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• Welcome to ubiquitous file sharing (December 08, 2009)

  - by user12612012

  The core of any file server is its file system and ZFS provides the foundation on which we have built our ubiquitous file sharing and single access control model.  ZFS has a rich, Windows and NFSv4 compatible, ACL implementation (ZFS only uses ACLs), it understands both UNIX IDs and Windows SIDs and it is integrated with the identity mapping service; it knows when a UNIX/NIS user and a Windows user are equivalent, and similarly for groups.  We have a single access control architecture, regardless of whether you are accessing the system via NFS or SMB/CIFS.The NFS and SMB protocol services are also integrated with the identity mapping service and shares are not restricted to UNIX permissions or Windows permissions.  All access control is performed by ZFS, the system can always share file systems simultaneously over both protocols and our model is native access to any share from either protocol.Modal architectures have unnecessary restrictions, confusing rules, administrative overhead and weird deployments to try to make them work; they exist as a compromise not because they offer a benefit.  Having some shares that only support UNIX permissions, others that only support ACLs and some that support both in a quirky way really doesn't seem like the sort of thing you'd want in a multi-protocol file server.  Perhaps because the server has been built on a file system that was designed for UNIX permissions, possibly with ACL support bolted on as an add-on afterthought, or because the protocol services are not truly integrated with the operating system, it may not be capable of supporting a single integrated model.With a single, integrated sharing and access control model: If you connect from Windows or another SMB/CIFS client: The system creates a credential containing both your Windows identity and your UNIX/NIS identity.  The credential includes UNIX/NIS IDs and SIDs, and UNIX/NIS groups and Windows groups. If your Windows identity is mapped to an ephemeral ID, files created by you will be owned by your Windows identity (ZFS understands both UNIX IDs and Windows SIDs). If your Windows identity is mapped to a real UNIX/NIS UID, files created by you will be owned by your UNIX/NIS identity. If you access a file that you previously created from UNIX, the system will map your UNIX identity to your Windows identity and recognize that you are the owner.  Identity mapping also supports access checking if you are being assessed for access via the ACL. If you connect via NFS (typically from a UNIX client): The system creates a credential containing your UNIX/NIS identity (including groups). Files you create will be owned by your UNIX/NIS identity. If you access a file that you previously created from Windows and the file is owned by your UID, no mapping is required. Otherwise the system will map your Windows identity to your UNIX/NIS identity and recognize that you are the owner.  Again, mapping is fully supported during ACL processing. The NFS, SMB/CIFS and ZFS services all work cooperatively to ensure that your UNIX identity and your Windows identity are equivalent when you access the system.  This, along with the single ACL-based access control implementation, results in a system that provides that elusive ubiquitous file sharing experience.

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• Need help on a problemset in a programming contest

  - by topher

  I've attended a local programming contest on my country. The name of the contest is "ACM-ICPC Indonesia National Contest 2013". The contest has ended on 2013-10-13 15:00:00 (GMT +7) and I am still curious about one of the problems. You can find the original version of the problem here. Brief Problem Explanation: There are a set of "jobs" (tasks) that should be performed on several "servers" (computers). Each job should be executed strictly from start time Si to end time Ei Each server can only perform one task at a time. (The complicated thing goes here) It takes some time for a server to switch from one job to another. If a server finishes job Jx, then to start job Jy it will need an intermission time Tx,y after job Jx completes. This is the time required by the server to clean up job Jx and load job Jy. In other word, job Jy can be run after job Jx if and only if Ex + Tx,y = Sy. The problem is to compute the minimum number of servers needed to do all jobs. Example: For example, let there be 3 jobs S(1) = 3 and E(1) = 6 S(2) = 10 and E(2) = 15 S(3) = 16 and E(3) = 20 T(1,2) = 2, T(1,3) = 5 T(2,1) = 0, T(2,3) = 3 T(3,1) = 0, T(3,2) = 0 In this example, we need 2 servers: Server 1: J(1), J(2) Server 2: J(3) Sample Input: Short explanation: The first 3 is the number of test cases, following by number of jobs (the second 3 means that there are 3 jobs for case 1), then followed by Ei and Si, then the T matrix (sized equal with number of jobs). 3 3 3 6 10 15 16 20 0 2 5 0 0 3 0 0 0 4 8 10 4 7 12 15 1 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 8 10 4 7 12 15 1 4 0 50 50 50 50 0 50 50 50 50 0 50 50 50 50 0 Sample Output: Case #1: 2 Case #2: 1 Case #3: 4 Personal Comments: The time required can be represented as a graph matrix, so I'm supposing this as a directed acyclic graph problem. Methods I tried so far is brute force and greedy, but got Wrong Answer. (Unfortunately I don't have my code anymore) Could probably solved by dynamic programming too, but I'm not sure. I really have no clear idea on how to solve this problem. So a simple hint or insight will be very helpful to me.

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• How to enable and connect to RDP on a Windows Azure Web Role Instance?

  - by Enrique Lima

  We all know there have been some updates to Windows Azure, and one of the biggest I would say is the capability of being able to remote into the “OS level” of the image running a role.  And I am not talking about VM Role, I am talking about a Web Role for example. As developers we use Visual Studio, and when we are getting ready to deploy a project, we have the option of enabling this. Here is how: 1.  We publish our Project 2. On the Deployment dialog, provide all the details for your account, and before clicking OK, click on Configure Remote Desktop connections. 3.  Enable connections and the rest of the configuration.  Now, here is where there is an extra set of steps.  The first thing to know: The certificate used here is different from the other certs you have in place.  I created a new one, the went into certmgr.msc, then to Personal, then I selected the cert I just created.  Did a right-click, then All Tasks > Export.  Because what is needed is a pfx package, make sure when exporting you select to export the private key. 4. Click OK, on the Remote Desktop Configuration screen, now before you click OK on the Deployment, you will need to visit the Azure Portal. And perform the following: Go to your hosted services. Then with the service available, select the Certificates folder location. Then, select Add Certificate from the toolbar (more like Azure Portal Ribbon) Provide the details to upload the recently create pfx file. That will create the Certificate. Click OK on the deployment dialog, this kick off the deployment process. 5. Now, we need to go to the Windows Azure Portal.  Here we will select the Web Role deployed and Configure RDP. 6. Time to test.  Click on the Instance (not the role), this will make the Remote Access Connect Button available.  A file will start the process to be downloaded too 7. You will then be prompted for the credentials you configured. 8.  Validate connectivity … 9. Open IIS Manager … From here on, this is a way to manage and work with your Instance.

