just open the folder in Explorer - but never fear, you can change it manually and fortunately it's not that difficult. (If you want to get to these settings click the Tools > Options link on the left-hand side of the SmartAssembly main window.)   Figure 1. Error reports database settings in SmartAssembly. The folder path is actually stored in the database, so you just need to open up SQL Server Management Studio, connect to the SQL Server where your error reports database is stored, then open a new query on the SmartAssembly database by right-clicking on it in the Object Explorer, then clicking New Query (see figure 2).     Figure 2. Opening a new query against the SmartAssembly error reports database in SQL Server. Now execute the following SQL query in the new query window: SELECT * FROM dbo.Information You should find that you get a result set rather like that shown in figure 3. You can see that the map folder path is stored in the MapFolderNetworkPath column.   Figure 3. Contents of the dbo.Information table, showing the map folder path I set in SmartAssembly. All I need to do to change this is execute the following SQL: UPDATE dbo.Information SET MapFolderNetworkPath = '\\UNCPATHTONEWFOLDER' WHERE MapFolderNetworkPath = '\\dev-ltbart\SAMaps' This will change the map folder path to whatever I supply in the SET clause. Once you've done this, you can verify the change by executing the following again: SELECT * FROM dbo.Information You should find the result set contains the new path you've set.

    Read the article

  • Do game-theoretic considerations stand in the way of this market-based game-mechanic achieving its goals?

    - by BerndBrot
    Mechanic The mechanic is called "market manipulation" and is supposed to work like this: Players can enter the London Stock Exchange (LSE) LSE displays the stock prices of 8 to 10 companies and derivatives. This number is relatively small to ensure that players will collide in their efforts to manipulate the market in their favor. The prices are calculated based on real world prices of these companies and derivatives (in real time) any market manipulations that were conducted by the players any market corrections of the system Players can buy and sell shares with cash, a resource in the game, at current in-game market value Players can manipulate the market, i.e. let the price of a share either rise or fall, by some amount, over a certain period of time. Manipulating the market requires spending certain in-game resources and is therefore limited. The system continuously corrects market manipulations by letting the in-game prices converge towards their real world counterparts at a rate of 2% of the difference between the two per hour. Because of this market correction mechanism, pushing up prices (and screwing down prices) becomes increasingly difficult the higher (lower) the price already is. Goals Players are supposed to collide (and have incentives to collide) in their efforts to manipulate the market in their favor, especially when it comes to manipulation efforts by different groups. Prices should not resolve around any equilibrium points. The more variance the better. Band-wagoning should always involve risk (recognizing that prices start rising should not be a sure sign that they will keep rising so that everybody can make easy profits even when they don't manipulate the market themselves) Question Are there any game-theoretic considerations that prevent the mechanic from achieving these goals?

    Read the article

  • Building a regex builder

    - by i.h4d35
    I am a beginner in programming in general and web development in particular. I am especially bad at regular expressions. Recently I was involved in building a couple of cPanel plugins(Perl-CGI) and that's when I realized how bad I am in regex. As a result, I have decided to build an online regex builder - this will help me to learn regex and help other struggling with regex. I have checked out GSkinner, Rubular and a couple of others like regexpal. It seemed to be a little difficult to use, hence i thought of writing another one. I do not know which tool is best suited for the job. should I write it in Perl or Python? My skill level is between beginner and intermediate in both those languages. What would be a good starting point - building it for the CLI or for the browser? I plan to get a string as an input, ask if the user want to search or search and replace, enter the search string (and the replace string where applicable) and then generate a regex. Would this be the right way to go?

