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• Vertical textes inside of table headers with respect of a JavaScript based on SVG library

  - by Oleg

  I use jqGrid with many columns contains Boolean information, which are displayed as checkboxes inside of table (see http://www.ok-soft-gmbh.com/VerticalHeaders/TestFixedO.htm as an example). To display information more compact I use vertical column headers. It works very well and works in jqGrid in all browsers (see my discussion with Tony Tomov in jqGrid forum http://www.trirand.com/blog/?page_id=393/feature-request/headers-with-vertical-orientation/), but in IE vertical texts looks not nice enough. I was asked from users why the texted displayed so strange. So I think about using a JavaScript based SVG library like SVG Web ( http://code.google.com/p/svgweb/ ) or Raphaël ( http://raphaeljs.com/ ). SVG is very powerful and it is difficult to find a good example is not very easy. I need only display vertical texts (-90 grad, from bottom to up) and use if possible without working in mode of absolute position. So one more times my question: I need have a possibility to display vertical texts (-90 grad rotation) inside of <td> element of table header. I want use a JavaScript based SVG library like SVG Web or Raphaël. The solution must support on IE6. Have somebody a good reference to example which could help me to do this? If somebody post a whole solution of the problem I would be happy. To be exact here is my current solution: I define .rotate { -webkit-transform: rotate(-90deg); /* Safari, Chrome */ -moz-transform: rotate(-90deg); /* Firefox */ -o-transform: rotate(-90deg); /* Opera starting with 10.50 */ /* Internet Explorer: */ filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.BasicImage(rotation=3); } define RotateCheckboxColumnHeaders function var RotateCheckboxColumnHeaders = function (grid, headerHeight) { // we use grid as context (if one have more as one table on tnhe page) var trHead = $("thead:first tr", grid.hdiv); var cm = grid.getGridParam("colModel"); $("thead:first tr th").height(headerHeight); headerHeight = $("thead:first tr th").height(); for (var iCol = 0; iCol < cm.length; iCol++) { var cmi = cm[iCol]; if (cmi.formatter === 'checkbox') { // we must set width of column header div BEFOR adding class "rotate" to // prevent text cutting based on the current column width var headDiv = $("th:eq(" + iCol + ") div", trHead); headDiv.width(headerHeight).addClass("rotate"); if (!$.browser.msie) { if ($.browser.mozilla) { headDiv.css("left", (cmi.width - headerHeight) / 2 + 3).css("bottom", 7); } else { headDiv.css("left", (cmi.width - headerHeight) / 2); } } else { var ieVer = jQuery.browser.version.substr(0, 3); // Internet Explorer if (ieVer !== "6.0" && ieVer !== "7.0") { headDiv.css("left", cmi.width / 2 - 4).css("bottom", headerHeight / 2); $("span", headDiv).css("left", 0); } else { headDiv.css("left", 3); } } } } }; And include a call like RotateCheckboxColumnHeaders(grid, 110); after creating jqGrid.

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• Running in to some issues with Tumblr's Theme Parser

  - by Kylee

  Below part of a tumblr theme I'm working on and you will notice that I use the {block:PostType} syntax to declare the opening tag of each post, which is a <li> element in an Ordered List. This allows me to not only dynamicly set the li's class based on the type of post but cuts down on the number of times I'm calling the ShareThis JS which was really bogging down the page. This creates a new issue though which I believe is a flaw in Tumblr's parser. Each post is an ordered list with one <li> element in it. I know I could solve this by having each post as a <div> but I really like the control and semantics of using a list. Tumblr gurus? Suggestions? Sample of code: {block:Posts} <ol class="posts"> {block:Text} <li class="post type_text" id="{PostID}"> {block:Title} <h2><a href="{Permalink}" title="Go to post '{Title}'.">{Title}</a></h2> {/block:Title} {Body} {/block:Text} {block:Photo} <li class="post type_photo" id="{PostID}"> <div class="image"> <a href="{LinkURL}"><img src="{PhotoURL-500}" alt="{PhotoAlt}"></a> </div> {block:Caption} {Caption} {/block:Caption} {/block:Photo} {block:Photoset} <li class="post type_photoset" id="{PostID}"> {Photoset-500} {block:Caption} {Caption} {/block:Caption} {/block:Photoset} {block:Quote} <li class="post type_quote" id="{PostID}"> <blockquote> <div class="quote_symbol">&ldquo;</div> {Quote} </blockquote> {block:Source} <div class="quote_source">{Source}</div> {/block:Source} {/block:Quote} {block:Link} <li class="post type_link" id="{PostID}"> <h2><a href="{URL}" {Target} title="Go to {Name}.">{Name}</a></h2> {block:Description} {Description} {/block:Description} {/block:Link} {block:Chat} <li class="post type_chat" id="{PostID}"> {block:Title} <h2><a href="{Permalink}" title="Go to post {PostID} '{Title}'.">{Title}</a></h2> {/block:Title} <table class="chat_log"> {block:Lines} <tr class="{Alt} user_{UserNumber}"> <td class="person">{block:Label}{Label}{/block:Label}</td> <td class="message">{Line}</td> </tr> {/block:Lines} </table> {/block:Chat} {block:Video} <li class="post type_video" id="{PostID}"> {Video-500} {block:Caption} {Caption} {/block:Caption} {/block:Video} {block:Audio} <li class="post type_audio" id="{PostID}"> {AudioPlayerWhite} {block:Caption} {Caption} {/block:Caption} {block:ExternalAudio} <p><a href="{ExternalAudioURL}" title="Download '{ExternalAudioURL}'">Download</a></p> {/block:ExternalAudio} {/block:Audio} <div class="post_footer"> <p class="post_date">Posted on {ShortMonth} {DayOfMonth}, {Year} at {12hour}:{Minutes} {AmPm}</p> <ul> <li><a class="comment_link" href="{Permalink}#disqus_thread">Comments</a></li> <li><script type="text/javascript" src="http://w.sharethis.com/button/sharethis.js#publisher=722e181d-1d8a-4363-9ebe-82d5263aea94&amp;type=website"></script></li> </ul> {block:PermalinkPage} <div id="disqus_thread"></div> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://disqus.com/forums/kyleetilley/embed.js"></script> <noscript><a href="http://disqus.com/forums/kyleetilley/?url=ref">View the discussion thread.</a></noscript> {/block:PermalinkPage} </div> </li> </ol> {/block:Posts}

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• How to use pthread_atfork() and pthread_once() to reinitialize mutexes in child processes

  - by Blair Zajac

  We have a C++ shared library that uses ZeroC's Ice library for RPC and unless we shut down Ice's runtime, we've observed child processes hanging on random mutexes. The Ice runtime starts threads, has many internal mutexes and keeps open file descriptors to servers. Additionally, we have a few of mutexes of our own to protect our internal state. Our shared library is used by hundreds of internal applications so we don't have control over when the process calls fork(), so we need a way to safely shutdown Ice and lock our mutexes while the process forks. Reading the POSIX standard on pthread_atfork() on handling mutexes and internal state: Alternatively, some libraries might have been able to supply just a child routine that reinitializes the mutexes in the library and all associated states to some known value (for example, what it was when the image was originally executed). This approach is not possible, though, because implementations are allowed to fail *_init() and *_destroy() calls for mutexes and locks if the mutex or lock is still locked. In this case, the child routine is not able to reinitialize the mutexes and locks. On Linux, the this test C program returns EPERM from pthread_mutex_unlock() in the child pthread_atfork() handler. Linux requires adding _NP to the PTHREAD_MUTEX_ERRORCHECK macro for it to compile. This program is linked from this good thread. Given that it's technically not safe or legal to unlock or destroy a mutex in the child, I'm thinking it's better to have pointers to mutexes and then have the child make new pthread_mutex_t on the heap and leave the parent's mutexes alone, thereby having a small memory leak. The only issue is how to reinitialize the state of the library and I'm thinking of reseting a pthread_once_t. Maybe because POSIX has an initializer for pthread_once_t that it can be reset to its initial state. #include <pthread.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <string.h> static pthread_once_t once_control = PTHREAD_ONCE_INIT; static pthread_mutex_t *mutex_ptr = 0; static void setup_new_mutex() { mutex_ptr = malloc(sizeof(*mutex_ptr)); pthread_mutex_init(mutex_ptr, 0); } static void prepare() { pthread_mutex_lock(mutex_ptr); } static void parent() { pthread_mutex_unlock(mutex_ptr); } static void child() { // Reset the once control. pthread_once_t once = PTHREAD_ONCE_INIT; memcpy(&once_control, &once, sizeof(once_control)); setup_new_mutex(); } static void init() { setup_new_mutex(); pthread_atfork(&prepare, &parent, &child); } int my_library_call(int arg) { pthread_once(&once_control, &init); pthread_mutex_lock(mutex_ptr); // Do something here that requires the lock. int result = 2*arg; pthread_mutex_unlock(mutex_ptr); return result; } In the above sample in the child() I only reset the pthread_once_t by making a copy of a fresh pthread_once_t initialized with PTHREAD_ONCE_INIT. A new pthread_mutex_t is only created when the library function is invoked in the child process. This is hacky but maybe the best way of dealing with this skirting the standards. If the pthread_once_t contains a mutex then the system must have a way of initializing it from its PTHREAD_ONCE_INIT state. If it contains a pointer to a mutex allocated on the heap than it'll be forced to allocate a new one and set the address in the pthread_once_t. I'm hoping it doesn't use the address of the pthread_once_t for anything special which would defeat this. Searching comp.programming.threads group for pthread_atfork() shows a lot of good discussion and how little the POSIX standards really provides to solve this problem. There's also the issue that one should only call async-signal-safe functions from pthread_atfork() handlers, and it appears the most important one is the child handler, where only a memcpy() is done. Does this work? Is there a better way of dealing with the requirements of our shared library?

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• The best cross platform (portable) arbitrary precision math library

  - by Siu Ching Pong - Asuka Kenji

  Dear ninjas / hackers / wizards, I'm looking for a good arbitrary precision math library in C or C++. Could you please give me some advices / suggestions? The primary requirements: It MUST handle arbitrarily big integers (my primary interest is on integers). In case that you don't know what the word arbitrarily big means, imagine something like 100000! (the factorial of 100000). The precision MUST NOT NEED to be specified during library initialization / object creation. The precision should ONLY be constrained by the available resources of the system. It SHOULD utilize the full power of the platform, and should handle "small" numbers natively. That means on a 64-bit platform, calculating 2^33 + 2^32 should use the available 64-bit CPU instructions. The library SHOULD NOT calculate this in the same way as it does with 2^66 + 2^65 on the same platform. It MUST handle addition (+), subtraction (-), multiplication (*), integer division (/), remainder (%), power (**), increment (++), decrement (--), gcd(), factorial(), and other common integer arithmetic calculations efficiently. Ability to handle functions like sqrt() (square root), log() (logarithm) that do not produce integer results is a plus. Ability to handle symbolic computations is even better. Here are what I found so far: Java's BigInteger and BigDecimal class: I have been using these so far. I have read the source code, but I don't understand the math underneath. It may be based on theories / algorithms that I have never learnt. The built-in integer type or in core libraries of bc / Python / Ruby / Haskell / Lisp / Erlang / OCaml / PHP / some other languages: I have ever used some of these, but I have no idea on which library they are using, or which kind of implementation they are using. What I have already known: Using a char as a decimal digit, and a char* as a decimal string and do calculations on the digits using a for-loop. Using an int (or a long int, or a long long) as a basic "unit" and an array of it as an arbitrary long integer, and do calculations on the elements using a for-loop. Booth's multiplication algorithm What I don't know: Printing the binary array mentioned above in decimal without using naive methods. Example of a naive method: (1) add the bits from the lowest to the highest: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, ... (2) use a char* string mentioned above to store the intermediate decimal results). What I appreciate: Good comparisons on GMP, MPFR, decNumber (or other libraries that are good in your opinion). Good suggestions on books / articles that I should read. For example, an illustration with figures on how a un-naive arbitrarily long binary to decimal conversion algorithm works is good. Any help. Please DO NOT answer this question if: you think using a double (or a long double, or a long long double) can solve this problem easily. If you do think so, it means that you don't understand the issue under discussion. you have no experience on arbitrary precision mathematics. Thank you in advance! Asuka Kenji

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• Firefox not running jQuery for XHTML output

  - by ScottSEA

  Okay, I did a crappy job of describing the issue in my previous post. I think the discussion got sidetracked from the core issue - so I'm going to try again. Mea Culpa to Elzo Valugi about the aforementioned thread. I have an XML file: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="wtf.xsl"?> <Paragraphs> <Paragraph>Hi</Paragraph> </Paragraphs> Simple enough. I also have a stylesheet to create XHTML output: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" doctype-system="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd" doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" omit-xml-declaration="yes"/> <xsl:template match="/*"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> <head> <title>FF-JS-XHTML WTF</title> <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="wtf.js"></script> </head> <body> <xsl:apply-templates /> </body> </html> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="Paragraph"> <p> <xsl:apply-templates /> </p> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> Last but not least, I have the following jQuery in toto (wtf.js, from the script tag in the stylesheet): $(function() { alert('Hiya!'); $('<p>Hello</p>').appendTo('body'); }); Extremely simple, but sufficient for the demonstration. When I run this in Internet Explorer, I get the alert 'Hiya!' as well as the expected: Hi Hello but when I run it in Firefox (3.0.1), I still get the alert, but the jQuery does not insert the paragraph into the DOM, and I just get this: Hi If I change the stylesheet to method="html" it works fine, and I get (along with the alert): Hi Hello Why doesn't Firefox run the jQuery with an XHTML document? Has anyone any experience with this problem? EDIT: ADDITIONAL INFO I can successfully insert elements into the documents this way in Firefox (method="xml"): var frag = document.createDocumentFragment(); var p = document.createElement('p'); p.appendChild(document.createTextNode('Ipsum Lorem')); frag.appendChild(p); $('body').append(frag); but I'm running into a similar problem with the .remove() method. It is looking more and more that Firefox doesn't construct a DOM from XML that jQuery can relate to, or somesuch.