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• Generate MERGE statements from a table

  - by Bill Graziano

  We have a requirement to build a test environment where certain tables get reset from production every night.  These are mainly lookup tables.  I played around with all kinds of fancy solutions and finally settled on a series of MERGE statements.  And being lazy I didn’t want to write them myself.  The stored procedure below will generate a MERGE statement for the table you pass it.  If you have identity values it populates those properly.  You need to have primary keys on the table for the joins to be generated properly.  The only thing hard coded is the source database.  You’ll need to update that for your environment.  We actually used a linked server in our situation. CREATE PROC dba_GenerateMergeStatement (@table NVARCHAR(128) )ASset nocount on; declare @return int;PRINT '-- ' + @table + ' -------------------------------------------------------------'--PRINT 'SET NOCOUNT ON;--'-- Set the identity insert on for tables with identitiesselect @return = objectproperty(object_id(@table), 'TableHasIdentity')if @return = 1 PRINT 'SET IDENTITY_INSERT [dbo].[' + @table + '] ON; 'declare @sql varchar(max) = ''declare @list varchar(max) = '';SELECT @list = @list + [name] +', 'from sys.columnswhere object_id = object_id(@table)SELECT @list = @list + [name] +', 'from sys.columnswhere object_id = object_id(@table)SELECT @list = @list + 's.' + [name] +', 'from sys.columnswhere object_id = object_id(@table)-- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------PRINT 'MERGE [dbo].[' + @table + '] AS t'PRINT 'USING (SELECT * FROM [source_database].[dbo].[' + @table + ']) as s'-- Get the join columns ----------------------------------------------------------SET @list = ''select @list = @list + 't.[' + c.COLUMN_NAME + '] = s.[' + c.COLUMN_NAME + '] AND 'from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLE_CONSTRAINTS pk , INFORMATION_SCHEMA.KEY_COLUMN_USAGE cwhere pk.TABLE_NAME = @tableand CONSTRAINT_TYPE = 'PRIMARY KEY'and c.TABLE_NAME = pk.TABLE_NAMEand c.CONSTRAINT_NAME = pk.CONSTRAINT_NAMESELECT @list = LEFT(@list, LEN(@list) -3)PRINT 'ON ( ' + @list + ')'-- WHEN MATCHED ------------------------------------------------------------------PRINT 'WHEN MATCHED THEN UPDATE SET'SELECT @list = '';SELECT @list = @list + ' [' + [name] + '] = s.[' + [name] +'],'from sys.columnswhere object_id = object_id(@table)-- don't update primary keysand [name] NOT IN (SELECT [column_name] from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLE_CONSTRAINTS pk , INFORMATION_SCHEMA.KEY_COLUMN_USAGE c where pk.TABLE_NAME = @table and CONSTRAINT_TYPE = 'PRIMARY KEY' and c.TABLE_NAME = pk.TABLE_NAME and c.CONSTRAINT_NAME = pk.CONSTRAINT_NAME)-- and don't update identity columnsand columnproperty(object_id(@table), [name], 'IsIdentity ') = 0 --print @list PRINT left(@list, len(@list) -3 )-- WHEN NOT MATCHED BY TARGET ------------------------------------------------PRINT ' WHEN NOT MATCHED BY TARGET THEN';-- Get the insert listSET @list = ''SELECT @list = @list + '[' + [name] +'], 'from sys.columnswhere object_id = object_id(@table)SELECT @list = LEFT(@list, LEN(@list) - 1)PRINT ' INSERT(' + @list + ')'-- get the values listSET @list = ''SELECT @list = @list + 's.[' +[name] +'], 'from sys.columnswhere object_id = object_id(@table)SELECT @list = LEFT(@list, LEN(@list) - 1)PRINT ' VALUES(' + @list + ')'-- WHEN NOT MATCHED BY SOURCEprint 'WHEN NOT MATCHED BY SOURCE THEN DELETE; 'PRINT ''PRINT 'PRINT ''' + @table + ': '' + CAST(@@ROWCOUNT AS VARCHAR(100));';PRINT ''-- Set the identity insert OFF for tables with identitiesselect @return = objectproperty(object_id(@table), 'TableHasIdentity')if @return = 1 PRINT 'SET IDENTITY_INSERT [dbo].[' + @table + '] OFF; 'PRINT ''PRINT 'GO'PRINT '';

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• Why do old programming languages continue to be revised?

  - by SunAvatar

  This question is not, "Why do people still use old programming languages?" I understand that quite well. In fact the two programming languages I know best are C and Scheme, both of which date back to the 70s. Recently I was reading about the changes in C99 and C11 versus C89 (which seems to still be the most-used version of C in practice and the version I learned from K&R). Looking around, it seems like every programming language in heavy use gets a new specification at least once per decade or so. Even Fortran is still getting new revisions, despite the fact that most people using it are still using FORTRAN 77. Contrast this with the approach of, say, the typesetting system TeX. In 1989, with the release of TeX 3.0, Donald Knuth declared that TeX was feature-complete and future releases would contain only bug fixes. Even beyond this, he has stated that upon his death, "all remaining bugs will become features" and absolutely no further updates will be made. Others are free to fork TeX and have done so, but the resulting systems are renamed to indicate that they are different from the official TeX. This is not because Knuth thinks TeX is perfect, but because he understands the value of a stable, predictable system that will do the same thing in fifty years that it does now. Why do most programming language designers not follow the same principle? Of course, when a language is relatively new, it makes sense that it will go through a period of rapid change before settling down. And no one can really object to minor changes that don't do much more than codify existing pseudo-standards or correct unintended readings. But when a language still seems to need improvement after ten or twenty years, why not just fork it or start over, rather than try to change what is already in use? If some people really want to do object-oriented programming in Fortran, why not create "Objective Fortran" for that purpose, and leave Fortran itself alone? I suppose one could say that, regardless of future revisions, C89 is already a standard and nothing stops people from continuing to use it. This is sort of true, but connotations do have consequences. GCC will, in pedantic mode, warn about syntax that is either deprecated or has a subtly different meaning in C99, which means C89 programmers can't just totally ignore the new standard. So there must be some benefit in C99 that is sufficient to impose this overhead on everyone who uses the language. This is a real question, not an invitation to argue. Obviously I do have an opinion on this, but at the moment I'm just trying to understand why this isn't just how things are done already. I suppose the question is: What are the (real or perceived) advantages of updating a language standard, as opposed to creating a new language based on the old?