    Read the article

  • Messing with the Team

    - by Robert May
    Good Product Owners will help the team be the best that they can be.  Bad product owners will mess with the team and won’t care about the team.  If you’re a product owner, seek to do good and avoid bad behavior at all costs.  Remember, this is for YOUR benefit and you have much power given to you.  Use that power wisely. Scope Creep The product owner has several tools at his disposal to inject scope into an iteration.  First, the product owner can use defects to inject scope.  To do this, they’ll tell the team what functionality that they want to see in a feature.  Then, after the feature is developed, the Product Owner will decide that they don’t really like how the functionality behaves.  To change it, rather than creating a new story, they’ll add a defect.  The functionality is correct, as designed, but the Product Owner doesn’t like it.  By creating the defect, the Product Owner destroys the trust that the team has of the product owner.  They may not be able to count the story, because the Product Owner changed the story in the iteration, and the team then ends up looking like they have low velocity for something over which they have no control.  This is bad.  One way to deal with this is to add “Product Owner Time” to the iteration.  This will slow the velocity, but then the ScrumMaster can tell stake holders that this time is strictly in place to deal with bad behavior of the Product Owner. Another mechanism often used to inject Scope is the concept of directed development.  Outside of planning, stand-ups, or any other meeting, the Product Owner will take a developer aside and ask them to complete a task for them.  This is bad!  The team should be allocating all of their time to development.  If the Product Owner asks for a favor, then time that would normally be used for development will be used for a pet project of the Product Owner and the team will not get credit for this work.  Selfish product owners do this, and I typically see people who were “managers” do this behavior.  Authoritarian command and control development environments also see this happen.  The best thing that can happen is for the team member to report the issue to the ScrumMaster and the ScrumMaster to get very aggressive with management and the Product Owner to try and stop the behavior.  This may result in the ScrumMaster being fired, but if the behavior continues, Scrum is doomed.  This problem is especially bad in cases where the team member’s direct supervisor is the Product Owner.  I don’t recommend that the Product Owner or ScrumMaster have a direct report relationship with team members, since team members need the ability to say no.  To work around this issue, team members need to say no.  If that fails, team members need to add extra time to the iteration to deal with the scope creep injection and accept the lower velocity. As discussed above, another mechanism for injecting scope is by changing acceptance tests after the work is complete.  This is similar to adding defects to change scope and is bad.  To get around, add time for Product Owner uncertainty to the iteration and make sure that stakeholders are aware of the need to add this time because of the Product Owner. Refusing to Prioritize Refusing to prioritize causes chaos for the team.  From the team’s perspective, things that are not important will be worked on while things that the team knows are vital will be ignored.  A poor Product Owner will often pick the stories for the iteration on a whim.  This leads to the team working on many different aspects of the product and results in a lower velocity, since each iteration the team must switch context to the new area of development. The team will also experience confusion about priorities.  In one iteration, Feature X was the highest priority and had to be done.  Then, the following iteration, even though parts of Feature X still need to be completed, no stories to address them will be in the iteration.  However, three iterations later, Feature X will again become high priority. This will cause the team to not trust the Product Owner, and eventually, they’ll stop caring about the features they implement.  They won’t know what is important, so to insulate themselves from the ever changing chaos, they’ll become apathetic to all features.  Team members are some of the most creative people in a company.  By losing their engagement, the company is going to have a substandard product because the passion for the product won’t be in the team. Other signs that the Product Owner refuses to prioritize is that no one outside of the product owner will be consulted on priorities.  Additionally, the product, release, and iteration backlogs will be weak or non-existent. Dealing with this issue is not easy.  This really isn’t something the team can fix, short of taking over the role of Product Owner themselves.  An appeal to the stake holders might work, but only if the Product Owner isn’t a “manager” themselves.  The ScrumMaster needs to protect the team and do what they can to either get the Product Owner to prioritize or have the Product Owner replaced. Managing the Team A Product Owner that is also the “boss” of team members is a Scrum team that is waiting to fail.  