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• Dynamic model choice field in django formset using multiple select elements

  - by Aryeh Leib Taurog

  I posted this question on the django-users list, but haven't had a reply there yet. I have models that look something like this: class ProductGroup(models.Model): name = models.CharField(max_length=10, primary_key=True) def __unicode__(self): return self.name class ProductRun(models.Model): date = models.DateField(primary_key=True) def __unicode__(self): return self.date.isoformat() class CatalogItem(models.Model): cid = models.CharField(max_length=25, primary_key=True) group = models.ForeignKey(ProductGroup) run = models.ForeignKey(ProductRun) pnumber = models.IntegerField() def __unicode__(self): return self.cid class Meta: unique_together = ('group', 'run', 'pnumber') class Transaction(models.Model): timestamp = models.DateTimeField() user = models.ForeignKey(User) item = models.ForeignKey(CatalogItem) quantity = models.IntegerField() price = models.FloatField() Let's say there are about 10 ProductGroups and 10-20 relevant ProductRuns at any given time. Each group has 20-200 distinct product numbers (pnumber), so there are at least a few thousand CatalogItems. I am working on formsets for the Transaction model. Instead of a single select menu with the several thousand CatalogItems for the ForeignKey field, I want to substitute three drop-down menus, for group, run, and pnumber, which uniquely identify the CatalogItem. I'd also like to limit the choices in the second two drop-downs to those runs and pnumbers which are available for the currently selected product group (I can update them via AJAX if the user changes the product group, but it's important that the initial page load as described without relying on AJAX). What's the best way to do this? As a point of departure, here's what I've tried/considered so far: My first approach was to exclude the item foreign key field from the form, add the substitute dropdowns by overriding the add_fields method of the formset, and then extract the data and populate the fields manually on the model instances before saving them. It's straightforward and pretty simple, but it's not very reusable and I don't think it is the right way to do this. My second approach was to create a new field which inherits both MultiValueField and ModelChoiceField, and a corresponding MultiWidget subclass. This seems like the right approach. As Malcolm Tredinnick put it in a django-users discussion, "the 'smarts' of a field lie in the Field class." The problem I'm having is when/where to fetch the lists of choices from the db. The code I have now does it in the Field's __init__, but that means I have to know which ProductGroup I'm dealing with before I can even define the Form class, since I have to instantiate the Field when I define the form. So I have a factory function which I call at the last minute from my view--after I know what CatalogItems I have and which product group they're in--to create form/formset classes and instantiate them. It works, but I wonder if there's a better way. After all, the field should be able to determine the correct choices much later on, once it knows its current value. Another problem is that my implementation limits the entire formset to transactions relating to (CatalogItems from) a single ProductGroup. A third possibility I'm entertaining is to put it all in the Widget class. Once I have the related model instance, or the cid, or whatever the widget is given, I can get the ProductGroup and construct the drop-downs. This would solve the issues with my second approach, but doesn't seem like the right approach.

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• Round-twice error in .NET's Double.ToString method

  - by Jeppe Stig Nielsen

  Mathematically, consider for this question the rational number 8725724278030350 / 2**48 where ** in the denominator denotes exponentiation, i.e. the denominator is 2 to the 48th power. (The fraction is not in lowest terms, reducible by 2.) This number is exactly representable as a System.Double. Its decimal expansion is 31.0000000000000'49'73799150320701301097869873046875 (exact) where the apostrophes do not represent missing digits but merely mark the boudaries where rounding to 15 resp. 17 digits is to be performed. Note the following: If this number is rounded to 15 digits, the result will be 31 (followed by thirteen 0s) because the next digits (49...) begin with a 4 (meaning round down). But if the number is first rounded to 17 digits and then rounded to 15 digits, the result could be 31.0000000000001. This is because the first rounding rounds up by increasing the 49... digits to 50 (terminates) (next digits were 73...), and the second rounding might then round up again (when the midpoint-rounding rule says "round away from zero"). (There are many more numbers with the above characteristics, of course.) Now, it turns out that .NET's standard string representation of this number is "31.0000000000001". The question: Isn't this a bug? By standard string representation we mean the String produced by the parameterles Double.ToString() instance method which is of course identical to what is produced by ToString("G"). An interesting thing to note is that if you cast the above number to System.Decimal then you get a decimal that is 31 exactly! See this Stack Overflow question for a discussion of the surprising fact that casting a Double to Decimal involves first rounding to 15 digits. This means that casting to Decimal makes a correct round to 15 digits, whereas calling ToSting() makes an incorrect one. To sum up, we have a floating-point number that, when output to the user, is 31.0000000000001, but when converted to Decimal (where 29 digits are available), becomes 31 exactly. This is unfortunate. Here's some C# code for you to verify the problem: static void Main() { const double evil = 31.0000000000000497; string exactString = DoubleConverter.ToExactString(evil); // Jon Skeet, http://csharpindepth.com/Articles/General/FloatingPoint.aspx Console.WriteLine("Exact value (Jon Skeet): {0}", exactString); // writes 31.00000000000004973799150320701301097869873046875 Console.WriteLine("General format (G): {0}", evil); // writes 31.0000000000001 Console.WriteLine("Round-trip format (R): {0:R}", evil); // writes 31.00000000000005 Console.WriteLine(); Console.WriteLine("Binary repr.: {0}", String.Join(", ", BitConverter.GetBytes(evil).Select(b => "0x" + b.ToString("X2")))); Console.WriteLine(); decimal converted = (decimal)evil; Console.WriteLine("Decimal version: {0}", converted); // writes 31 decimal preciseDecimal = decimal.Parse(exactString, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture); Console.WriteLine("Better decimal: {0}", preciseDecimal); // writes 31.000000000000049737991503207 } The above code uses Skeet's ToExactString method. If you don't want to use his stuff (can be found through the URL), just delete the code lines above dependent on exactString. You can still see how the Double in question (evil) is rounded and cast.

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• Why are there so many man-made edge cases in IT, and is there any hope for simplification / unificat

  - by Hamish Grubijan

  This question is meant to generate discussion and so it is marked as community wiki. My observation is that the field of information technology grows so rapidly and randomly, that for many it takes a lot of time to learn many intricacies of some tools that will be obsolete in just short 3 years. If you look at the questions asked on StackOverflow ... at least half of them stem from the fact that some language / tool / API / protocol was poorly designed, is backwards and has gotchas. There are so many things which distract developers from converting English into machine code; instead they spend their time configuring stuff and gluing together things that do not really fit. How many times do you pick up somebody else's project (or someone picks up yours :) ) and realize that this program does not need half of the dialogs that it has, and that the logic can be simplified a great deal? But, it had to be made and sold here before a better thing is made and sold elsewhere, and hence all this rush. I often wish that things would just slow down. I do not want Microsoft Windows to run on my car's computer, my watch, my table, my toaster oven, and my toilet seat. I'd rather have Windows that DOES NOT HAVE WINDOWS REGISTRY, I'd rather have Windows that allows two different programs to work on the same file at the same time, the way it works on Unix systems. Microsoft is just an example. I am looking forward to the day when I do not have to worry about Windows vs Unix new line break, when System32 actually means that this directory contains 32-bit binaries, and not 64-bit ones, the day when dll hell and manifest hell are no longer an issue, the day when it takes me a lot less than 3 months on a new job to learn the system. I do not mean learning the entire code base of a product (depending on the size of it, it can take a long time). I mean - remembering which build-assisting scripts are written in Perl and which version of it, and which ones are done through .bat files, when do I need to manually make every file in some directory writable before running a script, or else a critical step of a database maintenance home-grown tool will bomb, and it will take 2 days to clean that up. Makes me wonder if humans enslaved computers, or if it is the other way around. The key is that improving those things will not bring extra revenue, and hence those taking the time to fix crap like that are not "business focused". However, these imperfections irritate me immensely, particularly because my memory is limited - I can hold only a small portion of that useless knowledge of a system in my head at any given point in time. I must not be alone. Did you also happen to notice that a programmer can waste a lot of time on things that should have been a lot more straight-forward? Is there hope? Will things get better/simpler in the future, or will there be a lot more IT crap floating around? I suppose I see diversity of tools, protocols, etc. as a bad thing. Thank you for participation.

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• jquery intercept

  - by zurna

  In another question's discussion, I became aware of intercepting clicks and updating area without refreshing the whole page. Problem is, the following code seems correct to me and I dont receive any errors but data taken from another page is not displayed at all. Please advise. main page $('ul.thumbs li.pagination a').live('click', function() { var pageNumber = parseInt($(this).text().replace(/[^0-9]/g, '')); $(function ViewImages() { $.ajax({ type: "GET", url: "/FLPM/cp/images.cs.asp?Process=ViewImages&PAGEID=" + pageNumber, success: function(data) { $("#ViewImages").html(data); }, error: function (XMLHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown) { $("#ViewImages").html('.'); } }); }); return false; }); <div id="ViewImages"> </div> page where data lays <ul class="thumbs"> <li> <a href="#" class="thumb"><img src="/FLPM/media/news/images/5P2B4K5M_sm.jpg" alt="Forest Flowers" class="floatLeft" /></a> <br /> <a href="?Process=DeleteImage&IMAGEID=21" class="thumb"><span class="floatLeft">DELETE</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="#" class="thumb"><img src="/FLPM/media/news/images/6Z3L5U6W_sm.jpg" alt="Forest" class="floatLeft" /></a> <br /> <a href="?Process=DeleteImage&IMAGEID=20" class="thumb"><span class="floatLeft">DELETE</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="#" class="thumb"><img src="/FLPM/media/news/images/8O5A7J8M_sm.jpg" alt="Dock" class="floatLeft" /></a> <br /> <a href="?Process=DeleteImage&IMAGEID=19" class="thumb"><span class="floatLeft">DELETE</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="#" class="thumb"><img src="/FLPM/media/news/images/9Q6B3Q4S_sm.jpg" alt="Desert Landscape" class="floatLeft" /></a> <br /> <a href="?Process=DeleteImage&IMAGEID=18" class="thumb"><span class="floatLeft">DELETE</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="#" class="thumb"><img src="/FLPM/media/news/images/5B2N4W5Z_sm.jpg" alt="Creek" class="floatLeft" /></a> <br /> <a href="?Process=DeleteImage&IMAGEID=17" class="thumb"><span class="floatLeft">DELETE</span></a> </li> <li class="pagination">1.&nbsp;</li> <li class="pagination"><a href="2">2.</a>&nbsp;</li> </ul>

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• Vertical text inside table headers using a JavaScript-based SVG library