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• How should I structure my turn based engine to allow flexibility for players/AI and observation?

  - by Reefpirate

  I've just started making a Turn Based Strategy engine in GameMaker's GML language... And I was cruising along nicely until it came time to handle the turn cycle, and determining who is controlling what player, and also how to handle the camera and what is displayed on screen. Here's an outline of the main switch happening in my main game loop at the moment: switch (GameState) { case BEGIN_TURN: // Start of turn operations/routines break; case MID_TURN: switch (PControlledBy[Turn]) { case HUMAN: switch (MidTurnState) { case MT_SELECT: // No units selected, 'idle' UI state break; case MT_MOVE: // Unit selected and attempting to move break; case MT_ATTACK: break; } break; case COMPUTER: // AI ROUTINES GO HERE break; case OBSERVER: // OBSERVER ROUTINES GO HERE break; } break; case END_TURN: // End of turn routines/operations, and move Turn to next player break; } Now, I can see a couple of problems with this set-up already... But I don't have any idea how to go about making it 'right'. Turn is a global variable that stores which player's turn it is, and the BEGIN_TURN and END_TURN states make perfect sense to me... But the MID_TURN state is baffling me because of the things I want to happen here: If there are players controlled by humans, I want the AI to do it's thing on its turn here, but I want to be able to have the camera follow the AI as it makes moves in the human player's vision. If there are no human controlled player's, I'd like to be able to watch two or more AI's battle it out on the map with god-like 'observer' vision. So basically I'm wondering if there are any resources for how to structure a Turn Based Strategy engine? I've found lots of writing about pathfinding and AI, and those are all great... But when it comes to handling the turn structure and the game states I am having trouble finding any resources at all. How should the states be divided to allow flexibility between the players and the controllers (HUMAN, COMPUTER, OBSERVER)? Also, maybe if I'm on the right track I just need some reassurance before I lay down another few hundred lines of code...

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• Collision in PyGame for spinning rectangular object.touching circles

  - by OverAchiever

  I'm creating a variation of Pong. One of the differences is that I use a rectangular structure as the object which is being bounced around, and I use circles as paddles. So far, all the collision handling I've worked with was using simple math (I wasn't using the collision "feature" in PyGame). The game is contained within a 2-dimensional continuous space. The idea is that the rectangular structure will spin at different speed depending on how far from the center you touch it with the circle. Also, any extremity of the rectangular structure should be able to touch any extremity of the circle. So I need to keep track of where it has been touched on both the circle and the rectangle to figure out the direction it will be bounced to. I intend to have basically 8 possible directions (Up, down, left, right and the half points between each one of those). I can work out the calculation of how the objected will be dislocated once I get the direction it will be dislocated to based on where it has been touch. I also need to keep track of where it has been touched to decide if the rectangular structure will spin clockwise or counter-clockwise after it collided. Before I started coding, I read the resources available at the PyGame website on the collision class they have (And its respective functions). I tried to work out the logic of what I was trying to achieve based on those resources and how the game will function. The only thing I could figure out that I could do was to make each one of these objects as a group of rectangular objects, and depending on which rectangle was touched the other would behave accordingly and give the illusion it is a single object. However, not only I don't know if this will work, but I also don't know if it is gonna look convincing based on how PyGame redraws the objects. Is there a way I can use PyGame to handle these collision detections by still having a single object? Can I figure out the point of collision on both objects using functions within PyGame precisely enough to achieve what I'm looking for? P.s: I hope the question was specific and clear enough. I apologize if there were any grammar mistakes, English is not my native language.

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• How to apply effects that occur (or change) over time to characters in a game?

  - by Joshua Harris

  So assume that I have a system that applies Effects to Characters like so: public class Character { private Collection<Effect> _effects; public void AddEffect (Effect e) { e.ApplyTo(this); _effects.Add(e); } public void RemoveEffect (Effect e) { e.RemoveFrom(this); _effects.Remove(e); } } public interface Effect { public void ApplyTo (Character character); public void RemoveFrom (Character character); } Example Effect: Armor Buff for 5 seconds. void someFunction() { // Do Stuff ... Timer armorTimer = new Timer(5 seconds); ArmorBuff armorbuff = new ArmorBuff(); character.AddEffect(armorBuff); armorTimer.Start(); // Do more stuff ... } // Some where else in code public void ArmorTimer_Complete() { character.RemoveEffect(armorBuff); } public class ArmorBuff implements Effect { public void applyTo(Character character) { character.changeArmor(20); } public void removeFrom(Character character) { character.changeArmor(-20); } } Ok, so this example would buff the Characters armor for 5 seconds. Easy to get working. But what about effects that change over the duration of the effect being applied. Two examples come to mind: Damage Over Time: 200 damage every second for 3 seconds. I could mimic this by applying an Effect that lasts for 1 second and has a counter set to 3, then when it is removed it could deal 200 damage, clone itself, decrement the counter of the clone, and apply the clone to the character. If it repeats this until the counter is 0, then you got a damage over time ability. I'm not a huge fan of this approach, but it does describe the behavior exactly. Degenerating Speed Boost: Gain a speed boost that degrades over 3 seconds until you return to your normal speed. This is a bit harder. I can basically do the same thing as above except having timers set to some portion of a second, such that they occur fast enough to give the appearance of degenerating smoothly over time (even though they are really just stepping down incrementally). I feel like you could get away with only 12 steps over a second (maybe less, I would have to test it and see), but this doesn't seem very elegant to me. The only other way to implement this effect would be to change the system so that the Character checks the _effects collection for effects that alter any of the properties any time that they are being used. I could handle this in functions like getCurrentSpeed() and getCurrentArmor(), but you can imagine how much of a hassle it would be to have that kind of overhead every time you want to do a calculation with movement speed (which would be every time you move your character). Is there a better way to deal with these kinds of effects or events?