If your boss tells you to do something, failing to do that something can cause you to be fired.  The team needs the ability to tell the Product Owner NO.  If the product owner introduces scope creep, the team has a responsibility to tell the Product Owner no.  If the Product Owner tries to get the team to commit to more than they can accomplish in an iteration, the team needs the ability to tell the Product Owner no. If the Product Owner is your boss and determines your pay increases, you’re probably not going to ever tell them no, and Scrum will likely fail.  The team can’t do much in this situation. Another aspect of “managing the team” that often happens is the Product Owner tries to tell the team how to develop the stories that are in the iteration.  This is one reason why I recommend that Product Owners are NOT technical people.  That way, the team can come up with the tasks that are needed to accomplish the stories and the Product Owner won’t know better.  If the Product Owner is technical, the ScrumMaster will need to take great care to protect the team from the ScrumMaster changing how the team thinks they need to implement the stories. Product Owners can also try to manage the team by their body language.  If the team says a task is going to take 6 hours to complete, and the Product Owner disagrees, they will use some kind of sour body language to indicate this disagreement.  In weak teams, this may cause the team to revise their estimate down, which will result in them taking longer than estimated and may result in them missing the iteration.  The ScrumMaster will need to make sure that the Product Owner doesn’t send such messages and that the team ignores them and estimates what they REALLY think it will take to complete the tasks.  Forcing the team to deal with such items in the retrospective can be helpful. Absenteeism The team is completely dependent upon the Product Owner to develop features for the customer.  The Product Owner IS the voice of the customer and without them, the team will lack direction.  Being the Product Owner is a full time job!  If the Product Owner cannot dedicate daily time with the team, a different product owner should be found. The Product Owner needs to attend every stand-up, planning meeting, showcase, and retrospective that the team has.  The team also must be able to have instant communication with the product owner.  They must not be required to schedule meetings to speak with their product owner.  The team must be the highest priority task that the Product Owner has. The best way to work around an absent Product Owner is to appoint a new Product Owner in the team.  This person will be responsible for making the decisions that the Product Owner should be making and to act as the liaison to the absent Product Owner.  If the delegate Product Owner doesn’t have authority to make decisions for the team, Scrum will fail.  If the Product Owner is absent, the ScrumMaster should seek to have that Product Owner replaced by someone who has the time and ability to be a real Product Owner. Making it Personal Too often Product Owners will become convinced that their ideas are the ones that matter and that anyone who disagrees is making a personal attack on them.  Remember that Product Owners will inherently be at odds with many people, simply because they have the need to prioritize.  Others will frequently question prioritization because they only see part of the picture that Product Owners face. Product Owners must have a thick skin and think egos.  If they don’t, they tend to make things personal, which causes them to become emotional and causes them to take actions that can destroy the trust that team members have in the Product Owner. If a Product Owner is making things person, the best thing that team members can do is reassure them that its not personal, but be firm about doing what is best for the Company and for the users.  The ScrumMaster should also spend significant time coaching the Product Owner on how to not react emotionally and how to accept criticism without becoming defensive. Conclusion I’m sure there are other ways that a Product Owner can mess with the team, but these are the most common that I’ve seen.  I would encourage all Product Owners to seek to be a good Product Owner.  If you find yourself behaving in any of the bad product owner ways, change your behavior today!  Your team will thank you. Remember, being Product Owner is very difficult!  Product Owner is one of the most difficult roles in Scrum.  However, it can also be one of the most rewarding roles in Scrum, since Product Owners literally see their ideas brought to life on the computer screen.  Product Owners need to be very patient, even in the face of criticism and need to be willing to make tough decisions on priority, but then not become offended when others disagree with those decisions.  Companies should spend the time needed to find the right product owners for their teams.  Doing so will only help the company to write better software. Technorati Tags: Scrum,Product Owner