  - by Oleg

  I use jqGrid with many columns containing boolean information, which are displayed as checkboxes inside the table (see http://www.ok-soft-gmbh.com/VerticalHeaders/TestFixedO.htm as an example). To display information more compactly I use vertical column headers. It works very well and works in jqGrid in all browsers (see my discussion with Tony Tomov in jqGrid forum http://www.trirand.com/blog/?page_id=393/feature-request/headers-with-vertical-orientation/), but in IE vertical text is blurred and doesn't look nice enough (open the link above in IE and you will see exactly what I mean). I was asked from users why the text displayed so strangely. So I'm thinking of using a JavaScript-based SVG library like SVG Web ( http://code.google.com/p/svgweb/ ) or Raphaël ( http://raphaeljs.com/ ). SVG is very powerful and it is difficult to find a good example. I need only to display vertical text (-90 grad, from the bottom up) and use if possible without working in mode of absolute positioning. So one more time my question: I need to have a possibility to display vertical text (-90 grad rotation) inside <td> elements of a table header. I want to use a JavaScript-based SVG library like SVG Web or Raphaël. The solution must support IE6. Does anybody have a good reference example which could help me do this? If somebody posts a whole solution of the problem I would be happy. To be exact here is my current solution: I define .rotate { -webkit-transform: rotate(-90deg); /* Safari 3.1+, Chrome */ -moz-transform: rotate(-90deg); /* Firefox 3.5+ */ -o-transform: rotate(-90deg); /* Opera starting with 10.50 */ /* Internet Explorer: */ filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.BasicImage(rotation=3); /* IE6, IE7 */ -ms-filter: "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.BasicImage(rotation=3)" /* IE8 */; } define RotateCheckboxColumnHeaders function var RotateCheckboxColumnHeaders = function (grid, headerHeight) { // we use grid as context (if one have more as one table on tnhe page) var trHead = $("thead:first tr", grid.hdiv); var cm = grid.getGridParam("colModel"); $("thead:first tr th").height(headerHeight); headerHeight = $("thead:first tr th").height(); for (var iCol = 0; iCol < cm.length; iCol++) { var cmi = cm[iCol]; if (cmi.formatter === 'checkbox') { // we must set width of column header div BEFOR adding class "rotate" to // prevent text cutting based on the current column width var headDiv = $("th:eq(" + iCol + ") div", trHead); headDiv.width(headerHeight).addClass("rotate"); if (!$.browser.msie) { if ($.browser.mozilla) { headDiv.css("left", (cmi.width - headerHeight) / 2 + 3).css("bottom", 7); } else { headDiv.css("left", (cmi.width - headerHeight) / 2); } } else { var ieVer = jQuery.browser.version.substr(0, 3); // Internet Explorer if (ieVer !== "6.0" && ieVer !== "7.0") { headDiv.css("left", cmi.width / 2 - 4).css("bottom", headerHeight / 2); $("span", headDiv).css("left", 0); } else { headDiv.css("left", 3); } } } } }; And include a call like RotateCheckboxColumnHeaders(grid, 110); after creating jqGrid.

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• swap a div to an embed form when user tweets using the @anywhere function box

  - by Jeff

  I'm using the @anywhere twitter function on the front page of my site (vocabbomb.com) and right now it works great to allow users to tweet straight away. Problem is, when they click tweet, it just reloads the twitter box, empty. I want it to load something new, like a "thank you, now fill in this email form" and show a mailchimp form. Ok so this is the @anywhere code currently working fine: <div id="tbox"></div> <script type="text/javascript"> twttr.anywhere(function (T) { T("#tbox").tweetBox({ height: 100, width: 400, defaultContent: " #vocabbomb", label: "Use the word foo in a tweet:", }); }); </script> So this is fine, and when the user writes a tweet, it just re-displays the twitter box. I understand there is a function that lets you specify stuff after the tweet is made: (example from http://dev.twitter.com/pages/anywhere_tweetbox) <div id="example-ontweet"></div> <script type="text/javascript"> twttr.anywhere(function (T) { T("#example-ontweet").tweetBox({ onTweet : function(plaintext, html) { console.log(plaintext); alert(html); } }); }); </script> Is this the best way to attempt this? Or do I need a function or something that changes what's in the div to something else? I want the mailchimp email form to show up after the tweet. It includes a ton of script and tags and starts like this: <!-- Begin MailChimp Signup Form --> <!--[if IE]> <style type="text/css" media="screen"> #mc_embed_signup fieldset {position: relative;} #mc_embed_signup legend {position: absolute; top: -1em; left: .2em;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--[if IE 7]> <style type="text/css" media="screen"> .mc-field-group {overflow:visible;} </style> <![endif]--> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.2.6/jquery.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://downloads.mailchimp.com/js/jquery.validate.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://downloads.mailchimp.com/js/jquery.form.js"></script> <div id="mc_embed_signup"> <form action="http://faresharenyc.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=106b58b4751a007d826715754&amp;id=2fe6ba4e6a" method="post" id="mc-embedded-subscribe-form" name="mc-embedded-subscribe-form" class="validate" target="_blank" style="font: normal 100% Arial, sans-serif;font-size: 10px;"> ... So my attempt to just require it inside the function didn't work at all: <div id="tbox"></div> <script type="text/javascript"> twttr.anywhere(function (T) { T("#tbox").tweetBox({ height: 100, width: 400, defaultContent: " #vocabbomb", label: "Use the word foo in a tweet:", onTweet: function(plain, html){ <?php require_once('mailchimp.html'); ?> } }); }); </script> Nettuts had a brief discussion here: http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/javascript-ajax/using-twitters-anywhere-service-in-6-steps/ I am seeing now that the 'onTweet' function simply adds some text above the twitter box, but doesn't actually replace the entire twitter box. How do I do that? Is it possible? Thanks!

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• TDD - beginner problems and stumbling blocks

  - by Noufal Ibrahim

  While I've written unit tests for most of the code I've done, I only recently got my hands on a copy of TDD by example by Kent Beck. I have always regretted certain design decisions I made since they prevented the application from being 'testable'. I read through the book and while some of it looks alien, I felt that I could manage it and decided to try it out on my current project which is basically a client/server system where the two pieces communicate via. USB. One on the gadget and the other on the host. The application is in Python. I started off and very soon got entangled in a mess of rewrites and tiny tests which I later figured didn't really test anything. I threw away most of them and and now have a working application for which the tests have all coagulated into just 2. Based on my experiences, I have a few questions which I'd like to ask. I gained some information from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1146218/new-to-tdd-are-there-sample-applications-with-tests-to-show-how-to-do-tdd but have some specific questions which I'd like answers to/discussion on. Kent Beck uses a list which he adds to and strikes out from to guide the development process. How do you make such a list? I initially had a few items like "server should start up", "server should abort if channel is not available" etc. but they got mixed and finally now, it's just something like "client should be able to connect to server" (which subsumed server startup etc.). How do you handle rewrites? I initially selected a half duplex system based on named pipes so that I could develop the application logic on my own machine and then later add the USB communication part. It them moved to become a socket based thing and then moved from using raw sockets to using the Python SocketServer module. Each time things changed, I found that I had to rewrite considerable parts of the tests which was annoying. I'd figured that the tests would be a somewhat invariable guide during my development. They just felt like more code to handle. I needed a client and a server to communicate through the channel to test either side. I could mock one of the sides to test the other but then the whole channel wouldn't be tested and I worry that I'd miss that. This detracted from the whole red/green/refactor rhythm. Is this just lack of experience or am I doing something wrong? The "Fake it till you make it" left me with a lot of messy code that I later spent a lot of time to refactor and clean up. Is this the way things work? At the end of the session, I now have my client and server running with around 3 or 4 unit tests. It took me around a week to do it. I think I could have done it in a day if I were using the unit tests after code way. I fail to see the gain. I'm looking for comments and advice from people who have implemented large non trivial projects completely (or almost completely) using this methodology. It makes sense to me to follow the way after I have something already running and want to add a new feature but doing it from scratch seems to tiresome and not worth the effort. P.S. : Please let me know if this should be community wiki and I'll mark it like that. Update 0 : All the answers were equally helpful. I picked the one I did because it resonated with my experiences the most. Update 1: Practice Practice Practice!

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• Trouble with Code First DatabaseGenerated Composite Primary Key

  - by Nick Fleetwood

  This is a tad complicated, and please, I know all the arguments against natural PK's, so we don't need to have that discussion. using VS2012/MVC4/C#/CodeFirst So, the PK is based on the date and a corresponding digit together. So, a few rows created today would be like this: 20131019 1 20131019 2 And one created tomorrow: 20131020 1 This has to be automatically generated using C# or as a trigger or whatever. The user wouldn't input this. I did come up with a solution, but I'm having problems with it, and I'm a little stuck, hence the question. So, I have a model: public class MainOne { //[Key] //public int ID { get; set; } [Key][Column(Order=1)] [DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.None)] public string DocketDate { get; set; } [Key][Column(Order=2)] [DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.None)] public string DocketNumber { get; set; } [StringLength(3, ErrorMessage = "Corp Code must be three letters")] public string CorpCode { get; set; } [StringLength(4, ErrorMessage = "Corp Code must be four letters")] public string DocketStatus { get; set; } } After I finish the model, I create a new controller and views using VS2012 scaffolding. Then, what I'm doing is debugging to create the database, then adding the following instead of trigger after Code First creates the DB [I don't know if this is correct procedure]: CREATE TRIGGER AutoIncrement_Trigger ON [dbo].[MainOnes] instead OF INSERT AS BEGIN DECLARE @number INT SELECT @number=COUNT(*) FROM [dbo].[MainOnes] WHERE [DocketDate] = CONVERT(DATE, GETDATE()) INSERT INTO [dbo].[MainOnes] (DocketDate,DocketNumber,CorpCode,DocketStatus) SELECT (CONVERT(DATE, GETDATE ())),(@number+1),inserted.CorpCode,inserted.DocketStatus FROM inserted END And when I try to create a record, this is the error I'm getting: The changes to the database were committed successfully, but an error occurred while updating the object context. The ObjectContext might be in an inconsistent state. Inner exception message: The object state cannot be changed. This exception may result from one or more of the primary key properties being set to null. Non-Added objects cannot have null primary key values. See inner exception for details. Now, what's interesting to me, is that after I stop debugging and I start again, everything is perfect. The trigger fired perfectly, so the composite PK is unique and perfect, and the data in other columns is intact. My guess is that EF is confused by the fact that there is seemingly no value for the PK until AFTER an insert command is given. Also, appearing to back this theory, is that when I try to edit on of the rows, in debug, I get the following error: The number of primary key values passed must match number of primary key values defined on the entity. Same error occurs if I try to pull the 'Details' or 'Delete' function. Any solution or ideas on how to pull this off? I'm pretty open to anything, even creating a hidden int PK. But it would seem redundant. EDIT 21OCT13 [HttpPost] public ActionResult Create(MainOne mainone) { if (ModelState.IsValid) { var countId = db.MainOnes.Count(d => d.DocketDate == mainone.DocketNumber); //assuming that the date field already has a value mainone.DocketNumber = countId + 1; //Cannot implicitly convert type int to string db.MainOnes.Add(mainone); db.SaveChanges(); return RedirectToAction("Index"); } return View(mainone); } EDIT 21OCT2013 FINAL CODE SOLUTION For anyone like me, who is constantly searching for clear and complete solutions. if (ModelState.IsValid) { String udate = DateTime.UtcNow.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd"); mainone.DocketDate = udate; var ddate = db.MainOnes.Count(d => d.DocketDate == mainone.DocketDate); //assuming that the date field already has a value mainone.DocketNumber = ddate + 1; db.MainOnes.Add(mainone); db.SaveChanges(); return RedirectToAction("Index"); }

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• Ctrl F5 exception and ignored on F5