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• problems programmatically creating UIView on iPad App

  - by user3871

  I have been struggling with this problem for a few days. My iPad app is designed to be a portrait game. To satisfy Apple's expection, I also support landscape mode. When it goes into landscape mode, the game goes into a letterbox format with back borders on the sides. My problem is I am creating the UIWindow and UIView programmatically. For some unkown reason, the touch controls are "locked" in to think I'm always in landscape mode. And even though visually in portrait mode everything looks correct, the top and bottom of the screen does not respond to touch. To summarize how I am setting this up, let me provide the skeletal framework of what I'm doing: in main.cpp: int retVal = UIApplicationMain(argc, argv, nil, @"derbyPoker_ipadAppDelegate"); In the delegate, I am doing this: - (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions { CGRect screenBounds = [[UIScreen mainScreen] bounds]; CGFloat scale = [[ UIScreen mainScreen] scale ]; m_device_width = screenBounds.size.width; m_device_height = screenBounds.size.height; m_device_scale = scale; // Everything is built assuming 640x960 window = [[ UIWindow alloc ] initWithFrame:[[UIScreen mainScreen] bounds]]; viewController = [ glView new ]; [self doStateChange:[blitz class]]; return YES; } The last bit of code sets up the UIView... - (void) doStateChange: (Class) state{ viewController.view = [[state alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, m_device_width, m_device_height) andManager:self]; viewController.view.contentMode = UIViewContentModeScaleAspectFit; viewController.view.autoresizesSubviews = YES; [window addSubview:viewController.view]; [window makeKeyAndVisible]; } The problem seems to related to the line viewController.view.contentMode = UIViewContentModeScaleAspectFit; If I remove that line, touch works correctly in portrait mode. But the negative is when I'm landscape mode, the game stretches incorrectly. So That's not a option. The frustrating thing is, when I originally had this set up with a NIB file, it worked fine. I have read through the docs about UIWindow, UIViewController and UIView and have tried about everything to no avail. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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• Analysing SQLBits Feedback

  - by jamiet

  Earlier this week I received all the feedback that people offered on my session at SQLBits 7 in York – “SSIS Dataflow Performance Tuning” (the video is available online if you wish to see it). As you may have gathered from previous posts on this blog and my less-SQLy-focused Wordpress blog I am a big fan of collecting and tracking both personal and public data and session feedback lends itself very well to tracking because it is quantitative rather than qualitative; by that I mean attendees are invited to provide marks out of ten rather than (or, in the case of SQLBits, as well as) written comments. The SQLBits feedback is also useful because they use a consistent format – the same questions are asked each time – this means it is particularly easy to to track whether the scores that people give are trending up or down. I suspect that somewhere the SQLBits organisers have a big Analysis Services cube (ok, perhaps its an Excel pivot table) that allows them to analyse these scores per conference, speaker, track etc.… and there’s no reason that we as session speakers cannot do the same thing. To that end I have started to store my feedback in an Excel spreadsheet of my own which in the interests of transparency is available for public viewing (only a web browser required) on SkyDrive at http://cid-550f681dad532637.office.live.com/view.aspx/Public/Misc/Personal%20SQLBits%20Session%20Feedback.xlsx. I have used a pivot table to aggregate all that feedback and here is a screenshot: I am hereby making a public plea to the SQLBits organisers (on the off-chance that they are reading) to please continue to keep the feedback format consistent in the future and I encourage them to publish all of the feedback in an anonymised form. I would also encourage anyone doing conference speaking to track their conference feedback in the same way that I am doing so that you get an insight into whether or not you are improving over time. It is not difficult to setup and maintaining it as you do more sessions takes very little effort. Storing feedback data like this leads me to wider thoughts about well-known conventions and data format standardisation. Let’s imagine a utopia where there were a standard set of questions for capturing session feedback that were leveraged at every conference regardless of subject matter, location or culture; that would give rise to immense cross-conference and cross-discipline analysis – the data analyst in me goes giddy at the thought of it. It is scenarios like this that drive my interest both in data formats such as iCalendar, microformats and RDF, and in emerging movements such as the semantic web and linked data, all things which I have written about in the past. I don’t know whether we will ever reach the stage where every piece of data has structured, descriptive metadata associated with it but I live in hope. @Jamiet

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

  - by Christian P

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

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• Best Practices for serializing/persisting String Object Dictionary entities

  - by Mark Heath

  I'm noticing a trend towards using a dictionary of string to object (or sometimes string to string), instead of strongly typed objects. For example, the new Katana project makes heavy use of IDictionary<string,object>. This approach avoids the need to continually update your entity classes/DTOs and the database tables that persist them with new properties. It also avoids the need to create new derived entity types to support new types of entity, since the Dictionary is flexible enough to store any arbitrary properties. Here's a contrived example: class StorageDevice { public int Id { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } } class NetworkShare : StorageDevice { public string Path { get; set; } public string LoginName { get; set; } public string Password { get; set; } } class CloudStorage : StorageDevice { public string ServerUri { get; set } public string ContainerName { get; set; } public int PortNumber { get; set; } public Guid ApiKey { get; set; } } versus: class StorageDevice { public IDictionary<string, object> Properties { get; set; } } Basically I'm on the lookout for any talks, books or articles on this approach, so I can pick up on any best practices / difficulties to avoid. Here's my main questions: Does this approach have a name? (only thing I've heard used so far is "self-describing objects") What are the best practices for persisting these dictionaries into a relational database? Especially the challenges of deserializing them successfully with strongly typed languages like C#. Does it change anything if some of the objects in the dictionary are themselves lists of strongly typed entities? Should a second dictionary be used if you want to temporarily store objects that are not to be persisted/serialized across a network, or should you use some kind of namespacing on the keys to indicate this?

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• No description for any page on the website is available in Google despite robots.txt allowing crawling

  - by Abhijit

  I seem to have the weirdest issue with Search Engine Optimization, and I asked the IT folks at my university, I asked people on Joomla forums and I am trying to sort this issue out using Google Webmaster Tools for more than 2 months to little avail. I want to know if I have some blatantly wrong configuration somewhere that is causing search engines to be unable to index this site. I noticed a similar issue with another website I searched for online (ECEGSA - The University of British Columbia at gsa.ece.ubc.ca), making me believe this might be a concern that people might be looking an answer for. Here are the details: The website in question is: http://gsa.ece.umd.edu/. It runs using Joomla 2.5.x (latest). The site was up since around mid December of 2013, and I noticed right from the get go that the site was not being indexed correctly on Google. Specifically I see the following message when I search for the website on Google: A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more. The thing is in December till around March I used the default Joomla robots.txt file which is: User-agent: * Disallow: /administrator/ Disallow: /cache/ Disallow: /cli/ Disallow: /components/ Disallow: /images/ Disallow: /includes/ Disallow: /installation/ Disallow: /language/ Disallow: /libraries/ Disallow: /logs/ Disallow: /media/ Disallow: /modules/ Disallow: /plugins/ Disallow: /templates/ Disallow: /tmp/ Nothing there should stop Google from searching my website. And even more confusingly, when I go to Google Webmaster tools, under "Blocked URLs" tab, when I try many of the links on the site, they are all shown up as "Allowed". I then tried adding a sitemap, putting it in the robots.txt file. That did not help. Same exact search result, same behavior in the "Blocked URLs" tab on the webmaster tools. Now additionally, the "sitemaps" tab says for several links an error saying "URL is robotted out". I tried those exact links in the "Blocked URLs" and they are allowed! I then tried deleting the robots.txt file. No use. Same exact problem. Here is an example screenshot from Google's Webmaster Tools: At this point I cannot give a rational explanation to why this is happening and neither can anyone in the IT department here. No one on Joomla forums can seem to understand what is going on. Based on what I explained, does it seem that I have somehow set a setting in the robots.txt or in .htaccess or somewhere else, incorrectly?