    Read the article

  • How bad is it to use display: none in CSS?

    - by Andy
    I've heard many times that it's bad to use display: none for SEO reasons, as it could be an attempt to push in irrelevant popular keywords. A few questions: Is that still received wisdom? Does it make a difference if you're only hiding a single word, or perhaps a single character? If you should avoid any use of it, what are the preferred techniques for hiding (in situations where you need it to become visible again on certain conditions)? Some references I've found so far: Matt Cutts from 2005 in a comment If you're straight-out using CSS to hide text, don't be surprised if that is called spam. I'm not saying that mouseovers or DHTML text or have-a-logo-but-also-have-text is spam; I answered that last one at a conference when I said "imagine how it would look to a visitor, a competitor, or someone checking out a spam report. If you show your company's name and it's Expo Markers instead of an Expo Markers logo, you should be fine. If the text you decide to show is 'Expo Markers cheap online discount buy online Expo Markers sale ...' then I would be more cautious, because that can look bad." And in another comment on the same article We can flag text that appears to be hidden using CSS at Google. To date we have not algorithmically removed sites for doing that. We try hard to avoid throwing babies out with bathwater. (My emphasis) Eric Enge said in 2008 The legitimate use of this technique is so prevalent that I would rarely expect search engines to penalize a site for using the display: none attribute. It’s just very difficult to implement an algorithm that could truly ferret out whether the particular use of display: none is meant to deceive the search engines or not. Thanks in advance, Andy

    Read the article

  • Building a Store Locator ASP.NET Application Using Google Maps API (Part 3)

    Over the past two weeks I've showed how to build a store locator application using ASP.NET and the free Google Maps API and Google's geocoding service. Part 1 looked at creating the database to record the store locations. This database contains a table named Stores with columns capturing each store's address and latitude and longitude coordinates. Part 1 also showed how to use Google's geocoding service to translate a user-entered address into latitude and longitude coordinates, which could then be used to retrieve and display those stores within (roughly) a 15 mile area. At the end of Part 1, the results page listed the nearby stores in a grid. In Part 2 we used the Google Maps API to add an interactive map to the search results page, with each nearby store displayed on the map as a marker. The map added in Part 2 certainly improves the search results page, but the way the nearby stores are displayed on the map leaves a bit to be desired. For starters, each nearby store is displayed on the map using the same marker icon, namely a red pushpin. This makes it difficult to match up the nearby stores listed in the grid with those displayed on the map. Hovering the mouse over a marker on the map displays the store number in a tooltip, but ideally a user could click a marker to see more detailed information about the store, such as its address, phone number, a photo of the storefront, and so forth. This third and final installment shows how to enhance the map created in Part 2. Specifically, we'll see how to customize the marker icons displayed in the map to make it easier to identify which marker corresponds to which nearby store location. We'll also look at adding rich popup windows to each marker, which includes detailed store information and can be updated further to include pictures and other HTML content. Read on to learn more! Read More >

    Read the article

  • Building a Store Locator ASP.NET Application Using Google Maps API (Part 3)

    Over the past two weeks I've showed how to build a store locator application using ASP.NET and the free Google Maps API and Google's geocoding service. Part 1 looked at creating the database to record the store locations. This database contains a table named Stores with columns capturing each store's address and latitude and longitude coordinates. Part 1 also showed how to use Google's geocoding service to translate a user-entered address into latitude and longitude coordinates, which could then be used to retrieve and display those stores within (roughly) a 15 mile area. At the end of Part 1, the results page listed the nearby stores in a grid. In Part 2 we used the Google Maps API to add an interactive map to the search results page, with each nearby store displayed on the map as a marker. The map added in Part 2 certainly improves the search results page, but the way the nearby stores are displayed on the map leaves a bit to be desired. For starters, each nearby store is displayed on the map using the same marker icon, namely a red pushpin. This makes it difficult to match up the nearby stores listed in the grid with those displayed on the map. Hovering the mouse over a marker on the map displays the store number in a tooltip, but ideally a user could click a marker to see more detailed information about the store, such as its address, phone number, a photo of the storefront, and so forth. This third and final installment shows how to enhance the map created in Part 2. Specifically, we'll see how to customize the marker icons displayed in the map to make it easier to identify which marker corresponds to which nearby store location. We'll also look at adding rich popup windows to each marker, which includes detailed store information and can be updated further to include pictures and other HTML content. Read on to learn more! Read More >Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

    Read the article

  • Incrementing Assembly Version in TFS Builds and its affect over Other Build Definitions