  - by user575219

  I am getting this unhandled exception error shown: See screen shot. I am getting this error only when I run with Ctrl+ F5 and not in F5(debug mode).Not sure if this is helpful,my computer is a windows 7- 64bit and running a 32 bit build According to this discussion: How can I get WinForms to stop silently ignoring unhandled exceptions?, Adding Application.SetUnhandledExceptionMode(UnhandledExceptionMode.ThrowException) iwll cause Windows to ignore the error. EDIT: frmPlant_Load Event public partial class frmPlant : Form { DatabaseConnection _DbConnection = new DatabaseConnection(); string conString = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["RVESTConnString"].ConnectionString; SQLQueries _SQlQueries = new SQLQueries(); DataSet ds; SQLiteDataAdapter da; static DataTable gdt; int gSelectedPlant; string gSelectedPlantName = ""; bool ignoreSelChg = false; bool DataDirty = false; public frmPlant() { InitializeComponent(); } public frmPlant(int sSelectedPlant) { InitializeComponent(); } private void frmPlant_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { ds = FillData(); gdt = ds.Tables[0]; bindingSource1.DataSource = gdt; dataGridView1.DataSource = bindingSource1; gSelectedPlant = StaticClass.GlobalValue; dataGridView1.AutoGenerateColumns = true; dataGridView1.Columns["PlantId"].Visible = false; dataGridView1.Columns["NSSS_Design"].Width = 70; } private DataSet FillData() { ignoreSelChg = true; SQLiteConnection con = new SQLiteConnection(conString); DataSet dPlant; try { con.Open(); SQLiteCommand cmd = new SQLiteCommand("select * from Plant", con); da = new SQLiteDataAdapter("select * from Plant", con); dPlant = new DataSet(); da.Fill(dPlant, "plant"); } catch (Exception ex) { throw ex; } finally { con.Close(); } return dPlant; } I should also add another concern: When I say continue here in the dialog, it works fine but leaves a background process running. I have to manually go and kill it in the task manager Question: Suppose I add this line in the Program.cs, will it ignore ANY- even genuine errors which need to be fixed? More Code: This dialog pops up on button click on the second screen- Initial Setup screen . The first being a splash screen. Initial setup takes me to the Plant form Here's the code for the initial setup screen public partial class frmInitialSetUp : Form { public frmInitialSetUp() { InitializeComponent(); } private void btnOK_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { Program.fPlant = new frmPlant(); Program.fPlant.Show(); this.Hide(); } private void frmInitialSetUp_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { Program.LoadAllForms(); } } } Program.cs static public void LoadAllForms() { try { Program.fInitialSetUp = new frmInitialSetUp(); Program.fPlant = new frmPlant(); Program.frm*** = new frm***(); Program.frm*** = new frm***(); Program.frm*** = new frm***(); } catch (Exception ex) { throw ex; } } On button click on the

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• Haskell: monadic takeWhile?

  - by Mark Rushakoff

  I have some functions written in C that I call from Haskell. These functions return IO (CInt). Sometimes I want to run all of the functions regardless of what any of them return, and this is easy. For sake of example code, this is the general idea of what's happening currently: Prelude> let f x = print x >> return x Prelude> mapM_ f [0..5] 0 1 2 3 4 5 Prelude> I get my desired side effects, and I don't care about the results. But now I need to stop execution immediately after the first item that doesn't return my desired result. Let's say a return value of 4 or higher requires execution to stop - then what I want to do is this: Prelude> takeWhile (<4) $ mapM f [0..5] Which gives me this error: <interactive:1:22: Couldn't match expected type `[b]' against inferred type `IO a' In the first argument of `mapM', namely `f' In the second argument of `($)', namely `mapM f ([0 .. 5])' In the expression: takeWhile (< 4) $ mapM f ([0 .. 5]) And that makes sense to me - the result is still contained in the IO monad, and I can't just compare two values contained in the IO monad. I know this is precisely the purpose of monads -- chaining results together and discarding operations when a certain condition is met -- but is there an easy way to "wrap up" the IO monad in this case to stop executing the chain upon a condition of my choosing, without writing an instance of MonadPlus? Can I just "unlift" the values from f, for the purposes of the takeWhile? Is this a solution where functors fit? Functors haven't "clicked" with me yet, but I sort of have the impression that this might be a good situation to use them. Update: @sth has the closest answer to what I want - in fact, that's almost exactly what I was going for, but I'd still like to see whether there is a standard solution that isn't explicitly recursive -- this is Haskell, after all! Looking back on how I worded my question, now I can see that I wasn't clear enough about my desired behavior. The f function I used above for an example was merely an example. The real functions are written in C and used exclusively for their side effects. I can't use @Tom's suggestion of mapM_ f (takeWhile (&lt;4) [0..5]) because I have no idea whether any input will really result in success or failure until executed. I don't actually care about the returned list, either -- I just want to call the C functions until either the list is exhausted or the first C function returns a failure code. In C-style pseudocode, my behavior would be: do { result = function_with_side_effects(input_list[index++]); } while (result == success && index < max_index); So again, @sth's answer performs the exact behavior that I want, except that the results may (should?) be discarded. A dropWhileM_ function would be equivalent for my purposes. Why isn't there a function like that or takeWhileM_ in Control.Monad? I see that there was a similar discussion on a mailing list, but it appears that nothing has come of that.

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• CookieContainer bug?

  - by Salar

  I'm confused how CookieContainer handles domain, so I create this test. This test shows cookieContainer doesn't return any cookie for "site.com" but according to RFC it should return at least 2 cookies. Isn't it a bug? How make it to work? Here is a discussion about this bug: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ncl/thread/c4edc965-2dc2-4724-8f08-68815cf1dce6 <%@ Page Language="C#" %> <%@ Import Namespace="System.Net" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <script runat="server"> CookieContainer getContainer() { CookieContainer result = new CookieContainer(); Uri uri = new Uri("http://sub.site.com"); string cookieH = @"Test1=val; domain=sub.site.com; path=/"; result.SetCookies(uri, cookieH); cookieH = @"Test2=val; domain=.site.com; path=/"; result.SetCookies(uri, cookieH); cookieH = @"Test3=val; domain=site.com; path=/"; result.SetCookies(uri, cookieH); return result; } void Test() { CookieContainer cookie = getContainer(); lblResult.Text += "<br>Total cookies count: " + cookie.Count + " &nbsp;&nbsp; expected: 3"; Uri uri = new Uri("http://sub.site.com"); CookieCollection coll = cookie.GetCookies(uri); lblResult.Text += "<br>For " + uri + " Cookie count: " + coll.Count + " &nbsp;&nbsp; expected: 2"; uri = new Uri("http://other.site.com"); coll = cookie.GetCookies(uri); lblResult.Text += "<br>For " + uri + " Cookie count: " + coll.Count + " &nbsp;&nbsp; expected: 2"; uri = new Uri("http://site.com"); coll = cookie.GetCookies(uri); lblResult.Text += "<br>For " + uri + " Cookie count: " + coll.Count + " &nbsp;&nbsp; expected: 2"; } protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { Test(); } </script> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server"> <title>CookieContainer Test Page</title> </head> <body> <form id="frmTest" runat="server"> <asp:Label ID="lblResult" EnableViewState="false" runat="server"></asp:Label> </form> </body> </html>

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• AGENT: The World's Smartest Watch

  - by Rob Chartier

  AGENT: The World's Smartest Watch by Secret Labs + House of Horology Disclaimer: Most if not all of this content has been gleaned from the comments on the Kickstarter project page and comments section. Any discrepancies between this post and any documentation on agentwatches.com, kickstarter.com, etc.., those official sites take precedence. Overview The next generation smartwatch with brand-new technology. World-class developer tools, unparalleled battery life, Qi wireless charging. Kickstarter Page, Comments Funding period : May 21, 2013 - Jun 20, 2013 MSRP : $249 Other Urls http://www.agentwatches.com/ https://www.facebook.com/agentwatches http://twitter.com/agentwatches http://pinterest.com/agentwatches/ http://paper.li/robchartier/1371234640 Developer Story The first official launch of the preview SDK and emulator will happen on 20-Jun-2013.  All development will be done in Visual Studio 2012, using the .NET Micro Framework SDK 2.3.  The SDK will ship with the first round of the expected API for developers along with an emulator. With that said, there is no need to wait for the SDK.  You can download the tooling now and get started with Apps and Faces immediately.  The only thing that you will not be able to work with is the API; but for example, watch faces, you can start building the basic face rendering with the Bitmap graphics drawing in the .NET Micro Framework.   Does it look good? Before we dig into any more of the gory details, here are a few photos of the current available prototype models.   The watch on the tiny QI Charter   If you wander too far away from your phone, your watch will let you know with a vibration and a message, all but one button will dismiss the message.   An app showing the premium weather data!   Nice stitching on the straps, leather and silicon will be available, along with a few lengths to choose from (short, regular, long lengths). On to those gory details…. Hardware Specs Processor 120MHz ARM Cortex-M4 processor (ATSAM4SD32) with secondary AVR co-processor Flash & RAM 2MB of onboard flash and 160KB of RAM 1/4 of the onboard flash will be used by the OS The flash is permanent (non-volatile) storage. Bluetooth Bluetooth 4.0 BD/EDR + LE Bluetooth 4.0 is backwards compatible with Bluetooth 2.1, so classic Bluetooth functions (BD/EDR, SPP/AVRCP/PBAP/etc.) will work fine. Sensors 3D Accelerometer (Motion) ST LSM303DLHC Ambient Light Sensor Hardware power metering Vibration Motor (You can pulse it to create vibration patterns, not sure about the vibration strength - driven with PWM) No piezo/speaker or microphone. Other QI Wireless Charging, no NFC, no wall adapter included Custom LED Backlight No GPS in the watch. It uses the GPS in your phone. AGENT watch apps are deployed and debugged wirelessly from your PC via Bluetooth. RoHS, Pb-free Battery Expected to use a CR2430-sized rechargeable battery – replaceable (Mouser, Amazon) Estimated charging time from empty is 2 hours with provided charger 7 Days typical with Bluetooth on, 30 days with Bluetooth off (watch-face only mode) The battery should last at least 2 years, with 100s of charge cycles. Physical dimensions Roughly 38mm top-to-bottom on the front face 35mm left-to-right on the front face and around 12mm in depth 22mm strap Two ~1/16" hex screws to attach the watch pin The top watchcase material candidates are PVD stainless steel, brushed matte ceramic, and high-quality polycarbonate (TBD). The glass lens is mineral glass, Anti-glare glass lens Strap options Leather and silicon straps will be available Expected to have three sizes Display 1.28" Sharp Memory Display The display stays on 100% of the time. Dimensions: 128x128 pixels Buttons Custom "Pusher" buttons, they will not make noise like a mouse click, and are very durable. The top-left button activates the backlight; bottom-left changes apps; three buttons on the right are up/select/down and can be used for custom purposes by apps. Backup reset procedure is currently activated by holding the home/menu button and the top-right user button for about ten seconds Device Support Android 2.3 or newer iPhone 4S or newer Windows Phone 8 or newer Heart Rate monitors - Bluetooth SPP or Bluetooth LE (GATT) is what you'll want the heart monitor to support. Almost limitless Bluetooth device support! Internationalization & Localization Full UTF8 Support from the ground up. AGENT's user interface is in English. Your content (caller ID, music tracks, notifications) will be in your native language. We have a plan to cover most major character sets, with Latin characters pre-loaded on the watch. Simplified Chinese will be available Feature overview Phone lost alert Caller ID Music Control (possible volume control) Wireless Charging Timer Stopwatch Vibrating Alarm (possibly custom vibrations for caller id) A few default watch faces Airplane mode (by demand or low power) Can be turned off completely Customizable 3rd party watch faces, applications which can be loaded over bluetooth. Sample apps that maybe installed Weather Sample Apps not installed Exercise App Other Possible Skype integration over Bluetooth. They will provide an AGENT app for your smartphone (iPhone, Android, Windows Phone). You'll be able to use it to load apps onto the watch.. You will be able to cancel phone calls. With compatible phones you can also answer, end, etc. They are adopting the standard hands-free profile to provide these features and caller ID.