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• Perfect is the enemy of “Good Enough”

  - by Daniel Moth

  This is one of the quotes that I was against, but now it is totally part of my core beliefs: "Perfect is the enemy of Good Enough" Folks used to share this quote a lot with me in my early career and my frequent interpretation was that they were incompetent people that were satisfied with mediocrity, i.e. I ignored them and their advice. (Yes, I went through an arrogance phase). I later "grew up" and "realized" that they were missing the point, so instead of ignoring them I would retort: "Of course we have to aim for perfection, because as human beings we'll never achieve perfection, so by aiming for perfection we will indeed achieve good enough results". (Yes, I went through a smart ass phase). Later I grew up a bit more and "understood" that what I was really being told is to finish my work earlier and move on to other things because by trying to perfect that one thing, another N things that I was responsible for were suffering by not getting my attention - all things on my plate need to move beyond the line, not just one of them to go way over the line. It is really a statement of increasing scale and scope. To put it in other words, getting PASS grades on 10 things is better than getting an A+ with distinction on 1-2 and a FAIL on the rest. Instead of saying “I am able to do very well these X items” it is best if you can say I can do well enough on these X * Y items”, where Y > 1. That is how breadth impact is achieved. In the future, I may grow up again and have a different interpretation, but for now - even though I secretly try to "perfect" things, I try not to do that at the expense of other responsibilities. This means that I haven't had anybody quote that saying to me in a while (or perhaps my quality of work has dropped so much that it doesn't apply to me any more - who knows :-)). Wikipedia attributes the quote to Voltaire and it also makes connections to the “Law of diminishing returns”, and to the “80-20 rule” or “Pareto principle”… it commonly takes 20% of the full time to complete 80% of a task while to complete the last 20% of a task takes 80% of the effort …check out the Wikipedia entry on “Perfect is the enemy of Good” and its links. Also use your favorite search engine to search and see what others are saying (Bing, Google) – it is worth internalizing this in a way that makes sense to you… Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Managing accounts on a private website for a real-life community

  - by Smudge

  I'm looking at setting-up a walled-in website for a real-life community of people, and I was wondering if anyone has any experience with managing member accounts for this kind of thing. Some conditions that must be met: This community has a set list of real-life members, each of whom would be eligible for one account on the website. We don't expect or require that they all sign-up. It is purely opt-in, but we anticipate that many of them would be interested in the services we are setting up. Some of the community members emails are known, but some of them have fallen off the grid over the years, so ideally there would be a way for them to get back in touch with us through the public-facing side of the site. (And we'd want to manually verify the identity of anyone who does so). Their names are known, and for similar projects in the past we have assigned usernames derived from their real-life names. This time, however, we are open to other approaches, such as letting them specify their own username or getting rid of usernames entirely. The specific web technology we will use (e.g. Drupal, Joomla, etc) is not really our concern right now -- I am more interested in how this can be approached in the abstract. Our database already includes the full member roster, so we can email many of them generated links to a page where they can create an account. (And internally we can require that these accounts be paired with a known member). Should we have them specify their own usernames, or are we fine letting them use their registered email address to log-in? Are there any paradigms for walled-in community portals that help address security issues if, for example, one of their email accounts is compromised? We don't anticipate attempted break-ins being much of a threat, because nothing about this community is high-profile, but we do want to address security concerns. In addition, we want to make the sign-up process as painless for the members as possible, especially given the fact that we can't just make sign-ups open to anyone. I'm interested to hear your thoughts and suggestions! Thanks!

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• Enabling Attachments in Oracle Forms

  - by Manoj Madhusoodanan

  In this blog I will demonstrate how we can enable attachments in Oracle Form. The user ask is to capture a job description which will be along text. Oracle Apps has a feature called attachments, through some easy setup we can enable attachments in forms. We will be going to addresscustomer ask through this feature. Step 1 : Identify Form Name First thing you have to do is to identify the form to enable attachment. In this scenario form will be PERWSDJT ( Job form in HRMS ). Step 2 :  Identify Document Entity exists or not. If exists then do nothing otherwise create new. Step 3 : Create Document Categories. Here I will create a category Job Description with Default Data Type Long Text and Application Human Resources.Onceit is done I will assign this to Create Job form. Step: 3 Query Attachment Functions for PERWSDJT. Click on Categories and add Job Description.Make sure enabled check box is checked. v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Step 4 : Turn off HR:Use Standard Attachments profile option. Output Go to Work Structures > Job > Description

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• ecommerce item deleted by user, 301 rediret to HOME PAGE or 404 not found?