    - by ssmantha
    A very common scenario while performing TFS builds is to increment version number of the assemblies. There are quite a few approaches of which I would like to share two links: Ewald Hofman’s Approach: http://www.ewaldhofman.nl/post/2010/05/13/Customize-Team-Build-2010-e28093-Part-5-Increase-AssemblyVersion.aspx#id_02e7b082-ce95-49a9-92e9-7dc88887b377 Richard Bank’s Approach : http://www.richard-banks.org/2010/07/how-to-versioning-builds-with-tfs-2010.html   Both these approaches work well, however there are scenarios where Editing and Checking–in the Assembly version information can create problems with Build Definitions meant for Continuous Integration, or gated Check-ins. You can suppress the Continuous Integration Builds while checking in the Assembly info file by just putting a comment “***NO_CI***” as specified by Ewald in his blog. However, if you have Gated Checkin in place, this can turn out to be difficult to suppress, I myself tried to suppress the Build Trigger during the check in process but things doesn’t turn out well. That’s where Richard’s solution comes as handy. Both the solutions have their own pros and cons, which I believe can only be experienced over a period of time. In case of Richard’s solution I believe that we don’t have any history of the Assembly Version Info file and when you take latest of the solution the information will be lost. If you notice closely, that suppressing the Continuous Integration (the NO_CI approach in check in comments) is a workaround provided by Microsoft, however I didn’t find anything to suppress the gated Checkin so far. Suggestions or Findings are most welcome.

    Read the article

  • Navigating the Unpredictable Swinging of the Financial Regulation Pendulum

    - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP
    Written by Guest Blogger: Maureen Clifford, Sr Product Marketing Manager, Oracle The pendulum of the regulatory clock is constantly in motion, albeit often not in any particular rhythm.  Nevertheless, given what many insurers have been through economically, any movement can send shock waves through critical innovation and operational plans.  As pointed out in Deloitte’s 2012 Global Insurance Outlook, the impact of regulatory reform can cause major uncertainty in the area of costs.  As the reality of increasing government regulations settles in, the change that comes along with it creates more challenges in compliance and ultimately on delivering the optimum return on investment.  The result of this changing environment is a proliferation of compliance projects that must be executed with an already constrained set of resources, budget and time. Insurers are confronted by the need to gain visibility into all of their compliance efforts and proactively manage them. Currently that is very difficult to do as these projects often are being managed by groups across the enterprise and they lack a way to coordinate their efforts and drive greater synergies.  With limited visibility and equally limited resources it is no surprise that reporting on project status and determining realistic completion of these projects is only a dream. As a result, compliance deadlines are missed, penalties are incurred, credibility with key stakeholders and the public is jeopardized and returns and competitive advantage go unrealized. Insurers need to ask themselves some key questions: Do I have “one stop” visibility into all of my compliance efforts?  If not, what can I do to change that? What is top priority and how does that impact my already taxed resources? How can I figure out how to best balance my resources to get these compliance projects done as well as keep key innovation and operational efforts on track? How can ensure that I have all the requisite documentation for each compliance project I undertake? Dealing with complying with regulatory efforts is a necessary evil. Don't let the regulatory pendulum sideline your efforts to generate the greatest return on investment for your key stakeholders.

    Read the article

  • Oracle Service Bus JMS Deployments Utility by Mike Muller

    - by JuergenKress
    For proxy services utilizing the JMS transport, OSB receives messages from destinations by using an MDB. These MDBs get generated and deployed during activation of the service configuration. OSB creates a random, unique name for the J2EE application that gets deployed to WLS. The name starts with “_ALSB_” and ends in a unique series of digits. The EAR files are written to the sbgen subdirectory of the domain home directory. You will see these applications on the WLS console page for “Deployments”. For various operational reasons, there are times when the application name for a given proxy service needs to be determined. Since the generated name of the application doesn’t reflect the name of the service, it becomes difficult to determine the relationship between the service and its EAR file. In fact, it can not be discerned from either the OSB or WLS consoles.Read the full article here. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: Service bus,OSB,JMS,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60  | Next Page >