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• Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community

  There we go! I finally managed to push myself forward and pick up an old, actually too old, idea since I ever arrived here in Mauritius more than six years ago. I'm talking about a community for all kind of ICT connected people. In the past (back in Germany), I used to be involved in various community activities. For example, I was part of the Microsoft Community Leader/Influencer Program (CLIP) in Germany due to an FAQ on Visual FoxPro, actually Active FoxPro Pages (AFP) to be more precise. Then in 2003/2004 I addressed the responsible person of the dFPUG user group in Speyer in order to assist him in organising monthly user group meetings. Well, he handed over management completely, and attended our meetings regularly. Why did it take you so long? Well, I don't want to bother you with the details but short version is that I was too busy on either job (building up new companies) or private life (got married and we have two lovely children, eh 'monsters') or even both. But now is the time where I was starting to look for new fields given the fact that I gained some spare time. My businesses are up and running, the kids are in school, and I am finally in a position where I can commit myself again to community activities. And I love to do that! Why a new user group? Good question... And 'easy' to answer. Since back in 2007 I did my usual research, eh Google searches, to see whether there existing user groups in Mauritius and in which field of interest. And yes, there are! If I recall this correctly, then there are communities for PHP, Drupal, Python (just recently), Oracle, and Linux (which used to be even two). But... either they do not exist anymore, they are dormant, or there is only a low heart-beat, frankly speaking. And yes, I went to meetings of the Linux User Group Meta (Mauritius) back in 2010/2011 and just recently. I really like the setup and the way the LUGM is organised. It's just that I have a slightly different point of view on how a user group or community should organise itself and how to approach future members. Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing others doing a very good job, I'm only saying that I'd like to do it differently. The last meeting of the LUGM was awesome; read my feedback about it. Ok, so what's up with 'Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community' or short: MSCC? As I've already written in my article on 'Communities - The importance of exchange and discussion' I think it is essential in a world of IT to stay 'connected' with a good number of other people in the same field. There is so much dynamic and every day's news that it is almost impossible to keep on track with all of them. The MSCC is going to provide a common platform to exchange experience and share knowledge between each other. You might be a newbie and want to know what to expect working as a software developer, or as a database administrator, or maybe as an IT systems administrator, or you're an experienced geek that loves to share your ideas or solutions that you implemented to solve a specific problem, or you're the business (or HR) guy that is looking for 'fresh' blood to enforce your existing team. Or... you're just interested and you'd like to communicate with like-minded people. Meetup of 26.06.2013 @ L'arabica: Of course there are laptops around. Free WiFi, power outlet, coffee, code and Linux in one go. The MSCC is technology-agnostic and spans an umbrella over any kind of technology. Simply because you can't ignore other technologies anymore in a connected IT world as we have. A front-end developer for iOS applications should have the chance to connect with a Python back-end coder and eventually with a DBA for MySQL or PostgreSQL and exchange their experience. Furthermore, I'm a huge fan of cross-platform development, and it is very pleasant to have pure Web developers - with all that HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and JS libraries stuff - and passionate C# or Java coders at the same table. This diversity of knowledge can assist and boost your personal situation. And last but not least, there are projects and open positions 'flying' around... People might like to hear others opinion about an employer or get new impulses on how to tackle down an issue at their workspace, etc. This is about community. And that's how I see the MSCC in general - free of any limitations be it by programming language or technology. Having the chance to exchange experience and to discuss certain aspects of technology saves you time and money, and it's a pleasure to enjoy. Compared to dusty books and remote online resources. It's human! Organising meetups (meetings, get-together, gatherings - you name it!) As of writing this article, the MSCC is currently meeting every Wednesday for the weekly 'Code & Coffee' session at various locations (suggestions are welcome!) in Mauritius. This might change in the future eventually but especially at the beginning I think it is very important to create awareness in the Mauritian IT world. Yes, we are here! Come and join us! ;-) The MSCC's main online presence is located at Meetup.com because it allows me to handle the organisation of events and meeting appointments very easily, and any member can have a look who else is involved so that an exchange of contacts is given at any time. In combination with the other entities (G+ Communities, FB Pages or in Groups) I advertise and manage all future activities here: Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community This is a community for those who care and are proud of what they do. For those developers, regardless how experienced they are, who want to improve and master their craft. This is a community for those who believe that being average is just not good enough. I know, there are not many 'craftsmen' yet but it's a start... Let's see how it looks like by the end of the year. There are free smartphone apps for Android and iOS from Meetup.com that allow you to keep track of meetings and to stay informed on latest updates. And last but not least, there is a Trello workspace to collect and share ideas and provide downloads of slides, etc. Trello is also available as free smartphone app. Sharing is caring! As mentioned, the #MSCC is present in various social media networks in order to cover as many people as possible here in Mauritius. Following is an overview of the current networks: Twitter - Latest updates and quickies Google+ - Community channel Facebook - Community Page LinkedIn - Community Group Trello - Collaboration workspace to share and develop ideas Hopefully, this covers the majority of computer-related people in Mauritius. Please spread the word about the #MSCC between your colleagues, your friends and other interested 'geeks'. Your future looks bright Running and participating in a user group or any kind of community usually provides quite a number of advantages for anyone. On the one side it is very joyful for me to organise appointments and get in touch with people that might be interested to present a little demo of their projects or their recent problems they had to tackle down, and on the other side there are lots of companies that have various support programs or sponsorships especially tailored for user groups. At the moment, I already have a couple of gimmicks that I would like to hand out in small contests or raffles during one of the upcoming meetings, and as said, companies provide all kind of goodies, books free of charge, or sometimes even licenses for communities. Meeting other software developers or IT guys also opens up your point of view on the local market and there might be interesting projects or job offers available, too. A community like the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community is great for freelancers, self-employed, students and of course employees. Meetings will be organised on a regular basis, and I'm open to all kind of suggestions from you. Please leave a comment here in blog or join the conversations in the above mentioned social networks. Let's get this community up and running, my fellow Mauritians! Recent updates The MSCC is now officially participating in the O'Reilly UK User Group programm and we are allowed to request review or recension copies of recent titles. Additionally, we have a discount code for any books or ebooks that you might like to order on shop.oreilly.com. More applications for user group sponsorship programms are pending and I'm looking forward to a couple of announcement very soon. And... we need some kind of 'corporate identity' - Over at the MSCC website there is a call for action (or better said a contest with prizes) to create a unique design for the MSCC. This would include a decent colour palette, a logo, graphical banners for Meetup, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. and of course badges for our craftsmen to add to their personal blogs and websites. Please spread the word and contribute. Thanks!

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• Install the Ajax Control Toolkit from NuGet

  - by Stephen Walther

  The Ajax Control Toolkit is now available from NuGet. This makes it super easy to add the latest version of the Ajax Control Toolkit to any Web Forms application. If you haven’t used NuGet yet, then you are missing out on a great tool which you can use with Visual Studio to add new features to an application. You can use NuGet with both ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web Forms applications. NuGet is compatible with both Websites and Web Applications and it works with both C# and VB.NET applications. For example, I habitually use NuGet to add the latest version of ELMAH, Entity Framework, jQuery, jQuery UI, and jQuery Templates to applications that I create. To download NuGet, visit the NuGet website at: http://NuGet.org Imagine, for example, that you want to take advantage of the Ajax Control Toolkit RoundedCorners extender to create cross-browser compatible rounded corners in a Web Forms application. Follow these steps. Right click on your project in the Solution Explorer window and select the option Add Library Package Reference. In the Add Library Package Reference dialog, select the Online tab and enter AjaxControlToolkit in the search box: Click the Install button and the latest version of the Ajax Control Toolkit will be installed. Installing the Ajax Control Toolkit makes several modifications to your application. First, a reference to the Ajax Control Toolkit is added to your application. In a Web Application Project, you can see the new reference in the References folder: Installing the Ajax Control Toolkit NuGet package also updates your Web.config file. The tag prefix ajaxToolkit is registered so that you can easily use Ajax Control Toolkit controls within any page without adding a @Register directive to the page. <configuration> <system.web> <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.0" /> <pages> <controls> <add tagPrefix="ajaxToolkit" assembly="AjaxControlToolkit" namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" /> </controls> </pages> </system.web> </configuration> You should do a rebuild of your application by selecting the Visual Studio menu option Build, Rebuild Solution so that Visual Studio picks up on the new controls (You won’t get Intellisense for the Ajax Control Toolkit controls until you do a build). After you add the Ajax Control Toolkit to your application, you can start using any of the 40 Ajax Control Toolkit controls in your application (see http://www.asp.net/ajax/ajaxcontroltoolkit/samples/ for a reference for the controls). <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="WebForm1.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebApplication1.WebForm1" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server"> <title>Rounded Corners</title> <style type="text/css"> #pnl1 { background-color: gray; width: 200px; color:White; font: 14pt Verdana; } #pnl1_contents { padding: 10px; } </style> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div> <asp:Panel ID="pnl1" runat="server"> <div id="pnl1_contents"> I have rounded corners! </div> </asp:Panel> <ajaxToolkit:ToolkitScriptManager ID="sm1" runat="server" /> <ajaxToolkit:RoundedCornersExtender TargetControlID="pnl1" runat="server" /> </div> </form> </body> </html> The page contains the following three controls: Panel – The Panel control named pnl1 contains the content which appears with rounded corners. ToolkitScriptManager – Every page which uses the Ajax Control Toolkit must contain a single ToolkitScriptManager. The ToolkitScriptManager loads all of the JavaScript files used by the Ajax Control Toolkit. RoundedCornersExtender – This Ajax Control Toolkit extender targets the Panel control. It makes the Panel control appear with rounded corners. You can control the “roundiness” of the corners by modifying the Radius property. Notice that you get Intellisense when typing the Ajax Control Toolkit tags. As soon as you type <ajaxToolkit, all of the available Ajax Control Toolkit controls appear: When you open the page in a browser, then the contents of the Panel appears with rounded corners. The advantage of using the RoundedCorners extender is that it is cross-browser compatible. It works great with Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari even though different browsers implement rounded corners in different ways. The RoundedCorners extender even works with an ancient browser such as Internet Explorer 6. Getting the Latest Version of the Ajax Control Toolkit The Ajax Control Toolkit continues to evolve at a rapid pace. We are hard at work at fixing bugs and adding new features to the project. We plan to have a new release of the Ajax Control Toolkit each month. The easiest way to get the latest version of the Ajax Control Toolkit is to use NuGet. You can open the NuGet Add Library Package Reference dialog at any time to update the Ajax Control Toolkit to the latest version.

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• Silverlight 4 Training Kit