  - by Marco Demaio

  I know this question is someway similar to this one where they reccomend using 404, but after reading this other one where they suggest to use 301 when changing site urls (in the specific case was due to redesign/refactoring) I get a bit of confused and I hope someone could clarify for this specific example: Let's say I have an ecommerce site, let's also say the final user inserted some interesting items in the site and the ecommerce webapp created the item pages at the urls: http://...?id=20, http://...?id=30 etc. Now let's say some of these interesting items got many external links toward them from many other sites because some people found those items very interesting and linked to them. After some years the final user deletes those items, so obviously the pages/urls http://...?id=20, http://...?id=30, etc. now do not exist anymore, but still many pages on the web are linking toward them. What should the ecommerce site do now, just show a 404 page for those items? But, I'm confused, wouldn't this loose all the Google PR passed by the external links to the items pages? So isn't it better to use 301 redirect to HOME PAGE that at least passes the PR to the HOME PAGE? Thanks, EDIT: Well, according to answeres the best thing to do so far is to do a 404/410. In order to make this question more complete, I would like to talk about a special case, just to make sure I understood. properly. Let's say the user creates those items again (the ones he previously deleted at point 4), maybe he changes a bit their names and description, but they are basically the same items. The webapp has no way to know these new added items were the old items so it obviously create them as new items with new urls http://...?id=100, http://...?id=101, does it makes sense at this point to redirect 301 the old urls to the new ones? MORE EDIT (It would be VERY IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND): Well according to the clever answers received so far it seems for the special case, explained in my last EDIT, I could use 301, since it's something of not deceptive cause basically the new pages is a replacement for the old page in term of contents. This is basically done to keep the PR passed from external link and also for better user experience. But beside the user experince, that is discussible (*1), in order to preserve PR from external broken linlks why not just always use 301, In my understanding Google dislikes duplicated contents, but are we sure that 301 redirect to HOME PAGE is seen as duplicated contents for Google?! Google itself suggests to redircet 301 index.html to document root so if they consider 301 as duplicated contents wouldn't that be considered duplicated contents too?! Why do they suggest it? Let me provoke you: “why not just add a 301 to HOME PAGE for every not found page?” (*1) as a user, when I follo a broken url from some external link to some website's page I would stick more on this website if I get redirected to HOME PAGE rather than seeing a 404 page where I would think the webiste does not even exist anymore and maybe I don't even try to go to HOME PAGE of the website.

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• Crash when using Cocos2d

  - by ipodfreak0313

  Sorry about the poor question title, it's just that this seems to big for a title. So here's the dirt: I am making a game (obviously) and I want the enemies to shoot (not necessarily at the player). I want the shoot method to be in the Enemies file, so as not to clutter up my HelloWorldLayer.m file even more. Here's what I'm using right now: HelloWorldLayer.m -(void)addEnemy:(BigAndStrongEnemy *)enemy { enemy = nil; if((arc4random() % 4) == 3) { enemy = [BigAndStrongEnemy enemy]; } else { enemy = [SmallAndFastEnemy enemy]; } if(buffDude.position.y > character.position.y || buffDude.position.y < (character.position.y + 10)) { } int rand = arc4random() % 320; if((arc4random() % 2 == 1)) { [enemy setPosition:ccp(0,rand)]; }else{ [enemy setPosition:ccp(480,rand)]; } [self animateEnemy:enemy]; [self addChild:enemy]; } -(void)animateEnemy:(BigAndStrongEnemy *)enemy2 { float randX = arc4random() % 480; float randY = arc4random() % 320; int rand = arc4random() % 320; CGPoint moveToPoint = CGPointMake(randX, (randY - rand)); [enemies addObject:enemy2]; action = [CCSequence actions: [CCMoveBy actionWithDuration:1 position:ccpMult(ccpNormalize(ccpSub(moveToPoint, enemy2.position)), 75)], [CCMoveBy actionWithDuration:3 position:ccp(buffDude.position.x,buffDude.position.y)], nil]; CCCallFuncO *a = [CCCallFuncO actionWithTarget:self selector:(@selector(shoot:)) object:enemy2]; CCSequence *s = [CCSequence actions:action,a, nil]; CCRepeatForever *repeat = [CCRepeatForever actionWithAction:s]; [enemy2 runAction:repeat]; } And here's the Shoot info from the Enemies class: Enemies.m: -(void)shoot:(id)sender { self = (BigAndStrongEnemy *)sender; [self shoot]; } -(void)spriteMoveFinished:(id)sender { CCSprite *b = (CCSprite *)sender; [self removeChild:b cleanup:YES]; } -(void)shoot { self = [CCSprite spriteWithFile:@"bigAndStrongEnemy.gif"]; CCSprite *b = [CCSprite spriteWithFile:@"bullet.gif"]; b.position = ccp(self.position.x,self.position.y); b.tag = 2; [self addChild:b]; [bullets addObject:b]; CGSize winSize = [[CCDirector sharedDirector] winSize]; CGPoint point = CGPointMake((winSize.width - (winSize.width - self.position.x)),0); [b runAction:[CCSequence actions: [CCMoveBy actionWithDuration:0.5 position:point], [CCCallFuncN actionWithTarget:self selector:@selector(spriteMoveFinished:)], nil]]; } Every time the 3 seconds goes by, the app crashes, and goes to the breakpoint in the CCCallFuncO file. I haven't touched it, is the thing. I am completely confused. Any help is greatly appreciated.

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• The partition table is corrupt

  - by Tim

  I have a corrupt the partition table on the laptop that is running Ubunutu 10.4. Before the partition table was corrupt I had the following partitions: 2 primary partitions: 1st - NTFS 2nd - Extended 4 logical partitons that are built within 2nd extended: 1st NTFS (68 Gib) 2nd Linux (19 Gib) 3rd Swap (1.4 Gib) 4th Linux (24 Gib) The physical order of these partitions was the following: ( 4th Linux ) - ( 1st NTFS ) - ( 2nd Linux ) - ( 3rd Swap ) The logical order of the partition was different: ( 1st NTFS ) - ( 2nd Linux ) - ( 3rd Swap ) ( 4th Linux ) NTFS partition was big and it resided between 2 Linux partitions, neither of these partitions had enough space to install Oracle 11g. Therefore, I decided to a) either move the NTFS partion to the left or b) remove it completely and extend partition where Linux resides. As I tool I have chosen GParted. But unfortunately it was not able to move the partition because he found that in NTFS partition there are some blocks that are referenced multiple times. Also it was not able to remove the partition neither, because in this case the partitions that follow it ( 2nd Linux ) - ( 3rd Swap ) have to be in his opinion also removed, because the organization of extended partition is a linked list. Since GParted was not able to do such thing I was trying to find another tool. I found diskdrake tool on PSLinuxOS distribution of linux. That tool silently deleted ( 1st NTFS ) partition and I thought that everything was fine. But diskdrake has damaged the partition in a way that I am not able either to boot from the hard disk nor to see the partitions with GParted and even with diskdrake itself! Fortunately I have a live CD of Ubuntu 8.10 and I am able to boot and see hard disk. I have 2 ideas how I can solve the problem: 1) Manually change disk partitions and point them to the correct partitions. 2) Create partition table with GParted that as much as possible is the same with the previous one I find the 2nd approach less time consuming but some data will be lost because of it is not possible to place borders of the partitions exactly how it was before. And moreover I am not sure if such approach would work, for example, if the OS is able to locate files after repartitioning. I feel like that it will but not 100% sure. Are there some ideas how the problem may be solved?

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• SSH from external network refused

  - by wulfsdad

  I've installed open-ssh-server on my home computer(running Lubuntu 12.04.1) in order to connect to it from school. This is how I've set up the sshd_config file: # Package generated configuration file # See the sshd_config(5) manpage for details # What ports, IPs and protocols we listen for #Port 22 Port 2222 # Use these options to restrict which interfaces/protocols sshd will bind to #ListenAddress :: #ListenAddress 0.0.0.0 Protocol 2 # HostKeys for protocol version 2 HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key #Privilege Separation is turned on for security UsePrivilegeSeparation yes # Lifetime and size of ephemeral version 1 server key KeyRegenerationInterval 3600 ServerKeyBits 768 # Logging SyslogFacility AUTH #LogLevel INFO LogLevel VERBOSE # Authentication: LoginGraceTime 120 PermitRootLogin no StrictModes yes RSAAuthentication yes PubkeyAuthentication yes #AuthorizedKeysFile %h/.ssh/authorized_keys # Don't read the user's ~/.rhosts and ~/.shosts files IgnoreRhosts yes # For this to work you will also need host keys in /etc/ssh_known_hosts RhostsRSAAuthentication no # similar for protocol version 2 HostbasedAuthentication no # Uncomment if you don't trust ~/.ssh/known_hosts for RhostsRSAAuthentication #IgnoreUserKnownHosts yes # To enable empty passwords, change to yes (NOT RECOMMENDED) PermitEmptyPasswords no # Change to yes to enable challenge-response passwords (beware issues with # some PAM modules and threads) ChallengeResponseAuthentication no # Change to no to disable tunnelled clear text passwords #PasswordAuthentication yes # Kerberos options #KerberosAuthentication no #KerberosGetAFSToken no #KerberosOrLocalPasswd yes #KerberosTicketCleanup yes # GSSAPI options #GSSAPIAuthentication no #GSSAPICleanupCredentials yes X11Forwarding no X11DisplayOffset 10 PrintMotd no PrintLastLog yes TCPKeepAlive yes #UseLogin no #MaxStartups 10:30:60 #Banner /etc/issue.net Banner /etc/sshbanner.net # Allow client to pass locale environment variables AcceptEnv LANG LC_* Subsystem sftp /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server # Set this to 'yes' to enable PAM authentication, account processing, # and session processing. If this is enabled, PAM authentication will # be allowed through the ChallengeResponseAuthentication and # PasswordAuthentication. Depending on your PAM configuration, # PAM authentication via ChallengeResponseAuthentication may bypass # the setting of "PermitRootLogin without-password". # If you just want the PAM account and session checks to run without # PAM authentication, then enable this but set PasswordAuthentication # and ChallengeResponseAuthentication to 'no'. UsePAM yes #specify which accounts can use SSH AllowUsers onlyme I've also configured my router's port forwarding table to include: LAN Ports: 2222-2222 Protocol: TCP LAN IP Address: "IP Address" displayed by viewing "connection information" from right-click menu of system tray Remote Ports[optional]: n/a Remote IP Address[optional]: n/a I've tried various other configurations as well, using primary and secondary dns, and also with specifying remote ports 2222-2222. I've also tried with TCP/UDP (actually two rules because my router requires separate rules for each protocol). With any router port forwarding configuration, I am able to log in with ssh -p 2222 -v localhost But, when I try to log in from school using ssh -p 2222 onlyme@IP_ADDRESS I get a "No route to host" message. Same thing when I use the "Broadcast Address" or "Default Route/Primary DNS". When I use the "subnet mask", ssh just hangs. However, when I use the "secondary DNS" I recieve a "Connection refused" message. :^( Someone please help me figure out how to make this work.

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• Strategy to use two different measurement systems in software

  - by Dennis

  I have an application that needs to accept and output values in both US Custom Units and Metric system. Right now the conversion and input and output is a mess. You can only enter in US system, but you can choose the output to be US or Metric, and the code to do the conversions is everywhere. So I want to organize this and put together some simple rules. So I came up with this: Rules user can enter values in either US or Metric, and User Interface will take care of marking this properly All units internally will be stored as US, since the majority of the system already has most of the data stored like that and depends on this. It shouldn't matter I suppose as long as you don't mix unit. All output will be in US or Metric, depending on user selection/choice/preference. In theory this sounds great and seems like a solution. However, one little problem I came across is this: There is some data stored in code or in the database that already returns data like this: 4 x 13/16" screws, which means "four times screws". I need the to be in either US or Metric. Where exactly do I put the conversion code for doing the conversion for this unit? The above already mixing presentation and data, but the data for the field I need to populate is that whole string. I can certainly split it up into the number 4, the 13/16", and the " x " and the " screws", but the question remains... where do I put the conversion code? Different Locations for Conversion Routines 1) Right now the string is in a class where it's produced. I can put conversion code right into that class and it may be a good solution. Except then, I want to be consistent so I will be putting conversion procedures everywhere in the code at-data-source, or right after reading it from the database. The problem though is I think that my code will have to deal with two systems, all throughout the codebase after this, should I do this. 2) According to the rules, my idea was to put it in the view script, aka last change to modify it before it is shown to the user. And it may be the right thing to do, but then it strikes me it may not always be the best solution. (First, it complicates the view script a tad, second, I need to do more work on the data side to split things up more, or do extra parsing, such as in my case above). 3) Another solution is to do this somewhere in the data prep step before the view, aka somewhere in the middle, before the view, but after the data-source. This strikes me as messy and that could be the reason why my codebase is in such a mess right now. It seems that there is no best solution. What do I do?

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• Are they asking too much of me?