  - by ScottGu

  We recently released a new free Silverlight 4 Training Kit that walks you through building business applications with Silverlight 4.  You can browse the training kit online or alternatively download an entire offline version of the training kit.  The training material is structured on teaching how to use the new Silverlight 4 features to build an end to end business application. The training kit includes 8 modules, 25 videos, and several hands on labs. Below is a breakdown and links to all of the content. [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] Module 1: Introduction Click here to watch this module. In this video John Papa and Ian Griffiths discuss the key areas that the Building Business Applications with Silverlight 4 course focuses on. This module is the overview of the course and covers many key scenarios that are faced when building business applications, and how Silverlight can help address them. Module 2: WCF RIA Services Click here to explore this module. In this lab, you will create a web site for managing conferences that will be the basis for the other labs in this course. Don’t worry if you don’t complete a particular lab in the series – all lab manual instructions are accompanied by completed solutions, so you can either build your own solution from start to finish, or dive straight in at any point using the solutions provided as a starting point. In this lab you will learn how to set up WCF RIA Services, create bindings to the domain context, filter using the domain data source, and create domain service queries. Online Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 2.1 - WCF RIA Services Ian Griffiths sets up the Entity Framework and WCF RIA Services for the sample Event Manager application for the course. He covers how to set up the services, how the Domain Services work and the role that the DomainContext plays in the sample application. He also reviews the metadata classes and integrating the navigation framework. Module 2.2 – Using WCF RIA Services to Edit Entities Ian Griffiths discusses how he adds the ability to edit and create individual entities with the features built into WCF RIA Services into the sample Event Manager application. He covers data binding fundamentals, IQueryable, LINQ, the DomainDataSource, navigation to a single entity using the navigation framework, and how to use the Visual Studio designer to do much of the work . Module 2.3 – Showing Master/Details Records Using WCF RIA Services Ian Griffiths reviews how to display master/detail records for the sample Event Manager application using WCF RIA Services. He covers how to use the Include attribute to indicate which elements to serialize back to the client. Ian also demonstrates how to use the Data Sources window in the designer to add and bind controls to specific data elements. He wraps up by showing how to create custom services to the Domain Services. Module 3 – Authentication, Validation, MVVM, Commands, Implicit Styles and RichTextBox Click here to visit this module. This lab demonstrates how to build a login screen, integrate ASP.NET authentication, and perform validation on data elements. Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) is introduced and used in this lab as a pattern to help separate the UI and business logic. You will also learn how to use implicit styling and the new RichTextBox control. Online Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 3.1 – Authentication Ian Griffiths covers how to integrate a login screen and authentication into the sample Event Manager application. Ian shows how to use the ASP.NET authentication and integrate it into WCF RIA Services and the Silverlight presentation layer. Module 3.2 – MVVM Ian Griffiths covers how to Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) patterns into the sample Event Manager application. He discusses why MVVM exists, what separated presentation means, and why it is important. He shows how to connect the View to the ViewModel, why data binding is important in this symbiosis, and how everything fits together in the overall application. Module 3.3 –Validation Ian Griffiths discusses how validation of user input can be integrated into the sample Event Manager application. He demonstrates how to use the DataAnnotations, the INotifyDataErrorInfo interface, binding markup extensions, and WCF RIA Services in concert to achieve great validation in the sample application. He discusses how this technique allows for property level validation, entity level validation, and asynchronous server side validation. Module 3.4 – Implicit Styles Ian Griffiths discusses how why implicit styles are important and how they can be integrated into the sample Event Manager application. He shows how implicit styles defined in a resource dictionary can be applied to all elements of a particular kind throughout the application. Module 3.5 – RichTextBox Ian Griffiths discusses how the new RichTextBox control and it can be integrated into the sample Event Manager application. He demonstrates how the RichTextBox can provide editing for the event information and how it can display the rich text for selection and copying. Module 4 – User Profiles, Drop Targets, Webcam and Clipboard Click here to visit this module. This lab builds new features into the sample application to take the user's photo. It teaches you how to use the webcam to capture an image, use Silverlight as a drop target, and take advantage of programmatic access to the clipboard. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 4.1 – Webcam Ian Griffiths demonstrates how the webcam adds value to the sample Event Manager application by capturing an image of the attendee. He discusses the VideoCaptureDevice, the CaptureDviceConfiguration, and the CaptureSource classes and how they allow audio and video to be captured so you can grab an image from the capture device and save it. Module 4.2 - Drag and Drop in Silverlight Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to capture and handle the Drop in the sample Event Manager application so the user can drag a photo from a file and drop it into the application. Ian reviews the AllowDrop property, the Drop event, how to access the file that can be dropped, and the other drag related events. He also reviews how to make this work across browsers and the challenges for this. Module 5 – Schedule Planner and Right Mouse Click Click here to visit this module. This lab builds on the application to allow grouping in the DataGrid and implement right mouse click features to add context menu support. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 5.1 – Grouping and Binding Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to use the grouping features for data binding in the DataGrid and how it applies to the sample Event Manager application. He reviews the role of the CollectionViewSource in grouping, customizing the templates for headers, and how to work with grouping with ItemsControls. Module 5.2 – Layout Visual States Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to use the Fluid UI animation support for visual states in the ListBox control DataGrid and how it applies to the sample Event Manager application. He reviews the 3 visual states of BeforeLoaded, AfterLoaded, and BeforeUnloaded. Module 5.3 – Right Mouse Click Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to add support for handling the right mouse button click event to display a context menu for the Event Manager application. He demonstrates how to handle the event, show a custom context menu control, and integrate it into the scheduling portion of the application. Module 6 – Printing the Schedule Click here to visit this module. This lab teaches how to use the new printing features in Silverlight 4. The lab walks through the PrintDocument class and the ViewBox control, while showing how to print multiple pages of content using them. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 6.1 – Printing and the Viewbox Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to add the ability to print the schedule to the sample Event Manager application. He walks through the importance of the PrintDocument class and its members. He also shows how to handle printing the visual tree and how the ViewBox control can help. Module 6.2 – Multi Page Printing Ian Griffiths expands on his printing discussion by showing how to handle printing multiple pages of content for the sample Event Manager application. He shows how to paginate the content and points out various tips to keep in mind when determining the printable area. Module 7 – Running the Event Dashboard Out of Browser Click here to visit this module. This lab builds a dashboard for the sample application while explaining the fundamentals of the out of browser features, how to handle authentication, displaying notifications (toasts), and how to use native integration to use COM Interop with Silverlight. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 7.1 – Out of Browser Ian Griffiths discusses the role of an Out of Browser application for administrators to manage the events and users in the sample Event Manager application. He discusses several reasons why out of browser applications may better suit your needs including custom chrome, toasts, window placement, cross domain access, and file access. He demonstrates the basic technique to take your application and make it work out of browser using the tools. Module 7.2 – NotificationWindow (Toasts) for Elevated Trust Out of Browser Applications Ian Griffiths discusses the how toasts can be used in the sample Event Manager application to show information that may require the user's attention. Ian covers how to create a toast using the NotificationWindow, security implications, and how to make the toast appear as needed. Module 7.3 – Out of Browser Window Placement Ian Griffiths discusses the how to manage the window positioning when building an out of browser application, handling the windows state, and controlling and handling activation of the window. Module 7.4 – Out of Browser Elevated Trust Application Overview Ian Griffiths discusses the implications of creating trusted out of browser application for the Event Manager sample application. He reviews why you might want to use elevated trust, what features is opens to you, and how to take advantage of them. Topics Ian covers include the dynamic keyword in C# 4, the AutomationFactory class, the API to check if you are in a trusted application, and communicating with Excel. Module 8 – Advanced Out of Browser and MEF Click here to visit this module. This hands-on lab walks through the creation of a trusted out of browser application and the new functionality that comes with that. You will learn to use COM Automation, handle the window closing event, set custom window chrome, digitally sign your Silverlight out of browser trusted application, create a silent install option, and take advantage of MEF. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 8.1 – Custom Window Chrome for Elevated Trust Out of Browser Applications Ian Griffiths discusses how to replace the standard operating system window chrome with customized chrome for an elevated trusted out of browser application. He covers how it is important to handle close, resize, minimize, and maximize events. Ian mentions that the tooling was not ready when he shot this video, but the good news is that the tooling now supports setting the custom chrome directly from the property page for the Silverlight application. Module 8.2 – Window Closing Event for Out of Browser Applications Ian Griffiths discusses the WindowClosing event and how to handle and optionally cancel the event. Module 8.3 – Silent Install of Out of Browser Applications Ian Griffiths discusses how to use the SLLauncher executable to install an out of browser application. He discusses the optional command line switches that can be set including how the emulate switch can help you emulate the install process. Ian also shows how to setup a shortcut for the application and tell the application where it should look for future updates online. Module 8.4 – Digitally Signing Out of Browser Application Ian Griffiths discusses how and why to digitally sign an out of browser application using the signtool program. He covers what trusted certificates are, the implications of signing (or not signing), and the effect on the user experience. Module 8.5 – The Value of MEF with Silverlight Ian Griffiths discusses what MEF is, how your application can benefit from it, and the fundamental features it puts at your disposal. He covers the 3 step import, export and compose process as well as how to dynamically import XAP files using MEF. Summary As you can probably tell from the long list above – this series contains a ton of great content, and hopefully provides a nice end-to-end walkthrough that helps explain how to take advantage of Silverlight 4 (and all its new features).  Hope this helps, Scott

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• Issue 15: Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ Oracle OpenWorld

  - by rituchhibber

       ORACLE FOCUS Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange@ ORACLE OpenWorld Sylvie MichouSenior DirectorPartner Marketing & Communications and Strategic Programs RESOURCES -- Oracle OpenWorld 2012 Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld Registration Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange SpecializationTest Fest Oracle OpenWorld Schedule Builder Oracle OpenWorld Promotional Toolkit for Partners Oracle Partner Events Oracle Partner Webcasts Oracle EMEA Partner News SUBSCRIBE FEEDBACK PREVIOUS ISSUES If you are attending our forthcoming Oracle OpenWorld 2012 conference in San Francisco from 30 September to 4 October, you will discover a new dedicated programme of keynotes and sessions tailored especially for you, our valued partners. Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld has been created to enhance the opportunities for you to learn from and network with Oracle executives and experts. The programme also provides more informal opportunities than ever throughout the week to meet up with the people who are most important to your business: customers, prospects, colleagues and the Oracle EMEA Alliances & Channels management team. Oracle remains fully focused on building the industry's most admired partner ecosystem—which today spans over 25,000 partners. This new OPN Exchange programme offers an exciting change of pace for partners throughout the conference. Now it will be possible to enjoy a fully-integrated, partner-dedicated session schedule throughout the week, as well as key social events such as the Sunday night Welcome Reception, networking lunches from Monday to Thursday at the Howard Street Tent, and a fantastic closing event on the last Thursday afternoon. In addition to the regular Oracle OpenWorld conference schedule, if you have registered for the Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld programme, you will be invited to attend a much anticipated global partner keynote presentation, plus more than 40 conference sessions aimed squarely at what's most important to you, as partners. Prominent topics for discussion will include: Oracle technologies and roadmaps and how they fit with partners' business plans; business development; regional distinctions in business practices; and much more. Each session will provide plenty of food for thought ahead of the numerous networking opportunities throughout the week, encouraging the knowledge exchange with Oracle executives, customers, prospects, and colleagues that will make this conference of even greater value for you. At Oracle we always work closely with our partners to deliver solution offerings that improve business value, simplify the IT experience and drive innovation and efficiencies for joint customers. The most important element of our new OPN Exchange is content that helps you get more from technology investments, more from your peer-to-peer connections, and more from your interactions with customers. To this end we've created some partner-specific tools which can be used by OPN members ahead of the conference itself. Crucially, a comprehensive Content Catalog already lists and organises details of every OPN Exchange session, speaker, exhibitor, demonstration and related materials. This Content Catalog can be used by all our partners to identify interesting content that you can add to your own personalised Oracle OpenWorld Schedule Builder, allowing more effective planning and pre-enrolment for vital sessions. There are numerous highlights that you will definitely want to include in those personal schedules. On Sunday morning, 30 September we will start the week with partner dedicated OPN Exchange sessions, following our Global Partner Keynote at 13:00 with Judson Althoff, SVP, Worldwide Alliances & Channels and Embedded Sales and senior executives, giving insight into Oracle's partner vision, strategy, and resources—all designed to help build and strengthen market opportunities for you. This will be followed by a number of OPN Exchange general sessions, the Oracle OpenWorld Opening Keynote with Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle and concluded with the OPN Exchange AfterDark Welcome Reception, starting at 19:30 at the Metreon. From Monday 1 to Thursday 4 October, you can attend the OPN Exchange sessions that are most relevant to your business today and over the coming year. Oracle's top product and sales leaders will be on hand to discuss Oracle's strategic direction in 40+ targeted and in-depth sessions focussing on critical success factors to develop your business. Oracle's dedication to innovation, specialization, enablement and engineering provides Oracle partners with a huge opportunity to create new services and solutions, differentiate themselves and deliver extreme value to joint customers across the globe. Oracle will even be helping over 1000 partners to earn OPN Specialization certification during the Oracle OpenWorld OPN Exchange Test Fest, which will be providing all the study materials and exams required to drive Specialization for free at the conference. You simply need to check the list of current certification tracks available, and make sure you pre-register to reserve a seat in one of the ten sessions being offered free to OPN Exchange registered attendees. And finally, let's not forget those all-important networking opportunities, which can so often provide partners with valuable long-term alliances as well as exciting new business leads. The Oracle PartnerNetwork Lounge, located at Moscone South, exhibition hall, room 100 is the place where partners can meet formally or informally with colleagues, customers, prospects, and other industry professionals. OPN Specialized partners with OPN Exchange passes can also visit the OPN Video Blogging room to record and share ideas, and at the OPN Information Station you will find consultants available to answer your questions. "For the first time ever we will have a full partner conference within OpenWorld. OPN Exchange @ OpenWorld will kick-off on the first Sunday and run the entire week. We'll have over 40 sessions throughout that time and partners will hear from our top development executives, with special sessions dedicated to partnering throughout. It's going to be a phenomenal event, and we look forward to seeing our partners there." Judson Althoff, SVP, Oracle Worldwide Alliances & Channels and Embedded Sales So if you haven't done so already, please register for Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld today or add OPN Exchange to your existing registration for just $100 through My Account. And if you have any further questions regarding partner activities at Oracle OpenWorld, please don't hesitate to contact the Oracle PartnerNetwork team at [email protected] will be on hand to share the very latest information about: Oracle's SPARC Superclusters: the latest Engineered Systems from Oracle, delivering radically improved performance, faster deployment and greatly reduced operational costs for mixed database and enterprise application consolidation Oracle's SPARC T4 servers: with the newly developed T4 processor and Oracle Solaris providing up to five times the single threaded performance and better overall system throughput for expanded application versatility Oracle Database Appliance: a new way to take advantage of the world's most popular database, Oracle Database 11g, in a single, easy-to-deploy and manage system. It's a complete package engineered to deliver simple, reliable and affordable database services to small and medium size businesses and departmental systems. All hardware and software components are supported together and offer customers unique pay-as-you-grow software licensing to quickly scale from two to 24 processor cores without incurring the costs and downtime usually associated with hardware upgrades Oracle Exalogic: the world's only integrated cloud machine, featuring server hardware and middleware software engineered together for maximum performance with minimum set-up and operational cost Oracle Exadata Database Machine: the only database machine that provides extreme performance for both data warehousing and online transaction processing (OLTP) applications, making it the ideal platform for consolidating onto grids or private clouds. It is a complete package of servers, storage, networking and software that is massively scalable, secure and redundant Oracle Sun ZFS Storage Appliances: providing enterprise-class NAS performance, price-performance, manageability and TCO by combining third-generation software with high-performance controllers, flash-based caches and disks Oracle Pillar Axiom Quality-of-Service: confidently consolidate storage for multiple applications into a single datacentre storage solution Oracle Solaris 11: delivering secure enterprise cloud deployments with the ability to run hundreds of virtual application with no overhead and co-engineered with other Oracle software products to provide the highest levels of security, manageability and performance Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c: Oracle's integrated enterprise IT management product, providing the industry's only complete, integrated and business-driven enterprise cloud management solution Oracle VM 3.0: the latest release of Oracle's server virtualisation and management solution, helping to move datacentres beyond server consolidation to improve application deployment and management. Register today and ensure your place at the Extreme Performance Tour! Extreme Performance Tour events are free to attend, but places are limited. To make sure that you don't miss out, please visit Oracle's Extreme Performance Tour website, select the city that you'd be interest in attending an event in, and then click on the 'Register Now' button for that city to secure your interest. Each individual city page also contains more in-depth information about your local event, including logistics, agenda and maybe even a preview of VIP guest speakers. -- Oracle OpenWorld 2010 Whether you attended Oracle OpenWorld 2009 or not, don't forget to save the date now for Oracle OpenWorld 2010. The event will be held a little earlier next year, from 19th-23rd September, so please don't miss out. With thousands of sessions and hundreds of exhibits and demos already lined up, there's no better place to learn how to optimise your existing systems, get an inside line on upcoming technology breakthroughs, and meet with your partner peers, Oracle strategists and even the developers responsible for the products and services that help you get better results for your end customers. Register Now for Oracle OpenWorld 2010! Perhaps you are interested in learning more about Oracle OpenWorld 2010, but don't wish to register at this time? Great! Please just enter your contact information here and we will contact you at a later date. How to Exhibit at Oracle OpenWorld 2010 Sponsorship Opportunities at Oracle OpenWorld 2010 Advertising Opportunities at Oracle OpenWorld 2010 -- Back to the welcome page

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• Entity Association Mapping with Code First Part 1 : Mapping Complex Types

  - by mortezam

  Last week the CTP5 build of the new Entity Framework Code First has been released by data team at Microsoft. Entity Framework Code-First provides a pretty powerful code-centric way to work with the databases. When it comes to associations, it brings ultimate flexibility. I’m a big fan of the EF Code First approach and am planning to explain association mapping with code first in a series of blog posts and this one is dedicated to Complex Types. If you are new to Code First approach, you can find a great walkthrough here. In order to build a solid foundation for our discussion, we will start by learning about some of the core concepts around the relationship mapping.   What is Mapping?Mapping is the act of determining how objects and their relationships are persisted in permanent data storage, in our case, relational databases. What is Relationship mapping?A mapping that describes how to persist a relationship (association, aggregation, or composition) between two or more objects. Types of RelationshipsThere are two categories of object relationships that we need to be concerned with when mapping associations. The first category is based on multiplicity and it includes three types: One-to-one relationships: This is a relationship where the maximums of each of its multiplicities is one. One-to-many relationships: Also known as a many-to-one relationship, this occurs when the maximum of one multiplicity is one and the other is greater than one. Many-to-many relationships: This is a relationship where the maximum of both multiplicities is greater than one. The second category is based on directionality and it contains two types: Uni-directional relationships: when an object knows about the object(s) it is related to but the other object(s) do not know of the original object. To put this in EF terminology, when a navigation property exists only on one of the association ends and not on the both. Bi-directional relationships: When the objects on both end of the relationship know of each other (i.e. a navigation property defined on both ends). How Object Relationships Are Implemented in POCO domain models?When the multiplicity is one (e.g. 0..1 or 1) the relationship is implemented by defining a navigation property that reference the other object (e.g. an Address property on User class). When the multiplicity is many (e.g. 0..*, 1..*) the relationship is implemented via an ICollection of the type of other object. How Relational Database Relationships Are Implemented? Relationships in relational databases are maintained through the use of Foreign Keys. A foreign key is a data attribute(s) that appears in one table and must be the primary key or other candidate key in another table. With a one-to-one relationship the foreign key needs to be implemented by one of the tables. To implement a one-to-many relationship we implement a foreign key from the “one table” to the “many table”. We could also choose to implement a one-to-many relationship via an associative table (aka Join table), effectively making it a many-to-many relationship. Introducing the ModelNow, let's review the model that we are going to use in order to implement Complex Type with Code First. It's a simple object model which consist of two classes: User and Address. Each user could have one billing address. The Address information of a User is modeled as a separate class as you can see in the UML model below: In object-modeling terms, this association is a kind of aggregation—a part-of relationship. Aggregation is a strong form of association; it has some additional semantics with regard to the lifecycle of objects. In this case, we have an even stronger form, composition, where the lifecycle of the part is fully dependent upon the lifecycle of the whole. Fine-grained domain models The motivation behind this design was to achieve Fine-grained domain models. In crude terms, fine-grained means “more classes than tables”. For example, a user may have both a billing address and a home address. In the database, you may have a single User table with the columns BillingStreet, BillingCity, and BillingPostalCode along with HomeStreet, HomeCity, and HomePostalCode. There are good reasons to use this somewhat denormalized relational model (performance, for one). In our object model, we can use the same approach, representing the two addresses as six string-valued properties of the User class. But it’s much better to model this using an Address class, where User has the BillingAddress and HomeAddress properties. This object model achieves improved cohesion and greater code reuse and is more understandable. Complex Types: Splitting a Table Across Multiple Types Back to our model, there is no difference between this composition and other weaker styles of association when it comes to the actual C# implementation. But in the context of ORM, there is a big difference: A composed class is often a candidate Complex Type. But C# has no concept of composition—a class or property can’t be marked as a composition. The only difference is the object identifier: a complex type has no individual identity (i.e. no AddressId defined on Address class) which make sense because when it comes to the database everything is going to be saved into one single table. How to implement a Complex Types with Code First Code First has a concept of Complex Type Discovery that works based on a set of Conventions. The convention is that if Code First discovers a class where a primary key cannot be inferred, and no primary key is registered through Data Annotations or the fluent API, then the type will be automatically registered as a complex type. Complex type detection also requires that the type does not have properties that reference entity types (i.e. all the properties must be scalar types) and is not referenced from a collection property on another type. Here is the implementation: public class User{    public int UserId { get; set; }    public string FirstName { get; set; }    public string LastName { get; set; }    public string Username { get; set; }    public Address Address { get; set; }} public class Address {     public string Street { get; set; }     public string City { get; set; }            public string PostalCode { get; set; }        }public class EntityMappingContext : DbContext {     public DbSet<User> Users { get; set; }        } With code first, this is all of the code we need to write to create a complex type, we do not need to configure any additional database schema mapping information through Data Annotations or the fluent API. Database SchemaThe mapping result for this object model is as follows: Limitations of this mappingThere are two important limitations to classes mapped as Complex Types: Shared references is not possible: The Address Complex Type doesn’t have its own database identity (primary key) and so can’t be referred to by any object other than the containing instance of User (e.g. a Shipping class that also needs to reference the same User Address). No elegant way to represent a null reference There is no elegant way to represent a null reference to an Address. When reading from database, EF Code First always initialize Address object even if values in all mapped columns of the complex type are null. This means that if you store a complex type object with all null property values, EF Code First returns a initialized complex type when the owning entity object is retrieved from the database. SummaryIn this post we learned about fine-grained domain models which complex type is just one example of it. Fine-grained is fully supported by EF Code First and is known as the most important requirement for a rich domain model. Complex type is usually the simplest way to represent one-to-one relationships and because the lifecycle is almost always dependent in such a case, it’s either an aggregation or a composition in UML. In the next posts we will revisit the same domain model and will learn about other ways to map a one-to-one association that does not have the limitations of the complex types. References ADO.NET team blog Mapping Objects to Relational Databases Java Persistence with Hibernate

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• MVC 2 Editor Template for Radio Buttons

  - by Steve Michelotti

  A while back I blogged about how to create an HTML Helper to produce a radio button list.  In that post, my HTML helper was “wrapping” the FluentHtml library from MvcContrib to produce the following html output (given an IEnumerable list containing the items “Foo” and “Bar”): 1: <div> 2: <input id="Name_Foo" name="Name" type="radio" value="Foo" /><label for="Name_Foo" id="Name_Foo_Label">Foo</label> 3: <input id="Name_Bar" name="Name" type="radio" value="Bar" /><label for="Name_Bar" id="Name_Bar_Label">Bar</label> 4: </div> With the release of MVC 2, we now have editor templates we can use that rely on metadata to allow us to customize our views appropriately.  For example, for the radio buttons above, we want the “id” attribute to be differentiated and unique and we want the “name” attribute to be the same across radio buttons so the buttons will be grouped together and so model binding will work appropriately. We also want the “for” attribute in the <label> element being set to correctly point to the id of the corresponding radio button.  The default behavior of the RadioButtonFor() method that comes OOTB with MVC produces the same value for the “id” and “name” attributes so this isn’t exactly what I want out the the box if I’m trying to produce the HTML mark up above. If we use an EditorTemplate, the first gotcha that we run into is that, by default, the templates just work on your view model’s property. But in this case, we *also* was the list of items to populate all the radio buttons. It turns out that the EditorFor() methods do give you a way to pass in additional data. There is an overload of the EditorFor() method where the last parameter allows you to pass an anonymous object for “extra” data that you can use in your view – it gets put on the view data dictionary: 1: <%: Html.EditorFor(m => m.Name, "RadioButtonList", new { selectList = new SelectList(new[] { "Foo", "Bar" }) })%> Now we can create a file called RadioButtonList.ascx that looks like this: 1: <%@ Control Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewUserControl" %> 2: <% 3: var list = this.ViewData["selectList"] as SelectList; 4: %> 5: <div> 6: <% foreach (var item in list) { 7: var radioId = ViewData.TemplateInfo.GetFullHtmlFieldId(item.Value); 8: var checkedAttr = item.Selected ? "checked=\"checked\"" : string.Empty; 9: %> 10: <input type="radio" id="<%: radioId %>" name="<%: ViewData.TemplateInfo.HtmlFieldPrefix %>" value="<%: item.Value %>" <%: checkedAttr %>/> 11: <label for="<%: radioId %>"><%: item.Text %></label> 12: <% } %> 13: </div> There are several things to note about the code above. First, you can see in line #3, it’s getting the SelectList out of the view data dictionary. Then on line #7 it uses the GetFullHtmlFieldId() method from the TemplateInfo class to ensure we get unique IDs. We pass the Value to this method so that it will produce IDs like “Name_Foo” and “Name_Bar” rather than just “Name” which is our property name. However, for the “name” attribute (on line #10) we can just use the normal HtmlFieldPrefix property so that we ensure all radio buttons have the same name which corresponds to the view model’s property name. We also get to leverage the fact the a SelectListItem has a Boolean Selected property so we can set the checkedAttr variable on line #8 and use it on line #10. Finally, it’s trivial to set the correct “for” attribute for the <label> on line #11 since we already produced that value. Because the TemplateInfo class provides all the metadata for our view, we’re able to produce this view that is widely re-usable across our application. In fact, we can create a couple HTML helpers to better encapsulate this call and make it more user friendly: 1: public static MvcHtmlString RadioButtonList<TModel, TProperty>(this HtmlHelper<TModel> htmlHelper, Expression<Func<TModel, TProperty>> expression, params string[] items) 2: { 3: return htmlHelper.RadioButtonList(expression, new SelectList(items)); 4: } 5:   6: public static MvcHtmlString RadioButtonList<TModel, TProperty>(this HtmlHelper<TModel> htmlHelper, Expression<Func<TModel, TProperty>> expression, IEnumerable<SelectListItem> items) 7: { 8: var func = expression.Compile(); 9: var result = func(htmlHelper.ViewData.Model); 10: var list = new SelectList(items, "Value", "Text", result); 11: return htmlHelper.EditorFor(expression, "RadioButtonList", new { selectList = list }); 12: } This allows us to simply the call like this: 1: <%: Html.RadioButtonList(m => m.Name, "Foo", "Bar" ) %> In that example, the values for the radio button are hard-coded and being passed in directly. But if you had a view model that contained a property for the collection of items you could call the second overload like this: 1: <%: Html.RadioButtonList(m => m.Name, Model.FooBarList ) %> The Editor templates introduced in MVC 2 definitely allow for much more flexible views/editors than previously available. By knowing about the features you have available to you with the TemplateInfo class, you can take these concepts and customize your editors with extreme flexibility and re-usability.