  - by Tesserex

  Or am I just whining? Background: I work for a "startup," which I put in air quotes because the company has been around for 4 years. We have about 40 employees in three offices, 9 here plus some part time. We have a good amount of investment and bring in about 75% of what we spend (so not profitable just yet.) Standard work week is supposed to be about 60 hours, but they justify that as we have to be online when our international (Taiwan and Vietnam) offices are awake. When I started the job 6 months ago, I spent about a month prototyping an iphone app and did really well on my own. They also found out about my facebook applications and how many users they got. Putting 2 and 2 together (and winding up at -7) they realized 1. I'm independent and innovative (because I was able to use stackoverflow to answer my iOS questions instead of bugging my superiors) and 2. I must have an eye for marketing (since my fb apps grew totally organically without me doing any advertising), and assigned me to a project optimizing adwords campaigns. Today I got reviewed, and then chewed out, by our CEO for not totally rocking this project. Now I thought I was doing ok, but the CEO said the project is stagnant and they're expecting more from me. But since it's a startup, they play loose with job roles and I've had plenty of other things to do in the past three months. Every time I ask what's most important, I get conflicting responses depending who I ask, and the end result is that almost everything has equal priority - high. I could go on about how I don't think adwords is worthwhile for us since our profit margin is so slim, and how we should be trying to improve our website first, but that's not the point. I also have explained to the office director (who originally assigned me the project, not the CEO) that I don't actually know anything about marketing, I'm just a decent programmer, but they think my general smarts will prove capable of tackling this challenge. The CEO also clarified that he wants a more technical and algorithmic approach to the problem. So is there something I can do to address this? Combined with my existing and confusing workload, should I be raising an issue? Or should I do the grown up thing and give it my all, asking for help when I need it and hoping for the best? Sorry if this is very rant-ish.

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• Cone of Uncertainty in classic and agile projects

  - by DigiMortal

  David Starr from Scrum.org made interesting session in TechEd Europe 2012 - Implementing Scrum Using Team Foundation Server 2012. One of interesting things for me was how Cone of Uncertainty looks like in agile projects (or how agile methodologies distort the cone we know from waterfall projects). This posting illustrates two cones – one for waterfall and one for agile world. Cone of Uncertainty Cone of Uncertainty was introduced to software development community by Steve McConnell and it visualizes how accurate are our estimates over project timeline. Here is the Cone of Uncertainty when we deal with waterfall and Big Design Up-Front (BDUF). Cone of Uncertainty. Taken from MSDN Library page Estimating. The closer we are to project end the more accurate are our estimates. When project ends we know exactly how much every task took time. As we can see then cone is wide when we usually have to give our estimates – it happens somewhere between Initial Project Concept and Requirements Complete. Don’t ask me why Initial Project Concept is the stage where some companies give their best estimates – they just do it every time and doesn’t learn a thing later. This cone is inevitable for software development and agile methodologies that try to make software world better are also able to change the cone. Cone of Uncertainty in agile projects Agile methodologies usually try to avoid BDUF, waterfalls and other things that make all our mistakes highly expensive. Of course, we are not the only ones who make mistakes – don’t also forget our dear customers. Agile methodologies take development as creational work and focus on making it better. One main trick is to focus on small and short iterations. What it means? We are estimating functionalities that are easier for us to understand and implement. Therefore our estimates are more accurate. As we move from few big iterations to many small iterations we also distort and slice Cone of Uncertainty. This is how cone looks when agile methodologies are used. Cone of Uncertainty in agile projects. We have more cones to live with but they are way smaller. I don’t have any numbers to put here because I found any but still this “chart” should give you the point: more smaller iterations cause more but way smaller cones of uncertainty. We can handle these small uncertainties because steps we take to complete small tasks are more predictable and doesn’t grow very often above our heads. One more note. Consider that both of charts given in this posting describe exactly the same phase of same project – just uncertainties are different.

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• Dual booting windows 8/ubuntu 12.04. Grub doesn't appear and machine never boot in ubuntu

  - by black sensei

  i got a new ACER predator AG3620-UR308 which came with windows 8, so i wanted to run ubuntu 12.04.2 on it as a dual booting. To be honest, i've been doing dual booting for a while now so, i did the right thing. the box came with 2TB HDD. so i made 4 partitions with a raw partition just after the windows installation partition I always do manual installation so even if ubuntu didn't detect windows 8, it was ok for me. So i created swap area and finished the installation etc....Grub was install on the only drive there which is sda. After reboot, grub doesn't even come up.So it always boot in windows 8. I did repeat the installation process twice and yield same result. which is weird because this method always works for me so far.Even the laptop am using to write this post is a dual booting windows 7/ mint nadia installed the same way. Is there anything new in windows 8 that i didn't make provision for? Before starting the installation, all i read about was that , windows 8 should be installed first and ubuntu after. I went ahead and disable secure boot from the BIOS and enabled CSM (don't even know what it means) according to Acer custhelp site . I boot from USB and did fdisk -l bellow is the result: ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted. Disk /dev/sda: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders, total 3907029168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0x8c361cb5 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 3907029167 1953514583+ ee GPT Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary. Disk /dev/sdb: 8178 MB, 8178892800 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 994 cylinders, total 15974400 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0006a87e Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 2048 15972351 7985152 b W95 FAT32 ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ Can anybody shed some light? thank you in advance

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• Determining cause of random latency/loading issues

  - by Sherwin Flight

  I'm not sure exactly what details to post in regards to my issue, because I'm not sure what is relevant. Prior to the end of September my websites all loaded quickly, in almost all cases. Loading time wasn't usually more than a few seconds. However, since the end of September I noticed a big increase in page loading times. In some cases pages were taking 30 seconds or more to load. I do have a remote monitoring service monitoring some of the sites as well, and the image below shows the response times over the past month. The response times shown at the beginning of this graph were what the usual response times were prior to this issue occurring. You can see that there has been a significant increase in response times from the beginning to the end of this graph. The thing is, the problem is not happening 100% of the time. If I click through the site, or even just keep refreshing the page, about 25% of the time the pages load quickly, the remaining 75% of the time they load slowly. Sometimes the pages take so long to load that they time out, and don't load at all. I have contacted my hosting provider, and they said things at their end was fine. I don't believe the problem is my home internet provider, because all other websites load without a problem. The server is located in Texas, USA. This also raises another interesting point. My remote monitor checks my site from two locations, California, USA, and London, England. As you can see in the chart below the response time is actually shorter when checked from London, which doesn't seem to make sense, since the server is physically closer to the California monitoring location. I would have expected the London monitoring location to have higher response times since they are physically farther away. I should also point out that in some traceroute test I've done it seem like the first connection to the server seems to take the longest, then after that the rest of the page loads quickly. Below is a little chart showing the times for the first connection to the server. So, what could be causing this problem, and what steps can I take to resolve it or at least narrow down the problem? Sending the request to the server was very quick, and receiving the reply back seems pretty quick, but the WAIT time is really long. So it connects, sends the request, but then waits close to 30 seconds before it starts receiving data back. I am also aware that there are things I can do to speed up page loading times, like reducing the number of css/js files used on a page, compressing images, etc. This is not really what the source of the problem is though, because nothing has really changed on the site since before the problem started, and other sites on the same server are loading slowly as well. Any help or advice is much appreciated.

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