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• Parallelism in .NET – Part 1, Decomposition

  - by Reed

  The first step in designing any parallelized system is Decomposition.  Decomposition is nothing more than taking a problem space and breaking it into discrete parts.  When we want to work in parallel, we need to have at least two separate things that we are trying to run.  We do this by taking our problem and decomposing it into parts. There are two common abstractions that are useful when discussing parallel decomposition: Data Decomposition and Task Decomposition.  These two abstractions allow us to think about our problem in a way that helps leads us to correct decision making in terms of the algorithms we’ll use to parallelize our routine. To start, I will make a couple of minor points. I’d like to stress that Decomposition has nothing to do with specific algorithms or techniques.  It’s about how you approach and think about the problem, not how you solve the problem using a specific tool, technique, or library.  Decomposing the problem is about constructing the appropriate mental model: once this is done, you can choose the appropriate design and tools, which is a subject for future posts. Decomposition, being unrelated to tools or specific techniques, is not specific to .NET in any way.  This should be the first step to parallelizing a problem, and is valid using any framework, language, or toolset.  However, this gives us a starting point – without a proper understanding of decomposition, it is difficult to understand the proper usage of specific classes and tools within the .NET framework. Data Decomposition is often the simpler abstraction to use when trying to parallelize a routine.  In order to decompose our problem domain by data, we take our entire set of data and break it into smaller, discrete portions, or chunks.  We then work on each chunk in the data set in parallel. This is particularly useful if we can process each element of data independently of the rest of the data.  In a situation like this, there are some wonderfully simple techniques we can use to take advantage of our data.  By decomposing our domain by data, we can very simply parallelize our routines.  In general, we, as developers, should be always searching for data that can be decomposed. Finding data to decompose if fairly simple, in many instances.  Data decomposition is typically used with collections of data.  Any time you have a collection of items, and you’re going to perform work on or with each of the items, you potentially have a situation where parallelism can be exploited.  This is fairly easy to do in practice: look for iteration statements in your code, such as for and foreach. Granted, every for loop is not a candidate to be parallelized.  If the collection is being modified as it’s iterated, or the processing of elements depends on other elements, the iteration block may need to be processed in serial.  However, if this is not the case, data decomposition may be possible. Let’s look at one example of how we might use data decomposition.  Suppose we were working with an image, and we were applying a simple contrast stretching filter.  When we go to apply the filter, once we know the minimum and maximum values, we can apply this to each pixel independently of the other pixels.  This means that we can easily decompose this problem based off data – we will do the same operation, in parallel, on individual chunks of data (each pixel). Task Decomposition, on the other hand, is focused on the individual tasks that need to be performed instead of focusing on the data.  In order to decompose our problem domain by tasks, we need to think about our algorithm in terms of discrete operations, or tasks, which can then later be parallelized. Task decomposition, in practice, can be a bit more tricky than data decomposition.  Here, we need to look at what our algorithm actually does, and how it performs its actions.  Once we have all of the basic steps taken into account, we can try to analyze them and determine whether there are any constraints in terms of shared data or ordering.  There are no simple things to look for in terms of finding tasks we can decompose for parallelism; every algorithm is unique in terms of its tasks, so every algorithm will have unique opportunities for task decomposition. For example, say we want our software to perform some customized actions on startup, prior to showing our main screen.  Perhaps we want to check for proper licensing, notify the user if the license is not valid, and also check for updates to the program.  Once we verify the license, and that there are no updates, we’ll start normally.  In this case, we can decompose this problem into tasks – we have a few tasks, but there are at least two discrete, independent tasks (check licensing, check for updates) which we can perform in parallel.  Once those are completed, we will continue on with our other tasks. One final note – Data Decomposition and Task Decomposition are not mutually exclusive.  Often, you’ll mix the two approaches while trying to parallelize a single routine.  It’s possible to decompose your problem based off data, then further decompose the processing of each element of data based on tasks.  This just provides a framework for thinking about our algorithms, and for discussing the problem.

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• MVP Summit 2011 summary and thoughts: The &ldquo;I hope I don&rsquo;t cross a line and lose my MVP status&rdquo; post

  - by George Clingerman

  I've been wanting to write this post summarizing my thoughts about the MVP summit but have been dragging my feet since it's a very difficult one to write. However seeing Andy (http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/77625.aspx) and Catalin (http://www.catalinzima.com/2011/03/mvp-summit-2011/) and Chris (http://geekswithblogs.net/cwilliams/archive/2011/03/07/144229.aspx) post about it has encouraged me to finally take the plunge. I'm going to have to write carefully though because I'm going to be dancing around a ton of NDA mine fields as well as having to walk the tight-rope of not sending the wrong message or having people read too much into what I'm saying. I want to note that most of what I'm about to say is just based on my observations, they're not thoughts that Microsoft has asked me to pass along and they're not things I heard Microsoft say. It's just me sharing what I think after going to the MVP summit. Let's start off with a short imaginary question and answer session.     Has the App Hub forums and XBLIG management been rather poor by Microsoft? Yes.     Do I think we're going to see changes to that overnight? No.     Will it continue to look bad from the outside? Somewhat. Confusing right? Well that's kind of how things are right now. Lots of confusion. XNA is doing AWESOME. Like, really, really awesome. As a result of that awesomeness, XNA is on three major platforms: Xbox 360, WP7 and PC. This means that internally Microsoft is really excited and invested in the technology. That's fantastic for XNA and really should show you the future the framework has. It's here to stay. So why are Xbox LIVE Indie Game developers feeling so much pain? The ironic thing is that pain is being caused by the success of XNA. When XNA was just a small thing, there was more freedom and more focus. It was just us and them. We were an only child. Now our family has grown and everyone has and wants some time with XNA. This gets XNA pulled in all directions and as it moves onto new platforms, it plays catch up trying to get those platforms up to speed to where Xbox LIVE Indie Games has grown. Forums, documentation, educational content. They all need to be there because Xbox LIVE Indie Games has all of that and more. Along with the catch up in features/documentation/awesomeness there's the catch up that the people on the team have to play. New platforms and new areas of development mean new players and those new guys don't have the history of being around from the beginning. This leads to a lack of understanding at times just how important some things are because they seem so small and insignificant (Rich Text defaulting for new forum profiles would be one things that jumps to mind). If you're not aware that the forums have become more than just a basic Q&A, if you're not aware that they're a central hub to a very active community, then you don't understand why that small change should be prioritized over something else. New people have to get caught up and figure out how to make a framework and central forum site work for everyone it's now serving. So yeah, a lot of our pain this last year has been simply that XNA is doing well and XBLIG is doing well so the focus was shifted to catch other things up. It hurts when a parent seems to not have any time for you and they're spending some much time with your new baby brother. Growing pains. All families and in our case our product family experience it to some degree. I think as WP7 matures we'll see the team figuring out how to give everyone the right amount of attention. While we're talking about some of our growing pains, it is also important to note (although not really an excuse) that the Xbox LIVE Arcade developers complain about many of the same things that we do. If you paid attention to talks and information coming out of GDC 2011, most of the the XBLA guys were saying things that sounded eerily similar to what the XBLIG developers are saying (Scott Nichols from GayGamer.net noticed http://twitter.com/#!/NaviFairyGG/status/43540379206811650). Does this mean we should just accept the status quo since we're being treated exactly the same? No way. However it DOES show that the way we're being treated is no indication of the stability and future of the platform, it's just Microsoft dropping the communication ball on two playing fields. We're not alone and we're not even being treated worse. Not great, but also in a weird way a very good sign. Now on to a few tidbits I think I CAN share from the summit (I'm really crossing my fingers I'm not stepping over some NDA line I shouldn't be). First, I discovered that the XBLIG user base is bigger than I personally had originally estimated. I won't give the exact numbers (although we did beg Microsoft to release some of these numbers so maybe someday?) but it was much larger than my original guestimates and I was pleasantly surprised. Maybe some of you guys had the right number when you were guessing, but I know that mine was much too low. And even MORE importantly the number of users/shoppers is growing at a steady pace as well. Our market is growing! That was fantastic news and really something that I had to share. On to the community manager discussion. It was mentioned. I was mentioned. I blushed. Nothing more to report there than the blush in my cheeks was a light crimson color. If I ever see a job description posted for that position I have a resume waiting in the wings. I can't deny that I think that would be my dream job... ...so after I finished blushing, the MVPs did make it very, very clear that the communication has to improve. Community manager or not the single biggest pain point with the Xbox LIVE Indie Game community has been a lack of communication. I have seen dramatic improvement in the team responding to MVPs and I'm even seeing more communication from them on the forums so I'm hoping that's a long term change. I really think they understood the issue, the problem remains how to open that communication channel in a way that was sustainable. I think they'll get it figured out and hopefully that's sooner rather than later. During the summit, you may have seen me tweeting about how I was "that guy" (http://twitter.com/#!/clingermangw/status/42740432471470081). You also may have noticed that Andy and Catalin both mentioned me in their summit write ups. I may have come on a bit strong while I was there...went a little out of character for myself. I've been agitated for a while with the way things have been and I've been listening to you guys and hearing you guys be agitated. I'm also watching some really awesome indie game developers looking elsewhere and leaving the platform. Some of them we might not have been able to keep even with changes, but others are only leaving because of perceptions and lack of communication from Microsoft. And that pisses me off. And I let Microsoft know that I was pissed off. You made your list and I took that list and verbalized it. I verbalized the hell out of it. [It was actually mentioned that I'm a lot nicer on the forums and in email than I am in person...I felt bad about that, but I couldn't stay silent]. Hopefully it did something guys, I really did try hard to get the message across. Along with my agitation, I also brought some pride. I mentioned several things in person to the team that I was particularly proud of. From people in the community that are doing an awesome job, to the re-launch of XboxIndies that was going on that week and even gamers like Steven Hurdle (http://writingsofmassdeduction.com/) who have purchased one XBLIG every day for over 100 days now. The community is freaking rocking it and I made sure to highlight that. So in conclusion, I'd just like to say hang in there (you know, like that picture of the cat). If you've been worried about investing in Xbox LIVE Indie Games because you think it's on shaky ground. It's not. Dream Build Play being about the Xbox 360 should have helped a little to point that out. The team is really scrambling around trying to figure things out and make improvements all around. There’s quite a few new gals and guys and it's going to take them time to catch up and there are a lot of constantly shifting priorities. We all have one toy, one team and we're fighting for time with it. It's also time for the community to continue spreading our wings and going out on our own more often. The Indie Game Winter Uprising was a fantastic example of that. We took things into our own hands and it got noticed and Microsoft got behind it. They do every time we stand up and do something (look at how many Microsoft employees tweeted, wrote about the re-launch of XboxIndies.com or the support I've gotten from them for my weekly XNA Notes). XNA is here to stay, it's time for us to stop being scared of that and figure out how to make our own games the successes they should be. There's definitely a list of things that need to be fixed, things that should be improved and I think we should definitely keep vocal about that with Microsoft. Keep it short, focused and prioritized. There's also a lot of things we can do ourselves while we're waiting on them to fix and change things. Lots of ways we can compensate for particular weaknesses in the channel. The kind of stuff that we can step up and do ourselves. Do it on our own, you know, the way Indies always do. And I'm really looking forward to watching us do just that.

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